“SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year,” writes the BBC, “as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests.”

Human landings could begin as early as 2029 if initial missions go well, though “2031 was more likely”, he added in a post on his social media platform X…

The billionaire said in 2020 that he remained confident that his company would land humans on Mars six years later. In 2024, he said he would launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, with plans to send crewed flights in four years.
Musk has said that the coming Mars mission would carry the Tesla humanoid robot “Optimus”, which was shown to the public last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The lunar eclipse this week had many of us gazing up at the night sky to marvel at the red-tinged moon, and now we can see what that eerie effect looked like from the other side thanks to images captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. From the lander’s perspective on the moon, the phenomenon on March 14 was a solar eclipse, and the latest video shows red light cast over Blue Ghost as Earth temporarily blocked the sun. The new imagery came in shortly after the team shared a photo of the diamond ring effect captured by the lander as the sun began to reemerge.

“These images — rapidly captured by our top deck camera with different exposure settings — were stitched together in a quick clip,” Firefly said. “The red hue is the result of sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere as the sun is blocked by our planet, casting a shadow on the lunar surface.” At the beginning of the video where the images are better lit, you can see Venus as a small dot above the eclipse. And if you look really, really closely, you’ll also see Mercury to its left. 

Blue Ghost landed on the moon on March 2, and Firefly has shared some pretty amazing photos and videos since, including landing footage from the spacecraft’s point of view. The lander’s mission is expected to come to an end soon with the onset of lunar night, but it’ll first observe the lunar sunset on March 16.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/see-fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-bathed-in-red-during-solar-eclipse-captured-from-the-moon-203203999.html?src=rss

Looks like Disney’s putting its live-action faith in the Lilo & Stitch remake and taking the chance to highlight its social media impact.

“Is everything we see around us is sealed within a black hole?” asks Space.com.

Because here’s the thing. The $10 billion James Webb Space telescope (in operation since 2022) “has found that the vast majority of deep space and, thus the early galaxies it has so far observed, are rotating in the same direction. While around two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise, the other third rotates counter-clockwise.”

In a random universe, scientists would expect to find 50% of galaxies rotating one way, while the other 50% rotate the other way. This new research suggests there is a preferred direction for galactic rotation… “It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations,” team leader Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering, said in a statement. “One explanation is that the universe was born rotating.

“That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.

“But if the universe was indeed born rotating, it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete.” Black hole cosmology, also known as “Schwarzschild cosmology,” suggests that our observable universe might be the interior of a black hole itself within a larger parent universe. The idea was first introduced by theoretical physicist Raj Kumar Pathria and by mathematician I. J. Good. It presents the idea that the “Schwarzchild radius,” better known as the “event horizon,” (the boundary from within which nothing can escape a black hole, not even light) is also the horizon of the visible universe.
The article cites a theory by Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven that ultimately black holes don’t compress indefinitely into a singularity. “The matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like a compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding,” Poplawski explained to Space.com…
The scientist continued by adding that rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe, an event we now refer to as the Big Bang… “I think that the simplest explanation of the rotating universe is the universe was born in a rotating black hole.”
Team leader Shamir offers another theory: that we just need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe. (Which could also explain the difference in the expansion rates in the universe “and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.”)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney’s keeping the Percy Jackson train a-going with another season that’ll adapt 2007’s The Titan’s Curse.

“Alphabet’s Waymo autonomous vehicles are programmed to follow the rules of the road…” notes the Washington Post. But while the cars obey speed limits and properly use their turn signals — they also “routinely violate parking rules.”

Waymo vehicles driving themselves received 589 tickets for parking violations in 2024, according to records from San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency… The robots incurred $65,065 in fines for violations such as obstructing traffic, disobeying street cleaning restrictions and parking in prohibited areas… [Waymo is responsible for 0.05% of the city’s fines, according to statistics from the article.]

Parking violations are one of the few ways to quantify how often self-driving companies’ vehicles break the rules of the road… Some parking violations, such as overstaying in a paid spot, cause inconvenience but do not directly endanger other people. Others increase the risk of crashes, said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Anytime a vehicle is obstructing the flow of traffic, other drivers might be forced to brake suddenly or change lanes, he said, creating risks for drivers, pedestrians or other road users…

San Francisco transit operators lost 2 hours and 12 minutes of service time in 2024 because of Waymo vehicles blocking or colliding with transit vehicles, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency records. Autonomous vehicles have obstructed firefighters responding to emergency scenes in San Francisco, triggering city officials to ask for tougher oversight from state regulators.

The article adds that driverless Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles received 75 more tickets in 2024 — “with $543 in fines still outstanding, according to records from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As of March 28, Amazon Echo models that were previously able to process Alexa requests locally will no longer do so, instead sending those voice recordings to the cloud. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the change to The Verge after a Reddit user posted a PSA about it on Friday, with a screenshot of an email they’d received from the company. The change applies to the Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15, according to The Verge.

Per the email shared on Reddit, the settings for Echo users who enabled the ‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ option will automatically change to ‘Don’t save recordings.’ It goes on to say, “This means that, starting on March 28th, your voice recordings will be sent to and processed in the cloud, and they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests. Any previously saved voice recordings will also be deleted.” The move comes a few weeks after Amazon introduced Alexa+, which brings generative AI to the assistant. Amazon said during the February unveiling event that Alexa+ would begin rolling out in early access this month.

“As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature,” Amazon said in its email to customers about discontinuing the option for local processing. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/amazon-is-getting-rid-of-the-option-for-echo-devices-to-process-alexa-requests-locally-182627101.html?src=rss

Slashdot has run nearly a dozen stories about Michael Mann, one of America’s most prominent climate scientists and a co-creator of the famous “hockey stick” graph of spiking temperatures. In 2012 Mann sued two bloggers for defamation — and last year Mann finally won more than $1 million, reports the Washington Post. “A jury found that two conservative commentators had defamed him by alleging that he was like a child molester in the way he had ‘molested and tortured’ climate data.”

But “Now, a year after that ruling, the case has taken a turn that leaves Mann in the position of the one who owes money.”

On Wednesday, a judge sanctioned Mann’s legal team for “bad-faith trial misconduct” for overstating how much the scientist lost in potential grant funding as a result of reputational harm. The lawyers had shown jurors a chart that listed one grant amount Mann didn’t get at $9.7 million, though in other testimony Mann said it was worth $112,000. And when comparing Mann’s grant income before and after the negative commentary, the lawyers cited a disparity of $2.8 million, but an amended calculation pegged it at $2.37 million.

The climate scientist’s legal team said it was preparing to fight the setbacks in court. Peter J. Fontaine, one of Mann’s attorneys, wrote in an email that Mann “believes that the court committed errors of fact and law and will pursue these matters further.” Fontaine emphasized that the original decision — that Mann was defamed by the commentary — still stands. “We have reviewed the recent rulings by the D.C. Superior Court and are pleased to note that the court has upheld the jury’s verdict,” he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Cuba’s power grid collapsed Friday night,” reports CNN, “triggering a nationwide power outage and plunging its more than 10 million people into darkness.”

Video filmed by CNN in the capital Havana showed streets and buildings shrouded in total darkness, as people used electric torches to navigate the streets. By Saturday morning, the Cuban government officials said that “microsystems” — pockets of electricity — had been restored in some cities. However, it remains unclear when the island’s power system would be fully online again and most people remained in the dark…

It marks the latest in a series of failures on the Caribbean island struggling with creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil… For nearly a week in October, most of Cuba suffered near-total blackouts, the worst energy outages in decades. While Cubans are used to frequent power outages, to have another nationwide backcourt — the fourth in six months — was unsettling for many people who need electricity to cook and refrigerate food that otherwise spoils quickly in the tropical heat.
“Many residents posted on online sites looking for propane, charcoal, and fuel for generators…”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bit Reactor and Respawn’s turn-based tactics game will have its grand unveiling at Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo, Japan.

Google’s update to the Find My Device app, which adds a “People” tab showing contacts who have shared their location with you (and vice versa), is now available for Android users. The company announced the feature at the beginning of the month with the March Pixel Drop, and it started rolling out this week, as spotted by 9to5Google. With the update, you can now see your approved contacts’ real-time locations on the map, above a list that displays the addresses of their current positions, their distance from you and the time since that information was last refreshed.

While Google Maps already let users manage location sharing and keep track of trusted contacts, the Find My Device update makes all this information easier to find, with a more straightforward presentation. In the People tab, you can choose to see the contacts who have shared their location with you, and those you’ve shared your location with. You can also switch Google accounts and change your Location Sharing settings at any time from within the app using the tab at the top right. The update comes almost a year after Google first launched Find My Device, and brings the service more in line with Apple’s Find My app.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/googles-find-my-device-app-can-now-show-your-contacts-real-time-locations-154857019.html?src=rss

Anthony and Joe Russo’s new sci-fi adventure film, The Electric State, is adapted from the graphic novel by Swedish artist/designer Simon Stålenhag. So naturally the directors wanted to create their own distinctive look and tone—complete with a colorful array of quirky misfit robots who team up with their human counterparts to take down an evil corporation.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The Electric State is Stålenhag’s third book, published in 2018. Like much of work, it’s set in a dystopian, ravaged landscape: a reimagined America in an alternate 1990s where a war between robots and humans has devastated the country. Paragraphs of text, accompanied by larger artworks, tell the story of a teen girl named Michelle (Milly Bobby Brown) who must travel across the country with her robot companion, Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), to find her long-lost genius brother, Christopher (Woody Norman), while being pursued by a federal agent (Giancarlo Esposito).

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Tuesday Microsoft “surprised everyone,” writes Neowin, “by announcing a new change that will radically improve TypeScript performance” — porting TypeScript to Go.

InfoWorld writes that “The initiative promises dramatic improvements in editor startup speed, build times, and memory usage, making it easier to scale TypeScript to large code bases, Microsoft said.”

Microsoft’s TypeScript team expects to be able to preview command-line type-checking in Go-based tsc by mid-2025, and to deliver a feature-complete Go implementation of TypeScript by the end of the year. [You can build and run the Go code now from Microsoft’s new working repository.]
Developers who use Go-based TypeScript in the Visual Studio Code editor will feel the increased speed in the editor, Microsoft said. The company promises an 8x improvement in project load times, instant comprehensive error listings across entire projects, and greater responsiveness for all language service operations including completion lists, quick information, go to definition, and find all references. The new TypeScript will also support more advanced refactoring and deeper insights that were previously too expensive to compute, the company said.

Microsoft believes native Go implementations reduce build times by up to 10x, notes Neowin. But “Developers can expect TypeScript 6.0 to have some deprecations and breaking changes to support the upcoming Go-based version.”

Later this year, Microsoft will be releasing this new native Go implementation as TypeScript 7.0. The current JS-based TypeScript codebase will continue development into the 6.x series until TypeScript 7+ reaches sufficient maturity and adoption, since some projects may depend on certain API features, legacy configurations, or other things that are not supported by TypeScript 7+.
TypeScript’s original creator Anders Hejlsberg recorded an announcement video — and also shared his thoughts in a GitHub discussion titled simply… “Why Go?”
The TypeScript compiler’s move to Go was influenced by specific technical requirements, such as the need for structural compatibility with the existing JavaScript-based codebase, ease of memory management, and the ability to handle complex graph processing efficiently. After evaluating numerous languages and making multiple prototypes — including in C# — Go emerged as the optimal choice…
Let’s be real. Microsoft using Go to write a compiler for TypeScript wouldn’t have been possible or conceivable in years past. However, over the last few decades, we’ve seen Microsoft’s strong and ongoing commitment to open-source software, prioritizing developer productivity and community collaboration above all. Our goal is to empower developers with the best tools available, unencumbered by internal politics or narrow constraints. This freedom to choose the right tool for each specific job ultimately benefits the entire developer community, driving innovation, efficiency, and improved outcomes. And you can’t argue with a 10x outcome!

Hejlsberg also addressed their choice of Go in an online interview with the Michigan TypeScript meetup.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Siri chief reportedly called the delay in features “ugly.”

“Wind and solar energy generated more electricity in the U.S. than coal for the first time last year,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “according to analysis from clean-energy think tank Ember.

“The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17% of the country’s power mix while coal fell to a low of 15%, it said.”

Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, according to Ember’s analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, increasing 27% from the year before, while wind rose 7%… Natural gas generation increased 3.3% in 2024, according to Ember, and remains by far the largest source of electricity in the U.S., accounting for 43% of the mix…
California and Nevada both surpassed 30% annual share of solar in their electricity mix for the first time last year (32% and 30%, respectively). California’s battery growth was key to its solar success. It installed 20% more battery capacity than it did solar capacity, which helped it transfer a significant share of its daytime solar to the evening. Texas installed more solar and battery capacity than even California.

Yet the growth of solar was uneven — 28 states generated less than 5% of their electricity from solar in 2024, highlighting significant untapped potential — even before adding battery storage.
The article includes this observation from Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember. “The fall in battery costs is a gamechanger for how much solar the U.S. electricity grid could integrate in the near future.”

Electrek notes that “After being stagnant for 14 years, electricity demand started rising in recent years and saw a 3% increase in 2024, marking the fifth-highest level of rise this century…”

Natural gas grew three times more than the decline in coal, increasing power sector CO2 emissions slightly (0.7%). Coal fell by the second smallest amount since 2014, as gas and clean energy growth met rising electricity demand, whereas historically, they have replaced coal. Despite growing emissions, the carbon intensity of electricity continued to decline. The rise in power demand was much faster than the rise in power sector CO2 emissions, making each unit of electricity likely the cleanest it has ever been.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.