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After two days of roller-coaster negotiations at OpenAI HQ after the surprise ouster of CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that Microsoft plans to hire Altman and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman to head a “new advanced AI research team.” Overnight, the OpenAI board named a new interim CEO, Emmett Shear, who acknowledged the messy process and promised to hire an investigator to generate a full report on Altman’s firing.

But the story isn’t over yet, because Monday morning, 505 of 700 OpenAI employees sent a letter to the OpenAI board demanding that all current board members resign and Altman and Brockman be reinstated, or they will likely leave to join Altman and Brockman at Microsoft.

“The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company,” the letter states. “Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.”

Enlarge / Las Vegas’ animated Sphere provided part of a spectacular backdrop for the Las Vegas street race. Luckily for F1, the racing more than lived up to the hype. (credit: Bob Kupbens/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images)

The way an F1 event normally works is that a promoter pays the sport a sanctioning fee—somewhere between $20 million and $55 million—and then the sporting circus turns up and races, then leaves. But Liberty Media, which owns F1, decided that it would handle promoting the Las Vegas race itself.

It put plenty of money where its mouth was, too. It built a new permanent pit complex, also housing the fancy Paddock Club hospitality suites, topped off with a massive animated display for a roof. And the 3.8 miles of city streets that made up the track had to be entirely resurfaced with more than 100,000 tons of paving to create the smooth racing surface the sport expects. All in, Liberty spent at least half a billion dollars of its own money on the event.

Enlarge / A view of the double cluster in Perseus. (credit: Markus Noga)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Enlarge (credit: Paradox Interactive)

The worst thing about Cities: Skylines 2 is that it was recently released.

If this hugely ambitious city builder simulation would have been released some time ago, patched over and over again, and updated with some gap-filling DLC, it would be far better off. It could be on its slow-burn second act, like No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, or Final Fantasy XIV. It could have settled into a disgruntled-but-still-invested player base, like Destiny 2 or Overwatch 2. Or its technical debts could have been slowly paid off to let its underlying strengths come through, as with Disco Elysium or The Witcher 3.

But Cities: Skylines 2 (C:S2) is regrettably available now in its current state. It has serious performance problems, both acknowledged by its 30-odd-employee developer Colossal Order and studied in-depth by others (which we’ll get into). It has a rough-draft look when compared to its predecessor, which has accumulated eight years of fixes, DLC, and mods to cover a dizzying array of ideas. Worst of all, it was highly anticipated by fans, some of whom have high-end systems that still can’t properly run the sluggish game.

Enlarge / David Brown Automotive makes modernized minis with electric power for well-heeled buyers. (credit: David Brown Automotive)

You’ll be forgiven for not knowing who David Brown Automotive is. It’s a small outfit that specializes in cars for the ultra wealthy, but it does so rather wonderfully. Founded in 2013 by a chap called, perhaps unsurprisingly, David Brown (no relation to the Aston Martin David Brown, before you ask), its first car was the Jaguar XK Convertible-based Speedback GT.

Launched in 2014, the Speedback GT came with a 5.0 L supercharged V8, more than 500 hp (373 kW), and a look that apes a classic Aston Martin. Brown, an avid classic car enthusiast, loved the look of his classics but hated having to fix them all the time, so he made something that looks old but shouldn’t break down anywhere near as often. The company says no more than 100 will be built, and with a pretty spicy entry fee one can imagine the wider appeal may be a smidge limited.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 06, 2023 in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Ars Technica)

Just over a day since his surprise firing that sent shock waves through the tech industry, the OpenAI board is reportedly engaging in discussions with Sam Altman to potentially return as CEO of the company, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the matter. The outlet says that Altman is “ambivalent” about returning and would want significant changes to how the company is run.

The move would be a dramatic about-face for the board, which has faced intense scrutiny from all corners of the tech world for abruptly and surprisingly firing one of the tech industry’s most high-profile CEOs. Altman was popular with both Microsoft leadership and OpenAI staff, and his firing came as a shock to employees, who reportedly pushed back against OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever’s handling of the move during an all-hands meeting on Friday. The overtures toward Altman suggest that the board may have been surprised by the sizable reaction from the world at large.

In an internal memo obtained by Axios on Saturday, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap hinted at criticism of how the firing was handled and confirmed that Altman was not fired in response to “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices.” With no apparent legal wrongdoing at play, and with broad support within the company (present board of directors excluded), the path could clear for Altman’s return, should he choose to accept it.

Enlarge / Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI Chief Scientist, speaks at Tel Aviv University on June 5, 2023. (credit: Getty Images)

On Friday, OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman in a surprise move that led to the resignation of President Greg Brockman and three senior scientists. The move also blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious. As Friday night wore on, reports emerged that the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI’s tech deployment.

“This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity,” Sutskever told employees at an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon, as reported by The Information.

Since its founding, OpenAI has pursued the development of artificial general intelligence (or AGI), which is a hypothetical technology that would be able to perform any intellectual task a human can do, potentially replacing a large number of humans at their jobs.

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How did science get started? A few years back, we looked at one answer to that question in the form of a book called The Invention of Science. In it, British historian David Wootton places the origin within a few centuries of European history in which the features of modern science—experiments, models and laws, peer review—were gradually aggregated into a formal process of organized discovery.

But that answer is exquisitely sensitive to how science is defined. A huge range of cultures engaged in organized observations of the natural world and tried to identify patterns in what they saw. In a recent book called Horizons, James Poskett places these efforts firmly within the realm of science and arrives at his subtitle: “The global origins of modern science.” He de-emphasizes the role of Europe and directly dismisses Wootton’s book via footnote in the process.

Whether you find Poskett’s broad definition of science compelling will go a long way to explain how you feel about the first third of the book. The remaining two-thirds, however, are a welcome reminder that, wherever it may have started, science quickly grew into an international effort and matured in conversation with international cultural trends like colonialism, nationalism, and Cold War ideologies.

Enlarge / The 3D-printed hand made via the new method. (credit: ETH Zurich/Thomas Buchner)

Have you ever wondered why robots are unable to walk and move their bodies as fluidly as we do? Some robots can run, jump, or dance with greater efficiency than humans, but their body movements also seem mechanical. The reason for this lies in the bones they lack.

Unlike humans and animals, robots do not have real bones or the flexible tissues that connect them; they have artificial links and joints made of materials like carbon fiber and metal tubes. According to Robert Katzschmann, a professor of robotics at ETH Zurich, these internal structures allow a robot to make movements, grab objects, and maintain different postures. However, since links and joints are made up of hard materials, robot bodies are not as flexible, agile, and soft as human bodies. This is what makes their body movements so stiff.

But they may not need to stay stiff for long. A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and US-based startup Inkbit have figured out a way to 3D print the world’s first robotic hand with an internal structure composed of human-like bones, ligaments, and tendons. What makes the hand even more special is that it was printed using an entirely new 3D inkjet deposition method called vision-controlled jetting (VCJ).

Enlarge (credit: RyanLJane via Getty)

This is common in wealthier countries. In the United States, a staggering 60 percent of all car trips cover less than 10km.

Then, if all goes according to plan, 33 Raptor engines will light at 7 am CST (13:00 UTC) to propel this gigantic rocket into the sky over Boca Chica Beach, a remote stretch of South Texas shoreline a couple of miles north of the US-Mexico border. SpaceX will live stream the event on X.

Space fans got what they hope will be their last look at this particular rocket Friday night, hours before law enforcement closed off public access to the launch site. One of the neat things about SpaceX’s privately-owned South Texas launch site, named Starbase, is the public can approach white a few hundred feet of the rocket. The surrounding mud flats, dunes, and beach are all public land.

Enlarge (credit: OpenAI / Ars Technica)

On Friday afternoon, not long after news of CEO Sam Altman’s abrupt and surprising departure from OpenAI began spreading online, the company held an all-hands meeting at its headquarters in San Francisco, reports The Information. During the meeting, interim CEO Mira Murati attempted to reassure the shocked employees that the search for a new CEO is underway.

Hours later, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman posted a statement on X, saying that after he learned today’s news he sent a message to the OpenAI team: “based on todays news, i quit.” Brockman, a key technical figure involved in many of the company’s successes, was relieved of his OpenAI board membership on Friday, but the company initially announced he would be staying on.

Earlier on Friday, OpenAI released a blog post titled “OpenAI announces leadership transition” where it announced that Atlman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” In a response post on X, Altman wrote, “I loved my time at openai,” and hinted at future plans without revealing any details.

Enlarge / It’s been a while since I’ve seen some of those once-ubiquitous logos… (credit: Valve)

This Sunday, November 19, makes a full 25 years since the original Half-Life first hit (pre-Steam) store shelves. To celebrate the anniversary, Valve has uploaded a feature-packed “25th anniversary update” to the game on Steam, and made the title free to keep if you pick it up this weekend.

Valve’s 25th Anniversary Update page details a bevy of new and modernized features added to the classic first-person shooter, including:

• Four new multiplayer maps that “push the limits of what’s possible in the Half-Life engine”
• New graphics settings, including support for a widescreen field-of-view on modern monitors and OpenGL Overbright lighting (still no official ray-tracing support, though—leave that to the modders)
• “Proper gamepad config out of the box” (so dust off that Gravis Gamepad Pro)
• Steam networking support for easier multiplayer setup
• “Verified” support for Steam Deck play (“We failed super hard” on the first verification attempt, Valve writes)
• Proper UI scaling for resolutions up to 3840×1600
• Multiplayer balancing updates (because 25 years hasn’t been enough to perfect the meta)
• New entity limits that allow mod makers to build more complex mods
• A full software renderer for the Linux version of the game
• Various bug fixes
• “Removed the now very unnecessary ‘Low video quality. Helps with slower video cards’ setting”

One of four new multiplayer maps added to Half-Life‘s 25th anniversary update. (credit: Valve)

In addition, the new update includes a host of restored and rarely seen content, including:

Enlarge / Eye drop over woman’s eye. (credit: Getty | AGF)

The Indian manufacturing facility that made generic eye drops sold under CVS, Target, Rite Aid, and Walmart brands had a slew of manufacturing violations, including allowing workers to regularly perform their roles barefoot and failing to document bacterial contamination, according to an inspection report released by the Food and Drug Administration.

Last month, the regulator warned consumers to immediately stop using over two dozen kinds of big-brand eye drops due to a risk of infection. The list has since been updated to include a few more products. In addition to the big store brands, the eye drops were also sold as Leader (Cardinal Health), Rugby (Cardinal Health), and Velocity Pharma branded products.

All of the products are made by Kilitch Healthcare India Limited in Mumbai. At the time of the FDA’s initial warning, the agency said it had found bacterial contamination in critical production areas of the Mumbai facility. As such, the agency warned of a possibility that the products, which are intended to be sterile, may not be and could pose a risk of infection.