Ars chats with particle physicist Daniel Whiteson about his new book Do Aliens Speak Physics? Science fiction has long speculated about the possibility of first contact with an alien species from a distant world and how we might be able to communicate with them. But what if we simply…
Almost half of US car buyers won’t consider a car without Apple CarPlay. Apple CarPlay, the interface that lets you cast your phone to your car’s infotainment screen, may finally be coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. CarPlay is nearly a decade old at this point, and it has become…
Google will preserve sideloading for power users, but it hasn’t decided how that will work yet. Google recently decided that the freedom afforded by Android was a bit too much and announced developer verification, a system that will require developers outside the Google Play platform to register with Google.…
Even a 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement wouldn’t be enough, engineer says. Yesterday’s announcement of new living room and VR hardware from Valve obviously has many gamers clamoring for any news of a more powerful version of the nearly 4-year-old Steam Deck. In a new interview with IGN, though, Valve…
Tracking winds across Mars’ surface and their association with dust storms. Mars is cold, parched, and extremely dusty. Powerful gusts of wind kick up literal tons of reddish dust that often takes the form of whorls known as dust devils. These winds also shroud the planet in dust by…
Alphabet will add routes in LA, Phoenix, and San Francisco for its driverless cars. Waymo is set to expand its self-driving taxi service onto highways in three US cities on Wednesday, an advance for the venture owned by Google’s parent company that raises the stakes on safety. The company…
New controls attempt to please critics on both sides with a balance between bland and habit-forming. On Wednesday, OpenAI released GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking, two updated versions of its flagship AI models now available in ChatGPT. The company is wrapping the models in the language of anthropomorphism, claiming…
It’s not just the number of rocket launches, but how much stuff they’re carrying into orbit. CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Another Falcon 9 rocket fired off its launch pad here on Monday night, taking with it another 29 Starlink Internet satellites to orbit. This was the 94th orbital launch from Florida’s…
A bug was keeping Windows 10 PCs from enrolling in Microsoft’s ESU program. Officially, Windows 10 died last month, a little over a decade after its initial release. But the old operating system’s enduring popularity has prompted Microsoft to promise between one and three years of Extended Security Updates…
“NASA is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve.” CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The second flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was postponed again Wednesday as a supercharged wave of magnetized plasma from the Sun enveloped the Earth, triggering colorful auroral displays and concerns over possible impacts to communications, navigation,…
