Ars Technica

NASA said Saturday that an astronaut who was hospitalized after returning from space the day before has been released and is in "good health." The agency did not provide any more details on the matter, citing medical privacy protections.

The astronaut was one of four crew members who returned from a 235-day mission in low-Earth orbit with a predawn splashdown Friday. The four-person crew splashed down inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft at 3:29 am EDT (07:29 UTC) in the Gulf of Mexico south of Pensacola, Florida.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were inside SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft for reentry and splashdown. NASA said one of its astronauts "experienced a medical issue" after the splashdown, and all four crew members were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola for medical evaluation.

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The integrated development environment (IDE) Rider by JetBrains is now available for free for the first time ever.

After trialing non-commercial free licenses with other products like RustRover and Aqua, JetBrains has introduced a similar option for Rider. It also says this is a permanent situation, not a limited-time initiative.

In a blog post announcing the change, JetBrains' Ekaterina Ryabukha acknowledges that there are numerous cases where people use an IDE without any commercial intent—for example, hobbyists, open source developers, and educators or students. She also cites a Stack Overflow survey that 68 percent of professional developers "code outside of work as a hobby."

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In a blockbuster story published Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two years, with the discussions covering a range of issues from geopolitics to business to personal matters.

There are no on-the-record sources confirming the regular conversations between Musk and Putin, and Musk did not comment to the news organization. A Putin spokesperson said the Russian leader and Musk have had just one telephone call. However, the report is plausibly true, and the Journal cites "several current and former US, European, and Russian officials." This is also not the first time there have been reports of contact between Musk and Putin.

The new story about Musk's direct links to an avowed enemy of the United States immediately raised concerns among some prominent US officials who work with the billionaire entrepreneur, including NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

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Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge today hailed a decision by the US Copyright Office to "grant an exemption specifically allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment—including soft serve ice cream machines similar to those available at McDonald's."

The group, which teamed with iFixit to request the exemption last year, said the government ruling will "free the McFlurry." Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Meredith Rose called the decision a victory for "franchise owners, independent repair shops, and anyone who's had to bribe their kids with a chilly treat on lengthy road trips."

The change should "spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customers," Rose said. "While we are disappointed that the Register recommended a narrower exemption than we had proposed, this does not soften our enthusiasm. We will continue to chip away at half-baked laws blocking the right to repair, sprinkling consumer victories as we go. Today's win may not be parfait, but it's still pretty sweet."

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Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking.

In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congress sided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases. This argument resonated with the Copyright Office despite a VGHF study that found 87 percent of those older game titles are currently out of print.

"While proponents are correct that some older games will not have a reissue market, they concede there is a 'healthy' market for other reissued games and that the industry has been making 'greater concerted efforts' to reissue games," the Register writes in her decision. "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms."

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A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search’s reliance on Reddit and Google's AI Overview.

In May, Google launched AI Overviews in the US, an experimental feature that populates the top of Google Search results with a summarized answer based on an AI model built into Google’s web rankings. When Google first debuted AI Overview, it quickly became apparent that the feature needed work with accuracy and its ability to properly summarize information from online sources. AI Overviews are “built to only show information that is backed up by top web results," Liz Reid, VP and head of Google Search, wrote in a May blog post. But as my colleague Benj Edwards pointed out at the time, that setup could contribute to inaccurate, misleading, or even dangerous results: “The design is based on the false assumption that Google's page-ranking algorithm favors accurate results and not SEO-gamed garbage."

As Edwards alluded to, many have complained about Google Search results' quality declining in recent years, as SEO spam and, more recently, AI slop float to the top of searches. As a result, people often turn to the Reddit hack to make Google results more helpful. By adding "site:reddit.com” to search results, users can hone their search to more easily find answers from real people. Google seems to understand the value of Reddit and signed an AI training deal with the company that’s reportedly worth $60 million per year.

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Twenty-six more cases have been identified in a multistate E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.

The 26 new cases represent a 50 percent increase in the case count from October 22, bringing the total to 75 cases. With the new cases, health officials also reported 12 more hospitalizations, including one new adult case of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a severe complication to an E. coli O157:H7 infection. Three more states are also newly affected: Michigan, New Mexico, and Washington.

In all, the outbreak now stands at 75 cases, including 22 hospitalizations and two cases of HUS, across 13 states. The number of deaths linked to the outbreak remains at one. The most recent illness onset for the cases identified so far is October 10.

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This October, many Elon Musk believers are wondering, where is X Payments?

Last year, Musk claimed in a Spaces conversation that he "would be surprised" if it took longer than mid-2024 to roll out the payments feature that he believes is crucial to transforming the social media app formerly known as Twitter into an everything app.

“It would blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the end of next year,” Musk said around this time last year, clarifying that "when I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life. If it involves money, it’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like 'send $20 to my friend.' I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account."

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he is investigating Google, claiming that the tech giant censors conservative speech and manipulated search results about Donald Trump.

"BREAKING: I am launching an investigation into Google—the biggest search engine in America—for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation's history. Google is waging war on the democratic process. It's time to fight back," Bailey wrote on X, the social network owned by notable Trump supporter Elon Musk.

The New York Post quoted a Bailey spokesperson saying that "evidence has come to light that Google is deemphasizing conservative speech or content—such as putting conservative reporting on Page 11 rather than Page 1—by manipulating search results." The spokesperson said Google "has an obligation to consumers to utilize fair business practice" and that "we will be subpoenaing information on Google's algorithms and other systems to determine whether they are censoring conservative speech."

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On Wednesday morning, a surprising email popped into my inbox with the following subject line: "Astra announces Department of Defense contract valued up to $44 Million."

I had to read it a second time to make sure I got it right. Astra, the launch company? Astra, whose valuation went from $2.6 billion to $25 million after a series of launch failures? Astra, the company that was taken private in July at 50 cents a share?

Yes, it was that Astra.

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A 12th-century Norse saga tells of an invading army from the south razing a castle stronghold and throwing a dead body into the well to render the water undrinkable. Human remains believed to be those of this so-called "Well-man" were discovered in the 1930s, providing valuable potential outside confirmation of the tale. Scientists have now sequenced the DNA of those remains, and while they could not prove once and for all that the remains are those of the Well-man, their findings are consistent with that identification, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience.

Much of what we know about early Norse and Icelandic history comes from the sagas, many of which were written by scholars centuries after the events described—most likely based on oral traditions or earlier now-lost manuscripts. One notable exception is the Sverris Saga, which covers the reign of King Sverre Sigurdsson (1151–1240 CE), a tumultuous period marked by warring factions all vying to claim the throne. Norse scholars think that at least part of this saga was written contemporaneously at the king's request, and it contains detailed descriptions of many battles and speeches and a large cast of characters.

King Sverre's claim to the throne was that he was the son of King Sigurd Munn, killed in 1155 CE by his brother. Sverre's men were known as "Birkenbeiner" because their legwear and shoes were made of birch bark. Among the rival factions were the "Bagleres" from southern Norway. In 1197, King Sverre was spending the winter in Bergen in his stronghold, Sverresborg Castle. Bagler fighters snuck into the castle via a secret door and plundered the place, burning all the homes within the castle walls. That's when they threw a dead man down the local drinking well, subsequently filling the well with boulders.

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AI-infused search engines from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity have been surfacing deeply racist and widely debunked research promoting race science and the idea that white people are genetically superior to nonwhite people.

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher with UK-based anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, was in the middle of a monthslong investigation into the resurgent race science movement when he needed to find out more information about a debunked dataset that claims IQ scores can be used to prove the superiority of the white race.

He was investigating the Human Diversity Foundation, a race science company funded by Andrew Conru, the US tech billionaire who founded Adult Friend Finder. The group, founded in 2022, was the successor to the Pioneer Fund, a group founded by US Nazi sympathizers in 1937 with the aim of promoting “race betterment” and “race realism.”

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It took a crew of more than 100 talented modders and another hundred voice actors nearly five years to make Fallout: London. Just as they planned to release it, Bethesda came out with a "next-gen upgrade" of the mod's base game, Fallout 4, forcing the team to scramble and ultimately find a way to downgrade the game. When they finally released London, they then dealt with game-stopping bugs and quality issues that their small QA team could not have caught. It's been a long, maybe even post-apocalyptic road for these modders.

A few updates later, Fallout: London is in much better shape. I've been able to put about 12 hours into it, and that, in itself, is essentially my review: it is worth that kind of time and more. If you can still enjoy Fallout 4, of course.

Any Fallout fan waits a long time between official releases, so it can be tempting to go easy on any new offering, however spit-and-bailing-wire it may seem. But Fallout: London is a game in its own right, with a distinct look, vision, and stories to tell. You can find evidence of its unofficial mod-ness if you look around, but you're better off doing the Fallout thing: wandering, wondering, fighting, and occasionally talking to some messed-up weirdo.

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Welcome to Edition 7.17 of the Rocket Report! Next week marks 10 years since one of the more spectacular launch failures of this century. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket, then operated by Orbital Sciences, suffered an engine failure six seconds after liftoff from Virginia and crashed back onto the pad in a fiery twilight explosion. I was there and won't forget seeing the rocket falter just above the pad, being shaken by the deafening blast, and then running for cover. The Antares rocket is often an afterthought in the space industry, but it has an interesting backstory touching on international geopolitics, space history, and novel engineering. Now, Northrop Grumman and Firefly Aerospace are developing a new version of Antares.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astra gets a lifeline from DOD. Astra, the launch startup that was taken private again earlier this year for a sliver of its former value, has landed a new contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the development of a next-gen launch system for time-sensitive space missions, TechCrunch reports. The contract, which the DIU awarded under its Novel Responsive Space Delivery (NRSD) program, has a maximum value of $44 million. The money will go toward the continued development of Astra’s Launch System 2, designed to perform rapid, ultra-low-cost launches.

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The Windows 10 update cliff is coming in October 2025. We've explained why that's a big deal, and we have a comprehensive guide to updating to Windows 11 (recently updated to account for changes in Windows 11 24H2) so you can keep getting security updates, whether you're on an officially supported PC or not.

But this is more than just a theoretical exercise; I've been using Windows 11 on some kind of "unsupported" system practically since it launched to stay abreast of what the experience is actually like and to keep tabs on whether Microsoft would make good on its threats to pull support from these systems at any time.

Now that we're three years in, and since I've been using Windows 11 24H2 on a 2012-era desktop and laptop as my primary work machines on and off for a few months now, I can paint a pretty complete picture of what Windows 11 is like on these PCs. As the Windows 10 update cliff approaches, it's worth asking: Is running "unsupported" Windows 11 a good way to keep an older but still functional machine running, especially for non-technical users?

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An unprecedented 80 percent of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, think the country is deeply divided over its most important values ahead of the November elections. The general public’s polarization now encompasses issues like immigration, health care, identity politics, transgender rights, or whether we should support Ukraine. Fly across the Atlantic and you’ll see the same thing happening in the European Union and the UK.

To try to reverse this trend, Google’s DeepMind built an AI system designed to aid people in resolving conflicts. It’s called the Habermas Machine after Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher who argued that an agreement in a public sphere can always be reached when rational people engage in discussions as equals, with mutual respect and perfect communication.

But is DeepMind’s Nobel Prize-winning ingenuity really enough to solve our political conflicts the same way they solved chess or StarCraft or predicting protein structures? Is it even the right tool?

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Scout provided flights from Washington to Nashville and accommodation so Ars could attend the reveal. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Today, the reborn Scout Motors showed off a pair of new electric vehicles that revives the long-dormant maker of trucks and SUVs. Originally owned by International Harvester, Scout now belongs to Volkswagen Group, which decided to use it to create a new American-made brand for off-road-capable vehicles.

The first of these will be the Traveler SUV and Terra pickup truck, due to go into production in 2027. Despite VW's recent investment in Rivian, these are all-new, clean-sheet designs with a platform unique to Scout designed in Michigan, a platform that uses a body-on-frame construction with either purely electric or range-extended powertrains.

Scout says that pricing for the Terra and Traveler should start at "under $60,000," or "as low as $50,000 with available incentives" for the entry-level models, which are due to go into production at a new factory north of Columbia, South Carolina, in 2027.

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Sometimes, it's worth noting when something goes unsaid.

On Wednesday, Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, participated in his first quarterly conference call with investment analysts. Under fire from labor groups and regulators, Boeing logged a nearly $6.2 billion loss for the last three months, while the new boss pledged a turnaround for the troubled aerospace company.

What Ortberg didn't mention in the call was the Starliner program. Starliner is a relatively small portion of Boeing's overall business, but it's a high-profile and unprofitable one.

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Big-name fast food chains, including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Burger King, are reportedly pulling onions off their menus in certain locations amid a deadly, multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders.

Though the source of the outbreak bacteria has not been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading suspects are the beef patties and the sliced onions used on the popular burger.

On Wednesday, McDonald's onion supplier Taylor Farms recalled peeled and diced yellow onion products, according to a notice from US Foods, a supplier of food service operations.

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The third and final season of Good Omens, Prime Video's fantasy series adapted from the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, will not be a full season after all, Deadline Hollywood reports. In the wake of allegations of sexual assault against Gaiman this summer, the streaming platform has decided that rather than a full slate of episodes, the series finale will be a single 90-minute episode—the equivalent of a TV movie.

(Major spoilers for the S2 finale of Good Omens below.)

As reported previously, the series is based on the original 1990 novel by Gaiman and the late Pratchett. Good Omens is the story of an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. Gaiman's obvious deep-down, fierce love for this project—and the powerful chemistry between its stars—made the first season a sheer joy to watch. Apart from a few minor quibbles, it was pretty much everything book fans could have hoped for in a TV adaptation of Good Omens.

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