Isar Aerospace, a German startup founded seven years ago, is positioned to become the first in a new generation of European launch companies to reach orbit with a privately funded rocket.

The company announced Friday that the first stage of its Spectrum rocket recently completed a 30-second test-firing on a launch pad in the northernmost reaches of mainland Europe. The nine-engine booster ignited on a launch pad at Andøya Spaceport in Norway on February 14.

The milestone follows a similar test-firing of the Spectrum rocket's second stage last year. With these two accomplishments, Isar Aerospace says its launch vehicle is qualified for flight.

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An ongoing measles outbreak that began in one of Texas' least vaccinated counties has mushroomed to 90 cases across a cluster of seven counties in the state, according to an update by the Texas Department of State Health Services on Friday .

The outbreak may have also spread across the border to New Mexico, where nine cases have been reported. In an email to Ars, Robert Nott, the communications director for the New Mexico Department of Health, said that as of today, the department has not confirmed a connection between the nine cases and any of the confirmed cases in Texas.

However, all nine of the cases are in Lea County, New Mexico, which sits at the border with Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak. Of Texas' 90 cases, 57 are in Gaines, which has a vaccination rate among kindergarteners of just 82 percent this school year. The lack of a clear connection between the Texas and New Mexico cases may be yet more worrying because it suggests undetected community spread and a heightened risk of transmission in Lea, the health department noted in an alert last week .

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You might suspect that a one-line bill about Bigfoot that bears the number "666" is a joke, but AB-666 is apparently a serious offering from California Assemblymember Chris Rogers . Rogers represents a California district known for its Bigfoot sightings (or "sightings," depending on your persuasion—many of these have been faked ), and he wants to make Bigfoot the "official cryptid" of the state.

His bill notes that California already has many official symbols , including the golden poppy (official flower), the California redwood (official tree), the word "Eureka" (official motto), the red-legged frog (official amphibian), the grizzly bear (official animal), swing dancing (official dance), and the saber-toothed cat (official fossil). The state has so many of these that there are separate categories for freshwater fish (golden trout) and marine fish (garibaldi). So why not, Rogers wants to know, "designate Bigfoot as the official state cryptid"?

That's... pretty much the bill, which was introduced this week and already has Bigfoot advocates excited. SFGate talked to Matt Moneymaker , who it describes as "a longtime Bigfoot researcher and former star of the Animal Planet series Finding Bigfoot ," about the bill. Moneymaker loves it, noting that he has personally “had a face-to-face encounter one time, after which I was absolutely sure they existed because I had one about 20 feet in front of me, growling at me.”

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More than a year’s worth of internal communications from one of the world’s most active ransomware syndicates have been published online in a leak that exposes tactics, trade secrets, and internal rifts of its members.

The communications come in the form of logs of more than 200,000 messages members of Black Basta sent to each other over the Matrix chat platform from September 2023 to September 2024, researchers said. The person who published the messages said the move was in retaliation for Black Basta targeting Russian banks. The leaker's identity is unknown; it’s also unclear if the person responsible was an insider or someone outside the group who somehow gained access to the confidential logs.

How to be your own worst enemy

Last year, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Black Basta had targeted 12 of the 16 US critical infrastructure sectors in attacks mounted on 500 organizations around the world. One notable attack targeted Ascention , a St. Louis-based health care system with 140 hospitals in 19 states. Other victims include Hyundai Europe, UK-based outsourcing firm Capita, the Chilean Government Customs Agency, and UK utility company Southern Water. The native Russian-speaking group has been active since at least 2022.

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As the owner of a 3-year-old laptop, I feel the finite lifespan of lithium batteries acutely. It's still a great machine, but the cost of a battery replacement would take me a significant way down the path of upgrading to a newer, even greater machine. If only there were some way to just plug it in overnight and come back to a rejuvenated battery.

While that sounds like science fiction, a team of Chinese researchers has identified a chemical that can deliver fresh lithium to well-used batteries, extending their life. Unfortunately, getting it to work requires that the battery has been constructed with this refresh in mind. Plus it hasn't been tested with the sort of lithium chemistry that is commonly used in consumer electronics.

Finding the right chemistry

The degradation of battery performance is largely a matter of its key components gradually dropping out of use within the battery. Through repeated cyclings, bits of electrodes fragment and lose contact with the conductors that collect current, while lithium can end up in electrically isolated complexes. There's no obvious way to re-mobilize these lost materials, so the battery's capacity drops. Eventually, the only way to get more capacity is to recycle the internals into a completely new battery.

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On Wednesday, Clone Robotics released video footage of its Protoclone humanoid robot, a full-body machine that uses synthetic muscles to create unsettlingly human-like movements. In the video, the robot hangs suspended from the ceiling as its limbs twitch and kick, marking what the company claims is a step toward its goal of creating household-helper robots.

Atherton, California-based Clone Robotics designed the Protoclone with a polymer skeleton that replicates 206 human bones. The company built the robot with the hopes that it will one day be able to operate human tools and perform tasks like doing laundry, washing dishes, and preparing basic meals.

The Protoclone reportedly contains over 1,000 artificial muscles built with the company's "Myofiber" technology, which builds on the McKibbin pneumatic muscle concept. These muscles work through mesh tubes containing balloons that contract when filled with hydraulic fluid, mimicking human muscle function. A 500-watt electric pump serves as the robot's "heart," pushing fluid at 40 standard liters per minute.

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PC- and accessory-maker Asus has never been one to shy away from a strange idea, whether it's a tablet that you need to slide your smartphone into before you can use it, a laptop touchpad that's also a screen , or going with " Rock Solid, Heart Touching " as a corporate slogan. But an announcement the company made today stands out: Asus is launching something called the Asus Fragrance Mouse , a fairly regular-looking wireless mouse that also smells.

Yes, the main differentiating feature of the Fragrance Mouse is a "refillable vial" in its underside, next to the place where you put the battery and store its 2.4 GHz USB wireless receiver when not in use. The vial stores "aromatic oils" that "can be washed and refilled with different scents." Asus doesn't make any specific recommendations about the scents that you can put in the vial, so you have a lot of latitude as to what, exactly, you can make your mouse smell like.

Aside from the customizable stink, the Fragrance Mouse is a reasonably full-featured functional PC accessory. It supports Bluetooth as well as the USB wireless dongle, three DPI levels (1,200, 1,600, and 2,400) for customizing responsiveness, and understated white and pink color options. Asus says the mouse's switches are rated for 10 million clicks, ensuring that you will be able to smell your mouse for years to come.

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On May 16, 2024, a powerful derecho swept through Houston, killing seven people and causing significant damage to several of the city's towering skyscrapers. Those buildings were constructed to withstand much stronger hurricane-force winds up to 67 meters per second, as one would get with a Category 4 hurricane. The derecho's winds peaked at 40 meters per second, well below that threshold. And when Hurricane Beryl hit Houston that July with roughly comparable wind speeds of 36 meters per second, the damage wasn't nearly so severe. Why would that be the case?

Engineers at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami think they've found the answer, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Built Environment. "We show that a type of highly localized strong winds called ‘downbursts,’ which were generated during the May derecho, can significantly impact tall buildings and facades due to their unique characteristics in comparison to hurricanes,” said co-author Amal Elawady . This is particularly the case for skyscrapers that are close together, creating a "wind-channeling" interference effect that increases pressure on walls and windows.

One might assume that hurricanes and derechos are similar in that they both produce markedly intense winds, but the origin and characteristics of those winds are very different, per the authors. Hurricanes are vast tropical storms that form over warm ocean waters and affect large areas, usually lasting for several days, accompanied by heavy rains, storm surges, waves, and yes, high winds. By contrast, derechos and downbursts are much more localized convective systems, producing hurricane-force winds but over a much smaller area and shorter period of time.

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Elon Musk apparently no longer believes that crowdsourcing fact-checking through Community Notes can never be manipulated and is, thus, the best way to correct bad posts on his social media platform X.

Community Notes are supposed to be added to posts to limit misinformation spread after a broad consensus is reached among X users with diverse viewpoints on what corrections are needed. But Musk now claims a "fix" is needed to prevent supposedly outside influencers from allegedly gaming the system.

"Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media," Musk wrote on X. "Working to fix this."

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