A 51-year-old man showed up at a hospital in Germany looking as though he was wasting away, with swelling and tenderness in his ankles and knees. Then, his heart stopped.

Doctors were able to resuscitate him. Then, they got to work trying to figure out what was wrong. The man told them that for three months he had been suffering from diarrhea, weight loss, joint pain, and fever. His case was reported in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine .

Blood tests didn't detect any infection, but imaging of his heart told a different story. Doctors saw "vegetation" on both his aortic valve and mitral valve. Vegetations are clumps or masses that often build up from an infection, generally containing a bundle of proteins, platelets, and infecting germs stuck together. While they cause damage where they are, if they fully dislodge, they threaten to move to other parts of the body, such as the brain or lungs, and cause dangerous blockages. In the man's case, the vegetation on his aortic valve appeared mobile.

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Microsoft is adding a new recovery mode to Windows to help revive crashing PCs. Called quick machine recovery (QMR), this technology enables Windows 11 PCs to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE, also used by Windows install media and IT shops for various recovery and diagnostic purposes), connect to the Internet, and download Microsoft-provided fixes for "widespread boot issues" that could be keeping the PC from booting properly.

Initially announced in late 2024 as part of the "Windows Resiliency Initiative," QMR is one of a couple of steps that Microsoft is taking to prevent a repeat of mid-2024's CrowdStrike outage , when a bugged update to one of CrowdStrike's security products brought down millions of Windows PCs and servers and caused widespread service outages in many industries. Fixing some of those PCs required booting and fixing each one individually; QMR should make it possible to apply that kind of fix remotely even if a PC is so broken that it can't boot into Windows proper.

The initial version of the QMR feature is rolling out to Windows 11 PCs enrolled in the Canary channel of Microsoft's Windows Insider testing program. This is the least stable and most experimental of the four Windows 11 testing channels. As Microsoft adds features and fixes bugs, it should gradually move to the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channels before rolling out to the Windows user base more broadly.

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In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority of its Wemo devices, leaving users without core functionality and future updates.

In an announcement emailed to customers and posted on Belkin’s website, Belkin said:

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app. Any features that rely on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations, will no longer work.

The company said that people with affected devices that are under warranty on or after January 31 “may be eligible for a partial refund” starting in February.

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I'll be frank: I had mixed feelings, based solely on the trailers , about James Gunn's Superman reboot. Sure, the casting seemed great, Gunn has a winning track record on superhero fare, and Krypto the dog stole the show every time he appeared. The trailers struck a nice balance between action, humor, and heart. Yet the film also seemed overpacked with super-character cameos, and it was hard to get any sense of the actual plot.

I've now seen the film, and those impressions were largely correct. But I'm happy to report that the positives far outweigh any negatives. Superman is a super-fun ride that unabashedly embraces its early comic book roots, naive optimism and all.

(Spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

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The Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued an unusual statement yesterday about its decision to let T-Mobile complete an acquisition of US Cellular's wireless operations.

Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, a Trump nominee who was confirmed by the Senate in March, said in a 900-word statement that the deal and two related transactions "will consolidate yet more spectrum in the Big 3's oligopoly, which controls more than 80 percent of the mobile wireless spectrum in the country." She said the top three carriers—T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon—control more than 90 percent of the mobile subscriptions in the United States.

Despite that, the DOJ said it closed its investigation into the merger and will not ask a court for an injunction to prevent T-Mobile from buying US Cellular assets. US Cellular is being carved up among the three major wireless firms, as the regional carrier is selling spectrum licenses in separate deals with Verizon and AT&T for about $1 billion each. T-Mobile is paying $4.4 billion for about 30 percent of US Cellular's spectrum assets and its wireless operations.

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Google's Pixel phones have grown from a curiosity to become some of the best smartphones you can buy, featuring excellent cameras and lengthy support. Unfortunately, they are also gaining a reputation for battery defects. For the second time in a year, Google has announced that it will render some of its past phones almost unusable with a software update, and users don't have any choice in the matter.

After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has now confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a. The new July Android update adds "battery management features" that will make the phone unusable. Given the risks involved, Google had no choice but to act, but it could choose to take better care of its customers and use better components in the first place. Unfortunately, a lot more phones are about to end up in the trash.

Bad batteries

Lithium-ion has become the technology of choice for rechargeable batteries because it has very high energy density and reliability compared to other options. However, storing and releasing energy day after day causes inevitable wear and tear. Electrolytes that transport electrons can decompose into flammable gasses and puff up your battery into a spicy little pillow, for example. Batteries also form clumps of lithium ions called dendrites, which grow and can cause internal shorts. This damage is accelerated by heat, and batteries get warmer the faster and longer they charge.

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Health and medical groups around the country are bracing for another grievous blow to America's infrastructure of evidence-based health, this time targeting preventive medicine.

Earlier this week, health secretary and ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly canceled a meeting of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a scientifically independent panel of up to 16 volunteer experts that issues rigorous, evidence-based recommendations on preventive care—on everything from colonoscopies to folic acid supplements in pregnancy. The panel uses a highly transparent and rigorous framework, grading recommendations on an A to D scale. Recommendations with an A or B grade are adopted nationwide, and health insurance plans are required to cover them at no cost to patients.

The meeting scheduled for Thursday was reportedly going to focus on cardiovascular disease. Kennedy canceled it without explanation.

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The Goodwood Festival of Speed is currently taking place in the UK; the event is part garden party, part hill climb, and plenty of auto show as car makers small and large unveil their vehicle du jour . Among those whipping satin covers off new machinery was Lamborghini. It's replacing the venerable Huracan and its howling naturally aspirated V10 engine with the plug-in hybrid Temerario, another wedge-shaped all-wheel drive mid-engined supercar, now with even more power. The road-going car has been public for some time now, but today it was the turn of the Temerario GT3, which is coming to race tracks in 2026.

Critics and badge snobs sometimes look down on Lamborghini because, unlike the other Italian sports car builders, it didn't start life as a race team. That's not to say the company hasn't had racing success, but it's all happened this century, thanks to a category called GT3, for racing versions of performance coupes ranging from Ford Mustangs to Porsche 911s. GT3 cars are designed to be driven by amateurs , so they feature driver assists like antilock brakes and traction control. They're "performance balanced" so that they're all fairly equivalent in terms of lap times.

That's not to say they're slow: In the hands of a top-level professional driver, GT3 cars based on road cars are now as fast as the mighty Group C prototypes of the 1980s. Lamborghini's current car is old, but it's still notching up wins—two weekends ago, Grasser Racing took victory at the 24 Hours of Space with its Huracan GT3. Some of the same drivers had the potential to do well the weekend before at the Nürburgring until one of them chose to ignore multiple red flags during a practice session that rightfully earned that car a grid penalty.

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Welcome to Edition 8.02 of the Rocket Report! It's worth taking a moment to recognize an important anniversary in the history of human spaceflight next week. Fifty years ago, on July 15, 1975, NASA launched a three-man crew on an Apollo spacecraft from Florida and two Russian cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan, on course to link up in low-Earth orbit two days later. This was the first joint US-Russian human spaceflight mission, laying the foundation for a strained but enduring partnership on the International Space Station. Operations on the ISS are due to wind down in 2030, and the two nations have no serious prospects to continue any partnership in space after decommissioning the station.

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.

Sizing up Europe's launch challengers. The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent's incumbent launch service provider, Ars reports . The five small launch companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar's Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March. None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, ESA and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA's ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency's budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

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