Author name: Beth Washington

apple-enables-rcs-messaging-for-google-fi-subscribers-at-last

Apple enables RCS messaging for Google Fi subscribers at last

Apple, Google, google fi, rcs, Tech / /

With RCS, iPhone users can converse with non-Apple users without losing the enhanced features to which they’ve become accustomed in iMessage. That includes longer messages, HD media, typing indicators, and much more. Google Fi has several different options for data plans, and the company notes that RCS does use mobile data when away from Wi-Fi. Those on the “Flexible” Fi plan pay for blocks of data as they go, and using RCS messaging could inadvertently increase their bill.

If that’s not a concern, it’s a snap for Fi users to enable RCS on the new iOS update. Head to Apps > Messages, and then find the Text Messaging section to toggle on RCS. It may, however, take a few minutes for your phone number to be registered with the Fi RCS server.

In hindsight, the way Apple implemented iMessage was clever. By intercepting messages being sent to other iPhone phone numbers, Apple was able to add enhanced features to its phones instantly. It had the possibly intended side effect of reinforcing the perception that Android phones were less capable. This turned Android users into dreaded green bubbles that limited chat features. Users complained, and Google ran ads calling on Apple to support RCS. That, along with some pointed questions from reporters may have prompted Apple to announce the change in late 2023. It took some time, but you almost don’t have to worry about missing messaging features in 2025.

Apple enables RCS messaging for Google Fi subscribers at last Read More »

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The timeless genius of a 1980s Atari developer and his swimming salmon masterpiece

atari, Atari 800, Bill Williams, game development, gaming, retrotech, Salmon Run, sound design, video game development, video games / /

Williams’ success with APX led him to create several games for Synapse Software, including the beloved Alley Cat and the incomprehensible fantasy masterpiece Necromancer, before moving to the Amiga, where he created the experimental Mind Walker and his ambitious “cultural simulation” Knights of the Crystallion.

Necromancer, Williams’ later creation for the Atari 800, plays like a fever dream—you control a druid fighting off spiders while growing magic trees and battling an undead wizard. It makes absolutely no sense by conventional standards, but it’s brilliant in its otherworldliness.

“The first games that I did were very hard to explain to people and they just kind of bought it on faith,” Williams said in a 1989 interview with YAAM (Yet Another Amiga Magazine), suggesting this unconventional approach started early. That willingness to create deeply personal, almost surreal experiences defined Williams’ work throughout his career.

An Atari 800 (the big brother of the Atari 400) that Benj Edwards set up to play M.U.L.E. at his mom's house in 2015, for nostalgia purposes.

An Atari 800 that Benj Edwards set up to play M.U.L.E. at his mom’s house in 2015, for nostalgia purposes. Credit: Benj Edwards

After a brief stint making licensed games (like Bart’s Nightmare) for the Super Nintendo at Sculptured Software, he left the industry entirely to pursue his calling as a pastor, attending seminary in Chicago with his wife Martha, before declining health forced him to move to Rockport, Texas. Perhaps reflecting on the choices that led him down this path, Williams had noted years earlier in that 1989 interview, “Sometimes in this industry we tend to forget that life is a lot more interesting than computers.”

Bill Williams died on May 28, 1998, one day before his 38th birthday. He died young, but he outlived his doctors’ prediction that he wouldn’t reach age 13, and created cultural works that stand the test of time. Like Sam the Salmon, Williams pushed forward relentlessly—in his case, creating powerful digital art that was uniquely his own.

In our current era of photorealistic graphics and cinematic game experiences, Salmon Run‘s blocky pixels might seem quaint. But its core themes—persistence, natural beauty, and finding purpose against long odds—remain as relevant as ever. We all face bears in life—whether they come from natural adversity or from those who might seek to do us harm. The beauty of Williams’ game is in showing us that, despite their menacing presence, there’s still a reward waiting upstream for those willing to keep swimming.

If you want to try Salmon Run, you can potentially play it in your browser through an emulated Atari 800, hosted on The Internet Archive. Press F1 to start the game.

The timeless genius of a 1980s Atari developer and his swimming salmon masterpiece Read More »

research-roundup:-2,400-year-old-clay-puppets;-this-is-your-brain-on-klingon

Research roundup: 2,400-year-old clay puppets; this is your brain on Klingon

research roundup, Science / /

The stories we almost missed this month

Also: testing the efficacy of WWI “dazzle” camouflage; how the male blue-lined octopus survives deadly mating ritual.

Credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymańska/PASI

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection of such stories. March’s list includes fascinating papers on such topics as how the brain responds to speaking Klingon (or Dothraki, or Navi), the discovery of creepy preclassic Salvadoran puppets, the effectiveness of “dazzle camouflage,” and how male blue-lined octopuses manage not to be cannibalized by their chosen mates.

Wind Cave’s rocks fluoresce under black light

Several fluorescence measurements of a zebra calcite in Wind Cave were taken using portable spectrometers.

Several fluorescence measurements of a zebra calcite in Wind Cave were taken using portable spectrometers. Credit: Joshua Sebree

South Dakota’s Wind Cave gets its name from the flow of air moving continually through its many passages and equalizing the atmospheric pressure between the air inside and outside—almost like the cave is “breathing.” Its rock and mineral formations also boast a unique chemistry that fluoresces when exposed to black light, according to talks presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego. That fluorescence could shed light on how life can thrive in extreme environments, including that of Jupiter’s moon, Europa.

University of Northern Iowa astrobiologist Joshua Sebree and several students have been mapping new areas of Wind Cave (as well as other caves in the US), recording the passages, rock formations, minerals, and lifeforms they encounter in the process. They noticed that under UV light, certain parts of Wind Cave took on otherworldly hues, thanks to different concentrations of organic and inorganic fossilized chemical compounds. Those areas seem to indicate where water once flowed, carrying minerals into the cave from the surface 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to their analysis of the fluorescent spectra. Sebree et al. found that Wind Cave was likely carved out by waters rich in manganese, producing zebra stripes that glow pink under UV light, revealing the calcites that grew within as a result of those waters.

The physics of swing-top beer bottles

Three frames of a high-speed recording after popping a homebrewed bottle of beer.

Three frames of a high-speed recording after popping a homebrewed bottle of beer. Credit: Max Koch

So-called kitchen science is all the rage these days, with champagne, wine, and beer being particularly favorite subjects for experimentation. German physicist Max Koch of the University of Goettingen is as passionate about home brewing as he is about fluid dynamics. So naturally, Koch became fascinated by the distinctive “pop and slosh” sounds produced whenever he opened one of his home-brewed swing-top beer bottles. His experiments used a high-speed camera to capture the acoustics and underlying physics, augmented by audio recording and computer simulations.

Rather than producing a single shockwave, Koch and his co-authors discovered that the unique sound occurs because popping the lid produces a vibrating standing wave, thanks to condensation within the bottleneck, according to a paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. They were surprised to find that the frequency of the pop was significantly lower than the resonance produced by blowing across the open bottle top, which they attributed to the sudden expansion of the carbon dioxide and a strong cooling effect that reduces sound speed. The sloshing is due to the bottle’s motion, and it’s possible that the lid hitting the glass after popping could produce more bubbles and hence gushing.

Physics of Fluids, 2025. DOI: 10.1063/5.0248739  (About DOIs).

How effective was WWI “dazzle paint”?

A painting by Norman Wilkinson of a moonlit convoy wearing his dazzle camouflage, 1918

A painting by Norman Wilkinson of a moonlit convoy wearing the dazzle camouflage he invented, 1918. Credit: Public domain

During World War I, ships were often painted with complex geometric shapes in contrasting and intersecting colors, dubbed “dazzle camouflage” and usually attributed to British marine artist Norman Wilkinson. The objective was to confuse enemy U-boat captains trying to determine the speed and direction of those ships, and a 1919 study seemed to support that hypothesis. Aston University researchers have revisited that original study and concluded that the horizon effect—in which ships viewed from a distance seem to be traveling along the horizon—is a more effective means of confusing enemy combatants, according to a paper published in the journal i-Perception.

The author of the 1919 study was an MIT marine engineering student named Leo Blodgett, who painted model ships in those geometric patterns and observed them with a model periscope in a mechanical test theater to see if he could determine whether an observer’s perception of the direction of travel was markedly different from the actual direction. He concluded that this was indeed the case and therefore dazzle paint was effective.

But according to the Aston scientists, Blodgett’s experiment did not have a solid control condition to warrant such a conclusion. So they revisited his 105-year-old data and ran their own version of Blodgett’s experiment, comparing results from his photographs showing the original dazzle camouflage with versions that had the camouflage patterns edited out. The results: the dazzle camouflage did work via a twist on perspective, but it was a small effect. The horizon effect had a much stronger confounding effect.

i-Perception, 2025. DOI: 10.1177/20416695241312316  (About DOIs).

Early Salvadoran clay puppets

These “Bolinas” figures were found in a Salvadorian pyramid.

These “Bolinas” figures were found in a Salvadoran pyramid. Credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymańska/PASI

Archaeologists excavating the San Isidro pyramid in El Salvador have discovered five carved clay figurines dating back to around 400 BCE that may have been controlled with string like modern marionettes. Such “Bolinas” figures have also been found at a Mayan burial site in Guatemala, suggesting the two areas may have shared culture and civilization, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.

Three of the puppets were about a foot tall, with the other two measuring about 18 centimeters. The larger ones had adjustable heads connected to their bodies via matching sockets. The carved faces feature tongues, tattoos, and facial expressions that shift depending on the viewing angle: fearful when viewed from below and grinning from above, for example. The authors suggest that these puppets weren’t used as toys, but as “clay actors” in ritualistic funeral performances. “The universal impetus for creating scaled-down humanoid figures appears to be mimetic—that is, imbuing these handheld objects with deeper meanings that are readily decoded by the intended audience,” they concluded, although the shared cultural “code” for interpreting those meanings has been lost.

Antiquity, 2025. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.37  (About DOIs).

This is your brain on Esperanto and Klingon

Worf, son of Mogh, is surprised by new fMRI study.

Worf, son of Mogh, is surprised by new fMRI study. Credit: Paramount+

J.R.R. Tolkien invented two Elvish languages (Quenya and Sindarin) when writing The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Star Trek has Klingon, the Avatar films have Na’vi, and Game of Thrones boasts two constructed languages, or conlangs: Dothraki and High Valyrian. There are even hardcore fans who have diligently become proficient in those invented languages. And apparently conlangs activate the same parts of the brain as their native tongues, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MIT neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko previously spearheaded studies on how the brain responds to stimuli that share certain language features—music, gestures, facial expressions, and computer programming languages like Python. None seemed to engage the language-processing areas of the brain. Curious about what makes natural language unique, Fedorenko et al. turned to conlangs. They organized a weekend conference featuring conlang creators as speakers and invited people fluent in Esperanto, Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki, and High Valyrian to participate. They scanned 44 conlang speakers with fMRI as they listened to sentences in both their chosen conlang and their native tongue, performing nonlinguistic tasks as a control.

The results: The same language regions lit up regardless of whether they were speaking in their chosen conlang or native natural language. This helped the group determine that language responses appear to be driven in part by how they convey meaning about the interior and exterior world—objects, properties of objects, events, etc. Python, by contrast, is highly symbolic and abstract, disconnected from the everyday “real” world we experience. The group next plans to study how the brain responds to a different conlang called Lojban, created in the 1990s, to learn more about which language features activate the brain’s language centers.

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2313473122  (About DOIs).

Venom as a protective strategy for male octopuses

Male blue-lined octopuses inject females with venom during sex to avoid being eaten

Male blue-lined octopuses inject females with venom during sex to avoid being eaten. Credit: Wen-Sung Chung/University of Queensland

Sexual cannibalism—in which a female of the species consumes the male after copulating—is a very real thing in nature, seen in insect species like mantises and spiders, certain crustaceans and gastropods, and even certain species of octopus. Case in point: the blue-lined octopus (Hapalochlaena fasciata), a tiny creature found in shallow waters whose venom can be quite deadly, especially to humans. The females of the species might be the size of golf balls, but they are nonetheless significantly larger than the males and have a tendency to eat their mates.

Fortunately, the males have developed an effective defense strategy, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology: They inject their chosen females with tetrodotoxin (a venom also produced by pufferfish) just before mating, temporarily paralyzing the females so the males can avoid being eaten. Scientists at the University of Queensland studied the behavior of mating blue-lined octopuses in the lab and noticed that males would bite the females near the aorta as the mating ritual commenced, flooding their systems with the venom.

This immobilized the females for the duration of the mating sessions (which lasted between 40 and 75 minutes); they largely stopped breathing, turned pale, and did not respond to visual stimuli during that time. The males actually increased their respiration rate as they used a specialized mating arm to deposit their sperm into the females’ oviducts to fertilize the eggs. The effects of the venom eventually wore off sufficiently for the females to push the males away without suffering any permanent effects. The authors suggest that female blue-lined octopuses may have evolved a tolerance to tetrodotoxin, ensuring they survive to lay their eggs and propagate the species.

Current Biology, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.027  (About DOIs).

Rubber hand illusion alleviates pain

A rubber hand is perceived as part of your own body when you can't see your own.

A rubber hand is perceived as part of your own body when you can’t see your own. Credit: Damian Gorczany

One of the many strange things to come out of 21st-century neuroscience is the so-called rubber hand illusion, in which a subject’s hand is hidden and replaced by a rubber hand in the position where the real hand would be. When both the real and fake hands are stroked simultaneously, subjects respond as if the rubber hand were part of their body. Threaten the rubber hand by attempting to stab it with a dagger, for instance, and the participants exhibit an involuntary startle or fear response. It’s the combination of visual and tactile feedback that does it, and it only takes a few seconds for the illusion to kick in. And it’s not a purely psychological effect; there have been measurable physiological responses as well.

Scientists in Bochum, Germany, have now shown that the rubber hand illusion can also alleviate pain, according to a paper published in the journal Pain Reports. They recruited 34 right-handed subjects, evaluated their individual pain thresholds, then placed the subjects’ left hands behind a screen. A left rubber hand was placed in front of the subjects, which could be lit from below with red light. Then heat was applied at different temperatures to the hidden hand, while red light increased on the visible rubber hand. Subjects were asked to rate their pain in response.

The results: subjects’ perception of pain decreased noticeably when the rubber hand illusion was used, compared to control conditions. The authors don’t yet know what the underlying mechanism might be but suggest it could be related to visual analgesia, in which pain is considered less intense if someone can see the part of the body that is being hurt.

Pain Reports, 2025. DOI: 10.1097/PR9.0000000000001252  (About DOIs).

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Research roundup: 2,400-year-old clay puppets; this is your brain on Klingon Read More »

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France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

Apple, Apple App Tracking Transparency, Policy / /

A typical ATT  pop-up asks a user whether to allow an app “to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites,” and says that “your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you.”

Agency: “Double consent” too cumbersome

The agency said there is an “asymmetry” in which user consent for Apple’s own data collection is obtained with a single pop-up, but other publishers are “required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications.” The press release notes that “while advertising tracking only needs to be refused once, the user must always confirm their consent a second time.”

The system was said to be less harmful for big companies like Meta and Google and “particularly harmful for smaller publishers that do not enjoy alternative targeting possibilities, in particular in the absence of sufficient proprietary data.” Although France’s focus is on how ATT affects smaller companies, Apple’s privacy system has also been criticized by Facebook.

The €150 million fine won’t make much of a dent in Apple’s revenue, but Apple will apparently have to make some changes to comply with the French order. The agency’s press release said the problem “could be avoided by marginal modifications to the ATT framework.”

Benoit Coeure, the head of France’s competition authority, “told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,” according to Reuters. “The compliance process could take some time, he added, because Apple was waiting for rulings on regulators in Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania who are also investigating the ATT tool.”

Apple said in a statement that the ATT “prompt is consistent for all developers, including Apple, and we have received strong support for this feature from consumers, privacy advocates, and data protection authorities around the world. While we are disappointed with today’s decision, the French Competition Authority (FCA) has not required any specific changes to ATT.”

France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking Read More »

fbi-raids-home-of-prominent-computer-scientist-who-has-gone-incommunicado

FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

Policy, Science, Security / /

A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.

Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.

He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data. I have personally spoken to him on three occasions for articles here, here, and here.

“None of this is in any way normal”

In recent weeks, Wang’s email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university’s Library Technologies division.

As reported by the Bloomingtonian and later the Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma and located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. The station said that both a resident and an attorney for the resident were on scene during at least part of the search.

FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado Read More »

gran-turismo-7-expands-its-use-of-ai/ml-trained-npcs-with-good-effect

Gran Turismo 7 expands its use of AI/ML-trained NPCs with good effect

AI, Cars, gaming, gran turismo 7, GT Sophy / /

GT Sophy can now race at 19 tracks, up from the nine that were introduced in November 2023. The AI agent is an alternative to the regular, dumber AI in the game’s quick race mode, with easy, medium, and hard settings. But now, at those same tracks, you can also create custom races using GT Sophy, meaning you’re no longer limited to just two or three laps. You can enable things like damage, fuel consumption and tire wear, and penalties, and you can have some control over the cars you race against.

Unlike the time-limited demo, the hardest setting is no longer alien-beating. As a GT7 player, I’m slowing with age, and I find the hard setting to be that—hard, but beatable. (I suspect but need to confirm that the game tailors the hardest setting to your ability based on your results, as, when I create a custom race on hard, only seven of the nine progress bars are filled, and in the screenshot above, only five bars are filled.)

Having realistic competition has always been one of the tougher challenges for a racing game, and one that the GT franchise was never particularly great at during previous console generations. This latest version of GT Sophy does feel different to race against: The AI is opportunistic and aggressive but also provokable into mistakes. If only the developer would add it to more versions of the in-game Nürburgring.

Gran Turismo 7 expands its use of AI/ML-trained NPCs with good effect Read More »

oracle-has-reportedly-suffered-2-separate-breaches-exposing-thousands-of-customers‘-pii

Oracle has reportedly suffered 2 separate breaches exposing thousands of customers‘ PII

Biz & IT, Data breaches, oracle, oracle health, Security / /

Trustwave’s Spider Labs, meanwhile, said the sample of LDAP credentials provided by rose87168 “reveals a substantial amount of sensitive IAM data associated with a user within an Oracle Cloud multi-tenant environment. The data includes personally identifiable information (PII) and administrative role assignments, indicating potential high-value access within the enterprise system.”

Oracle initially denied any such breach had occurred against its cloud infrastructure, telling publications: “There has been no breach of Oracle Cloud. The published credentials are not for the Oracle Cloud. No Oracle Cloud customers experienced a breach or lost any data.”

On Friday, when I asked Oracle for comment, a spokesperson asked if they could provide a statement that couldn’t be attributed to Oracle in any way. After I declined, the spokesperson said Oracle would have no comment.

For the moment, there’s a stand-off between Oracle on the one hand, and researchers and journalists on the other, over whether two serious breaches have exposed sensitive information belonging to its customers. Reporting that Oracle is notifying customers of data compromises in unofficial letterhead sent by outside attorneys is also concerning. This post will be updated if new information becomes available.

Oracle has reportedly suffered 2 separate breaches exposing thousands of customers‘ PII Read More »

rocket-report:-stoke-is-stoked;-sovereignty-is-the-buzzword-in-europe

Rocket Report: Stoke is stoked; sovereignty is the buzzword in Europe

artemis II, european space agency, falcon 9, isar aerospace, launch, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, united launch alliance / /

“The idea that we will be able to do it through America… I think is very, very doubtful.”

Stoke Space’s Andromeda upper stage engine is hot-fired on a test stand. Credit: Stoke Space

Welcome to Edition 7.37 of the Rocket Report! It’s been interesting to watch how quickly European officials have embraced ensuring they have a space launch capability independent of other countries. A few years ago, European government satellites regularly launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, and more recently on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from the United States. Russia is now non grata in European government circles, and the Trump administration is widening the trans-Atlantic rift. European leaders have cited the Trump administration and its close association with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, as prime reasons to support sovereign access to space, a capability currently offered only by Arianespace. If European nations can reform how they treat their commercial space companies, there’s enough ambition, know-how, and money in Europe to foster a competitive launch industry.

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.

Isar Aerospace aims for weekend launch. A German startup named Isar Aerospace will try to launch its first rocket Saturday, aiming to become the first in a wave of new European launch companies to reach orbit, Ars reports. The Spectrum rocket consists of two stages, stands about 92 feet (28 meters) tall, and can haul payloads up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. Based in Munich, Isar was founded by three university graduate students in 2018. Isar scrubbed a launch attempt Monday due to unfavorable winds at the launch site in Norway.

From the Arctic … Notably, this will be the first orbital launch attempt from a launch pad in Western Europe. The French-run Guiana Space Center in South America is the primary spaceport for European rockets. Virgin Orbit staged an airborne launch attempt from an airport in the United Kingdom in 2023, and the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located in European Russia. The launch site for Isar is named Andøya Spaceport, located about 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) north of Oslo, inside the Arctic Circle. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A chance for competition in Europe. The European Space Agency is inviting proposals to inject competition into the European launch market, an important step toward fostering a dynamic multiplayer industry officials hope one day will mimic that of the United States, Ars reports. The near-term plan for the European Launcher Challenge is for ESA to select companies for service contracts to transport ESA and other European government payloads to orbit from 2026 through 2030. A second component of the challenge is for companies to perform at least one demonstration of an upgraded launch vehicle by 2028. The competition is open to any European company working in the launch business.

Challenging the status quo … This is a major change from how ESA has historically procured launch services. Arianespace has been the only European launch provider available to ESA and other European institutions for more than 40 years. But there are private companies across Europe at various stages of developing their own small launchers, and potentially larger rockets, in the years ahead. With the European Launcher Challenge, ESA will provide each of the winners up to 169 million euros ($182 million), a significant cash infusion that officials hope will shepherd Europe’s nascent private launch industry toward liftoff. Companies like Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, MaiaSpace, and PLD Space are among the contenders for ESA contracts.

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Rocket Lab launches eight satellites. Rocket Lab launched eight satellites Wednesday for a German company that is expanding its constellation to detect and track wildfires, Space News reports. An Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand and completed deploying its payload of eight CubeSats for OroraTech about 55 minutes later, placing them into Sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of about 341 miles (550 kilometers). This was Rocket Lab’s fifth launch of the year, and the third in less than two weeks.

Fire goggles … OroraTech launched three satellites before this mission, fusing data from those satellites and government missions to detect and track wildfires. The new satellites are designed to fill a gap in coverage in the afternoon, a peak time for wildfire formation and spread. OroraTech plans to launch eight more satellites later this year. Wildfire monitoring from space is becoming a new application for satellite technology. Last month, OroraTech partnered with Spire for a contract to build a CubeSat constellation called WildFireSat for the Canadian Space Agency. Google is backing FireSat, another constellation of more than 50 satellites to be deployed in the coming years to detect and track wildfires. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Should Britain have a sovereign launch capability? A UK House of Lords special inquiry committee has heard from industry experts on the importance of fostering a sovereign launch capability, European Spaceflight reports. On Monday, witnesses from the UK space industry testified that the nation shouldn’t rely on others, particularly the United States, to put satellites into orbit. “The idea that we will be able to do it through America… certainly in today’s, you know, the last 50 days, I think is very, very doubtful. The UK needs access to space,” said Scott Hammond, deputy CEO of SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland.

Looking inward … A representative from one of the most promising UK launch startups agreed. “Most people who are looking to launch are beholden to the United States solutions or services that are there,” said Alan Thompson, head of government affairs at Skyrora. “Without having our own home-based or UK-based service provider, we risk not having that voice and not being able to undertake all these experiments or be able to manifest ourselves better in space.” The UK is the only nation to abandon an independent launch capability after putting a satellite into orbit. The British government canceled the Black Arrow rocket in the early 1970s, citing financial reasons. A handful of companies, including Skyrora, is working to restore the orbital launch business to the UK.

This rocket engine CEO faces some salacious allegations. The Independent published what it described as an exclusive report Monday describing a lawsuit filed against the CEO of RocketStar, a New York-based company that says its mission is “improving upon the engines that power us to the stars.” Christopher Craddock is accused of plundering investor funds to underwrite pricey jaunts to Europe, jewelry for his wife, child support payments, and, according to the company’s largest investor, “airline tickets for international call girls to join him for clandestine weekends in Miami,” The Independent reports. Craddock established RocketStar in 2014 after financial regulators barred him from working on Wall Street over a raft of alleged violations.

Go big or go home … The $6 million lawsuit filed by former CEO Michael Mojtahedi alleges RocketStar “is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme… [that] has been predicated on Craddock’s ability to con new people each time the company has run out of money.” On its website, RocketStar says its work focuses on aerospike rocket engines and a “FireStar Fusion Drive, the world’s first electric propulsion device enhanced with nuclear fusion.” These are tantalizing technologies that have proven elusive for other rocket companies. RocketStar’s attorney told The Independent: “The company denies the allegations and looks forward to vindicating itself in court.”

Another record for SpaceX. Last Thursday, SpaceX launched a batch of clandestine SpaceX-built surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Spaceflight Now reports. This was the latest in a series of flights populating the NRO’s constellation of low-Earth orbit reconnaissance satellites. What was unique about this mission was its use of a Falcon 9 first stage booster that flew to space just nine days prior with a NASA astronomy satellite. The successful launch broke the record for the shortest span between flights of the same Falcon 9 booster, besting a 13.5-day turnaround in November 2024.

A mind-boggling number of launches … This flight also marked the 450th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since its debut in 2010, and the 139th within a 365-day period, despite suffering its first mission failure in nearly 10 years and a handful of other glitches. SpaceX’s launch pace is unprecedented in the history of the space industry. No one else is even close. In the last Rocket Report I authored, I wrote that SpaceX’s steamroller no longer seems to be rolling downhill. That may be the case as the growth in the Falcon 9 launch cadence has slowed, but it’s hard for me to see anyone else matching SpaceX’s launch rate until at least the 2030s.

Rocket Lab and Stoke Space find an on-ramp. Space Systems Command announced Thursday that it selected Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to join the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The contracts have a maximum value of $5.6 billion, and the Space Force will dole out “task orders” for individual missions as they near launch. Rocket Lab and Stoke Space join SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin as eligible launch providers for lower-priority national security satellites, a segment of missions known as Phase 3 Lane 1 in the parlance of the Space Force. For these missions, the Space Force won’t require certification of the rockets, as the military does for higher-value missions in the so-called “Lane 2” segment. However, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space must complete at least one successful flight of their new Neutron and Nova rockets before they are cleared to launch national security payloads.

Stoked at Stoke … This is a big win for Rocket Lab and Stoke. For Rocket Lab, it bolsters the business case for the medium-class Neutron rocket it is developing for flights from Wallops Island, Virginia. Neutron will be partially reusable with a recoverable first stage. But Rocket Lab already has a proven track record with its smaller Electron launch vehicle. Stoke hasn’t launched anything, and it has lofty ambitions for a fully reusable two-stage rocket called Nova. This is a huge vote of confidence in Stoke. When the Space Force released its invitation for an on-ramp to the NSSL program last year, it said bidders must show a “credible plan for a first launch by December 2025.” Smart money is that neither company will launch its rockets by the end of this year, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Falcon 9 deploys spy satellite. Monday afternoon, a SpaceX Falcon 9 took flight from Florida’s Space Coast and delivered a national security payload designed, built, and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit, Florida Today reports. Like almost all NRO missions, details about the payload are classified. The mission codename was NROL-69, and the launch came three-and-a-half days after SpaceX launched another NRO mission from California. While we have some idea of what SpaceX launched from California last week, the payload for the NROL-69 mission is a mystery.

Space sleuthing … There’s an online community of dedicated skywatchers who regularly track satellites as they sail overhead around dawn and dusk. The US government doesn’t publish the exact orbital parameters for its classified spy satellites (they used to), but civilian trackers coordinate with one another, and through a series of observations, they can produce a pretty good estimate of a spacecraft’s orbit. Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archeologist and university lecturer on space situational awareness, is one of the best at this, using publicly available information about the flight path of a launch to estimate when the satellite will fly overhead. He and three other observers in Europe managed to locate the NROL-69 payload just two days after the launch, plotting the object in an orbit between 700 and 1,500 kilometers at an inclination of 64.1 degrees to the equator. Analysts speculated this mission might carry a pair of naval surveillance spacecraft, but this orbit doesn’t match up well with any known constellations of NRO satellites.

NASA continues with Artemis II preps. Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle’s two solid-fueled boosters, Ars reports. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle, then rotate it to a vertical orientation and lift it into a high bay, where it was lowered into position on a mobile launch platform. The 212-foot-tall (65-meter) core stage is the largest single hardware element for the Artemis II mission, which will send a team of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth as soon as next year.

Looking like a go … With this milestone, the slow march toward launch continues. A few months ago, some well-informed people in the space community thought there was a real possibility the Trump administration could quickly cancel NASA’s Space Launch System, the high-priced heavy-lifter designed to send astronauts from the Earth to the Moon. The most immediate possibility involved terminating the SLS program before it flies with Artemis II. This possibility appears to have been overcome by circumstances. The rockets most often mentioned as stand-ins for the Space Launch System—SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn—aren’t likely to be cleared for crew missions for at least several years. The long-term future of the Space Launch System remains in doubt.

Space Force says Vulcan is good to go. The US Space Force on Wednesday announced that it has certified United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to conduct national security missions, Ars reports. “Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, in a news release. “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems.” The formal announcement closes a yearslong process that has seen multiple delays in the development of the Vulcan rocket, as well as two anomalies in recent years that were a further setback to certification.

Multiple options … This certification allows ULA’s Vulcan to launch the military’s most sensitive national security missions, a separate lot from those Rocket Lab and Stoke Space are now eligible for (as we report in a separate Rocket Report entry). It elevates Vulcan to launch these missions alongside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Vulcan will not be the next rocket that the company launches, however. First up is one of the company’s remaining Atlas V boosters, carrying Project Kuiper broadband satellites for Amazon. This launch could occur in April, although ULA has not set a date. This will be followed by the first Vulcan national security launch, which the Space Force says could occur during the coming “summer.”

Next three launches

March 29: Spectrum | “Going Full Spectrum” | Andøya Spaceport, Norway | 11: 30 UTC

March 29: Long March 7A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 16: 05 UTC

March 30: Alpha | LM-400 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 37 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: Stoke is stoked; sovereignty is the buzzword in Europe Read More »

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Trump can’t fire us, FTC Democrats tell court after being ejected from office

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Two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission who were fired by President Trump sued him today, saying their removals are “in direct violation of a century of federal law and Supreme Court precedent.”

“Plaintiffs bring this action to vindicate their right to serve the remainder of their respective terms, to defend the integrity of the Commission, and to continue their work for the American people,” said the lawsuit filed by Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Trump last week sent Slaughter and Bedoya notices that said, “I am writing to inform you that you have been removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately.” They were then cut off from their FTC email addresses, asked to return electronic devices, and denied access to their offices.

There are legal restrictions on the president’s authority to remove FTC commissioners. US law says any FTC commissioner “may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The Supreme Court unanimously held in a 1935 case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that “Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.” The case involved President Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of Commissioner William Humphrey.

Trump’s Department of Justice has argued the ruling was incorrect, but it is still in effect. “Congress has continually relied on Humphrey’s Executor, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to upset this landmark precedent,” the Slaughter/Bedoya lawsuit said. “As Humphrey’s Executor recognized, providing some protection from removal at the President’s whim is essential to ensuring that agency officials can exercise their own judgment.”

The lawsuit continued:

In short, it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause. And yet that is precisely what has happened here: President Trump has purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their “continued service on the FTC is” supposedly “inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities.”

“Indefensible under governing law”

In addition to Trump, the lawsuit’s defendants include FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, and FTC Executive Director David Robbins. The Democratic commissioners asked the court to “declare the President’s attempted removals unlawful and ineffective,” and “permanently enjoin the FTC Chairman, Commissioner Holyoak, and the FTC Executive Director from taking any action that would prevent Plaintiffs from fulfilling their duties as Commissioners and serving out the remainder of their terms.”

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Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat, all but demanding replays

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More than just rolling for initiative

Obsidian added a turn-based mode to Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire in patch 4.1, roughly eight months after the game’s initial release. Designer Josh Sawyer, who worked on Baldur’s Gate II and directed both PoE games, said in a 2023 interview with Touch Arcade that the real-time systems in the PoE games were largely a concession to the old-school CRPG fans that crowdfunded both games.

Turn-based was Sawyer’s stated preference, and he thinks Baldur’s Gate 3 largely put an end to the debate in modern times:

I just think it’s easier to design more intricate combats. I like games with a lot of stats, obviously. (He laughs). But the problem with real time with pause is that it’s honestly very difficult for people to actually parse all of that information, and one of the things I’ve heard a lot from people who’ve played Deadfire in turn based, is that there were things about the game like the affliction and inspiration system that they didn’t really understand very clearly until they played it in turn based.

But both Pillars games were designed with real-time combat in mind, such that, even with his appreciation for the turn-based addition to PoE 2, Sawyer knows “the game wasn’t designed for it,” he told Touch Arcade. This is almost certainly going to be the case, too, for the original PoE, but there could be lessons learned from PoE 2‘s transformation to apply. Other games from that era might also lure folks like me back, though perhaps they, too, have a density of encounters and maps that just can’t cut it for turn-based.

Beyond this notably big “patch” coming to the original PoE, the 10th anniversary patch should make it easier for Mac and Linux (through Proton) users to stay up to date on bug fixes, and for players on GOG and Epic to get Kickstarter rewards and achievements. Lots of audio and visual effects were fixed up, along with a whole heap of mechanical and combat fixes.

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As NASA faces cuts, China reveals ambitious plans for planetary exploration

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All of these grand Chinese plans come as NASA faces budget cuts. Although nothing is final, Ars reported earlier this year that some officials in the Trump administration want to cut science programs at the US space agency by as much as 50 percent, and that would include significant reductions for planetary science. Such cuts, one planetary officials told Ars, would represent an “extinction level” event for space science and exploration in the United States.

This raises the prospect that the United States could cede the lead in space exploration to China in the coming decades.

So what will happen?

To date, the majority of China’s space science objectives have been successful, bringing credibility to a government that sees space exploration as a projection of its soft power. By becoming a major actor in space and surpassing the United States in some areas, China can both please its own population and become a more attractive partner to other countries around the world.

However, if there are high-profile (and to some in China’s leadership, embarrassing) failures, would China be so willing to fund such an ambitious program? With the objectives listed above, China would be attempting some unprecedented and technically demanding missions. Some of them, certainly, will face setbacks.

Additionally, China is also investing in a human lunar program, seeking to land its own astronauts on the surface of the Moon by 2030. Simultaneously funding ambitious human and robotic programs would very likely require significantly more resources than the government has invested to date. How deep are China’s pockets?

It’s probably safe to say, therefore, that some of these mission concepts and time frames are aspirational.

At the same time, the US Congress is likely to block some of the deepest cuts in planetary exploration, should they be proposed by the Trump administration. So NASA still has a meaningful future in planetary exploration. And if companies like K2 are successful in lowering the cost of satellite buses, the combination of lower-cost launch and planetary missions would allow NASA to do more with less in deep space.

The future, therefore, has yet to be won. But when it comes to deep space planetary exploration, NASA, for the first time since the 1960s, has a credible challenger.

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After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers

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Waymo has been in dozens of crashes. Most were not Waymo’s fault.

A driverless Waymo in Los Angeles. Credit: P_Wei via Getty

The first ever fatal crash involving a fully driverless vehicle occurred in San Francisco on January 19. The driverless vehicle belonged to Waymo, but the crash was not Waymo’s fault.

Here’s what happened: A Waymo with no driver or passengers stopped for a red light. Another car stopped behind the Waymo. Then, according to Waymo, a human-driven SUV rear-ended the other vehicles at high speed, causing a six-car pileup that killed one person and injured five others. Someone’s dog also died in the crash.

Another major Waymo crash occurred in October in San Francisco. Once again, a driverless Waymo was stopped for a red light. According to Waymo, a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction crossed the double yellow line and crashed into an SUV that was stopped to the Waymo’s left. The force of the impact shoved the SUV into the Waymo. One person was seriously injured.

These two incidents produced worse injuries than any other Waymo crash in the last nine months. But in other respects, they were typical Waymo crashes. Most Waymo crashes involve a Waymo vehicle scrupulously following the rules while a human driver flouts them, speeding, running red lights, careening out of their lanes, and so forth.

Waymo’s service will only grow in the coming months and years. So Waymo will inevitably be involved in more crashes—including some crashes that cause serious injuries and even death.

But as this happens, it’s crucial to keep the denominator in mind. Since 2020, Waymo has reported roughly 60 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag or cause an injury. But those crashes occurred over more than 50 million miles of driverless operations. If you randomly selected 50 million miles of human driving—that’s roughly 70 lifetimes behind the wheel—you would likely see far more serious crashes than Waymo has experienced to date.

Federal regulations require Waymo to report all significant crashes, whether or not the Waymo vehicle was at fault—indeed, whether or not the Waymo is even moving at the time of the crash. I’ve spent the last few days poring over Waymo’s crash reports from the last nine months. Let’s dig in.

Last September, I analyzed Waymo crashes through June 2024. So this section will focus on crashes between July 2024 and February 2025. During that period, Waymo reported 38 crashes that were serious enough to either cause an (alleged) injury or an airbag deployment.

In my view, only one of these crashes was clearly Waymo’s fault. Waymo may have been responsible for three other crashes—there wasn’t enough information to say for certain. The remaining 34 crashes seemed to be mostly or entirely the fault of others:

  • The two serious crashes I mentioned at the start of this article are among 16 crashes where another vehicle crashed into a stationary Waymo (or caused a multi-car pileup involving a stationary Waymo). This included 10 rear-end crashes, three side-swipe crashes, and three crashes where a vehicle coming from the opposite direction crossed the center line.
  • Another eight crashes involved another car (or in one case a bicycle) rear-ending a moving Waymo.
  • A further five crashes involved another vehicle veering into a Waymo’s right of way. This included a car running a red light, a scooter running a red light, and a car running a stop sign.
  • Three crashes occurred while Waymo was dropping a passenger off. The passenger opened the door and hit a passing car or bicycle. Waymo has a “Safe Exit” program to alert passengers and prevent this kind of crash, but it’s not foolproof.

There were two incidents where it seems like no crash happened at all:

  • In one incident, Waymo says that its vehicle “slowed and moved slightly to the left within its lane, preparing to change lanes due to a stopped truck ahead.” This apparently spooked an SUV driver in the next lane, who jerked the wheel to the left and ran into the opposite curb. Waymo says its vehicle never left its lane or made contact with the SUV.
  • In another incident, a pedestrian walked in front of a stopped Waymo. The Waymo began moving after the pedestrian had passed, but then the pedestrian “turned around and approached the Waymo AV.” According to Waymo, the pedestrian “may have made contact with the driver side of the Waymo AV” and “later claimed to have a minor injury.” Waymo’s report stops just short of calling this pedestrian a liar.

So that’s a total of 34 crashes. I don’t want to make categorical statements about these crashes because in most cases, I only have Waymo’s side of the story. But it doesn’t seem like Waymo was at fault in any of them.

There was one crash where Waymo clearly seemed to be at fault: In December, a Waymo in Los Angeles ran into a plastic crate, pushing it into the path of a scooter in the next lane. The scooterist hit the crate and fell down. Waymo doesn’t know whether the person riding the scooter was injured.

I had trouble judging the final three crashes, all of which involved another vehicle making an unprotected left turn across a Waymo’s lane of travel. In two of these cases, Waymo says its vehicle slammed on the brakes but couldn’t stop in time to avoid a crash. In the third case, the other vehicle hit the Waymo from the side. Waymo’s summaries make it sound like the other car was at fault in all three cases, but I don’t feel like I have enough information to make a definite judgment.

Even if we assume all three of these crashes were Waymo’s fault, that would still mean that a large majority of the 38 serious crashes were not Waymo’s fault. And as we’ll see, Waymo vehicles are involved in many fewer serious crashes than human-driven vehicles.

Another way to evaluate the safety of Waymo vehicles is by comparing their per-mile crash rate to human drivers. Waymo has been regularly publishing data about this over the last couple of years. Its most recent release came last week, when Waymo updated its safety data hub to cover crashes through the end of 2024.

Waymo knows exactly how many times its vehicles have crashed. What’s tricky is figuring out the appropriate human baseline, since human drivers don’t necessarily report every crash. Waymo has tried to address this by estimating human crash rates in its two biggest markets—Phoenix and San Francisco. Waymo’s analysis focused on the 44 million miles Waymo had driven in these cities through December, ignoring its smaller operations in Los Angeles and Austin.

Using human crash data, Waymo estimated that human drivers on the same roads would get into 78 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag. By comparison, Waymo’s driverless vehicles only got into 13 airbag crashes. That represents an 83 percent reduction in airbag crashes relative to typical human drivers.

This is slightly worse than last September, when Waymo estimated an 84 percent reduction in airbag crashes over Waymo’s first 21 million miles.

Over the same 44 million miles, Waymo estimates that human drivers would get into 190 crashes serious enough to cause an injury. Instead, Waymo only got in 36 injury-causing crashes across San Francisco or Phoenix. That’s an 81 percent reduction in injury-causing crashes.

This is a significant improvement over last September, when Waymo estimated its cars had 73 percent fewer injury-causing crashes over its first 21 million driverless miles.

The above analysis counts all crashes, whether or not Waymo’s technology was at fault. Things look even better for Waymo if we focus on crashes where Waymo was determined to be responsible for a crash.

To assess this, Waymo co-authored a study in December with the insurance giant Swiss Re. It focused on crashes that led to successful insurance claims against Waymo. This data seems particularly credible because third parties, not Waymo, decide when a crash is serious enough to file an insurance claim. And claims adjusters, not Waymo, decide whether to hold Waymo responsible for a crash.

But one downside is that it takes a few months for insurance claims to be filed. So the December report focused on crashes that occurred through July 2024.

Waymo had completed 25 million driverless miles by July 2024. And by the end of November 2024, Waymo had faced only two potentially successful claims for bodily injury. Both claims are pending, which means they could still be resolved in Waymo’s favor.

One of them was this crash that I described at the beginning of my September article about Waymo’s safety record:

On a Friday evening last November, police chased a silver sedan across the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The fleeing vehicle entered San Francisco and went careening through the city’s crowded streets. At the intersection of 11th and Folsom streets, it sideswiped the fronts of two other vehicles, veered onto a sidewalk, and hit two pedestrians.

According to a local news story, both pedestrians were taken to the hospital, with one suffering major injuries. The driver of the silver sedan was injured, as was a passenger in one of the other vehicles. No one was injured in the third car, a driverless Waymo robotaxi.

It seems unlikely that an insurance adjuster will ultimately hold Waymo responsible for these injuries.

The other pending injury claim doesn’t seem like a slam dunk, either. In that case, another vehicle steered into a bike lane before crashing into a Waymo as it was making a left turn.

But let’s assume that both crashes are judged to be Waymo’s fault. That would still be a strong overall safety record.

Based on insurance industry records, Waymo and Swiss Re estimate that human drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix would generate about 26 successful bodily injury claims over 25 million miles of driving. So even if both of the pending claims against Waymo succeed, two injuries represent a more than 90 percent reduction in successful injury claims relative to typical human drivers.

The reduction in property damage claims is almost as dramatic. Waymo’s vehicles generated nine successful or pending property damage claims over its first 25 million miles. Waymo and Swiss Re estimate that human drivers in the same geographic areas would have generated 78 property damage claims. So Waymo generated 88 percent fewer property damage claims than typical human drivers.

Timothy B. Lee was on staff at Ars Technica from 2017 to 2021. Today he writes Understanding AI, a newsletter that explores how AI works and how it’s changing our world. You can subscribe here.

Photo of Timothy B. Lee

Timothy is a senior reporter covering tech policy and the future of transportation. He lives in Washington DC.

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