Beth Washington – Page 33

Trump issues flurry of orders on TikTok, DOGE, social media, AI, and energy

Policy, president trump / Beth Washington / January 21, 2025

A roundup of executive orders issued by Trump after his second inauguration.

US President Donald Trump after being sworn in at his inauguration on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s flurry of day-one actions included a reprieve for TikTok, the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an order on social media “censorship,” a declaration of an energy emergency, and reversal of a Biden order on artificial intelligence.

The TikTok executive order attempts to delay enforcement of a US law that requires TikTok to be banned unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells the platform. “I am instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans,” Trump’s order said.

TikTok shut down in the US for part of the weekend but re-emerged after Trump said on Sunday that he would issue an order to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” Trump also suggested that the US should own half of TikTok.

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) criticized Trump’s TikTok action. “I have serious concerns with President Trump’s executive order because he is circumventing national security legislation passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress… ByteDance has had 270 days to sell TikTok to an American company, and it’s disgraceful they spent all that time playing political games rather than working to find a buyer,” Pallone said.

Trump’s order doesn’t necessarily remove liability for any company that helps TikTok stay available in the US, The Washington Post reported:

Legal experts and some lawmakers said that with the ban already in force, companies that host or distribute the app will be in violation and could be held liable, no matter what Trump says. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned Sunday after Trump detailed his TikTok plans that companies could still “face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law,” even if Trump’s Justice Department does not enforce it.

Trump also issued an order revoking numerous Biden administration orders. One is an October 2023 order titled Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. That Biden order, as we wrote at the time, “includes testing mandates for advanced AI models to ensure they can’t be used for creating weapons, suggestions for watermarking AI-generated media, and provisions addressing privacy and job displacement.”

In other White House actions we wrote about yesterday and today, Trump ordered the US to withdraw from the World Health Organization and reversed steps taken to promote electric vehicles.

DOGE

Trump’s executive order establishing a Department of Government Efficiency has been expected since November, when he announced the plan and said that DOGE would be led by Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Instead of creating a brand-new department, the order gives a new name to the existing US Digital Service.

“The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President,” Trump’s order said.

The US Digital Service was launched in 2014 by the Obama administration as a “small team of America’s best digital experts” to “work in collaboration with other government agencies to make websites more consumer friendly, to identify and fix problems, and to help upgrade the government’s technology infrastructure.”

Trump said in November that DOGE “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Yesterday’s executive order said the department will focus on “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Federal agencies will have to collaborate with DOGE. “Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization,” the order said. “Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.”

Speech on social media

Trump tackled social media in an order titled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. The order targets the Biden administration’s practice of contacting social media platforms about content that government officials believe should have been moderated or blocked.

In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked an injunction that would have prevented the Biden administration from pressuring social media firms to take down content. Justices expressed skepticism during oral arguments about whether federal government officials should face limits on their communications with social media networks like Facebook and ruled in favor of the Biden administration in June 2024.

Despite the Biden court win, Trump’s order described the Biden administration’s approach as a threat to the First Amendment.

“Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” Trump’s order said. “Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”

The order goes on to say that federal government employees and officials are prohibited from “engag[ing] in or facilitat[ing] any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” Trump further directed his administration to”identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Fossil fuels good, wind bad

On the energy front, the most striking executive order is one declaring that the US is facing an energy emergency. This comes despite the fact that the US has been producing, in the words of its own agency, “more crude oil than any country, ever.” It’s also producing record volumes of natural gas. Prices for both have been low in part due to this large supply. Yet the executive order states that “identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs.”

The order describes ways to streamline permitting for all of these under emergency provisions overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers. On the face of it, this would seem to also be good for wind and solar power, which are produced domestically and suffer from permitting barriers and a backlog of requests for connections to the grid. But toward the end of the text, “energy” is defined in a way that excludes wind and solar. “The term ‘energy’ or ‘energy resources’ means crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals,” the order says.

If the animosity toward the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy weren’t clear there, a separate executive order makes them explicit, as Trump is putting a temporary end to all offshore wind lease sales. “This withdrawal temporarily prevents consideration of any area in the [Offshore Continental Shelf] for any new or renewed wind energy leasing for the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind,” it reads. “This withdrawal does not apply to leasing related to any other purposes such as, but not limited to, oil, gas, minerals, and environmental conservation.”

The ostensible reason for this is “alleged legal deficiencies” in the environmental reviews that were conducted prior to the leasing process. There will also be an attempt to claw back existing leases. The secretary of the interior and attorney general are instructed to “conduct a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”

As an added bonus, the same accusations of legal deficiencies is leveled against a single land-based project, the proposed Lava Ridge wind farm in Idaho. So all government activities related to that project are on hold until it’s reviewed.

“Burdensome” regulations targeted

When it comes to fossil fuel development on the continental shelf, a Trump order alleges that “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations” are impeding development. The order takes several steps to speed up permitting of fossil fuel projects. It also kills a grab bag of climate-related programs.

One of the most prominent efforts is to do away with the emissions waivers, allowed under the Clean Air Act, which enable states like California to set stricter rules than the federal government. The Supreme Court recently declined even to consider an attempt to challenge these waivers. Yet as part of an attack on electric vehicles, the administration is adopting a policy of “terminating, where appropriate, state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles.”

Also targeted for termination is the American Climate Corps, a job training program focused on people entering the workforce. The Biden administration’s effort to determine and consider the social cost of carbon emissions during federal rulemaking will also be ended.

Several federal rules and executive orders will be targets, notably those on implementing the energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which have subsidized renewable energy and funded programs like carbon capture and hydrogen production. Many of these are already formal rules published in the Federal Register, which means that new rulemaking processes will be required to eliminate them, something that typically takes over a year and can be subject to court challenge.

In a separate part of the order, titled “Terminating the Green New Deal,” the Order suspends funding provided under two laws that were not part of the Green New Deal: the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Given those funds have already been allocated by Congress, it’s not clear how long Trump can delay this spending.

Finally, Trump decided he would attack the foundation of US efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions: the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gasses are a threat to the public as defined by the Clean Air Act. The endangerment finding is solidly based on well-established science, so much so that attempts to challenge it during the first Trump administration were reportedly abandoned as being unrealistic. Now, the incoming EPA administrator is given just 30 days to “submit joint recommendations to the Director of [Office of Management and Budget] on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Sleeping pills stop the brain’s system for cleaning out waste

Biology, brain, Features, neurobiology, nREM sleep, Science, sleeping pills / Beth Washington / January 20, 2025

Cleanup on aisle cerebellum

A specialized system sends pulses of pressure through the fluids in our brain.

Our bodies rely on their lymphatic system to drain excessive fluids and remove waste from tissues, feeding those back into the blood stream. It’s a complex yet efficient cleaning mechanism that works in every organ except the brain. “When cells are active, they produce waste metabolites, and this also happens in the brain. Since there are no lymphatic vessels in the brain, the question was what was it that cleaned the brain,” Natalie Hauglund, a neuroscientist at Oxford University who led a recent study on the brain-clearing mechanism, told Ars.

Earlier studies done mostly on mice discovered that the brain had a system that flushed its tissues with cerebrospinal fluid, which carried away waste products in a process called glymphatic clearance. “Scientists noticed that this only happened during sleep, but it was unknown what it was about sleep that initiated this cleaning process,” Hauglund explains.

Her study found the glymphatic clearance was mediated by a hormone called norepinephrine and happened almost exclusively during the NREM sleep phase. But it only worked when sleep was natural. Anesthesia and sleeping pills shut this process down nearly completely.

Taking it slowly

The glymphatic system in the brain was discovered back in 2013 by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish neuroscientist and a coauthor of Hauglund’s paper. Since then, there have been numerous studies aimed at figuring out how it worked, but most of them had one problem: they were done on anesthetized mice.

“What makes anesthesia useful is that you can have a very controlled setting,” Hauglund says.

Most brain imaging techniques require a subject, an animal or a human, to be still. In mouse experiments, that meant immobilizing their heads so the research team could get clear scans. “But anesthesia also shuts down some of the mechanisms in the brain,” Hauglund argues.

So, her team designed a study to see how the brain-clearing mechanism works in mice that could move freely in their cages and sleep naturally whenever they felt like it. “It turned out that with the glymphatic system, we didn’t really see the full picture when we used anesthesia,” Hauglund says.

Looking into the brain of a mouse that runs around and wiggles during sleep, though, wasn’t easy. The team pulled it off by using a technique called flow fiber photometry which works by imaging fluids tagged with fluorescent markers using a probe implanted in the brain. So, the mice got the optical fibers implanted in their brains. Once that was done, the team put fluorescent tags in the mice’s blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and on the norepinephrine hormone. “Fluorescent molecules in the cerebrospinal fluid had one wavelength, blood had another wavelength, and norepinephrine had yet another wavelength,” Hauglund says.

This way, her team could get a fairly precise idea about the brain fluid dynamics when mice were awake and asleep. And it turned out that the glymphatic system basically turned brain tissues into a slowly moving pump.

Pumping up

“Norepinephrine is released from a small area of the brain in the brain stem,” Hauglund says. “It is mainly known as a response to stressful situations. For example, in fight or flight scenarios, you see norepinephrine levels increasing.” Its main effect is causing blood vessels to contract. Still, in more recent research, people found out that during sleep, norepinephrine is released in slow waves that roll over the brain roughly once a minute. This oscillatory norepinephrine release proved crucial to the operation of the glymphatic system.

“When we used the flow fiber photometry method to look into the brains of mice, we saw these slow waves of norepinephrine, but we also saw how it works in synchrony with fluctuation in the blood volume,” Hauglund says.

Every time the norepinephrine level went up, it caused the contraction of the blood vessels in the brain, and the blood volume went down. At the same time, the contraction increased the volume of the perivascular spaces around the blood vessels, which were immediately filled with the cerebrospinal fluid.

When the norepinephrine level went down, the process worked in reverse: the blood vessels dilated, letting the blood in and pushing the cerebrospinal fluid out. “What we found was that norepinephrine worked a little bit like a conductor of an orchestra and makes the blood and cerebrospinal fluid move in synchrony in these slow waves,” Hauglund says.

And because the study was designed to monitor this process in freely moving, undisturbed mice, the team learned exactly when all this was going on. When mice were awake, the norepinephrine levels were much higher but relatively steady. The team observed the opposite during the REM sleep phase, where the norepinephrine levels were consistently low. The oscillatory behavior was present exclusively during the NREM sleep phase.

So, the team wanted to check how the glymphatic clearance would work when they gave the mice zolpidem, a sleeping drug that had been proven to increase NREM sleep time. In theory, zolpidem should have boosted brain-clearing. But it turned it off instead.

Non-sleeping pills

“When we looked at the mice after giving them zolpidem, we saw they all fell asleep very quickly. That was expected—we take zolpidem because it makes it easier for us to sleep,” Hauglund says. “But then we saw those slow fluctuations in norepinephrine, blood volume, and cerebrospinal fluid almost completely stopped.”

No fluctuations meant the glymphatic system didn’t remove any waste. This was a serious issue, because one of the cellular waste products it is supposed to remove is amyloid beta, found in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Hauglund speculates it could be possible zolpidem induces a state very similar to sleep but at the same time it shuts down important processes that happen during sleep. While heavy zolpidem use has been associated with increased risk of the Alzheimer disease, it is not clear if this increased risk was there because the drug was inhibiting oscillatory norepinephrine release in the brain. To better understand this, Hauglund wants to get a closer look into how the glymphatic system works in humans.

“We know we have the same wave-like fluid dynamics in the brain, so this could also drive the brain clearance in humans,” Haugland told Ars. “Still, it’s very hard to look at norepinephrine in the human brain because we need an invasive technique to get to the tissue.”

But she said norepinephrine levels in people can be estimated based on indirect clues. One of them is pupil dilation and contraction, which work in in synchrony with the norepinephrine levels. Another other clue may lay in microarousals—very brief, imperceivable awakenings which, Hauglund thinks, can be correlated with the brain clearing mechanism. “I am currently interested in this phenomenon […]. Right now we have no idea why microarousals are there or what function they have” Hauglund says.

But the last step she has on her roadmap is making better sleeping pills. “We need sleeping drugs that don’t have this inhibitory effect on the norepinephrine waves. If we can have a sleeping pill that helps people sleep without disrupting their sleep at the same time it will be very important,” Hauglund concludes.

Cell, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.027

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

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TikTok is mostly restored after Trump pledges an order and half US ownership

bytedance, Donald Trump, Policy, President Donald Trump, Tech, tiktok / Beth Washington / January 20, 2025

At a rally Sunday, he did not clarify if this meant a US-based business or the government itself. “So they’ll have a partner, the United States, and they’ll have a lot of bidders … And there’s no risk, we’re not putting up any money. All we’re doing is giving them the approval without which they don’t have anything,” Trump said Sunday.

Legal limbo

Trump’s order, and TikTok’s return to service, both seem at odds with the law—and leadership in the Republican party. Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that Congress would “enforce the law.” Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) issued a joint statement Sunday, commending Apple, Microsoft, and Google for “following the law,” and noting that other companies “face ruinous bankruptcy” for violating it.

“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” the statement read. The law states that “A path to executing a qualified divestiture” has to be determined before a one-time extension of 90 days can be granted.

TikTok’s best chance at avoiding a shutdown vanished in last week’s unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding the divest-or-sell law. Aimed at protecting national security interests from TikTok’s Chinese owners having access to the habits and data of 170 million American users, the law was ruled to be “content-neutral,” and that the US “had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment.”

Reports at Forbes, Bloomberg, and elsewhere have suggested that ByteDance and its Chinese owners could be seeking to use TikTok as a bargaining chip, with maneuvers including a sale to Trump ally Elon Musk as a means of counteracting Trump’s proposed tariffs on Chinese imports.

One largely unforeseen side effect of Congress’ TikTok-centered actions is that Marvel Snap, a mobile collectible card and deck-building game, disappeared in similar fashion over the weekend. The game, developed by a California-based team, is published by ByteDance’s Nuverse mobile game division. With no web version available, Snap remained unavailable on app stores Monday morning. A message to players with the game installed noted that “This outage is a surprise to us and wasn’t planned,” though it pledged to restore the game.

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Hollywood mourns the loss of David Lynch

culture, David Lynch, Entertainment, film, Obituaries, television / Beth Washington / January 17, 2025

The success of Lynch’s next film, Blue Velvet, helped assuage his disappointment, as did his move to television with the bizarrely surreal and influential series Twin Peaks—part detective story, part soap opera, with dashes of sci-fi and horror. The series spawned a spin-off prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and a 2017 revival series, Twin Peaks: The Return, that picks up the storyline 25 years later. Many other TV series were influenced by Lynch’s show, including The X-Files, Lost, The Sopranos, Bates Motel, Fargo, Riverdale, Atlanta, and the animated series Gravity Falls.

His final feature films were an LA-centric trilogy—Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire (2006)—and 1999’s biographical road drama, The Straight Story, based on the true story of a man named Alvin Straight who drove across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. It was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures and was Lynch’s only G-rated film.

“A singular visionary dreamer”

The director’s filmography also includes an assortment of short films, all bearing his eccentric stamp, including a surrealist short, Absurda, shown at Cannes in 2007, as well as Premonition Following an Evil Deed (NSFW YouTube link), Lynch’s contribution to the 1995 anthology film Lumière and Company. All 41 featured directors used the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers. Lynch was also an avid painter, cartoonist, and musician and directed several music videos for such artists as Moby and Nine Inch Nails. Until his death, he hosted quirky online “weather reports” and a web series, What Is David Lynch Working on Today? He even racked up the occasional acting credit.

Lynch received an Honorary Oscar in 2000 for lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards after three prior nominations for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive. Deadline’s Pete Hammond called Lynch’s speech “probably one of the shortest for any Oscar acceptance.” Lynch briefly thanked the Academy, the other honorees, wished everyone a great night, then pointed to the statuette and said, “You have a very interesting figure. Good night.” At Cannes, he won the Palme d’Or in 1990 for Wild at Heart and won Best Director in 2001 for Mulholland Drive.

Naomi Watts, who played a dual role as doppelgängers Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Drive, said that Lynch put her “on the map” as an actor by casting her. “It wasn’t just his art that impacted me—his wisdom, humor, and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself I’d never accessed before,” she said in a statement. “Every moment together felt charged with a presence I’ve rarely seen or known. Probably because, yes, he seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of. And David invited all to glimpse into that world through his exquisite storytelling, which elevated cinema and inspired generations of filmmakers across the globe.”

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Google is about to make Gemini a core part of Workspaces—with price changes

AI, Enterprise, Gemini, Google, Google Workspace, Tech / Beth Washington / January 16, 2025

Google has added AI features to its regular Workspace accounts for business while slightly raising the baseline prices of Workspace plans.

Previously, AI tools in the Gemini Business plan were a $20 per seat add-on to existing Workspace accounts, which had a base cost of $12 per seat without. Now, the AI tools are included for all Workspace users, but the per-seat base price is increasing from $12 to $14.

That means that those who were already paying extra for Gemini are going to pay less than half of what they were—effectively $14 per seat instead of $32. But those who never used or wanted Gemini or any other newer features under the AI umbrella from Workspace are going to pay a little bit more than before.

Features covered here include access to Gemini Advanced, the NotebookLM research assistant, email and document summaries in Gmail and Docs, adaptive audio and additional transcription languages for Meet, and “help me write” and Gemini in the side panel across a variety of applications.

Google says that it plans “to roll out even more AI features previously available in Gemini add-ons only.”

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Here’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year

artemis, Commercial space, human spaceflight, launch, moon, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, texas / Beth Washington / January 16, 2025

Iterate, iterate, and iterate some more

The seventh test flight of Starship is scheduled for launch Thursday afternoon.

SpaceX’s upgraded Starship rocket stands on its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX plans to launch the seventh full-scale test flight of its massive Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket Thursday afternoon. It’s the first of what might be a dozen or more demonstration flights this year as SpaceX tries new things with the most powerful rocket ever built.

There are many things on SpaceX’s Starship to-do list in 2025. They include debuting an upgraded, larger Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, on the test flight preparing to launch Thursday. The one-hour launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 22: 00 UTC) at SpaceX’s launch base in South Texas. You can watch SpaceX’s live webcast of the flight here.

SpaceX will again attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster—more than 20 stories tall and wider than a jumbo jet—back at the launch pad using mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” mounted to the launch tower. Read more about the Starship Block 2 upgrades in our story from last week.

You might think of next week’s Starship test flight as an apéritif before the entrées to come. Ars recently spoke with Lisa Watson-Morgan, the NASA engineer overseeing the agency’s contract with SpaceX to develop a modified version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon. NASA has contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop and fly two Starship human landing missions under the umbrella of the agency’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

We are publishing the entire interview with Watson-Morgan below, but first, let’s assess what SpaceX might accomplish with Starship this year.

There are many things to watch for on this test flight, including the deployment of 10 satellite simulators to test the ship’s payload accommodations and the performance of a beefed-up heat shield as the vehicle blazes through the atmosphere for reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

If this all works, SpaceX may try to launch a ship into low-Earth orbit on the eighth flight, expected to launch in the next couple of months. All of the Starship test flights to date have intentionally flown on suborbital trajectories, bringing the ship back toward reentry over the sea northwest of Australia after traveling halfway around the world.

Then, there’s an even bigger version of Starship called Block 3 that could begin flying before the end of the year. This version of the ship is the one that SpaceX will use to start experimenting with in-orbit refueling, according to Watson-Morgan.

In order to test refueling, two Starships will dock together in orbit, allowing one vehicle to transfer super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the other. Nothing like this on this scale has ever been attempted before. Future Starship missions to the Moon and Mars may require 10 or more tanker missions to gas up in low-Earth orbit. All of these missions will use different versions of the same basic Starship design: a human-rated lunar lander, a propellant depot, and a refueling tanker.

Artist’s illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

Questions for 2025

Catching Starship back at its launch tower and demonstrating orbital propellant transfer are the two most significant milestones on SpaceX’s roadmap for 2025.

SpaceX officials have said they aim to fly as many as 25 Starship missions this year, allowing engineers to more rapidly iterate on the vehicle’s design. SpaceX is constructing a second launch pad at its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, to help speed up the launch cadence.

Can SpaceX achieve this flight rate in 2025? Will faster Starship manufacturing and reusability help the company fly more often? Will SpaceX fly its first ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration this year? When will Starship begin launching large batches of new-generation Starlink Internet satellites?

Licensing delays at the Federal Aviation Administration have been a thorn in SpaceX’s side for the last couple of years. Will those go away under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who counts SpaceX founder Elon Musk as a key adviser?

And will SpaceX gain a larger role in NASA’s Artemis lunar program? The Artemis program’s architecture is sure to be reviewed by the Trump administration and the nominee for the agency’s next administrator, billionaire businessman and astronaut Jared Isaacman.

The very expensive Space Launch System rocket, developed by NASA with Boeing and other traditional aerospace contractors, might be canceled. NASA currently envisions the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as the transportation system to ferry astronauts between Earth and the vicinity of the Moon, where crews would meet up with a landing vehicle provided by commercial partners SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Watson-Morgan didn’t have answers to all of these questions. Many of them are well outside of her purview as Human Landing System program manager, so Ars didn’t ask. Instead, Ars discussed technical and schedule concerns with her during the half-hour interview. Here is one part of the discussion, lightly edited for clarity.

Ars: What do you hope to see from Flight 7 of Starship?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: One of the exciting parts of working with SpaceX are these test flights. They have a really fast turnaround, where they put in different lessons learned. I think you saw many of the flight objectives that they discussed from Flight 6, which was a great success. I think they mentioned different thermal testing experiments that they put on the ship in order to understand the different heating, the different loads on certain areas of the system. All that was really good with each one of those, in addition to how they configure the tiles. Then, from that, there’ll be additional tests that they will put on Flight 7, so you kind of get this iterative improvement and learning that we’ll get to see in Flight 7. So Flight 7 is the first Version 2 of their ship set. When I say that, I mean the ship, the booster, all the systems associated with it. So, from that, it’s really more just understanding how the system, how the flaps, how all of that interacts and works as they’re coming back in. Hopefully we’ll get to see some catches, that’s always exciting.

Ars: How did the in-space Raptor engine relight go on Flight 6 (on November 19)?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Beautifully. And that’s something that’s really important to us because when we’re sitting on the Moon… well, actually, the whole path to the Moon as we are getting ready to land on the Moon, we’ll perform a series of maneuvers, and the Raptors will have an environment that is very, very cold. To that, it’s going to be important that they’re able to relight for landing purposes. So that was a great first step towards that. In addition, after we land, clearly the Raptors will be off, and it will get very cold, and they will have to relight in a cold environment (to get off the Moon). So that’s why that step was critical for the Human Landing System and NASA’s return to the Moon.

A recent artist’s illustration of two Starships docked together in low-Earth orbit. Credit: SpaceX

Ars: Which version of the ship is required for the propellant transfer demonstration, and what new features are on that version to enable this test?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We’re looking forward to the Version 3, which is what’s coming up later on, sometime in ’25, in the near term, because that’s what we need for propellant transfer and the cryo fluid work that is also important to us… There are different systems in the V3 set that will help us with cryo fluid management. Obviously, with those, we have to have the couplers and the quick-disconnects in order for the two systems to have the right guidance, navigation, trajectory, all the control systems needed to hold their station-keeping in order to dock with each other, and then perform the fluid transfer. So all the fluid lines and all that’s associated with that, those systems, which we have seen in tests and held pieces of when we’ve been working with them at their site, we’ll get to see those actually in action on orbit.

Ars: Have there been any ground tests of these systems, whether it’s fluid couplers or docking systems? Can you talk about some of the ground tests that have gone into this development?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Oh, absolutely. We’ve been working with them on ground tests for this past year. We’ve seen the ground testing and reviewed the data. Our team works with them on what we deem necessary for the various milestones. While the milestone contains proprietary (information), we work closely with them to ensure that it’s going to meet the intent, safety-wise as well as technically, of what we’re going to need to see. So they’ve done that.

Even more exciting, they have recently shipped some of their docking systems to the Johnson Space Center for testing with the Orion Lockheed Martin docking system, and that’s for Artemis III. Clearly, that’s how we’re going to receive the crew. So those are some exciting tests that we’ve been doing this past year as well that’s not just focused on, say, the booster and the ship. There are a lot of crew systems that are being developed now. We’re in work with them on how we’re going to effectuate the crew manual control requirements that we have, so it’s been a great balance to see what the crew needs, given the size of the ship. That’s been a great set of work. We have crew office hours where the crew travels to Hawthorne [SpaceX headquarters in California] and works one-on-one with the different responsible engineers in the different technical disciplines to make sure that they understand not just little words on the paper from a requirement, but actually what this means, and then how systems can be operated.

Ars: For the docking system, Orion uses the NASA Docking System, and SpaceX brings its own design to bear on Starship?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: This is something that I think the Human Landing System has done exceptionally well. When we wrote our high-level set of requirements, we also wrote it with a bigger picture in mind—looked into the overall standards of how things are typically done, and we just said it has to be compliant with it. So it’s a docking standard compliance, and SpaceX clearly meets that. They certainly do have the Dragon heritage, of course, with the International Space Station. So, because of that, we have high confidence that they’re all going to work very well. Still, it’s important to go ahead and perform the ground testing and get as much of that out of the way as we can.

Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, is based at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: ASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Ars: How far along is the development and design of the layout of the crew compartment at the top of Starship? Is it far along, or is it still in the conceptual phase? What can you say about that?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: It’s much further along there. We’ve had our environmental control and life support systems, whether it’s carbon dioxide monitoring fans to make sure the air is circulating properly. We’ve been in a lot of work with SpaceX on the temperature. It’s… a large area (for the crew). The seats, making sure that the crew seats and the loads on that are appropriate. For all of that work, as the analysis work has been performed, the NASA team is reviewing it. They had a mock-up, actually, of some of their life support systems even as far back as eight-plus months ago. So there’s been a lot of progress on that.

Ars: Is SpaceX planning to use a touchscreen design for crew displays and controls, like they do with the Dragon spacecraft?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We’re in talks about that, about what would be the best approach for the crew for the dynamic environment of landing.

Ars: I can imagine it is a pretty dynamic environment with those Raptor engines firing. It’s almost like a launch in reverse.

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Right. Those are some of the topics that get discussed in the crew office hours. That’s why it’s good to have the crew interacting directly, in addition to the different discipline leads, whether it’s structural, mechanical, propulsion, to have all those folks talking guidance and having control to say, “OK, well, when the system does this, here’s the mode we expect to see. Here’s the impact on the crew. And is this condition, or is the option space that we have on the table, appropriate for the next step, with respect to the displays.”

Ars: One of the big things SpaceX needs to prove out before going to the Moon with Starship is in-orbit propellant transfer. When do you see the ship-to-ship demonstration occurring?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: I see it occurring in ’25.

Ars: Anything more specific about the schedule for that?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: That’d be a question for SpaceX because they do have a number of flights that they’re performing commercially, for their maturity. We get the benefit of that. It’s actually a great partnership. I’ll tell you, it’s really good working with them on this, but they’d have to answer that question. I do foresee it happening in ’25.

Ars: What things do you need to see SpaceX accomplish before they’re ready for the refueling demo? I’m thinking of things like the second launch tower, potentially. Do they need to demonstrate a ship catch or anything like that before going for orbital refueling?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: I would say none of that’s required. You just kind of get down to, what are the basics? What are the basics that you need? So you need to be able to launch rapidly off the same pad, even. They’ve shown they can launch and catch within a matter of minutes. So that is good confidence there. The catching is part of their reuse strategy, which is more of their commercial approach, and not a NASA requirement. NASA reaps the benefit of it by good pricing as a result of their commercial model, but it is not a requirement that we have. So they could theoretically use the same pad to perform the propellant transfer and the long-duration flight, because all it requires is two launches, really, within a specified time period to where the two systems can meet in a planned trajectory or orbit to do the propellant transfer. So they could launch the first one, and then within a week or two or three, depending on what the concept of operations was that we thought we could achieve at that time, and then have the propellant transfer demo occur that way. So you don’t necessarily need two pads, but you do need more thermal characterization of the ship. I would say that is one of the areas (we need to see data on), and that is one of the reasons, I think, why they’re working so diligently on that.

Ars: You mentioned the long-duration flight demonstration. What does that entail?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: The simple objectives are to launch two different tankers or Starships. The Starship will eventually be a crewed system. Clearly, the ones that we’re talking about for the propellant transfer are not. It’s just to have the booster and Starship system launch, and within a few weeks, have another one launch, and have them rendezvous. They need to be able to find each other with their sensors. They need to be able to come close, very, very close, and they need to be able to dock together, connect, do the quick connect, and make sure they are able, then, to flow propellant and LOX (liquid oxygen) to another system. Then, we need to be able to measure the quantity of how much has gone over. And from that, then they need to safely undock and dispose.

Ars: So the long-duration flight demonstration is just part of what SpaceX needs to do in order to be ready for the propellant transfer demonstration?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We call it long duration just because it’s not a 45-minute or an hour flight. Long duration, obviously, that’s a relative statement, but it’s a system that can stay up long enough to be able to find another Starship and perform those maneuvers and flow of fuel and LOX.

Ars: How much propellant will you transfer with this demonstration, and do you think you’ll get all the data you need in one demonstration, or will SpaceX need to try this several times?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: That’s something you can ask SpaceX (about how much propellant will be transferred). Clearly, I know, but there’s some sensitivity there. You’ve seen our requirements in our initial solicitation. We have thresholds and goals, meaning we want you to at least do this, but more is better, and that’s typically how we work almost everything. Working with commercial industry in these fixed-price contracts has worked exceptionally well, because when you have providers that are also wanting to explore commercially or trying to make a commercial system, they are interested in pushing more than what we would typically ask for, and so often we get that for an incredibly fair price.

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.

Here’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year Read More »

This PDF contains a playable copy of Doom

gaming / Beth Washington / January 15, 2025

Here at Ars, we’re suckers for stories about hackers getting Doom running on everything from CAPTCHA robot checks and Windows’ notepad.exe to AI hallucinations and fluorescing gut bacteria. Despite all that experience, we were still thrown for a loop by a recent demonstration of Doom running in the usually static confines of a PDF file.

On the Github page for the quixotic project, coder ading2210 discusses how Adobe Acrobat included some robust support for JavaScript in the PDF file format. That JS coding support—which dates back decades and is still fully documented in Adobe’s official PDF specs—is currently implemented in a more limited, more secure form as part of PDFium, the built-in PDF-rendering engine of Chromium-based browsers.

In the past, hackers have used this little-known Adobe feature to code simple games like Breakout and Tetris into PDF documents. But ading220 went further, recompiling a streamlined fork of Doom‘s open source code using an old version of Emscripten that outputs optimized asm.js code.

With that code loaded, the Doom PDF can take inputs via the user typing in a designated text field and generate “video” output in the form of converted ASCII text fed into 200 individual text fields, each representing a horizontal line of the Doom display. The text in those fields is enough to simulate a six-color monochrome display at a “pretty poor but playable” 13 frames per second (about 80 ms per frame).

This PDF contains a playable copy of Doom Read More »

Ban on Chinese connected-car software is almost ready

Cars, connected cars / Beth Washington / January 14, 2025

However, the ban, as written, is not absolute. Companies can seek authorization to import software or hardware that would otherwise be outlawed, but the request would need to satisfy the US government and possibly be subject to conditions.

There are also exemptions for software for vehicles older than model year 2027 and hardware for vehicles older than model year 2030, including parts imported for warranty or repair work. (The government points out that retroactively applying the new rule would be a little pointless as any harm would already be done by vehicles that had compromised systems that predate it going into effect.)

And the final rule would only apply to light-duty vehicles. Anything with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 lbs is exempt but will be dealt with in “a separate regulation tailored to the commercial sector in the coming months.”

Auto industry suppliers probably face the most disruption as a result of the new rule—just the presence of a Chinese-made module in a larger system is enough to trigger the import ban. But there should be little disruption to the US car market, at least for now.

Since the rules only go into effect from model year 2027, the few Chinese-made vehicles on sale in the US—models from Polestar, Volvo, Lincoln, and Buick—may remain on sale. However, Polestar’s Chinese ownership may prove somewhat of a sticking point compared to Ford and GM. Ars notes that lawyers representing Polestar met with the Commerce Department last week—we reached out to the automaker for a comment and will update this piece should we hear back.

Ban on Chinese connected-car software is almost ready Read More »

Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg

decentralized social media, elon musk, European Union, facebook, Instagram, mark zuckerberg, mastodon, Meta, Policy, social networks / Beth Washington / January 13, 2025

And perhaps in a nod to Meta’s recent changes, Mastodon also vowed to “invest deeply in trust and safety” and ensure “everyone, especially marginalized communities,” feels “safe” on the platform.

To become a more user-focused paradise of “resilient, governable, open and safe digital spaces,” Mastodon is going to need a lot more funding. The blog called for donations to help fund an annual operating budget of $5.1 million (5 million euros) in 2025. That’s a massive leap from the $152,476 (149,400 euros) total operating expenses Mastodon reported in 2023.

Other social networks wary of EU regulations

Mastodon has decided to continue basing its operations in Europe, while still maintaining a separate US-based nonprofit entity as a “fundraising hub,” the blog said.

It will take time, Mastodon said, to “select the appropriate jurisdiction and structure in Europe” before Mastodon can then “determine which other (subsidiary) legal structures are needed to support operations and sustainability.”

While Mastodon is carefully getting re-settled as a nonprofit in Europe, Zuckerberg this week went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to call on Donald Trump to help US tech companies fight European Union fines, Politico reported.

Some critics suggest the recent policy changes on Meta platforms were intended to win Trump’s favor, partly to get Trump on Meta’s side in the fight against the EU’s strict digital laws. According to France24, Musk’s recent combativeness with EU officials suggests Musk might team up with Zuckerberg in that fight (unlike that cage fight pitting the wealthy tech titans against each other that never happened).

Experts told France24 that EU officials may “perhaps wrongly” already be fearful about ruffling Trump’s feathers by targeting his tech allies and would likely need to use the “full legal arsenal” of EU digital laws to “stand up to Big Tech” once Trump’s next term starts.

As Big Tech prepares to continue battling EU regulators, Mastodon appears to be taking a different route, laying roots in Europe and “establishing the appropriate governance and leadership frameworks that reflect the nature and purpose of Mastodon as a whole” and “responsibly serve the community,” its blog said.

“Our core mission remains the same: to create the tools and digital spaces where people can build authentic, constructive online communities free from ads, data exploitation, manipulative algorithms, or corporate monopolies,” Mastodon’s blog said.

Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg Read More »

New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

New York Affordable Broadband Act, Policy / Beth Washington / January 13, 2025

1.7 million New York households lost FCC discount

The order said quick implementation of the law is important because of “developments at the federal level impacting the affordability of broadband service.” About 1.7 million New York households, and 23 million nationwide, used to receive a monthly discount through an FCC program that expired in mid-2024 after Congress failed to provide more funding.

“For this reason, consumer benefit programs assisting low-income households—such as the ABA—are even more critical to ensure that the digital divide for low-income New Yorkers is being addressed,” the New York order said.

New York ISPs can obtain an exemption from the low-cost broadband law if they “provide service to no more than 20,000 households and the Commission determines that compliance with such requirements would result in ‘unreasonable or unsustainable financial impact on the broadband service provider,'” the order said.

Over 40 small ISPs filed for exemptions in 2021 before the law was blocked by a judge. Those ISPs and potentially others will be given one-month exemptions if they file paperwork by Wednesday stating that they meet the subscriber threshold. ISPs must submit detailed financial information by February 15 to obtain longer-term exemptions.

“All other ISPs (i.e., those with more than 20,000 subscribers) must comply with the ABA by January 15, 2025,” the order said. Failure to comply can be punished with civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation. The law applies to wireline, fixed wireless, and satellite providers.

Charter Spectrum currently advertises a $25-per-month plan with 50Mbps speeds for low-income households. Comcast and Optimum have $15 plans. Verizon has a low-income program reducing the cost of some home Internet plans to as low as $20 a month.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns 12.3 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications, which also owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast.

New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill Read More »

Report: After many leaks, Switch 2 announcement could come “this week”

gaming, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, nintendo switch 2, Switch, Tech / Beth Washington / January 13, 2025

Nintendo may be getting ready to make its Switch 2 console official. According to “industry whispers” collected by Eurogamer, as well as reporting from The Verge’s Tom Warren, the Switch 2 could be formally announced sometime this week. Eurogamer suggests the reveal is scheduled for this Thursday, January 16.

The reporting also suggests that the reveal will focus mostly on the console’s hardware design, with another game-centered announcement coming later. Eurogamer reports that the console won’t be ready to launch until April; this would be similar to Nintendo’s strategy for the original Switch, which was announced in mid-January 2017 but not launched until March.

Many things about the Switch 2’s physical hardware design have been thoroughly leaked at this point, thanks mostly to accessory makers who have been showing off their upcoming cases. Accessory maker Genki was at CES last week with a 3D-printed replica of the console based on the real thing, suggesting a much larger but still familiar-looking console with a design and button layout similar to the current Switch.

On the inside, the console is said to sport a new Nvidia-designed Arm processor with a much more powerful GPU and more RAM than the current Switch. Dubbed “T239,” Eurogamer reports that the chip includes 1,536 CUDA cores based on the Ampere architecture, the same used in 2020’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards on the PC.

Report: After many leaks, Switch 2 announcement could come “this week” Read More »

Supreme Court lets Hawaii sue oil companies over climate change effects

climate change, fossil fuel companies, Hawaii, Honolulu, Policy, shell, Sunoco, Supreme Court / Beth Washington / January 13, 2025

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to decide whether to block lawsuits that Honolulu filed to seek billions in damages from oil and gas companies over allegedly deceptive marketing campaigns that hid the effects of climate change.

Now those lawsuits can proceed, surely frustrating the fossil fuel industry, which felt that SCOTUS should have weighed in on this key “recurring question of extraordinary importance to the energy industry” raised in lawsuits seeking similarly high damages in several states, CBS News reported.

Defendants Sunoco and Shell, along with 15 other energy companies, had asked the court to intervene and stop the Hawaii lawsuits from proceeding. They had hoped to move the cases out of Hawaii state courts by arguing that interstate pollution is governed by federal law and the Clean Air Act.

The oil and gas companies continue to argue that greenhouse gas emissions “flow from billions of daily choices, over more than a century, by governments, companies, and individuals about what types of fuels to use, and how to use them.” Because of this, the companies believe Honolulu was wrong to demand damages based on the “cumulative effect of worldwide emissions leading to global climate change.”

“In these cases, state and local governments are attempting to assert control over the nation’s energy policies by holding energy companies liable for worldwide conduct in ways that starkly conflict with the policies and priorities of the federal government,” oil and gas companies unsuccessfully argued in their attempt to persuade SCOTUS to grant review. “That flouts this court’s precedents and basic principles of federalism, and the court should put a stop to it.”

Supreme Court lets Hawaii sue oil companies over climate change effects Read More »

Author name: Beth Washington