The state of New York is "asking companies to disclose whether AI is the reason for their layoffs," reports Entrepreneur: The move applies to New York State's existing Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) system and took effect in March, Bloomberg reported. New York is the first state in the U.S. to add the disclosure, which could help regulators understand AI's effects on the labor market.

The change takes the form of a checkbox added to a form employers fill out at least 90 days before a mass layoff or plant closure through the WARN system. Companies have to select whether "technological innovation or automation" is a reason for job cuts. If they choose that option, they are directed to a second menu where they are asked to name the specific technology responsible for layoffs, like AI or robots.

In 1989 a computer scientist argued that more functionality in software actually lowers usability and practicality — leading to the counterintuitive proposition that "worse is better". But is that still true?

Python's original creator Guido van Rossum addressed the question last month in a lightning talk at the annual Python Language Summit 2025. Guido started by recounting earlier periods of Python development from 35 years ago, where he used UNIX "almost exclusively" and thus "Python was greatly influenced by UNIX's 'worse is better' philosophy"... "The fact that [Python] wasn't perfect encouraged many people to start contributing. All of the code was straightforward, there were no thoughts of optimization... These early contributors also now had a stake in the language; [Python] was also their baby"...

Guido contrasted early development to how Python is developed now: "features that take years to produce from teams of software developers paid by big tech companies. The static type system requires an academic-level understanding of esoteric type system features." And this isn't just Python the language, "third-party projects like numpy are maintained by folks who are paid full-time to do so.... Now we have a huge community, but very few people, relatively speaking, are contributing meaningfully."

Guido asked whether the expectation for Python contributors going forward would be that "you had to write a perfect PEP or create a perfect prototype that can be turned into production-ready code?" Guido pined for the "old days" where feature development could skip performance or feature-completion to get something into the hands of the community to "start kicking the tires". "Do we have to abandon 'worse is better' as a philosophy and try to make everything as perfect as possible?" Guido thought doing so "would be a shame", but that he "wasn't sure how to change it", acknowledging that core developers wouldn't want to create features and then break users with future releases.

Guido referenced David Hewitt's PyO3 talk about Rust and Python, and that development "was using worse is better," where there is a core feature set that works, and plenty of work to be done and open questions. "That sounds a lot more fun than working on core CPython", Guido paused, "...not that I'd ever personally learn Rust. Maybe I should give it a try after," which garnered laughter from core developers.

"Maybe we should do more of that: allowing contributors in the community to have a stake and care".

Recently the Browser Company (the startup behind the Arc web browser) switched over to building a new AI-powered browser — and its beta has just been released, reports TechCrunch, "though you'll need an invite to try it out."

The Chromium-based browser has a URL/search bar that also "acts as the interface for its in-built AI chatbot" which can "search the web for you, summarize files that you upload, and automatically switch between chat and search functions." The Browser Company's CEO Josh Miller has of late acknowledged how people have been using AI tools for all sorts of tasks, and Dia is a reflection of that. By giving users an AI interface within the browser itself, where a majority of work is done these days, the company is hoping to slide into the user flow and give people an easy way to use AI, cutting out the need to visit the sites for tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude...

Users can also ask questions about all the tabs they have open, and the bot can even write up a draft based on the contents of those tabs. To set your preferences, all you have to do is talk to the chatbot to customize its tone of voice, style of writing, and settings for coding. Via an opt-in feature called History, you can allow the browser to use seven days of your browsing history as context to answer queries.
The Browser Company will give all existing Arc members access to the beta immediately, according to the article, "and existing Dia users will be able to send invites to other users."

The article points out that Google is also adding AI-powered features to Chrome...

Walmart and Amazon are exploring the possibility of issuing their own stablecoins in the United States, WSJ reported Friday, potentially shifting billions of dollars in transaction volume away from traditional banks and card networks. The retail giants, along with Expedia Group and several airlines, have recently discussed launching corporate stablecoins that would allow them to circumvent the existing payments infrastructure dominated by Visa and Mastercard.

The companies' final decisions hinge on passage of the Genius Act, legislation currently moving through Congress that would establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. These digital currencies maintain a one-to-one exchange ratio with dollars and are backed by cash or Treasury reserves, offering merchants the potential for faster payment settlement and significantly reduced processing fees compared to traditional card transactions that can take days to clear.

Scientists have successfully grown beating human hearts inside pig embryos for the first time, marking a significant advance in developing human-animal chimeras for potential organ transplantation. The hybrid embryos survived for 21 days, during which the fingertip-sized hearts began beating, according to findings presented at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Hong Kong.

Researchers -- led by Lai Liangxue at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health -- reprogrammed human stem cells to survive in pigs and introduced them into pig embryos with two heart development genes knocked out. The human cells, tagged with luminescent biomarkers, were visible glowing within the developing hearts.

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has captured the first-ever images of the sun's poles by tilting its orbit out of the ecliptic plane. Space.com reports: The captured images of the solar south pole were taken between March 16 and 17, 2025, with the Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instruments. They constitute humanity's first ever look at the sun's poles. This was the Solar Orbiter mission's first high-angle observation campaign of the sun, conducted at an angle of 15 degrees below the solar equator. Just a few days after snapping these images, the ESA spacecraft reached a maximum viewing angle of 17 degrees, which it sits in currently as it performs its first "pole-to-pole" orbit of our star. [...]

One of the first discoveries made by the Solar Orbiter is the fact that the magnetic fields around the sun's southern poles appear to be, for lack of a better phrase, a complete mess. While standard magnetic fields have well-defined north and south poles, these new observations reveal that north and south polarities are both found at the sun's southern pole. This seems to happen at solar maximum when the poles of the sun are about to flip. Following this exchange of poles, the fields at the north and south poles will maintain an orderly single polarity during solar minimum until solar maximum during the next 11-year cycle.

The Solar Orbiter observations also revealed that while the equator of the sun, where the most sunspots appear, possesses the strongest magnetic fields, those at the poles of our star have a complex and ever-changing structure. The Solar Orbiter's SPICE instrument provided another first for the ESA spacecraft, allowing scientists to track elements via their unique emissions as they move through the sun. Tracing the specific spectral lines of elements like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, neon, and magnesium, a process called "Doppler measurement," revealed how materials flow through different layers of the sun. The Solar Orbiter also allowed scientists to measure the speed of carbon atoms as they are ejected from the sun in plumes and jets. "This is just the first step of Solar Orbiter's 'stairway to heaven.' In the coming years, the spacecraft will climb further out of the ecliptic plane for ever better views of the sun's polar regions," ESA's Solar Orbiter project scientist Daniel Muller said. "These data will transform our understanding of the sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar activity."

Shubhanshu Shukla will become the first Indian astronaut to visit the International Space Station as part of a four-person mission by Axiom Space launching from the U.S.. The mission will include 14 days aboard the ISS and over 60 scientific studies. The Guardian reports: He will be the third astronaut of Indian origin to reach orbit, following Rakesh Sharma, who was part of a 1984 flight onboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, and Kalpana Chawla, who was born in India but became a US citizen and flew on two space shuttle missions, including the 2003 Columbia flight that ended in disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated, killing all seven astronauts onboard. "I truly believe that even though, as an individual, I am traveling to space, this is the journey of 1.4 billion people," Shukla was quoted as saying by the Hindu newspaper this year. Shukla said he hoped to "ignite the curiosity of an entire generation in my country."

India's department of space has called the trip a "defining chapter" in its ambitious space exploration program. The International Space Station mission (ISS) "stands as a symbol of a confident, forward-looking nation ready to reclaim its place in the global space race," the agency said before the launch. "His journey is more than just a flight -- it's a signal that India is stepping boldly into a new era of space exploration." New Delhi has paid more than $60m for the mission, according to Indian media reports. [...]

Shukla trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia in 2020, before undertaking further training at the ISRO's centre in Bengaluru. He has said the journey aboard the Axiom Mission 4, and the expected 14 days on the ISS, will provide "invaluable" lessons to bring back home. Shukla will be led by the mission commander, Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut and an Axiom employee, and joined by the European Space Agency astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, of Hungary. They will conduct 60 scientific studies, including microgravity research, earth observation, and life, biological and material sciences experiments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Nintendo Switch 2 is off to a roaring start. Early on Wednesday, Nintendo announced that it had sold 3.5 million units of its new console in just four days, making it Nintendo's fastest-selling console ever. In fact, this is likely the biggest console launch of all time -- by quite some margin. For comparison, PlayStation 5 shipped 4.5 million units in its first seven weeks, PlayStation 4 sold 2.1 million in a little over two weeks, and Nintendo Switch sold 2.74 million in its first month. [...]

Nintendo has predicted it will sell 15 million Switch 2s during its current financial year. It's well on the way to that figure already, although Nintendo still faces the challenges of maintaining stock availability and extending this expensive console's reach past the first wave of early adopters. If Switch 2 hits its first-year target, it will join Nintendo's other fasters sellers over the first year on sale: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 3DS, and the original Switch. Over the weekend, the Switch 2 beat the record for the "most-sold console within 24 hours and is on track to shatter the two-month record," according to TweakTown.

Blue Origin is falling far short of its goal to launch the New Glenn rocket eight times in 2025, with its second flight now delayed until at least mid-August. Key leadership changes were also announced, including the departure of the New Glenn program head, as the company faces pressure to increase launch cadence and compete with SpaceX for federal contracts and Amazon's Project Kuiper deployments. Ars Technica reports: The mission, with an undesignated payload, will be named "Never Tell Me the Odds," due to the attempt to land the booster. "One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster," [chief executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp] wrote. "This will take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution. We're on track to produce eight GS2s this year, and the one we'll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April."

In this comment, GS2 stands for "Glenn stage 2," or the second stage of the large rocket. It is telling that Limp commented on the company tracking toward producing eight second stages, which would match the original launch cadence planned for this year. This likely is a fig leaf offered to Bezos, who, two sources said, was rather upset that Blue Origin would not meet (or even approach) its original target of eight launches this year. One person familiar with the progress on the vehicle told Ars that even a launch date in August is unrealistic -- this too may have been set aggressively to appease Bezos -- and that September is probably the earliest the rocket is likely to be ready for launch. Blue Origin has not publicly stated what the payload will be, but this second flight is expected to carry the ESCAPADE mission for NASA.

On May 28, a couple of days after Limp's all-hands meeting, the chief executive emailed his entire team to announce an "organizational update." As part of this, the company's senior vice president of engines, Linda Cova, was retiring. Multiple sources confirmed this retiring was expected and that the company's program to produce BE-4 rocket engines is going well. However, the other name in the email raised some eyebrows, coming so soon after the announcement that New Glenn's cadence would be significantly slower than expected. Jarrett Jones, the senior vice president running the New Glenn program, was said to be "stepping away from his role and taking a well deserved year off" starting on August 15. It is unclear whether this departure was linked to Bezos' displeasure with the rocket program. One company official said Jones' sabbatical had been planned, but the timing is curious. A search for internal and external candidates to fill his role is ongoing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: The head of the Federal Aviation Administration just outlined an ambitious goal to upgrade the U.S.'s air traffic control (ATC) system and bring it into the 21st century. According to NPR, most ATC towers and other facilities today feel like they're stuck in the 20th century, with controllers using paper strips and floppy disks to transfer data, while their computers run Windows 95. While this likely saved them from the disastrous CrowdStrike outage that had a massive global impact, their age is a major risk to the nation's critical infrastructure, with the FAA itself saying that the current state of its hardware is unsustainable.

"The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said earlier this week," This is the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades. Everyone agrees -- this is non-partisan. Everyone knows we have to do it." The aviation industry put up a coalition pushing for ATC modernization called Modern Skies, and it even ran an ad telling us that ATC is still using floppy disks and several older technologies to keep our skies safe. [...]

Currently, the White House hasn't said what this update will cost. The FAA has already put out a Request For Information to gather data from companies willing to take on the challenge of upgrading the entire system. It also announced several 'Industry Days' so companies can pitch their tech and ideas to the Transportation Department. Duffy said that the Transportation Department aims to complete the project within four years. However, industry experts say this timeline is unrealistic. No matter how long it takes, it's high time that the FAA upgrades the U.S.'s ATC system today after decades of neglect.

South Asia has warmed far more slowly than the rest of the world over the past four decades with temperatures rising just 0.09C per decade compared to 0.30C elsewhere on land, according to new climate research. Scientists believe this "warming hole" results from two factors that have masked the true impact of global warming: heavy aerosol pollution that reflects sunlight back to space and expanded irrigation that cools air through evaporation.

The protective effect is temporary and comes at a deadly cost. Air pollution currently kills between 2 million and 3 million people annually in South Asia, while extreme heat causes 100,000 to 600,000 deaths. As governments reduce pollution and groundwater depletion limits irrigation expansion, atmospheric scientists predict India will warm at twice the rate of the past 20 years. By 2047, the average Indian could experience a four-fold increase in dangerous heat stress days, threatening a region where only 10% of households have air conditioning.

The U.K. electricity grid "was built to deliver power generated by coal and gas plants near the country's major cities and towns," reports the BBC, "and doesn't always have sufficient capacity in the wires that carry electricity around the country to get the new renewable electricity generated way out in the wild seas and rural areas.

"And this has major consequences." The way the system currently works means a company like Ocean Winds gets what are effectively compensation payments if the system can't take the power its wind turbines are generating and it has to turn down its output. It means Ocean winds was paid £72,000 [nearly $100,000 USD] not to generate power from its wind farms in the Moray Firth during a half-hour period on 3 June because the system was overloaded — one of a number of occasions output was restricted that day. At the same time, 44 miles (70km) east of London, the Grain gas-fired power station on the Thames Estuary was paid £43,000 to provide more electricity.

Payments like that happen virtually every day. Seagreen, Scotland's largest wind farm, was paid £65 million last year to restrict its output 71% of the time, according to analysis by Octopus Energy. Balancing the grid in this way has already cost the country more than £500 million this year alone, the company's analysis shows. The total could reach almost £8bn a year by 2030, warns the National Electricity System Operator (NESO), the body in charge of the electricity network. It's pushing up all our energy bills and calling into question the government's promise that net zero would end up delivering cheaper electricity... the potential for renewables to deliver lower costs just isn't coming through to consumers.

Renewables now generate more than half the country's electricity, but because of the limits to how much electricity can be moved around the system, even on windy days some gas generation is almost always needed to top the system up. And because gas tends to be more expensive, it sets the wholesale price.
The UK government is now considering smaller regional markets, so wind companies "would have to sell that spare power to local people instead of into a national market. The theory is prices would fall dramatically — on some days Scottish customers might even get their electricity for free...

"Supporters argue that it would attract energy-intensive businesses such as data centres, chemical companies and other manufacturing industries."

In late April Meta introduced its Meta AI app, which included something called a Discover feed. ("You can see the best prompts people are sharing, or remix them to make them your own.")

But while Meta insisted "you're in control: nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it" — just two days later Business Insider noticed that "clearly, some people don't realize they're sharing personal stuff." To be clear, your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button. Even so, I get the sense that some people don't really understand what they're sharing, or what's going on.

Like the woman with the sick pet turtle. Or another person who was asking for advice about what legal measures he could take against his former employer after getting laid off. Or a woman asking about the effects of folic acid for a woman in her 60s who has already gone through menopause. Or someone asking for help with their Blue Cross health insurance bill... Perhaps these people knew they were sharing on a public feed and wanted to do so. Perhaps not. This leaves us with an obvious question: What's the point of this, anyway? Even if you put aside the potential accidental oversharing, what's the point of seeing a feed of people's AI prompts at all?
Now Mozilla has issued their own warning. "Meta is quietly turning private AI chats into public content," warns a new post this week from the Mozilla Foundation, "and too many people don't realize it's happening." That's why the Mozilla community is demanding that Meta:

- Shut down the Discover feed until real privacy protections are in place.

- Make all AI interactions private by default with no public sharing option unless explicitly enabled through informed consent.

- Provide full transparency about how many users have unknowingly shared private information.

- Create a universal, easy-to-use opt-out system for all Meta platforms that prevents user data from being used for AI training.

- Notify all users whose conversations may have been made public, and allow them to delete their content permanently.

Meta is blurring the line between private and public — and it's happening at the cost of our privacy. People have the right to know when they're speaking in public, especially when they believe they're speaking in private.

If you agree, add your name to demand Meta shut down its invasive AI feed — and guarantee that no private conversations are made public without clear, explicit, and informed opt-in consent.

It's no longer a hypothetical question, writes the Washington Post. "In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all."

But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."

It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...

Mike Judge always seemed to have secret geek sympathies. He co-created the HBO series Silicon Valley, as well as the movie Office Space (reviewed in 1999 by Slashdot contributor Jon Katz).

Now comes the word that besides rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and an animated scifi/action/horror film called Predator: Killer of Killers — Hulu is also relaunching Judge's animated series King of the Hill on August 4th. And Cinemablend notes they took great pains to ensure the inclusion of internet-loving neighbor Dale Gribble despite the death of voice actor Johnny Hardwick: Co-creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels joined the cast of returning voice actors for a revealing Q&A at ATX Fest while also revealing longtime cast member Toby Huss took over the role of Dale Gribble... Hardwick passed away in August 2023 at 64, with fans and co-stars paying tribute soon after. It was revealed at the time that he'd recorded some audio for the new season, but it was clear that another actor would be needed to fill those intimidating and conspiracy-obsessed shoes. Among other characters, Huss provided the voice of Cotton Hill and Kahn Sr. in the O.G. run, and feels to me like a natural fit to take over as Dale. And he sounds humbled to have been given the task, telling the ATX Fest crowd:

"Johnny was one-of-a-kind and a wonderful fellow. I'm not trying to copy Johnny...I guess I'm trying to be Johnny. He laid down a really wonderful goofball character...he had a lot of weird heart to him and that's a credit to Johnny. So all I'm trying to do is hold on to his Dale-ness. We love our guy Johnny and it's so sad that he's not here...."

I can already hear Dale himself questioning why he sounds different, and whether or not the government has replaced him with a lizard creature or some other sentient organism... In the immediate aftermath of Johnny Hardwick's death, the word was that the actor had filmed a couple of episodes' worth of material for the Hulu revival, but Mike Judge went on the record at ATX Fest to reveal that initial assessment undershot things entirely. From the voice of Hank Hill himself: "Johnny Hardwick is in six episodes. He's still going to be in the show."
Hulu uploaded the new opening credits to YouTube eight days ago — and it's already been viewed 2.1 million times, attracting 55,000 upvotes and 7,952 comments...

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared the official blurb describing the new show: After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg, Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane.

"Everyone has a blog these days, even Claude," Anthropic wrote this week on a page titled "Claude Explains."

"Welcome to the small corner of the Anthropic universe where Claude is writing on every topic under the sun".

Not any more. After blog posts titled "Improve code maintainability with Claude" and "Rapidly develop web applications with Claude" — Anthropic suddenly removed the whole page sometime after Wednesday. But TechCrunch explains the whole thing was always less than it seemed, and "One might be easily misled into thinking that Claude is responsible for the blog's copy end-to-end." According to a spokesperson, the blog is overseen by Anthropic's "subject matter experts and editorial teams," who "enhance" Claude's drafts with "insights, practical examples, and [...] contextual knowledge."

"This isn't just vanilla Claude output — the editorial process requires human expertise and goes through iterations," the spokesperson said. "From a technical perspective, Claude Explains shows a collaborative approach where Claude [creates] educational content, and our team reviews, refines, and enhances it...." Anthropic says it sees Claude Explains as a "demonstration of how human expertise and AI capabilities can work together," starting with educational resources. "Claude Explains is an early example of how teams can use AI to augment their work and provide greater value to their users," the spokesperson said. "Rather than replacing human expertise, we're showing how AI can amplify what subject matter experts can accomplish [...] We plan to cover topics ranging from creative writing to data analysis to business strategy...."

The Anthropic spokesperson noted that the company is still hiring across marketing, content, and editorial, and "many other fields that involve writing," despite the company's dip into AI-powered blog drafting. Take that for what you will.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: Using conventional propulsion and low-energy trajectories, it takes six to nine months for crewed spacecraft to reach Mars. These durations complicate mission design and technology requirements and raise health and safety concerns since crews will be exposed to extended periods in microgravity and heightened exposure to cosmic radiation. Traditionally, mission designers have recommended nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP), which could shorten trips to just 3 months. In a recent study, a UCSB physics researcher identified two trajectories that could reduce transits to Mars using the Starship to between 90 and 104 days.

The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship.

Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Luca Guadagnino is in talks to direct Artificial, a dramatization of Sam Altman's dramatic firing and rehiring at OpenAI in 2023. The Amazon-MGM film is rumored to star Andrew Garfield, 'A Complete Unknown' scene-stealer Monica Barbaro, and 'Anora' actor Yura Borisov as lead roles in the story. From the Hollywood Reporter: Heyday Films' David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford are producing the feature that is being put together at lightning speed at Amazon MGM Studios. Simon Rich wrote the script and will also produce, with Jennifer Fox also in talks to produce. How fast is this moving? Sources say Amazon is looking to get production going this summer, with an eye to shoot in San Francisco and Italy.

Altman co-founded OpenAI, but in the fall of 2023, after mounting safety concerns regarding AI, and reports of abusive behavior, was ousted as the head of the company by his board. Five days later, after a revolt, he was reinstated. Sources say that if all goes as planned, Garfield would play Altman, Barbaro would play chief technology office Mira Murati, and Borisov would play Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder who led the movement to get rid of Altman.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Broadcom's VMware business unit has dropped the lowest tier of its channel program, a move one analyst told The Register will benefit its rivals. The virtualization pioneer currently operates a four-tier channel program spanning Pinnacle, Premier, Select, and Registered partners. On Sunday the business unit announced the retirement of the Registered tier. A blog post written by Brian Moats, Broadcom's Senior Vice President for Global Commercial Sales and Partners, states VMware made the decision because "the vast majority of customer impact and business momentum comes from partners operating within the top three tiers."

Laura Falko, Broadcom's Head of Global Partner Programs, Marketing & Experience, told The Register "The vast majority of these [Registered] partners are inactive and lack the capabilities to support customers through VMware's evolving private cloud journey. That's why the Registered tier is being retired to ensure every active partner meets a higher standard of technical, sales, and service readiness." Falko told us VMware will give Registered partners 60 days' notice before deauthorization and then "work proactively with affected customers to transition them to qualified partners in the new ecosystem, ensuring continuity and support throughout the change."

VMware has also introduced new requirements for partners in its remaining tiers. The virtualization giant will require Pinnacle and Premier partners to maintain dedicated sales and technical resources, and to "execute joint business plans with VMware to ensure alignment and delivery with mutual results." The Broadcom business unit is also "beginning the process of transitioning partners who no longer meet the minimum program requirements or have not demonstrated consistent engagement," suggesting even Pinnacle, Premier, and Select partners are not safe. The Register asked VMware to define "consistent engagement" and Falko told us it includes "regular deal activity," ongoing participation in joint sales activities, staying up to date with training, and "sustained, proactive commitment to a partner's VMware customer base." The changes will only apply in its Americas, and Asia-Pacific and Japan regions. Broadcom didn't explain why Europe was excluded.

The Register notes that trade associations in Europe have criticized Broadcom's changes at VMware and urged the European Commission to investigate the company.

Adam Riess won a Nobel Prize in Physics for helping discover that the universe's acceleration is expanding, remembers The Atlantic. But then theorists "proposed the existence of dark energy: a faint, repulsive force that pervades all of empty space... the final piece to what has since come to be called the 'standard model of cosmology.'"

Riess thinks instead we should just replace the standard model: When I visited Riess, back in January, he mentioned he was looking forward to a data release from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, a new observatory on Kitt Peak, in Arizona's portion of the Sonoran Desert. DESI has 5,000 robotically controlled optic fibers. Every 20 minutes, each of them locks onto a different galaxy in the deep sky. This process is scheduled to continue for a total of five years, until millions of galaxies have been observed, enough to map cosmic expansion across time... DESI's first release, last year, gave some preliminary hints that dark energy was stronger in the early universe, and that its power then began to fade ever so slightly. On March 19, the team followed up with the larger set of data that Riess was awaiting. It was based on three years of observations, and the signal that it gave was stronger: Dark energy appeared to lose its kick several billion years ago.

This finding is not settled science, not even close. But if it holds up, a "wholesale revision" of the standard model would be required [says Colin Hill, a cosmologist at Columbia University. "The textbooks that I use in my class would need to be rewritten." And not only the textbooks — the idea that our universe will end in heat death has escaped the dull, technical world of academic textbooks. It has become one of our dominant secular eschatologies, and perhaps the best-known end-times story for the cosmos. And yet it could be badly wrong. If dark energy weakens all the way to zero, the universe may, at some point, stop expanding. It could come to rest in some static configuration of galaxies. Life, especially intelligent life, could go on for a much longer time than previously expected.

If dark energy continues to fade, as the DESI results suggest is happening, it may indeed go all the way to zero, and then turn negative. Instead of repelling galaxies, a negative dark energy would bring them together into a hot, dense singularity, much like the one that existed during the Big Bang. This could perhaps be part of some larger eternal cycle of creation and re-creation. Or maybe not. The point is that the deep future of the universe is wide open...
"Many new observations will come, not just from DESI, but also from the new Vera Rubin Observatory in the Atacama Desert, and other new telescopes in space. On data-release days for years to come, the standard model's champions and detractors will be feverishly refreshing their inboxes..." And Riess tells The Atlantic he's disappointed when complacent theorists just tell him "Yeah, that's a really hard problem."

He adds, "Sometimes, I feel like I am providing clues and killing time while we wait for the next Einstein to come along."