Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future. However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket -- which has now been flying for a decade and a half -- to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country's state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX's fully reusable Starship. Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable "Leap" rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there's more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn't even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was "fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk's SpaceX." And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called "Beijing Leading Rocket Technology" took things a step further. It has named its vehicle "Starship-1," adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a "fully reusable AI rocket."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: RISC-V International, the global open hardware standards organization has announced that Intel has joined RISC-V at the Premier membership level. Let that sink in for a minute. Intel, which has made billions from its closed-source, complex instruction set computer (CISC) x86 processors, is joining forces with RISC-V, the open-source reduced instruction set computer (RISC) CPU group. What next? Dogs and cats living together!? Dr. David Patterson, co-creator of RISC-V helped create it to be an open lingua franca for computer chips, a set of instructions that would be used by all chipmakers and owned by none. Today, Patterson said, "I'm delighted that Intel, the company that pioneered the microprocessor 50 years ago, is now a member of RISC-V International."

Why? Because Intel sees a future in which ARM, x86, and RISC-V all play major roles. In particular, Intel has already seen strong demand for more RISC-V intellectual property (IP) and chip offerings. Intel's not just giving this idea lip service. Intel also announced a new $1 billion fund to support early-stage foundry startups. Together Intel Capital and Intel Foundry Services (IFS) will prioritize investments in chip IP, software tools, innovative chip architectures, and advanced packaging technologies. Randhir Thakur, IFS President, said this new program will focus on two key strategic industry points: Enabling modular products with an open chiplet platform and supporting design approaches that leverage multiple instruction set architectures including and spanning x86, Arm, and RISC-V.

As part of these initiatives, IFS will sponsor an open-source software development platform. This will provide IP for all three of the leading ISAs chip architectures. RISC-V has always been about providing open modular building blocks. Together Intel and RISC-V will expand the RISC-V ecosystem and help drive its commercialization. [...] Intel is already offering RISC-V chips: It's Nios V processors based on RISC-V. Moving ahead Intel hopes its new RISC-V investment will speed up RISC-V's development. Calista Redmond, RISC-V International's CEO, sees these moves as recognizing that "massive investment in open source has the power to change the course of history." Redmond went on to say that open collaboration with RISC-V has "ignited a profound shift in the semiconductor industry, and this partnership will accelerate innovation in open computing. RISC-V welcomes Intel and looks forward to our collective expansion and the commercial adoption of RISC-V across compute workloads and industries, growing RISC-V everywhere."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Cats host a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii that other research has linked to various mental illnesses. So, for some time, people have wondered whether cats are unsafe; for example, pregnant women are usually told to stay away from litter boxes. (They should still do this because transmission during pregnancy is very real.) In a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers looked at data that tracked 5,000 Brits born in the early '90s until they were 18. This included information about whether the kids grew up with cats, or whether there were cats around when the mother was pregnant. After the scientists controlled for factors like socioeconomic status, there was no link between developing psychosis and having owned a cat. The researchers suggest that previous studies that did show a link had relatively small sample sizes. In addition, many of these studies asked people whether they remembered having cats, which is not quite as accurate. That said, it's important to keep in mind that some mental disorders linked to the parasite -- like schizophrenia -- tend to be diagnosed fairly late in life, so only tracking until age 18 might limit the study.

judgecorp writes "A test of wireless chargers for electric vehicles has started in London. The Halo system owned by Qualcomm is one of several competing technologies designed to deliver power to charge car batteries without having to plug the vehicles in. At this stage, Qualcomm is apparently worried about frying cats."

Ant tips us to a story making the rounds lately, based on reporting a couple of weeks old, that owning a cat could cut your heart attack risk by one third. No such effect was seen from dog ownership, but the researchers say that could be because there weren't enough dog owners in the study population to provide meaningful statistics. The study: "...analyzed data on 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75, who took part in the federal government's second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, which ran from 1976-1980. According to the data in the survey, 2,435 of the participants either owned a cat or had owned a cat in the past, while the remaining 2,000 had never done so. [The] team then tracked rates of death from all causes, including heart and stroke. Cat owners 'appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks' over 10 years of follow-up compared to feline-free folk..."

We ran the "Call for questions" Monday, January 13, under the headline, Discuss BIOS and Palladium Issues With an AMIBIOS Rep. Note that Brian Richardson, AMI sales engineer, is a real engineer, not just a salesperson, and is also a staunch Slashdot reader who knows we have low tolerance for PR whitewashes around here. Brian's answers are real, not laundered, and he responded not only to the 10 questions we sent him but also to some he felt deserved answers even though they weren't moderated all the way up. Please note that in much of this interview he is speaking as "Brian Richardson, individual," and that his opinions do not necessarily reflect those of AMI's management. With that said, be prepared to learn a lot about the BIOS business, and how TCPA and Palladium relate (and don't relate) to it.

back@slash writes: "According to this Canoe article, Soldier of Fortune has come under the same restrictions as adult movies in British Columbia because of the realistic violence. This means you have to be 18 or over to rent the game. This is done of course in the 'best interests of the public' because if big brother isn't looking after us, civilization will cease to exist. Or something." RollingThunder points out the Vancouver Sun story which has more detail. My own analysis follows.

Jeremy Lee has contributed another feature to Slashdot. This one attempts to address some of the issues surrounding the new commercialization of Linux and Open Source. This is a really good piece that raises a lot of good issues worth thinking about. A must read.