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Airbus unveils Adeline, its clever answer to SpaceX’s reusable rockets

Airbus, the European aerospace giant, has unveiled Adeline: its answer to SpaceX’s reusable space launch ambitions. Adeline, which stands for Advanced Expendable Launcher with Innovative engine Economy, uses a rather novel solution to get the first stage engines back in one piece: it has wings and propellers that allow the engines to follow a ballistic trajectory, and then fly like an airplane back to a runway. All current space launch systems—SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Airbus’ Ariane 5, Russia’s Soyuz, etc.—are expendable. During every single rocket launch, the rocket engines and fuel tanks fall back to Earth, usually into the ocean, never to be used again. Rocket engines are not cheap: Orbital Sciences paid around $1 billion (£600 million) to Roscosmos for 20 RD-180 rocket engines. This is why companies like SpaceX, and now Airbus, are developing technologies that can bring the rocket engines back to the launchpad, so that they can be reused. SpaceX, which is currently leading the charge in this area, says that it wants to reuse rocket engines and fuel tanks within “single-digit hours” of their return. Depending on who you talk to, and the configuration of the rocket, current space launch prices are somewhere around $250-500 million; with reusable components, SpaceX wants to get that price down below $100 million . Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Airbus unveils Adeline, its clever answer to SpaceX’s reusable rockets

Fallout 4 won’t be coming to Xbox 360 or PS3

Last week’s big announcement of the long-anticipated Fallout 4 included confirmation of Xbox One, PS4, and PC versions of the game. But there was no official word on any versions for the tens of millions of gamers who still use an Xbox 360 or PS3. Now, Bethesda has confirmed that those gamers will need to upgrade their hardware if they want to revisit the wasteland. “[ Fallout 4 ] is not coming to 360 and PS3,” community manager Matt Grandstaff said in a NeoGAF thread about the game. “The stuff we’re doing will never work there.” That’s good news from a technical standpoint—the development team won’t have to hold back the game’s design to make it run on aging hardware—but bad news for those who have yet to buy a new console. Fallout 4 is part of a small wave of major franchises ignoring older consoles in upcoming releases. Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will be on “Xbox One, PS4 and PC. That’s it,” Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia told Eurogamer . Street Fighter V will be coming to PlayStation 4 and PC but not the aging PS3. And then there are first-party titles like Halo 5 , Forza Motorosport 6 , Uncharted 4 , and Ratchet & Clank that will be eschewing older consoles this time around. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fallout 4 won’t be coming to Xbox 360 or PS3

Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”

SAN FRANCISCO—As usual, another opening-day WWDC keynote has brought with it another new version of OS X. The new version, El Capitan, introduces a handful of new features to the platform but is otherwise focused on refinement, both in the overall stability of the OS and in its visual identity (El Capitan switches the system font from Helvetica Neue to the Apple Watch’s San Francisco typeface , which changes the look of the OS in subtle but significant ways). Spotlight becomes “more expressive,” according to Apple VP Craig Federighi. There are also improvements to window management and the built-in apps. On stage, Federighi showed off an improvement to the UI where a shake of the mouse causes the cursor to temporarily grow huge—for finding the cursor when first sitting down. The updated version of Safari shipping with El Capitan introduces the concept of pinned sites, which will load instantly on starting up Safari and which will remain in persistent tabs in the Safari UI. The browser also now allows users to see which tabs are playing music (similar to Chrome), and to mute noisy tabs with a single gesture. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”

Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

A Florida high school teacher was suspended without pay for five days Tuesday for deploying a signal jammer in his science class to block students from using their mobile phones. Science teacher Dean Liptak. Superintendent Kurt Browning said in a Pasco County School Board reprimand letter  (PDF) to instructor Dean Liptak that he exercised “poor judgement” and “posed a serious risk to critical safety communications as well as the possibility of preventing others from making 9-1-1 calls.” Liptak was accused of jamming mobile devices from his Fivay High School classroom between March 31 and April 2. Verizon discovered the blockage on the cell tower located on campus. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

The big news from Nvidia might be the release of the GTX 980 Ti , but the company has also announced some updates for G-Sync. The variable refresh rate technology, which synchronizes the refresh rate of a compatible monitor to the frame rate of a game, is finally making the jump from desktop to laptop. Upcoming laptops from Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and Clevo are all set to support the technology, and will feature 75Hz panels from 1080p all the way up to UHD (4K). Desktop users aren’t being forgotten either: There are some new monitors—including a lust-worthy 34-inch 21:9 75Hz IPS Acer X34 panel—featuring an updated G-Sync module that finally contains more than just a single DisplayPort input. Interestingly, G-Sync for laptops makes use of the embedded DisplayPort (eDP) standard, a standardised interface for hooking up display panels directly to internal graphics cards. On the desktop, G-Sync can only be used with compatible monitors that contain Nvidia’s G-Sync module. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

Comcast 2Gbps fiber to launch “in a bunch of markets this month”

Comcast’s plan to launch a 2Gbps fiber-to-the-home service by the end of May didn’t come to fruition, but the company says the rollout is being delayed only briefly and will go live in numerous cities this month. Comcast originally said that its “Gigabit Pro” service would be available during May in the Atlanta metro area, Nashville, Greater Chicago, and four cities in Florida (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Jacksonville). Rollouts in June were to follow in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Northwest Indiana; and several parts of California (Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara County, Stockton and Visalia metro areas.) Customers in Atlanta and West Palm Beach who wanted to order Gigabit Pro complained about the lack of availability on the company’s support forums . A Comcast employee originally said the service “will be available in your area [Atlanta] come early May” but amended that to May 28 and finally told customers, “The launch of this has been temporarily delayed. No tentative date has been announced yet.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast 2Gbps fiber to launch “in a bunch of markets this month”

Apple reportedly plans paid streaming music service announcement at WWDC

Add “subscription-based streaming music service” to the list of things we’re expecting to hear Apple announce at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The Wall Street Journal, citing those “familiar with the plan,” said that Apple will price the service at $10 per month and position itself in direct competition for customers’ ears with Spotify’s and Pandora’s paid options. Apple already offers its own free ad-supported streaming service, iTunes Radio, which it announced at WWDC in 2013 . However, the WSJ explains that the new paid streaming service will include human-curated and even human-hosted channels (reportedly including the likes of hip-hop musicians Q-Tip, Drake, and Dr. Dre). The paid streaming offering is not expected to include all of the songs and artists in the iTunes Store, since Apple’s existing deals with labels for selling music typically don’t include the rights to stream that music. The WSJ ’s sources indicate Apple is “rushing” to have the service ready and to get streaming deals signed in time for launch. The obvious goal for Apple would be to transform occasional purchasers from the iTunes store into sources of ongoing monthly revenue. To that end, the WSJ sources say Apple may prompt iTunes customers who spend $10 purchasing an album to give the new streaming service a try for the same cost. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple reportedly plans paid streaming music service announcement at WWDC

Intel will acquire FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion

Intel, after a couple of months of negotiation, has agreed to buy Altera for $16.7 billion (£11 billion) in cash. The acquisition comes just a few days after Avago announced its $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom, the largest deal ever seen by the tech sector. The timing is probably not coincidental: Intel and Altera had reportedly been in talks since March. Much like the Avago-Broadcom deal, Intel-Altera is a consolidation move. Altera is the second largest maker of FPGAs and other programmable logic devices behind Xilinx . Intel makes a wide range of chips, but has only ever dabbled in FPGAs. Buying Altera will let Intel sell a wider variety of chips through its existing sales channels, while also potentially realising some savings through strategic job cuts. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel will acquire FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion

Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

NEW YORK—Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison Friday, following a jury’s finding in February that the 31-year-old was the mastermind behind the Silk Road, once the Internet’s largest online drug marketplace. Operating online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht worked with a small staff to control everything sold on the site. He was arrested in October 2013, and the government made its case against him during a three-week trial here earlier this year. Ulbricht pleaded for leniency  during the hearing. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path,” he said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

Amazon Prime launches free same-day delivery in 14 cities

Amazon Prime’s list of benefits grew one bigger on Thursday, as the $99/year subscription service now includes free same-day shipping—and same-day delivery—for certain parts of the United States. Should an Amazon Prime member live in one of 14 qualifying metropolitan areas—including the company’s home base of Seattle, along with the Bay area, New York City, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Boston—they can get free same-day delivery on orders of $35 and up. Be advised: you’ll want to check at Amazon’s zip code search site  for your own eligibility if you live in a sprawling region; our test of addresses in the Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth regions proved scattershot. Prime members in these 14 metropolitan areas should double-check the linked zip code search tool before attempting to place a same-day delivery order. Qualifying same-day orders that cost less than $35 will be charged an additional $5.99 for same-day speed, as Prime customers had already paid up until today. Meanwhile, should an order be placed too late in the day, Prime customers will still enjoy free one-day shipping. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amazon Prime launches free same-day delivery in 14 cities