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LandSpace Could Become China's First Company To Land a Reusable Rocket

Slashdot.org - 13 hours 5 min ago
China's private launch firm LandSpace is preparing the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket, aiming to become the country's first to land a reusable orbital-class booster using a Falcon-9-style return profile. Ars Technica reports: Liftoff could happen around 11 pm EST tonight (04:00 UTC Wednesday), or noon local time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. Airspace warning notices advising pilots to steer clear of the rocket's flight path suggest LandSpace has a launch window of about two hours. When it lifts off, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket will become the largest commercial launch vehicle ever flown in China. What's more, LandSpace will become the first Chinese launch provider to attempt a landing of its first stage booster, using the same tried-and-true return method pioneered by SpaceX and, more recently, Blue Origin in the United States. Construction crews recently finished a landing pad in the remote Gobi Desert, some 240 miles (390 kilometers) southeast of the launch site at Jiuquan. Unlike US spaceports, the Jiuquan launch base is located in China's interior, with rockets flying over land as they climb into space. When the Zhuque-3 booster finishes its job of sending the rocket toward orbit, it will follow an arcing trajectory toward the recovery zone, firing its engines to slow for landing about eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. At least, that's what is supposed to happen. LandSpace officials have not made any public statements about the odds of a successful landing -- or, for that matter, a successful launch... UPDATE: Chinese Reusable Booster Explodes During First Orbital Test

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Study Finds Tattoo Ink Moves Through the Body, Killing Immune Cells

Slashdot.org - 16 hours 8 min ago
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Los Angeles Times: Tattoo ink doesn't just sit inertly in the skin. New research shows it moves rapidly into the lymphatic system, where it can persist for months, kill immune cells, and even disrupt how the body responds to vaccines. Scientists in Switzerland used a mouse model to trace what happens after tattooing. Pigments drained into nearby lymph nodes within minutes and continued to accumulate for two months, triggering immune-cell death and sustained inflammation. The ink also weakened the antibody response to Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE's COVID vaccine when the shot was administered in tattooed skin. In contrast, the same inflammation appeared to boost responses to an inactivated flu vaccine. "This work represents the most extensive study to date regarding the effect of tattoo ink on the immune response and raises serious health concerns associated with the tattooing practice," the researchers said. "Our work underscores the need for further research to inform public health policies and regulatory frameworks regarding the safety of tattoo inks." The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Anthropic Acquires Bun In First Acquisition

Slashdot.org - 18 hours 10 min ago
Anthropic has made its first acquisition by buying Bun, the engine behind its fast-growing Claude Code agent. The move strengthens Anthropic's push into enterprise developer tooling as it scales Claude Code with major backers like Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Google. Adweek reports: Claude Code is a coding agent that lets developers write, debug and interpret code through natural-language instructions. Claude Code had already hit $1 billion in revenue six months since its public debut in May, according to a LinkedIn post from Anthropic's chief product officer, Mike Krieger. The coding agent continues to barrel toward scale with customers like Netflix, Spotify, and Salesforce. Further reading: Meet Bun, a Speedy New JavaScript Runtime

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San Francisco Will Sue Ultraprocessed Food Companies

Slashdot.org - Tue, 12/02/2025 - 22:03
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The San Francisco city attorney filed on Tuesday the nation's first government lawsuit against food manufacturers over ultraprocessed fare (source may be paywalled; alternative source), arguing that cities and counties have been burdened with the costs of treating diseases that stem from the companies' products. David Chiu, the city attorney, sued 10 corporations that make some of the country's most popular food and drinks. Ultraprocessed products now comprise 70 percent of the American food supply and fill grocery store shelves with a kaleidoscope of colorful packages. Think Slim Jim meat sticks and Cool Ranch Doritos. But also aisles of breads, sauces and granola bars marketed as natural or healthy. It is a rare issue on which the liberal leaders in San Francisco City Hall are fully aligned with the Trump administration, which has targeted ultraprocessed foods as part of its Make America Healthy Again mantra. Mr. Chiu's lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of the State of California, seeks unspecified damages for the costs that local governments bear for treating residents whose health has been harmed by ultraprocessed food. The city accuses the companies of "unfair and deceptive acts" in how they market and sell their foods, arguing that such practices violate the state's Unfair Competition Law and public nuisance statute. The city also argues the companies knew that their food made people sick but sold it anyway.

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Waymo Hits a Dog In San Francisco, Reigniting Safety Debate

Slashdot.org - Tue, 12/02/2025 - 21:02
A Waymo robotaxi struck a small unleashed dog in San Francisco -- just weeks after another Waymo killed a beloved neighborhood cat. The dog's condition is unknown. The Los Angeles Times reports: The incident occurred near the intersection of Scott and Eddy streets and drew a small crowd, according to social media posts. A person claiming to be one of the passengers posted about the accident on Reddit. "Our Waymo just ran over a dog," the passenger wrote. "Kids saw the whole thing." The passenger described the dog as between 20 and 30 pounds and wrote that their family was traveling back home after a holiday tree lighting event. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has recorded Waymo taxis as being involved in at least 14 animal collisions since 2021. "Unfortunately, a Waymo vehicle made contact with a small, unleashed dog in the roadway," a company spokesperson said. "We are dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve." The spokesperson added that Waymo vehicles have a much lower rate of injury-causing collisions than human drivers. Human drivers run into millions of animals while driving each year. "I'm not sure a human driver would have avoided the dog either, though I do know that a human would have responded differently to a 'bump' followed by a car full of screaming people," the Waymo passenger wrote on Reddit. One person who commented on the discussion said that Waymo vehicles should be held to a higher standard than human drivers, because the autonomous taxis are supposed to improve road safety. "The whole point of this is because Waymo isn't supposed to make those mistakes," the person wrote on Reddit.

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BSD Release: FreeBSD 15.0

DistroWatch.com - Tue, 12/02/2025 - 20:35
The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The FreeBSD project has announced the release of FreeBSD 15.0. The new version introduces the option of installing the operating system using the pkg package manager and updates the version of ZFS on the system. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD....
Categories: Linux

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