Robots Serve Up Cocktails

A Boeing 737 Max suffered damage to parts of the plane’s structure after it went into a “Dutch roll” during a Southwest Airlines flight last month, U. S. investigators said Friday. The incident happened as the jet cruised at 34,000 feet from Phoenix to Oakland, California, on May 25, but Southwest did not notify the National Transportation Safety Board about the roll or damage to the jetliner until June 7, the NTSB said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Following the event, SWA performed maintenance on the airplane and discovered damage to structural components,” the safety board said. The NTSB comment could suggest that the incident was more serious than previously known, but aviation experts said it was too soon to know for sure. A Dutch roll is a combination of yaw, or the tail sliding side to side, and the plane rocking in a way that causes the wings to roll up and down.

Enlarge / This is an intact phage. A tailocin looks like one of these with its head cut off. (credit: iLexx) Long before humans became interested in killing bacteria, viruses were on the job. Viruses that attack bacteria, termed "phages" (short for bacteriophage), were first identified by their ability to create bare patches on the surface of culture plates that were otherwise covered by a lawn of bacteria.

Enlarge / US Embassy Australia employees learning to do the Nutbush to honor the late Tina Turner in 2023. (credit: Screenshot/US Embassy Australia on X) The whole world mourned the passing of music legend Tina Turner last year, perhaps none more so than Australians, who have always had a special fondness for her.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto) Brussels is set to charge Apple over allegedly stifling competition on its mobile app store, the first time EU regulators have used new digital rules to target a Big Tech group. The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation. The charges would be the first brought against a tech company under the Digital Markets Act, landmark legislation designed to force powerful “online gatekeepers” to open up their businesses to competition in the EU.

Enlarge / Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, Diablo? (credit: Blizzard) Longtime fans of Diablo II are deeply familiar with the extreme timesink that is the late-game grind for the very best loot. But when the creators of Diablo IV tried to re-create that style of grinding for the latest game in the series, they found that their players' tastes had changed quite a bit in the intervening years. In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central, Blizzard's general manager of Diablo, Rod Fergusson, said that they launched Diablo IV under "the assumption that D4 was meant to be more D2-like." That meant, in part, increasing the length of time required to discover the game's most valuable items after post-Auction-House Diablo 3 made rare item drops much more common. "One of the assumptions was that people were going to be okay with the long grind for the Unique or an Uber Unique in particular, because in Diablo II, it can go years," Fergusson said.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) We're heading into summer, a time when some people get a few half or whole days off from work. These can't all be vacations, and there's only so much shopping, golfing, or streaming one can do. A few of these times off are even unexpected, such that people with kids might even have some rare time to themselves. I have a suggestion for some part of one of these days: Declare a Tech Guilt Absolution Day.