Powderhorn

The US space agency has released a “pre-solicitation” for what is expected to be a hotly contested contract to develop a spacecraft to orbit Mars and relay communications from the red planet back to Earth.

Ars covered the intrigue surrounding the spacecraft in late January, which was initiated by US Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” legislation in the summer of 2025. The bill provided $700 million for NASA to develop the orbiter and specified funding had to be awarded “not later than fiscal year 2026,” which ends September 30, 2026. This legislation was seemingly crafted by Cruz’s office to favor a single contractor, Rocket Lab. However, multiple sources have told Ars it was poorly written and therefore the competition is more open than intended.

The pre-solicitation released this week is not a request for proposals from industry—it states that a draft Request for Proposals is forthcoming. Rather, it seeks feedback from industry and interested stakeholders about an “objectives and requirements” document that outlines the goals of the Mars mission.

We wrote recently about the FBI’s pre-dawn raid on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, in which agents seized two laptops, a phone, a portable hard drive, a recording device, and even a Garmin watch. Natanson covers the federal workforce and had cultivated nearly 1,200 confidential sources across more than 120 government agencies. She was not accused of any crime. She was not the target of any investigation. The FBI told her that much while they were busy carting away basically everything she uses to do her job.

The raid was connected to the prosecution of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor charged with retaining classified information. The DOJ wanted to rummage through a journalist’s entire digital life to find evidence against someone else. And they got a warrant to do it by, among other things, simply never mentioning to the magistrate judge that there’s a federal law—the Privacy Protection Act of 1980—that exists specifically to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening.

Last week, at a hearing on the Washington Post’s motion to get the devices back, Magistrate Judge William Porter let the DOJ attorneys have it. And then on Tuesday, he issued his ruling, blocking the government from searching Natanson’s devices and rescinding the portion of the warrant that would have let them do so.

As energy prices for US households soar nationwide, Democratic and progressive lawmakers are calling on the energy department to stop increasing exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“The Trump administration’s LNG export policies are not putting America first: they have jacked up utility prices for families, leaving many Americans struggling with the cost of heating their homes this winter,” reads a letter to energy secretary Chris Wright, sent Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Independent senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and seven others.

Exports of LNG – methane gas that is cooled and turned into a liquid for easier long-distance transport – boomed under former president Joe Biden. Since Trump re-entered office last January, they have soared even higher, growing 26% in 2025 with an additional 8% increase expected this year, according to federal data.

Last year, the US became the first country in history to export more than 100m metric tons of the fuel in a single year, a fact the White House has touted with pride.

Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel “devalued” by the technology and warned of a downward trajectory in the quality of work.

Recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund found AI would affect about 40% of jobs around the world. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, has said: “This is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.”

Workers who have trained AI models to replace some or all of their roles tell the Guardian about their experiences.

Influencers have had a bad time of it at restaurants recently. There they are, just trying to record a quick video and take a few pictures of their lunch, and restaurateur Jeremy King (of the Ivy and the Wolseley in London) goes and writes an article saying they’re ruining the dining experience of “bona fide guests” – something he says staff are “desperately trying to stop”. I’ve read pieces calling TikTok the end of the London restaurant scene. Friends’ parents have even said they would get up and leave if they were sitting next to anyone filming their meal.

This surprises me. I have worked as a waitress in restaurants for more than five years, a job I love, and the joys of which most often come from the customers I serve. Of course, for every 10 great customers, you’re bound to get one that’s not so great – I’ve come across my fair share of those.

And so I can confidently say that influencers are the least of my worries as a waitress. In fact, I’d rank them and their camera crews at the bottom of my list of the rudest types of customers I’ve come across. It’s a list which I’ll now be sharing with you, in the hopes that once you’ve read it, you’ll agree that influencers really aren’t the ultimate devil of the dining room.

So, I was ordered a Lyft up to a town an hour away, and when I got there, what I'd signed up for was not at all what I expected.

We can stick a pin in the interview with the researcher for Molly Ivins who I thought was not going to have a journalism background.

Now, I have a problem on my hands. What was sold as the story to assist with fundraisers is not, in fact, the story.

Queer activist from decades ago? Sure. I can deal with that and have questions ready to go.

You know more than I do about journalism was not expected.

And he does. I'm an asshole and full of myself, but you know when you're the student.

The hed isn't really answered to my satisfaction, but it's an interesting look into things.

Trump is tedious to listen to for 30 seconds, so signing up for nearly two hours of his worst hits didn't seem a good use of time.

I seriously have no idea who the audience was for that.

He said it was going to be long. He wasn’t lying.

Donald Trump told reporters earlier this week that his State of the Union address would be “a long speech,” and unlike with many of his key campaign promises, the president delivered. He spoke to lawmakers for 108 minutes on Tuesday, breaking the record he set last year for the longest speech ever delivered to Congress.

The speech was filled with the requisite presidential shoutouts to special guests in the audience. The U.S. men’s hockey team was there, fresh off their first Olympic gold medal in almost half a century. So was Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. The president also nodded to attending working moms, military veterans, and first responders to the floods that ravaged Texas last year. Trump toward the end of his speech recognized a 100-year-old Navy pilot before Melania Trump fastened the Medal of Honor around his neck. “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was informed I’m not allowed to give it to myself,” said Trump, who also doled out a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Purple Heart, and another Medal of Honor during the address.

The foundation of the nearly two hours Trump stood before Congress, however, was the president’s just-as-requisite torrent of ravings and falsehoods.

Glad I didn't waste two hours on that.

“When will we see justice?” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) demanded on the House floor Tuesday in a sharp rebuke of the U.S. Department of Justice over its handling of the government’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The DOJ’s release of millions of documents relating to its investigation into Epstein has triggered a wave of high-profile firings and resignations in the U.S. and overseas. However, there has been a glaring contrast between the fallout domestically and abroad — while there have been active criminal investigations overseas, there have yet to be any launched in the U.S.

Massie called attention to the stark difference on Tuesday. “I’ve not seen any arrests from the revelations in the Epstein files, over three million documents describing horrible things — describing unspeakable things, much of it redacted,” he said. “Over two dozen people have resigned, CEOs, members of government worldwide, but I haven’t seen any arrests or investigations here in the United States from this Department of Justice.”

The Republican congressman pointed to former Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Peter Mandelson, the U.K.’s former ambassador to Washington, who were arrested within days of each other for their alleged ties to Epstein, and are both under investigation for misconduct in public office. Massie also highlighted former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland — who was charged with gross corruption linked to his relationship with Epstein — and how “we don’t see any charges, arrests or investigations in the United States.”

SAN DIEGO, California, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Researchers at ASML Holding say they have found a way to boost the power of the light source in a key chip making machine to turn out up to 50% more chips by decade's end, to help retain the Dutch company's edge over emerging U.S. and Chinese rivals.

ASML is the world's only maker of commercial extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, a critical tool for chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Intel and others in producing advanced computing chips.

"It's not a parlor trick or something like this, where we demonstrate for a very short time that it can work," Michael Purvis, ASML's lead technologist for its EUV source light, said in an interview.

"It's a system that can produce 1,000 watts under all the same requirements that you could see at a customer," he added, speaking at the company's California facilities near San Diego.