Rocket Report: Cowboy up for data centers in LEO; Russia's new ICBM actually works

Rocket Report: Cowboy up for data centers in LEO; Russia's new ICBM actually works

fivenewscrypto    mai 16, 2026   

Welcome to Edition 8.41 of the Rocket Report! The stories of the world's two most powerful rockets are now intertwined. Hardware for NASA's third Space Launch System rocket is coming together at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while SpaceX is readying its first upgraded Starship Version 3 rocket for liftoff from Starbase, Texas. The readiness of each vehicle, along with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander, will go a long way toward determining the schedule and content of NASA's Artemis III mission in low-Earth orbit. We discuss those plans in this week's Rocket Report.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

An Indian startup nears its first launch. After the Indian government opened a pathway in 2020 for private industry to build and launch its own rockets, one Indian startup is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket, Ars reports. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, says its Vikram-1 launch vehicle could take flight within the next couple of months. And with a recent $60 million fundraising round valuing the firm at $1.1 billion, the company is poised to accelerate its commercial launch efforts.

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Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how

Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how

fivenewscrypto    mai 16, 2026   

More and more routine vaccines are being linked to lower risks of dementia. Shots against seasonal flu, RSV, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap), pneumococcal infections, hepatitis A and B, and typhoid have all been linked to lower risks. And one of the strongest connections is from vaccination against shingles, with more data supporting the link still coming in. But as the evidence mounts, scientists continue to puzzle over the pleasant surprise—how are vaccines that target specific pathogens inadvertently shielding our minds from deterioration?

A burgeoning hypothesis offers a brow-raising possibility: The shots may be protecting our noggins by training the part of our immune system that had long been considered untrainable. If the idea holds up, it could generate a deeper understanding of fundamental aspects of our immune systems while opening new avenues to treating or preventing dementia. It could also add another dimension to the benefits of vaccines, which already save millions of lives worldwide.

Trained immunity

It's well understood how vaccines work generally; they're designed to prime our immune systems against specific pathogens. Vaccines present either defanged pathogens or distinctive fragments of them to specialized immune cells—namely, T cells and antibody-producing B cells—that can then learn to identify those microbial enemies.

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Pennsylvanians use town hall meeting to rail against data center boom

Pennsylvanians use town hall meeting to rail against data center boom

fivenewscrypto    mai 16, 2026   

The latest example of burgeoning opposition to rapid data-center development in Pennsylvania came at a town hall meeting overflowing with frustration about how the state is managing the surge.

As about 225 people watched, more than 20 speakers in the two-hour online forum late Wednesday spoke about resistance to an industry they blame for rising electricity prices, heavy water use, noise pollution and rural industrialization. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has tried to thread the needle of welcoming data centers while proposing some guardrails, was a frequent target.

“This is a public trust and transparency issue,” said Jennifer Dusart, a small business owner and resident of Mechanicsburg, near the state capital. “Too many Americans are finding out about these projects after decisions have been made. We have been bulldozed over, and when citizens have raised concerns, they are often dismissed as uninformed, emotional or anti-progress.”

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The perfect commuter bike? Velotric's Discover M makes its case.

The perfect commuter bike? Velotric's Discover M makes its case.

fivenewscrypto    mai 15, 2026   

Commuter bikes don't come with the same constraints many other bikes do. Mountain bikes must glide gracefully through all sorts of abusive terrain; road bikes need to mix high performance with enough comfort to let riders stay in the saddle for hours on end. All a commuter bike needs to do is comfortably and reliably get you from A to B on typical roads with minimal fuss.

So it's been surprising how rarely the commuter bikes I've tested have gotten it right. At the low end of the price scale, as you'd expect, the required compromises have a big impact on the experience. The high end addresses those shortcomings, but at prices comparable to high-end bikes from specialized categories. I've never encountered something in the middle of the two: affordable, with no compromises.

But I may have just found my ideal commuter bike: the Velotric Discover M. It's comfortable, it has a great combination of components, and it comes in at just under $2,500.

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Claude Code's product lead talks usage limits, transparency, and the "lean harness"

Claude Code's product lead talks usage limits, transparency, and the "lean harness"

fivenewscrypto    mai 15, 2026   

SAN FRANCISCO—Amid an ever-expanding array of surfaces, growing demand for tokens and compute, and a rapidly evolving user base, Anthropic doesn't have a long-term road map for Claude Code. However, it's betting that such a plan would be rendered moot by improvements in model capabilities and new signals from developers on how best to use it. That's the takeaway from a 30-minute conversation Ars had with Cat Wu, Anthropic's head of product for Claude Code.

Last week, in a three-level car rental parking garage meticulously converted into an event space in downtown San Francisco, Anthropic put on its second annual Code with Claude developer conference. As previously reported, the single-day event included a keynote introducing new features for Managed Agents and announcing a compute deal with SpaceX.

That compute deal was accompanied by a doubling of usage limits for Claude Code users on the company's Pro and Max plans—a response to a lot of user frustration about a compute crunch, especially in recent weeks.

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Fired hacker twins forget to end Teams recording, capture own crimes

Fired hacker twins forget to end Teams recording, capture own crimes

fivenewscrypto    mai 15, 2026   

Perhaps you remember Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, the 34-year-old twin brothers we profiled earlier this week. Although they had the tech chops to commit years of petty crimes (like stealing airline miles), what landed them in truly serious trouble was deleting 96 US government databases in the hour after both were fired last year by the same federal IT contractor, Opexus. (Opexus had just found out that both brothers had previously been in prison for cyberfraud.)

The pair come off less as cybercriminal masterminds than as galumphing galoots—that is to say, a pair of bumbling oafs who thought that asking AI how to cover their tracks was going to keep them out of federal prison.

One of the minor mysteries I encountered while writing the piece was that the government had a verbatim transcript of everything the brothers said to each other during their hour-long deletion spree. The two men lived together in Arlington, Virginia, so it made sense that they might be chatting in the same room rather than by text or instant message. But how the heck had the government gotten access to the audio? Supersecret software bugging? Crazy corporate spyware running on their company laptops? FBI agent in the bushes with a microphone?

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Your doctor’s AI notetaker may be making things up, Ontario audit finds

Your doctor’s AI notetaker may be making things up, Ontario audit finds

fivenewscrypto    mai 15, 2026   

In recent years, many overworked doctors have turned to so-called AI medical scribes to help automatically summarize patient conversations, diagnoses, and care decisions into structured notes for health record logging. But a recent audit by the auditor general of Ontario found that AI scribes recommended by the provincial government regularly generated incorrect, incomplete and hallucinated information that could "potentially result in inadequate or harmful treatment plans that may potentially impact patient health outcomes."

In a recent report on Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Ontario Government, the auditor general reviewed transcription tests of two simulated patient-doctor conversations performed across 20 AI scribe vendors that were approved and pre-qualified by the provincial government for purchase by healthcare providers. All 20 of those vendors showed some issue with accuracy or completeness in at least one of these simple tests, including nine that hallucinated patient information, 12 that recorded information incorrectly, and 17 that missed key details about discussed mental health issues.

In the report, the auditor general points out multiple concerning examples of mistakes in those summaries that could have a direct and negative impact on a patient's subsequent care. That includes situations where an AI scribe hallucinated nonexistent referrals for blood tests or therapy, incorrectly transcribed the names of prescription medication, and/or missed "key details" of mental health issues discussed in the simulated conversations.

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