Technology

Google has announced a new, free tier of its Workspace suite, Workspace Essentials Starter. Basically, it lets workers use tools like Google Docs, Sheets, Chat, etc. with their co-workers without requiring them to switch over to Gmail if they’re already using something like Exchange or Zoho. While employees have long been able to replicate this use case with personal Google accounts, having an official product for it could help with security and make it easier to manage a team of people working together. According to Google’s blog post, users will be able to sign up for Essentials Starter using their existing email accounts and will then be able to invite their co-workers to work on projects with them. Google’s providing 15 GB of Drive storage for each user, which isn’t a ton of room for s...

GoPro will be expanding its camera lineup in the next year, adding two more models alongside its current Hero and Max cameras. According to Nick Woodman, the company’s founder and CEO who spoke during the company’s earnings presentation on Thursday, GoPro wants to offer more specialized cameras, while still using a lot of the same tech. GoPro used to have several models in its Hero lineup, from the White, Silver, and Black models of cameras like the Hero 3 and 7, to the rear screen-less Session cameras. Since the Hero 8’s release, though, it’s only released flagship models, opting to sell older flagships in lieu of introducing lower-spec but still current-gen cameras. GoPro isn’t going back to “good / better / best” More models doesn’t necessarily mean a return to the — as the company desc...

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced plans to give an update on his company’s next-generation Starship rocket next Thursday evening. The presentation will come more than two years after Musk’s last update on the vehicle in 2019. Starship is the massive new deep-space rocket that SpaceX has been developing at the company’s test facility in Boca Chica, Texas, for the last few years. The fully reusable vehicle is designed to launch on top of a giant booster called Super Heavy, carrying people and cargo to distant destinations like the Moon and eventually Mars. So far, SpaceX has conducted a few high-altitude test flights with the vehicle but has yet to launch Starship to orbit. The company is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch Starship to orbit out of Boc...

Google announced today via its Google for Education blog that it’s starting a repairability program to help schools fix Chromebooks in-house, and turn it into a valuable training opportunity for students looking into the IT field. Google says 50 million students and teachers are using Chromebooks while raising bold claims of the sustainability these laptops bring to the table via efficiency and extra durability. A Google-commissioned study cited on the page says its manufacturer partners build hardware that uses 46 percent less energy than competing products. This post comes from VP of Chrome OS John Solomon, who wrote how the company also “worked with these same partners to make Chromebook components interchangeable, reusable and safely disposable.” Another blog written today by the...

Amazon is raising the price of Prime in the US to $139 per year, up from the $119 annual fee that was instated four years ago. The price hike is meant to address higher costs Amazon is facing across the board, from shipping to labor to construction, according to analysts. The price change will go into effect for new members on February 18th and for current members after March 25th. The price for a monthly membership to Prime is also going up to $14.99 per month from $12.99 per month. Amazon cited higher shipping costs and increased benefits Amazon cited “the continued expansion of Prime member benefits as well as the rise in wages and transportation costs” as reason for increasing the service’s price. Higher costs across led Amazon’s operating income to dip substantially during the final q...

If you’ve ever wondered whether drug dealers might just fly packets of powder over the border wall with inexpensive consumer drones, wonder no more — the US Border Patrol caught a DJI Mini 2 dead to rights dropping off its own weight in meth last October. That’s according to a recently released search warrant from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which is trying to search the drone for evidence that might help them track down the pilot. On October 7th, according to the affidavit, Tecate’s Campo Border Patrol Station radioed that a drone was spotted flying over the 25-foot-high fence. An agent spotted the drone buzzing over a parking lot just the other side of the wall; watched it land; watched a grey Mercedes roll up with a man ready to collect the goods; then intercepted the dro...

Mozilla is retiring its virtual and augmented reality web browser Firefox Reality, passing the baton to an outside team that plans to relaunch it under a new name. Free software consultancy Igalia is developing a browser using the source code underlying Firefox Reality, aiming to launch a comparable VR / AR browser called Wolvic next week. Meanwhile, Mozilla will remove Firefox Reality from app stores in the next few weeks. In a blog post, Mozilla framed the change as a natural evolution for Firefox Reality, which launched in 2018. “We’ve been at the forefront of developing new technologies,” the organization said, citing the WebVR and WebAR standards. “In some instances, Mozilla continues to remain the host and incubator of those new technologies … With other technologies, we find c...

It’s hard to believe we’re just coming off the heels of the last big Olympic event in Tokyo, which took place in summer 2021. But the XXIV Olympic Winter Games are officially here, with the opening ceremony kicking off on Friday, February 4th. Whether you’re planning to tune in with Peacock, watch with a cable subscription, find highlights through a streaming service, or are hoping to find it bundled in with your live cord-cutting solution, we gathered everything you need to know in order to stream the Olympic Games. How to watch the Winter Olympics opening ceremony Coverage of the opening ceremony starts on Friday, February 4th, beginning at 6:30AM ET / 3:30AM PT. (Beijing is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast, and the event is scheduled for 8PM local time.) The event is being streamed live...

Sony has tip-toed its way into making its PS5 console more customizable. First, there was a batch of DualSense controllers in red and black, and more recently, it released a variety of vibrant color options that I really dug. At last, after threatening legal action against Dbrand, which beat Sony to the punch with PS5 console covers of its own, Sony has launched its own swappable console covers in midnight black and cosmic red, with more colors on the way. I got to slap some of these new console covers on my PS5, helping me to see the console in a different light and giving me some much-needed practice at removing the covers (it still feels less intuitive than it should). There isn’t much to say about the console covers; they’re color-swaps of the ones that come pre-installed on the PS5, c...

In 2016, Apple announced that it had developed a recycling robot, called Liam, that could deconstruct an iPhone in 11 seconds. Six years and several machine generations later, Apple still won’t disclose how many iPhones its robots have recycled for parts. But the potential impact of artificially intelligent robots on e-waste recycling more broadly might soon become clear, thanks to a new research project that seeks to develop AI-powered tools that allow a robotic recycler to harvest parts from many different models of phones. If such technology can be commercialized, researchers are hopeful it could vastly improve the recycling of smartphones and other small, portable electronics. While today’s e-waste recyclers are mostly handling larger legacy devices like CRT TVs, a growing number of sm...

The price of shares in Meta — the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Meta Quest (fka Oculus) — has dropped more than 25 percent from the previous day’s close, the morning after it revealed its first-ever sequential decline in Facebook’s daily active users. After closing at $323 Wednesday, they dropped as low as $238.90 before recovering slightly. Image: Google Bloomberg reports that the $200 billion plunge may rank as the biggest single-day drop in market value ever, as Meta struggles with waning relevance among young people and CEO Mark Zuckerberg refocuses its aim toward “metaverse” plans. Meta wasn’t the only company having a rough Thursday; the entire Nasdaq exchange was off by nearly 2 percent by midday, and rivals Snap and Twitter were also trading lower. Snap, whic...