Technology

This evening, SpaceX successfully launched another crew of four on their way to the International Space Station, marking the fifth time the company has sent people to space. Riding inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, the spacefarers will now spend roughly the next day in orbit lapping the Earth, before docking with the ISS. The mission, called Crew-3, is carrying three NASA astronauts — Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron — and one German astronaut, Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency. After a number of launch delays, the foursome finally took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 9:03PM ET, launching on top of one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. After successfully boosting the Crew Dragon carrying the passengers into low Earth orbit, the Falcon...

As Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand to answer questions about the sequence of events before he shot and killed a man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the jury was forced to watch the video evidence play out in miniature — because Rittenhouse’s defense lawyer came up with the wild notion that Apple has “artificial intelligence” that manipulates footage when you pinch-to-zoom on an iPad, and Judge Bruce Schroeder totally bought into that possibility. The word he’s looking for is algorithms, but that’s beside the point “iPads, which are made by Apple, have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three-dimensions and logarithms,” the defense insisted. “It uses artificial intelligence, or their logarithms, to create what they believe is happening. So this isn’t actually enha...

Twitter is expanding its interest in cryptocurrency, building out an entire team focused on exploring cryptocurrency, blockchain and other decentralized technologies. Software engineer Tess Rinearson has been named as the head of the new division and outlined her vision for Twitter Crypto in a series of tweets: I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies—including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.✨ pic.twitter.com/HaP0k5hUOq — Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) November 10, 2021 Rinearson said Twitter Crypto will work closely with Bluesky, a Twitter team devoted to building a decentralized social network protocol, and will serve as a “‘center of excellence’” for all things blockchain at Twitter.”...

Ever get stuck in a cycle of scrolling endlessly on Instagram? Same here. The social media site wants to address this behavior by testing a new feature called “Take a Break” that reminds users to, well, take a break. “If you opt-in, it encourages you to take a break from Instagram after you spend a certain amount of time on the app — 10, 20, 30 minutes,” Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. “We’ve worked with third-party experts and have gotten advice on what tips they should be and how to frame taking a break.” Testing “Take a Break” ?‍? We started testing a new feature called “Take a Break” this week. This opt-in control enables you to receive break reminders in-app after a duration of your choosing. I’m excited to dig into the results & hopefully lau...

Valve‘s highly-anticipated all-in-one gaming device Steam Deck will not be delivered to customers until February 2022, the company has announced. In a statement, Valve said that global supply chain issues led to them pushing back the launch date. “We’re sorry about this — we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates,” Valve said. “Based on our updated build estimates, Steam Deck will start shipping to customers February 2022.” The company added that February will now be the new start date of the reservation queue and all reservation holders get to keep their place in line. Reservation date estimates will be updated accordingly. The company...

Twitter is dropping the crop on web. This is the same update that banished Twitter’s awkward auto-cropping algorithm on its Android and iOS apps, which means that you’ll see images in their entirety on your timeline as you scroll through Twitter on your web browser. This is now available on web! Pic looking good in the Tweet composer? That’s how it will look on the timeline. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 10, 2021 The same goes for when you post images of your own; you’ll see an accurate preview of your image that doesn’t appear oddly formatted when you post it. The platform touts its full-size preview window as a “what you see is what you get” look at your post. The ongoing changes to Twitter’s handling of photos stem from last year’s auto-crop controversy. Some users notice...

Republican Congressman Paul Gosar (AZ) ignited national fury this week after tweeting a video portraying himself as an anime character killing other prominent lawmakers. But while Democrats are now calling for his expulsion from Congress and his accounts to be banned, the incident has drawn new attention to Gosar’s long association with far-right meme culture. Gosar first posted the problematic video parodying the opening credits of the popular anime series “Attack on Titan” on Sunday. The video — captioned “Any anime fans out there?” — depicts Gosar as one of the show’s main characters killing Democratic politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden by superimposing their faces onto those belonging to other characters. Responding to the video on Monday, Ocasio-Cor...

It’s November, which means it’s officially the holiday season (according to Mariah Carey, at least), and Microsoft seems to already be celebrating by emailing people gift cards to the Microsoft Store. We’ve seen a few reports on Twitter of people receiving legitimate emails from Microsoft offering gift cards for $10 or even $100, and the Microsoft Store Twitter account confirmed the promotion in a direct message with The Verge. It’s unclear who is eligible for the gift cards or how Microsoft is selecting people to get them. But if you have a Microsoft account or have signed up to receive emails from Microsoft, you might want to check your email to see if you’ve received a gift from the company. If you were lucky enough to get a gift card, there are lots of new products from Microsoft you c...

Over the weekend, Elon Musk made headlines by tweeting, as he often does, and in one of the tweets, proposed selling 10 percent of his stock in Tesla. At the time, he said, “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” Now, SEC filings (1, 2) reveal the exec has exercised his options on over two million shares of the automaker and sold 934,091 of them (via CNBC). At the company’s current valuation, the shares he sold are worth about $1.1 billion. So did he do it because someone on Twitter voted one way or the other? In this case, no, because as analyst Matt Levine points out, the documents reveal the plan for this sale has been established since September 14th. As we told you over the weekend, Musk’s compensation plan granted him a number of shares that were due to exp...

Netflix’s Squid Game has surpassed HBO’s Game of Thrones in terms of viewership for online video content. Variety reported that the hit South Korean series earned 17 billion views across long and short-form videos, citing a new report from the content analytics firm Vobile. The study looked at 129,000 uploaded videos, including trailers, clips from the show, and real-world challenges and video games that were inspired by the plot. Among the videos considered in the study were 533 million engagements in the form of likes, dislikes and comments. In comparison, Vobile found video content about Game of Thrones had garnered 16.9 billion views from 420,000 uploaded videos, and an estimated 233 million engagements, according to Variety. “In ten years looking at YouTube, we’ve never seen anything ...

Apple has launched a new subscription service for small businesses called Apple Business Essentials. Integrating device management, iCloud storage and Apple support, the service is specially geared towards small businesses with up to 500 employees. Rolling out today in beta, the service aids in the process of employee onboarding and device management, such as the setup of a work device or making necessary upgrades. The Collections component of the service allows IT personnel to configure settings and apps for individual employees or groups of employees. For instance, Collections can push VPN settings or Wi-Fi passwords automatically when employees sign into a device with their work credentials. With the AppleCare+ add-on, Apple offers 24/7 phone support to businesses and their employees, a...