Technology

This morning, space tourism venture Blue Shepard successfully launched its third crew of passengers to space and back on the company’s New Shepard rocket, the first time a group of six people has flown together on the vehicle. The crew included GMA host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard — the first American in space and the namesake for the New Shepard rocket. New Shepard lifted off just after 10AM ET on Saturday morning from Blue Origin’s launch facility in Van Horn, Texas. The entire flight lasted just over 10 minutes from liftoff to touch down. Riding inside a crew capsule on top of the New Shepard rocket, the six-person crew climbed to an altitude of 351,225 feet, or more than 66 miles above the Earth, what is considered to be above the bo...

The new smart home standard Matter is making a lot of grand promises, chief among them are fixing the interoperability mess the smart home is currently in and making Apple, Samsung, Google, and Amazon talk to each other. Big jobs. But it’s also tackling one of the other pain points in the connected home: TV control. One part of the new connectivity protocol is a specification for televisions and streaming video players. This means that Matter could become yet another way to control content in our homes. But, with its promise of platform agnosticism, Matter’s TV spec has the potential to replace proprietary casting systems, like Apple’s AirPlay or Google’s Cast, and finally free our TVs. Matter TV, as we’ll call it for wont of an official name, will allow control of a television’s core func...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided an explanation as to what caused the outage that downed parts of its own services, as well as the third-party websites and online platforms that utilize AWS. In a post on the AWS website, the company explains that an automated process caused the outage, which began around 10:30AM ET in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) region. The spike in congestion prevented the company’s operations team from using its real-time monitoring system “An automated activity to scale capacity of one of the AWS services hosted in the main AWS network triggered an unexpected behavior from a large number of clients inside the internal network,” Amazon’s report says. “This resulted in a large surge of connection activity that overwhelmed the networking devices between the int...

Former Apple employee Cher Scarlett says the company didn’t adequately live up to its half of a settlement, so she won’t withdraw her complaint to the National Labor Relations Board as agreed, according to Forbes. Scarlett says that her settlement with Apple required it to post “a company-wide memo clarifying employee rights including discussing pay & working conditions,” “in a prominent and visible location on the People site.” She says that the company did post a notice to its site, but that it was only up during the week that Apple employees were given off for Thanksgiving. “I’d argue all day that 7 days while no one is online for a holiday is absolutely not prominent and visible,” Scarlett tweeted on Thursday. Despite the fact that there was no requirement for a time period, the ag...

Bitcoin mining has rebounded after China’s recent cryptocurrency crackdown, according to data from Blockchain.com and BTC.com. Prior to the crackdown, China represented the largest average monthly hashrate share, or computational power required to mine Bitcoin. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), China’s global hashrate share was around 34.2% in May of this year. And in 2019, the country accounted for about 75% of the average monthly hashrate share — a significant portion of the world’s Bitcoin mining. In May of this year, China began to clamp down on crypto, banning financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to crypto transactions. In September, China’s top financial regulators vowed to work together to prevent “illeg...

Blue Origin on Saturday successfully completed its third human spaceflight, launching six people, including former NFL player Michael Strahan, into near space. Saturday’s mission, referred to as NS-19, was the first time the company had six passengers aboard its New Shepard rocket. Besides Strahan, other passengers included Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, and paying customers Dylan Taylor, Evan Dick, Lane Bess and Cameron Bess. The view from #NewShepard at apogee is something our #NS19 astronauts will never forget. Today’s flight featured a full capsule of six astronauts, each with their own window seat. pic.twitter.com/MOUT4YgnLC — Blue Origin (@blueorigin) December 11, 2021 The New Shepard rocket achieved liftoff from its spaceport in West Texas at a...

Microsoft is sponsoring an esports competition with prizes totaling $10,000. The game? Well, it’s not exactly a game — it’s Microsoft Excel. Every year, the top Microsoft Excel users (players?) from around the world face off in the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) (via PCWorld). The qualifying rounds already took place, leaving just eight Excel masters to compete for the FMWC crown. The quarter-finals, semifinals, and final round all take place today at 12PM ET via a YouTube livestream and the ESPN app. [embedded content] According to the FMWC rules, competitors are presented with a one to five-page long case study during each round. Case studies contain real-world problems, along with six to 15 questions that vary in complexity — the more complex a question, the more points are awarded...

By now, you’ve probably heard of NFTs enough to have an opinion about them, and, as it turns out, so has Keanu Reeves. In our interview with him and fellow The Matrix icon Carrie-Ann Moss, Alex Heath asked the actors about their feelings on cryptocurrency, NFT collectibles, and the concept of digital scarcity. Keanu — described in this 2019 Vox profile of his Keanaissance as a “relatable geek” — had, of course, a relatable response (tweeted earlier by David Zhou). He laughed. And not just a little either, as the idea of digital trinkets conveying ownership even though the actual content remains, as he says, “easily reproduced” is enough to have Neo himself bent over at the waist. When he recovered, he asked Moss if they’re getting a cut from the sales, so maybe he’ll take it more seriously...

An Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois collapsed following a bout of severe weather and tornados that ripped across the Midwest and South on Friday night. According to a report from Reuters, at least two deaths have been confirmed, and a number of workers are still unaccounted for. A post on Illinois’ Collinsville Emergency Management Agency’s Facebook page called the collapse a “mass casualty” incident. It later posted an update with a photo of the event’s aftermath, showing a large portion of the warehouse completely torn away by the storm. During a press conference this morning, police chief Mike Fillback told reporters that authorities have had trouble finding out “how many people we actually had at that facility at the time because it’s not a set staff.” Amazon management was a...

A report from the Financial Times acts as a reminder of what Apple’s App Tracking Transparency settings do and do not do to protect your privacy (via Ars Technica). While asking apps to not track you does keep them from collecting and selling data tied to your personal advertising identity, it doesn’t keep developers from collecting any information about you at all. The feature, introduced in iOS 14.5, is meant to prevent app-makers from tracking what you do and selling that information to advertisers. Companies like Facebook cried foul when it was introduced, saying that it would hurt their ability to show targeted, personalized ads, and therefore hurt businesses that relied on those ads. Companies have turned to aggregated and anonymized data, which still comes from individuals According...

On Monday, a jaw-dropping Halo Infinite video kept showing up on my Twitter feed that looked like something out of a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild speedrun. The video, from Australian YouTuber “Mint Blitz,” begins with Master Chief armed with a massive hammer behind a Warthog vehicle. In an impressive sequence taking place over a matter of seconds, Mint Blitz swings the hammer to send the Warthog flying while almost simultaneously using Master Chief’s new grappling hook on the vehicle to slingshot himself into the air like Spider-Man. As he’s soaring high above Zeta Halo’s treetops, he uses the thruster powerup — and then, inexplicably, just keeps flying forward. After 39 seconds in the air, he finally lands, gracefully setting down on top of a tall tower that’s likely supposed to ot...

Things have chilled out considerably this week, both in terms of how cold it has become in parts of the US and how few deals there are compared to the hectic Black Friday and Cyber Monday extravaganza. However, that’s not to say there aren’t some fantastic offers happening both in-store and online. We’ll be keeping a close eye on deals in the next few weeks to make sure you get what you’re looking for ahead of the holidays. Alright, let’s get to the deals. I can’t remember the last time an Apple product was discounted so swiftly. That’s what is happening to the third-gen AirPods, which debuted at $179, but are now just $139.99 at Amazon (the correct price will reflect at checkout). While they resemble the AirPods Pro with their shorter stems, the latest AirPods lack active noise cancellati...