Technology

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule carrying four private citizens plunged through Earth’s atmosphere Saturday night and splashed down off the east coast of Florida, closing out the company’s first all-civilian mission in space. The Inspiration4 crew — the mission’s billionaire funder Jared Isaacman, geoscientist Sian Proctor, physician assistant Haley Arceneaux, and data engineer Chris Sembroski — became the first crew to hang out in Earth orbit without any professionally trained astronauts. “it was a heck of a ride” The crew’s splashdown zone in the Atlantic Ocean was roughly 30 miles east of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where they launched to space atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday. Beginning at about 7:02PM ET, Crew Dragon deployed two sets of parachutes — an initial set of two, and ...

Facebook’s vice president of global affairs criticized a series of stories by the Wall Street Journal that reported the social network is aware of numerous problems across its platforms that cause harm to users, but does little to fix them. In a post on Facebook’s blog, Nick Clegg wrote that while it was “absolutely legitimate for us to be held to account for how we deal with” some of the issues outlined in the Journal reporting, the stories “contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.” This week, the Journal published a sweeping series of deeply reported stories on Facebook, based on its review of internal documents, concluding that the company’s platforms “are riddled with flaws tha...

Nearly a year after announcing plans to spin out its own electric bike company called Serial 1, Harley-Davidson said it will sell a “limited” number of the gorgeous, vintage-inspired models that it originally said was just a “styling exercise.” The S1 Mosh/Tribute is an homage to “Serial Number One,” the nickname for Harley-Davidson’s oldest known motorcycle built in 1903. The bike’s design, with its white tires, leather saddle and handgrips, and sleek black frame with gold lettering, harken back to that first prototype. But under the glossy black paint and honey-colored leather accents, the bike is identical to Serial 1’s entry-level Mosh/Cty model. The S1 Mosh/Tribute (props to Harley for keeping all the vowels this time ) has many of the same features as the Mosh/Cty, including a Gates ...

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Friday that the company’s Starlink satellite internet network would come out of its open beta phase next month. That’s two months later than the August date Musk gave at Mobile World Congress, when he also said he expected the service to have “possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months.” The Starlink system calls for a constellation of nearly 12,000 satellites in low-Earth orbits that will beam continuous broadband internet service. A terminal costs $499 and there’s a $99 monthly fee for service. It opened its public beta test in October 2020, and Musk said in August that SpaceX had shipped 100,000 Starlink terminals, which includes a satellite dish and a Wi-Fi router, to users in 14 countries. As the beta ends and more countries are able to get access to Sta...

Valve announced Friday that its latest Steam Next Fest is coming the first week of October, giving access to playable demos of hundreds of upcoming PC games. A video teaser showed glimpses of a few games to expect to see in demo, including Airhead from Octato Games, Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy from Ludomotion, ANNO:Mutationem from Thinking Stars, Mahokenshi from Game Source Studio, Starship Troopers— Terran Command from The Artistocrats, Life of Delta from Airo Games, and more. And IGN reported that The Last Campfire, from Hello Games, the creators of No Man’s Sky, will also have a playable demo available as part of Next Fest. Gamers can “explore the latest from veteran devs and first-timers alike,” according to the promotional video. [embedded content] Valve has been holding these...

Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls isn’t just the long-awaited return of the vampire-whipping series. It also marks the return of some big names, including character designer Ayami Kojima and composer Michiru Yamane, who left Konami in 2008. Yamane previously worked on seminal Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow, and after going freelance she teamed up with longtime Castlevania director Koji Igarashi on Bloodstained. Her credits also include Skullgirls, a few Suikoden games, and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, though she calls her work on Castlevania her “masterpiece.” Ahead of the launch of Grimoire of Souls, which is out now on Apple Arcade, I had the chance to ask Yamane a few questions over email about her work and career. How does it feel to return to the f...

OLED TVs have developed a reputation for being sharp, clean, fragile, but also remarkably expensive. But this weekend you can save a whopping $800 on this 55-inch OLED TV from Sony at Best Buy. At just 2.3-inches thick without its stand, the A8H, much like other OLED screens, is impossibly slim. This makes it ideal for wall mounting especially for anyone in pursuit of that ultra-clean, Ikea catalog aesthetic. In terms of apps, the A8H has access to the Android TV catalog and offers voice control via Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple AirPlay2. Besides having 4 HDMI ports that include a single audio return channel, the A8H also has a trio of USB ports and built-in Bluetooth for everything else. Sony 55-inch A8H Series OLED TV $1,100 $1,900 43% off This 55-inch Smart TV from Sony features an...

Clive Sinclair, who invented the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, an early personal computer, died of cancer Thursday at age 81, his family confirmed. Sinclair was an inventor with an impressive list of electronic products to his name, some, like his pocket calculator, were quite successful, while others, like his Sinclair C5 “electric trike” vehicle, were decidedly not. Born in England in 1940, Sinclair had a knack for creating gadgets. The Sinclair Executive “slimline” pocket calculator, released in 1972, sold well (likely in large part due to its low price ), and at one point was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. Sinclair’s ZX personal computers were priced lower than the then-popular Commodore 64, and well-liked by consumers in the UK. The ZX Spectrum (nicknamed “Speccy”) had a rubber keyboa...

It’s a decision that may seem like a no-brainer. You’ve got a new job, and they’ve just given you a brand-new ThinkPad. Perfect, you think to yourself. It’s about time I got rid of that 10-year-old MacBook Air. I’ve been there. Surveys have shown that over half of workers use work-issued devices for personal tasks — whether sending personal messages, shopping online, accessing social media, or reading the news. The prospect of using your work laptop as your only laptop — not just for work, but also for Netflixing, group chat messaging, reading fanfiction, paying bills, and emailing recipes to your mom — is understandably tempting, especially for folks who work from home. Keeping work tasks and personal tasks in one place may feel like an easy way to simplify your life, and it might save sp...

With the announcement and impending release of the new iPad Mini and its revamped design, it might be all too easy to stan the new model and completely write off its predecessor. While the new model has a lot to offer — namely a larger screen, faster processor, refined design akin to the 2020 iPad Air, and a USB-C port — it also has a quality that is not so desirable: a higher introductory price. The iPad Mini line has been notoriously discount-immune over the years, possibly because of its specialized position in the market and lack of competition. The outgoing iPad Mini only recently started receiving significant discounts, falling to $300 soon before the new model was announced, but it started at $399 from the get-go. The new iPad Mini starts at $499 before you add anything further, lik...

Pokémon Go developer Niantic is shutting down its augmented reality game Catan: World Explorers, the company announced on Friday (via Protocol). An AR adaptation of the popular board game Catan announced in 2019, World Explorers was the company’s latest attempt to recreate the magic of Pokémon Go, but soon it’s all coming to an end. After a year of early access, the game will not be playable after November 18th and Niantic says later today it “will be taking the game down from the App Store and removing real-money purchases from the Shop.” For the players that stick around, the company says it will increase in-game bonuses for the remaining weeks the game is live. Surely something other than Pokémon can catch on It’s not entirely clear what’s to blame for the shutdown, though the developer...