Technology

Richard Branson’s July flight to the edge of space is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration for veering out of its designated airspace mid-flight, the FAA said on Wednesday after a report from The New Yorker. The mission’s two pilots were alerted to yellow and red light warnings mid-flight that, according to sources in The New Yorker, should’ve prompted them to abort the mission. The flight continued and ultimately landed safely. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spaceplane air-launched from its carrier aircraft on July 11th carrying founder Branson and three company employees over the firm’s New Mexico spaceport, Spaceport America. The rocket plane soared 53.5 miles high, skimming the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness before free-gliding back to a runway,...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the upcoming Tesla Roadster “should ship in 2023” in a tweet on Wednesday. He blamed the ongoing supply chain shortages for the long timeline. “2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn’t matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship,” Musk said. 2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn’t matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship. Assuming 2022 is not mega drama, new Roadster should ship in 2023. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2021 Elon Musk first announced the $200,000 second-generation Roadster at a splashy event in November 2017, promising that the base model could go from 0 to 60 in a staggering 1.9 seconds. He also said that the Roadster would have a 200kWh battery ...

Apple is rolling out a new feature that allows users to upload their driver’s license and state IDs to the Apple Wallet. Arizona and Georgia will be the first states to have access to the feature, followed by Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah. The Wallet app is available on the iPhone and Apple Watch, and adding a license or ID to the app will work the same as linking a credit card. Users tap the + icon and will be directed to scan the license or ID card. They’ll also be instructed to take a selfie that will be sent to the state department for verification and will have to record head movements, like those required in the authentication process of setting up Face ID. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will be among the first to accept licenses and IDs i...

Texas is one step closer to enacting a law that would make it more difficult for social media companies to moderate political content. Both Texas’ House and Senate approved the bill earlier this week, sending it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. The bill would make it unlawful for social media companies with more than 50 million users, like Facebook and Twitter, to censor users and content based on political views or geographic location. This includes moderation actions like banning, deplatforming, or demonetizing users and removing posts. The bill initially failed in a special session earlier this year The bill initially failed in a special session earlier this year when Democrats fled the state to stall the passage of controversial partisan bills, including measures to ban abortions once a fet...

It hasn’t even been two months since Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took the reins from founder Jeff Bezos, but the company’s new chief executive is already facing a potential scandal. Two anonymous sources have accused Jassy of stepping in to overrule the company’s own HR department when it recommended that an executive be fired for discrimination — and Amazon isn’t denying it, reports Protocol. The story goes that in 2019, a Black female Amazon employee accused AWS Outposts general manager Joshua Burgin of discrimination, and HR issued a report recommending he be fired. But Jassy fielded a personal request from Burgin’s boss, Charlie Bell, and decided to let him stay. (At the time, Jassy was CEO of AWS, Bell was a star cloud executive who also reportedly served as a member of Amazon’s senior lead...

Reddit has banned anti-vaccine and anti-mask subreddit r/NoNewNormal and has quarantined 54 other subreddits associated with COVID denial. A week ago, the company’s CEO said in a post that Reddit was meant to be a place of “open and authentic discussion and debate,” even for ideas that “question or disagree with popular consensus.” In today’s post, the company has clarified its rules with regard to health misinformation. The subreddit NoNewNormal has been cited by many in the Reddit community as a source of vaccine misinformation, and it was known for “brigading” other subreddit’s discussions by butting in on conversations about COVID or related policies in other communities. NoNewNormal was the source of 80 such brigades in the past month, according to Reddit security, and the behavior co...

As Congress pushes for more details of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, tech companies have found themselves caught between a new request from the select committee investigating the attack and ominous threats from Republicans hoping to stall the committee’s investigation. Pushing for new details about communications between Republican members of Congress and President Trump during the attack, the House select committee sent data requests on Monday ordering the preservation of phone records and other communications related to the January 6th attack. Requests went out to 35 companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft. Wireless providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless also received the request. “A Republican majority will not forget” Notably, the request...

HBO Max is now available on Vizio SmartCast TVs, meaning users will no longer have to use casting workarounds to access the streaming service. Prior to today’s announcement, Vizio TVs lacked a native app within SmartCast, Vizio’s smart TV interface. Instead, they’d have to cast its content to their televisions using Apple AirPlay or by casting with Google. The addition of the app directly from the apps menu should make accessing HBO Max far more intuitive for SmartCast users. To mark the launch of the app on its sets, Vizio will also introduce a custom homescreen carousel to showcase HBO Max’s new teaser freebies. HBO Max no longer offers free trials, though it recently announced a limited sampling of the pilot episodes of more than a dozen of some of its most popular series, which can be ...

Yet another big game is jumping into the world of virtual concerts. League of Legends creator Riot is partnering with “virtual entertainment” company Wave for an upcoming event centered on the game’s in-universe heavy metal band Pentakill. The concert is set to take place on September 8th at 1:30PM PT / 4:30PM ET, and it’s tied to the band’s upcoming album release. You can watch it right here. From the sound of it, the Pentakill show will be a bit more involved than other virtual concerts. It’s described as “an interactive journey through the full concept album,” which will release after the show. (Riot has been teasing Pentakill’s third album over the past little while.) Wave says that viewers will be able to “influence the performance in real time” as well through features like voting. P...

I’ll confess this upfront: I’ve yet to watch an episode of Ted Lasso. But I absolutely buy the conspiracy theory that one of the show’s main characters, Roy Kent, is a CGI creation. People on Reddit have apparently been talking about this for months, but after their discussion was shared on Twitter this week, the theory about the Apple TV Plus show has gone mainstream. I read some of the threads, googled some screenshots of Kent himself (or itself), and I have to agree: the man looks like he stepped straight out of FIFA 21. When I broached the subject in The Verge’s Slack, a number of colleagues said they’d already had this exact discussion with friends. “I have thought this since ep 1 and i did not know it was a thing other people thought!” said one, before sharing screencaps of a group c...

Hurricane Ida thoroughly wrecked New Orleans’ power supply, preying on vulnerabilities that are only likely to get worse in the future as storms like Ida become more fierce. The storm knocked out all eight transmission lines that bring power into New Orleans, plunging the city into darkness. The damage was so intense that a new gas-fired power plant — sold as something that could keep the lights on after big storms — took days to bring power to the nearest neighborhood. To keep the lights on in the future, leaders need to abandon old strategies and build up different kinds of energy infrastructure, experts say. The fallout from Ida is yet another reminder of how fragile the country’s existing energy infrastructure is, especially as climate change brings on more extreme weather. “We can’t d...

Microsoft is starting to drop PCs from its Windows Insider testing program that are ineligible to upgrade to Windows 11. If you’ve been helping Microsoft test Windows 11 on a machine that doesn’t meet the minimum hardware requirements, you’ll likely see a message in Windows Update warning that you’ll need to reinstall Windows 10. “Your PC does not meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11,” says Microsoft’s warning. “Your device is not eligible to join the Windows Insider Program on Windows 11. Please install Windows 10 to participate in the Windows Insider Program in the Release Preview Channel.” Windows 11 testers in both the Dev and Beta channels have started receiving the message on incompatible PCs this week, just as Microsoft has announced its October 5th release date for...