Technology

Jeff Bezos is offering NASA a discount of at least $2 billion for the agency to give his space company a lucrative human lunar landing system contract that his rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, won earlier this year. Bezos’ new offer is the latest in an escalating string of efforts to win the contract for Blue Origin. In a Monday morning letter to NASA administrator Bill Nelson, Bezos said he’d permanently waive up to $2 billion in contract payments for the first two years if NASA adds Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander to a key phase of the agency’s Human Landing System program, which calls for landing the first humans on the lunar surface in decades. On top of that, Blue Origin would self-fund a Blue Moon test launch to low-Earth orbit, a feat likely worth hundreds of millions more. “I believ...

Detective Pikachu might not be the last time you see real people interacting with fictional (but real in my heart) pokémon. Netflix is reportedly in early development on a live-action Pokémon TV series, according to Variety, with Lucifer co-showrunner and executive producer Joe Henderson attached to shepherd the project to a screen near you. It felt almost like a fluke that Detective Pikachu happened at all, given the relative obscurity of the niche Pokémon spinoff game it was based on and Nintendo’s seeming reluctance to take big swings on live-action adaptations after the mythically lackluster quality of the Super Mario Bros. movie. As of late, though, Nintendo’s been expanding into other mediums — like theme parks — and taking on new partners — like Ubisoft and its Rabbids franchise — s...

People may know Rayssa Leal from a Vine that showed her landing an incredible heelflip while dressed in a pixie outfit, but today she’s wearing something different: the silver medal she won for her performance in the 2021 Olympic women’s street skating event. She also appeared on the Olympics official Twitter account, which posted a “how it started, how it’s going” meme featuring the 13-year-old skater. Leal’s profile on the Olympics’ website says that she was just eight years old when that viral video started spreading across Vine in 2015, after a version that included failed attempts and falls was posted to her Instagram. Since then, she’s been making a name for herself in her native country Brazil, and in US and global competitions, before eventually landing at the 2021 Olympics in Toky...

Even more week-long, “record-shattering” heatwaves are coming for us. From now until 2050, if greenhouse gas emissions stay high, the odds of such heatwaves happening are two to seven times greater than they were over the past few decades, according to a new study. From 2051 to 2080, those prolonged, record-breaking events are expected to become three to 21 times more probable than they were in the past. The authors of the new study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, used climate models to come to their conclusions. But there’s already plenty of evidence in the world around us that backs up this study and others that link climate change to more frequent and severe heatwaves. Yet another heat dome is stifling much of the US this week. That comes after a string of extreme...

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos offered to cover more than $2 billion USD in costs if NASA provides his commercial spaceflight company with the second Human Landing System contract, in an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday. “We stand ready to help NASA moderate its technical risks and solve its budgetary constraints and put the Artemis Program back on a more competitive, credible, and sustainable path,” Bezos wrote in the letter. Per his proposal, Bezos said that Blue Origin will waive up to $2 billion USD in costs during the current fiscal year as well as the following two. “This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments,” he wrote. “This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up.” At its own expe...

In my corner of the Bronx, March 2020 felt like the end of the world. A statewide emergency was declared on March 7th, and the city went into lockdown 13 days later, as case numbers climbed higher each day. Before lockdown, I’d been going to an esports venue nearly twice a week to play in Super Smash Bros. tournaments, but that quickly dropped out of my routine. I had just gotten a library card, too, to make more time for reading. Now the card was useless, and trips outdoors became rare. As soon as I had laid out a plan for getting productive, the world pushed me back inside. Being stuck inside wasn’t as bad for my social life as you might think. I spent more time on Discord, seeking out new channels and new people. Some of them were streamers, others voice actors — all of them people I wo...

Staples is hosting some stellar back-to-school deals this week, especially if tech is on your checklist. The AirPods Pro are $179 (visible on the third page of the ad) and are available at this price in-store only. Originally $249, these have been falling in price, but it’s not often that they sell for less than $189. It’s worth mentioning that Staples is also offering Apple’s HomePod Mini for $89, which ties for the lowest price yet. Unlike the AirPods Pro, Staples is offering this miniature smart speaker in-store or online. Apple HomePod Mini $89 $99 11% off HomePod Mini is the only smart speaker Apple currently sells. It’s more affordable than the standard HomePod was when it was still in production, and its output is predictably smaller. However, it has many of the same features. As no...

The Verge is always interested in the future — so this week, we’re taking a look at the people who will live there. All week, we’re going to publish stories focused on young people, whether they’re pushing for immigration reform or making bank in the online vintage trade. The way we see it, they’re building the future, and they’re using technology to do it. We’re calling the series Next Gen, like a next-gen camera or phone. The hope is that human beings will get a little better each time around, with fewer of the hang-ups that plagued earlier models. To kick it off, we’re going to hear from some of those young people firsthand. In a series of four personal essays, we asked young writers to talk about the tech that’s made the biggest impact on their lives, from YouTube videos to multiplayer...

A cross-platform counterterrorism program will start targeting white supremacist and far-right militia material, flagging content for moderation on Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, and several other services. Reuters reported the news this morning in an interview with Nicholas Rasmussen, executive director of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). GIFCT — launched in 2017 by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube — maintains a database of terrorist content that helps member companies find it for review or removal. That database initially included material from a United Nations-designated list of sanctioned groups, which meant it focused heavily on Islamist extremist organizations like the Taliban and Islamic State, with exceptions around specific far-right incidents like the...

Google‘s parent company Alphabet has announced the launch of a new company focused on developing software for robots. Named “Intrinsic,” the new firm comes after years of work within Alphabet’s subsidiary X, a “moonshot factory” functioning mainly as an incubator for innovative and entrepreneurial ideas by together talents from all across the tech industry. Other similar companies that came out of X include Waymo, Wing, and both Google Glass and Watch. “Over the last few years, our team has been exploring how to give industrial robots the ability to sense, learn, and automatically make adjustments as they’re completing tasks, so they work in a wider range of settings and applications,” the new company’s CEO Wendy Tan White wrote in a statement explaining the focus of the new company. “Work...

Amazon’s Key for Business, a system that allows its delivery drivers to gain access to apartment buildings without having to be buzzed in, has been installed in thousands of buildings across the US, according to the Associated Press. The company is reportedly pushing to get the system installed in more buildings, using a combination of free installations and $100 gift cards as incentives. The system is designed to make it easier for Amazon’s drivers to make deliveries to apartment buildings. Rather than having to be buzzed in by residents or a concierge, a driver can use the system to gain temporary access to lobbies via the Amazon Flex app. Then packages can then be delivered directly to residents or safely left behind in a mail room or with a doorman. In a technical breakdown of the syst...

Nothing has pushed my PC further than Microsoft Flight Simulator. That might sound odd for a “game” that’s largely about flying around empty skies by yourself, but Asobo’s latest iteration of the classic franchise is technically groundbreaking and ambitious, with all manner of wizardry going on beyond the scenes to stream in accurate city data, real-time weather effects, and so on. I’ve still had a great time with it, but compared to most AAA games, Flight Simulator asks a lot more of your CPU. That’s why I was intrigued by the new version for Xbox Series consoles, which comes out on Game Pass tomorrow. In fact, it’s the first Microsoft game for Xbox Series consoles that won’t run natively on any Xbox One model at all, though an xCloud version is also coming to mobile and will eventually h...