Technology

Airspeeder says its electric “flying” race car, the Alauda Mk3, has had its first unpiloted test flights in southern Australia. The craft, an electric vertical takeoff multicopter (abbreviated eVTOL for electric vertical take off and landing) was remotely controlled and the test flights took place under the supervision of Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority. The ultimate goal for Airspeeder and Alauda Aeronautics (the former is the racing series, the latter is the manufacturer), both founded by entrepreneur Matthew Pearson, has been to build flying vehicles for the purpose of racing them, which the companies say is the next step. According to Airspeeder’s website, the “successful execution of these flights means that uncrewed electric flying car Grand Prixs will take place in 2021 ...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it has combined two categories of text message alerts into one: the “Presidential Alerts” and alerts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The two will now be in a new “National Alerts” category, active on all devices that receive Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The goal of the alerts is to warn the public of natural disasters and other crisis situations, “and are of ever-increasing importance given the emergencies and disasters Americans have faced in recent years,” the FCC said in a news release (pdf). The false alert in Hawaii in 2018, where residents were warned of an imminent ballistic missile threat that wasn’t real, highlighted the need for improvements to its alert system, the agency said. The new rules provide states...

The Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G, as you may have pieced together, is a phone with a built-in stylus and 5G. It’s a slightly upgraded version of the 4G-only, 2021-edition Moto G Stylus (I’m sorry, that’s really how these phones are named). The Stylus 5G includes a few more hardware upgrades in addition to 5G connectivity, including a bigger battery, more storage and RAM (256GB and 6GB on the version I tested, respectively), and a newer Snapdragon 480 processor. There’s a new stylus-friendly GIF creator mode, which is fun. Fun is good! But it more or less feels like the same phone: the rear camera array is identical with the exception of a different macro sensor, its 6.8-inch screen is the same, and overall dimensions are similar. This puts the G Stylus 5G in a kind of awkward spot. At $399, i...

The facial recognition program used by nearly two dozen US states to to verify people seeking unemployment benefits is working inconsistently, leading to many people being denied benefits or having their applications put on hold, Motherboard reported. The identity verification service ID.me is intended to help reduce unemployment fraud, and uses biometric data and official documents to verify people. But according to Motherboard, some who have applied for unemployment have reported that ID.me has failed to identify them correctly, and that they have had difficulty reaching someone at ID.me to remedy the problem. ID.me didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment Saturday, but the company’s CEO Blake Hall told Motherboard in an email that the algorithms the company uses in its Face Mat...

Following a recommendation from its Oversight Board, Facebook says it will update its community standards to be clearer about how it handles satirical content, the company said in a blog post. “We’ll add information to the Community Standards that makes it clear where we consider satire as part of our assessment of context-specific decisions,” according to the post. “This change will allow teams to consider satire when assessing potential Hate Speech violations.” The update comes after the Oversight Board determined that Facebook was wrong to remove a user’s comment with a reference to the Turkish government, based on the two buttons meme. The Oversight Board described it: This meme featured the same split-screen cartoon from the original meme, but with the cartoon character’s face substit...

If you’ve spent some time playing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, you might feel like you’re playing a blockbuster family-friendly action movie — and that’s not just because of the game’s many perfectly timed set pieces. Rift Apart is also backed by a sweeping score composed by the legendary musician Mark Mothersbaugh. You might recognize Mothersbaugh as the co-founder of the band Devo or as the composer of Nickelodeon’s Rugrats. But I suggest you also scroll through his IMDb page. He’s been a jaw-droppingly prolific composer with work stretching back to the 1980s, and he has credits on films (The Lego Movie, Thor: Ragnarok), TV series (What We Do in the Shadows, Dawson’s Creek), and even other video games (Skate 3, The Sims 2). “Something you want to listen to for God knows how many hour...

PayPal said Friday it is raising fees for some of its newer products “to better align our pricing with the value that our products and services provide,” according to a blog post by senior vice president Dan Leberman. The changes will affect how much PayPal merchants pay per transaction, and take effect August 2nd. “PayPal has become more than just a button or payment processor to be a full commerce platform capable of driving growth for businesses,” according to the blog post. “Consumers are nearly three times more likely to complete their purchase when PayPal is available at checkout.” In the past, PayPal has had a flat rate for sellers processing payments, charging 2.9 percent of a transaction price, plus a 30-cent fee. The new, higher rates will apply to the company’s newer products, l...

Next week is when Prime Day 2021 begins. We’ll be here early on Monday and continue scouring deals through Tuesday night, bringing you the best deals on the tech we know you’ll like. However, before that, on Sunday, is Father’s Day. If you’ve already gotten a gift for the dad in your life, hopefully you‘ll be able to celebrate together in some manner. But, if you haven’t yet, it’s never too late to get one through our thoughtfully-curated gift guide. Get $150 off Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro Best Buy is offering a rare discount on the Magic Keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (that fits even the latest M1-equipped version). Normally $349, it’s $199 for all of Saturday. Usually, it’s just the 11-inch model that sees a big discount. This keyboard has USB-C passthrough ch...

With COVID-19 restrictions lifting in some places and outbreaks popping up in others, the pandemic has officially entered the weird zone. Okay, there’s nothing official about it, but the entire world is in a strange transition time right now — and likely will be for a while. Unlike the jump-cut into the pandemic, or even the suspenseful vaccine ramp-up, this time is more hopeful, less frantic, but also stretched out in an uneven mess. Places, populations, and even industries are moving at different paces as they move back to some semblance of normality. It’s like the entire globe is playing by a perverse version of “yes, and.” Yes, more people are vaccinated in the US than before, and immunocompromised people are still at risk. Yes, the vaccines that we have are stunningly effective, and t...

We may have gotten our first look at Ring’s dashcam, courtesy of The Tape Drive, which posted an image of a Ring-branded camera that looks like it’s made to fit on a car’s dashboard. Based on a support article which Zats Not Funny discovered (and claims may have been published inadvertently) Ring’s Car Cam will have Alexa integration and the ability to start recording if you tell it you’ve been pulled over. The Car Cam was originally announced by the Amazon-owned company in September as a dashboard-mounted device which would record both the inside and outside of the vehicle, and was priced at $199. However, the support article about the Car Cam that’s been posted on Ring’s site says that the camera attaches to the windshield as well. The design, as depicted in The Tape Drive’s findings doe...

The YouTube app on iOS will be getting picture-in-picture support, allowing all users to watch videos while doing other things on their iPhones and iPads. A YouTube spokesperson told The Verge that the feature is currently rolling out to Premium subscribers, and that a launch for all iOS users (including the free ones) in the US is in the works. Apple added support for picture-in-picture video for iPads with iOS 9, and brought it to iPhones with iOS 14. Since then, YouTube’s support for the feature on iPhones and iPads has been spotty — it works for iPad if you’re using Safari (though some have reported it doesn’t work for non-Premium subscribers); iPhone users have only been able to access the feature periodically. That complication seems to be going away, at least for those in the US: iO...

Google may be working on turning Android phones into a hivemind capable of finding lost devices, similar to Apple’s Find My network, according to analysis done by 9to5Google. A toggle for the feature showed up in a beta of Google Play Services, with code referencing the ability for phones to help locate other devices, potentially signaling that Android phones could soon become easier to find. According to Google’s support page, the current Find My Device system can only find phones that are powered on, have a data or Wi-Fi signal, and have location services enabled. At this early stage, it’s unclear which, if any, of those limitations the relay network feature — apparently called Spot — would solve, but when you’re looking for a lost phone any advantage is good to have. Google has other pr...