Technology

A company looking to build a massive solar project in Butte, Montana claims it would provide 300MW of renewable power and cost $250 million, Gizmodo reported. That’s according to Madison River Equity LLC, whose parent company also manages cryptomining outfit Atlas Power. As Gizmodo reports, Madison would build the solar array, then sell it to Atlas, which hopes to use it to power its cryptocurrency mining operations. If the solar farm, dubbed the Basin Creek Solar Project, is actually built, it could be one of the largest in the US, but it raises questions about the impact of such projects, and about crypto’s impact on energy. While the project would theoretically allow Atlas’ mining and other data center operations to run on renewable power, there are arguments that green energy doesn’t a...

Marvel has confirmed that Oscar Isaac will star in the Disney Plus Moon Knight series, bringing the Star Wars star to another highly lucrative side of the Disney empire. Moon Knight is one of several Marvel characters who seem to be inspired by DC Comics’ Batman, and is certainly more of an obscure character to adapt, but as the company pivots into the next phase of movies and now shows, weirdness is on the menu. Moon Knight, or Marc Spector, is a mercenary possessed by an ancient Egyptian moon god named Khonshu. That possession is what gives him his superpowers but also multiple conflicting personalities, including a taxi driver, wealthy playboy, and masked vigilante. Marvel and Isaac’s announcement — “WE ARE MOONKNIGHT” — seems to directly reference the character’s complex psychology. Di...

Tesla is starting to use the camera above the rear-view mirror in the Model 3 and Model Y to help make sure people pay attention to the road while using Autopilot, the company’s advanced driver assistance system. Until now, the main way Tesla’s cars measure driver attention is through torque sensors in the steering wheel that look for resistance — a crude way of ensuring drivers keep their hands on the wheel. If it doesn’t register enough feedback, the car performs a series of escalating visual and audible warnings. The change comes after regulators and safety experts spent years begging Tesla to add better driver monitoring to its cars. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has even admitted that crashes involving Autopilot stem from complacency. But he previously rejected his own engineers’ calls to add m...

In 2018, we marveled over the Spyra One, an attempt to crowdfund a modern Super Soaker that could blast veritable bolts of water; refill itself from a pool; and maintain a digital ammo gauge of your shots, thanks to a heap of electronics, a self-pressurizing tank, and a battery you recharge via a standard USB-C port. The big catch: you had to be willing to risk north of $133 on an unproven Kickstarter that wound up shipping a year behind schedule. But not only did Spyra eventually manage to ship those blasters (11,000 of them, according to the company) it’s now got a new version coming next month that sounds like a huge improvement in practically every way. The new Spyra Two fires faster, further, has twice the battery life, the company claims the pump is less noisy now — and this time, th...

Sony showed off 14 minutes of Horizon Forbidden West gameplay on a PS5 in a new State of Play presentation on Thursday. In the footage, protagonist Aloy fought against some giant animal-like machines and some human enemies on a beautiful post-apocalyptic beach settlement. The presentation revealed that Aloy has some new tools to get around in Forbidden West, like a diving mask to let her dive underwater and a Breath of the Wild-like hang glider. And much like in the first game, it looks like you’ll still be slinging a lot of arrows against your enemies, both human and machine. Aloy and Erend in Horizon Forbidden West.Image: Sony Horizon Forbidden West, a sequel to the hugely successful Horizon Zero Dawn, is expected to be one of Sony’s biggest titles this year, especially given that there ...

The DualSense controller for PS5 has great haptic feedback for games like Returnal and Demon’s Souls. But today I found out that it’s also good at humming along to tunes on Spotify when plugged into a PC. While browsing Reddit, I stumbled across an ancient thread from six months ago where a user explained that, by plugging in a DualSense and tweaking a few settings, the device’s built-in haptics motors will do their best to play your music from the Spotify app on Windows 10. If you press your ear to the controller, it’s like listening into the world’s smallest rave ever, perhaps with a few Astro Bots in attendance. I assume you just ran to go get your controller to try this out — because that’s the same reaction that I had. Okay, but first lower your expectations before you get started. Th...

Major US wireless carriers are gearing up to shut down their old 3G networks — a process that has been fraught with delays and miscommunication as companies alert customers with older phones that it’s time to upgrade. To that end, Verizon and AT&T have published guides to which devices will stop working after their 3G networks go offline next year. Here’s what you need to know. Verizon has delayed its CDMA 3G network shutdown several times but is now firmly committed to shutting the network down by December 31st, 2022. All 3G basic phones and smartphones will lose service, but some 4G devices will be impacted as well — namely, those that don’t support VoLTE (Voice over LTE). A few connected devices are affected, too; take a look at Verizon’s full guidelines for more details. Taking the...

Four women who used to work for Google have won class-action status for their gender equity lawsuit against the search engine company, allowing them to represent some 10,800 women, Bloomberg reports. The lawsuit alleges that Google pays men more than women for the same work, in violation of California’s Equal Pay Act, and that Google paid its female employees nearly $17,000 less per year than male counterparts in the same roles. The women filed the suit in 2017, claiming they were put into lower career tracks than their male colleagues— so-called “job ladders” that resulted in them receiving lower bonuses and salaries. The women have since left Google. “This is a significant day for women at Google and in the technology sector, and we are so proud of our brave clients for leading the way,”...

Among Us, the multiplayer game that soared in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the latest free title on the Epic Games Store. If you have an account for that storefront, you can download it for free until June 3rd (it normally costs $5). You can then join friends in the game’s newer Airship map, and good news: those friends don’t all need to be playing on PC. The game supports cross-platform multiplayer, so players of the Android, iOS, PC, and Nintendo Switch versions can play together. The PS4 and PS5 versions of the game will support crossplay, too, once it launches later this year. Among Us Among Us, developed by InnerSloth, released in 2018. But in 2020, the game saw a huge influx of players during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team has been updating the base game with maps and...

Hundreds more people died in Texas during the February deep freeze and blackouts than the state’s official count shows, according to an investigation by BuzzFeed News. The outages left millions of people without power as indoor temperatures dropped to deadly lows. The way authorities typically count death tolls from disasters tends to drastically low-ball the actual losses Texas has so far acknowledged 151 winter storm-related deaths. BuzzFeed News, on the other hand, found that an estimated 700 people lost their lives from the combined catastrophes of the storm and power outages. The news outlet conducted a thorough analysis of data that showed how many more people died around that time than would normally be expected. It’s the most recent analysis to show that the way authorities typical...

Kellogg’s — legal guardian of such cereal mascots as Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam — has partnered with DoorDash-owned Chowbotics to launch a new cereal-mixing robot at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida State University (via Gizmodo). The Kellogg’s Bowl Bot offers a vending machine-type experience for one of the simplest breakfast foods, and charges anywhere from $2.99 to $6.50 for the privilege. The Bowl Bot could be best thought of as an extension of Chowbotics’ earlier “Sally” fresh food and salad robot. You interact with it via a touchscreen to select through your dairy bases (milk or yogurt), combinations of cereals and granolas, and toppings like fresh fruit or cocoa nibs. Kellogg’s also offers custom pre-designed combinations of cereals at a higher price if something l...

We heard earlier this month that Sony may be planning to launch its next noise-canceling true wireless earbuds, the WF-1000XM4s, as early as June, and thanks to new leaks published by WinFuture, we might now know almost all of the specs for the upcoming buds. Like the very good previous-gen WF-1000XM3s, the new WF-1000XM4s will offer active noise cancelation (ANC), but thanks to a new “Sony V1” processor, ANC performance will be improved, WinFuture reports. The headphones will also support Sony’s LDAC codec, which lets you listen to high-quality audio over Bluetooth, WinFuture says. And it sounds like the new 1000XM4s will have a very good battery life, like the 1000XM3s. WinFuture says you’ll be able to get eight hours of battery on a single charge with ANC on and 12 hours with ANC off. A...