Technology

The NASA spacecraft that snatched a sample of rocks from the distant Bennu asteroid last year fired up a suite of thrusters on Monday and committed to its two-year journey back home. The maneuver kicks the minivan-sized spacecraft, dubbed Osiris-REx, onto a winding cosmic path around the Sun and toward Earth’s orbit. When it returns to Earth in 2023, it’ll toss a capsule packed with asteroid samples through the atmosphere somewhere over Utah. The spacecraft’s Asteroid Departure Maneuver (ADM) was no sweat for the Osiris-REx team, but it marked a significant step towards the return of the first pristine cache of asteroid samples in NASA’s history. Spacecraft engineers inside a Lockheed Martin center in Littleton, Colorado confirmed the seven-minute thruster firing began at 4PM ET Monday and...

As the trial for Epic v. Apple entered its second week, both parties took a break from antitrust law to argue over whether bananas should wear clothes in court. The banana in question is Peely, a humanoid fruit avatar from Epic’s game Fortnite. Fortnite, as you may remember, is at the center of the huge lawsuit between Apple and Epic. The trial’s sixth day began with testimony from Matthew Weissinger, Epic’s VP of marketing. And Apple used its cross-examination to offer the court an exhaustive tutorial on Fortnite, beginning with its title screen and one of its skins. Hence the banana: Apple attorney: We have in front of us a new set of images, and what is this screen showing? Weissinger: This is your matchmaking lobby. Attorney: And we have a large yellow banana here, don’t we? In a tuxed...

Today I learned that Hans Zimmer, known for his brilliant scores for movies such as Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Lion King, has also composed driving sounds for BMW. And they’re actually pretty good! You can hear one coming to the company’s M version of its electric BMW i4 cars in this video (and jump to 1:30 if you just want to hear the sound). [embedded content] And you can hear the driving sound that Zimmer composed for the BMW Vision M NEXT concept car in 2019 in this video: [embedded content] These are cool, but they got The Verge staff wondering — what other composers should create sounds for cars? So we compiled just a few of our favorite composers into one list, and some ideas about what their car noises might sound like: John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T...

Walmart appears to be getting into the streaming devices with the Onn Android TV UHD Streaming Device, according to a new listing on its website (spotted by 9to5Google). The company’s new streaming box (in this case, really more of a flattened cube) is currently listed for $29.88 but is also “out of stock” — which could be due to the fact it hasn’t been officially announced yet. According to Walmart’s page, the Onn Android TV UHD Streaming Device can, unsurprisingly, stream in 4K and play “Dolby audio” — although there are no other specifics shared. The small device runs Android TV, connects to a TV over HDMI, and comes with what looks like a Google Assistant-enabled remote with dedicated buttons for YouTube, Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max. Walmart’s streaming device is a fairly unassum...

Many Amazon listings for two major electronics sellers have mysteriously disappeared as of Monday afternoon, and it’s unclear exactly what might be going on. Here are a few screenshots from Aukey’s Amazon page, taken shortly after 12PM ET on Monday. Aukey is a major seller of chargers, portable batteries, and more, but its Amazon page has a whole lot of blank product boxes and products listed as “currently unavailable.” A section of Aukey’s largely empty Amazon page. Only two Aukey cables listed here. Many Aukey products are “currently unavailable.” And if I search “Aukey” on Amazon, the top results are for two massage guns, a home oven, and a keyboard — not chargers or cables. Mpow, another big seller known for headphones, car mounts, and more, similarly has an Amazon page filled with “cu...

The cyberattack that forced the Colonial Pipeline offline is just one failure to address existing weaknesses and an escalating “ransomware pandemic,” experts tell The Verge. That leaves the nation’s energy infrastructure especially vulnerable, even though there are basic steps that could have been taken to prevent the crisis that’s unfolding now. “Yet another example of what is really a ransomware pandemic” “Honestly, I think for anyone who’s been tracking ransomware closely, this really shouldn’t be a surprise,” says Philip Reiner, CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology. “This is yet another example of what is really a ransomware pandemic that needs to be addressed at the highest level.” An escalating threat from bad actors, like the criminal group DarkSide that’s beli...

The Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine can now be administered to 12- to 15-year-olds, the Food and Drug Administration announced today. Previously, the shot was authorized for people 16 years of age and older. The companies asked the FDA to expand the authorization to include the new ages in early April, just after they released data showing that their vaccine was highly effective for that group. All of the 12- to 15-year-olds given the two-dose vaccine in a small study generated strong antibody response with no serious side effects, and none developed COVID-19. Later this week, a committee from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet to make recommendations on how the vaccine should be rolled out to this age group. The United States will likely need to vaccinate kids and...

Bird, the electric scooter company that helped launch the global micromobility boom, is planning to go public via a reverse merger with a special acquisition company, or SPAC, according to dot.LA. Bird is merging with Switchback II Corporation, a Dallas-based “blank check” company focusing on companies reducing carbon emissions, according to documents reviewed by the website. Bird is the latest transportation company, but one of only a few e-scooter companies, to go public. A record number of companies have gone public this past year by merging with SPAC shell corporations, which avoids the scrutiny of a traditional IPO. Bird is the latest transportation company, but one of only a few e-scooter companies, to go public Reports first surfaced last November of Bird’s SPAC ambitions, after Blo...

Photo-Illustration: by Vulture; @contrachloe; @donte.colley, @chaeyeonbot They say good editing goes unnoticed. Online, it goes viral. It’s clear in the best internet videos: Editing defines the aesthetic, humor, and power of online storytelling. None of the genre’s inherent absurdity would click into place without an editor’s eye for a perfectly devastating zoom, a video cut short a millisecond too early, or a freeze-frame right at the moment of climax, with text overlaid to really underline the point. More From This Series And yet, the internet video has long lacked definition as a discrete genre, with its own tropes, techniques, and history. Like any art form, this one has been shaped in part by the technology available at the time. In compiling this list of influential video edits, we ...

In an open letter today, the National Association of Attorneys General called on Facebook to abandon plans for an Instagram platform focused on children under the age of 13. The letter is signed by 44 different state-level attorneys general (including non-states like Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands), representing a majority of US territories. “It appears that Facebook is not responding to a need, but instead creating one, as this platform appeals primarily to children who otherwise do not or would not have an Instagram account,” the letter reads. “The attorneys general urge Facebook to abandon its plans to launch this new platform.” “The attorneys general urge Facebook to abandon its plans” Plans for the child-focused Instagram were first reported by Buzzfeed News in Ma...

YouTube has run the numbers and discovered what greeting its vloggers most use to open videos: “Hey, guys.” Those findings may not be surprising if you’ve watched a lot of YouTube, but the report actually shows a lot more, including what the runners-up are, how greetings have changed in popularity over time, and how video genre affects the most common openings. Let’s just jump into it! To get these findings, YouTube did quite a bit of data analysis, looking at the auto- and creator-generated captions from over a million videos. YouTube picked videos that had over 20,000 views from channels that had over 20,000 subscribers, so it is worth noting that the results are more reflective of how relatively popular videos open, rather than of every single video on the platform. The runners-up have ...