Technology

I get it, there’s absolutely no part of you that wants to relive the terrible year we just lived through. But I implore you to make an exception for 2020 Game, a free web-based side scroller that offers a lighthearted take on last year’s events. It’s well-designed, creative, and — dare I say it — even laugh-out-loud funny in places, and well worth the 10 minutes or so it takes to complete. 2020 Game is the work of Max Garkavyy, who developed it alone over the course of six months. Each level takes the form of a major event or trend from last year, ranging from the early rush on toilet paper to the US presidential race. There’s even a brief TikTok dance interlude. The whole experience is complimented by some fantastic pixel-art graphics and great musical choices. Check out some more screens...

Lee Jae-yong — known as Jay Y. Lee in the West — the de facto leader and heir to the Samsung Group conglomerate, has been ordered back to prison for two years and six months on bribery charges, according to Bloomberg. The billionaire son of controversial Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, who died in October, was first jailed in 2017 in a succession scandal that saw the removal of president Park Geun-hye. Lee served just one year of a five-year sentence before a retrial was ordered in 2019. Lee had been accused of offering horses and other bribes to a friend of the former president to win government support for his succession at Samsung. Park is serving a 20-year sentence on a variety of charges including bribery related to Samsung. In December, Lee offered a rare public apology for his role in...

GitHub is admitting that a Jewish employee was fired in error and is offering him his job back. The news comes after the company hired an independent law firm to investigate the termination, and found that “significant mistakes were made.” The company’s head of HR, Carrie Olesen, is also resigning. “Yesterday evening, the investigation reached the conclusion that significant mistakes were made that are not consistent with our internal practices or the judgement we expect from our leaders,” wrote GitHub CEO Nat Friedman in an internal message to employees on January 16th. He said the company would be issuing a public apology on its blog this weekend. In the post, GitHub COO Erica Brescia said: “To the employee we wish to say publicly: we sincerely apologize.” The controversial firing came j...

I’m getting to the point where there’s so much to stream that I don’t know what to watch first, old shows I want to catch up on, or new shows/movies so I can keep up with all the references on Twitter. But! I am filled with hope for the coming weeks, as there are a slew of interesting-looking trailers for movies I have been waiting to see. [embedded content] The United States vs. Billie Holiday I sort of wish this movie had been named “Strange Fruit” after Holiday’s 1939 song that drew the ire of the FBI, but guessing a lot of people don’t know about this part of Holiday’s life. The great jazz singer who struggled with drug addiction saw the government wreck her career using an undercover sting operation, all over a controversial song. Really looking forward to watching this. Directed by L...

Social media platform Parler was all but wiped off the internet last week, but on Sunday, showed some signs of life. A message from Parler CEO John Matze, first noted by CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan– is now appearing at the site’s URL, with an image showing a “technical difficulties” banner, and a message. “Now seems like the right time to remind you all — both lovers and haters — why we started this platform. We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media,” the message reads, pledging to “welcome all of you back soon.” Amazon dropped Parler from its hosting platform earlier this month, saying in a letter it “cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against othe...

After experiencing technical difficulties Friday, the Signal messaging app appears to be back up and running. The company tweeted Saturday night that it was “back,” although added that some users may still see error messages in their chats. The company didn’t explain what caused the outage. Signal is back! Like an underdog going through a training montage, we’ve learned a lot since yesterday — and we did it together. Thanks to the millions of new Signal users around the world for your patience. Your capacity for understanding inspired us while we expanded capacity. pic.twitter.com/cRNV8kVtdF — Signal (@signalapp) January 17, 2021 For users still be seeing error messages in their chats — which the company said was a “side effect” of the outage that began around 11:30AM ET Friday— Signal twe...

Virgin Orbit — the sister company of billionaire Richard Branson’s space tourism outfit Virgin Galactic — will try a second test of its small satellite-launching rocket later today, months after it failed to reach orbit during a first attempt. It will also be the first time that the company tries to launch working satellites into space on behalf of NASA. Sometime after 1PM ET, Virgin Orbit’s customized Boeing 747 will take off from Virgin Galactic’s spaceport in the Mojave desert and ascend to 35,000 feet with the satellite-launching rocket attached to its wing. Once it reaches a predetermined location, the rocket is supposed to drop and ignite, taking the small satellites on board the rest of the way into orbit around the Earth. Virgin Orbit says the window for launch will last until 5PM ...

Amazon is facing a new lawsuit alleging that a deal between the company and five book publishers has created higher prices on e-books, The Wall Street Journal reported. The lawsuit filed by law firm Hagens Berman in a federal district court in New York, alleges that the publishers pay high commissions and other costs to Amazon, which in turn increases the retail price of e-books sold on the platform. Due to the deal between Amazon and the publishers— HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan — the Amazon price is the price the publishers charge other retailers as well, preventing other sellers from offering the e-books at lower prices, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the five publishers account for 80 percent of bo...

A new report looking into what went amiss with the rollout of Cyberpunk 2077 points to overconfidence from management at CD Projekt Red as a key problem, and reveals that “full development” of the game — announced in 2012— didn’t begin until 2016. Jason Schreier of Bloomberg interviewed more than 20 current and former CD Projekt staff, and found that the game’s development was plagued by unrealistic deadlines and technical issues. The company “hit the reset button” on the game in 2016, but a demo of Cyberpunk 2077 showed at E3 in 2018 was “almost entirely fake,” according to the report. The development also suffered from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with programmers on the PC version and testers of the console version working separately from each other. In the months leading up to ...

A critical NASA rocket test ended with a shutdown on Saturday, a little over a minute into what was planned to be an eight-minute test. This trial run was a vital checkpoint for NASA’s much-delayed Space Launch System. The SLS is set to play a key role in the agency’s Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the Moon. During today’s Green Run test, the four rocket engines in the SLS core fired for a little over a minute while anchored in NASA’s rocket test stand. The team had planned to have the engines fire for approximately eight minutes, or about the same amount of time it will take to launch future missions to the Moon. Instead, around a minute into the NASA broadcast of the test, a voice is heard saying “we did get a MCF [major component failure] on engine 4.” Shortly after,...

Millions of people in the US started buying face masks in 2020, and companies, unsurprisingly, rushed to take advantage of the surge of demand for a new product. At CES 2021, the gadget-ification of the mask was on full display. Leading the pack was Razer’s transparent voice-amplifying, light-up concept mask. AirPop promoted its Active+ Smart Mask, which monitors users’ breathing rates and alerts them via a smartphone app when the mask’s filter needs changing. Binatone’s MaskFone has built-in earbuds and a mic for phone calls. Turning masks into a status symbol is nothing new, nor is capitalizing on a disaster to make a buck. Before the pandemic, people wore masks to protect from air pollution, and they’re fashion items in China and India. Also before the pandemic, companies making masks a...

Update 3:10PM ET: NASA has moved up the time for the Green Run hot fire test. The NASA broadcast will now start at 3:20PM ET, and the test window opens at 4PM ET. Four huge rocket engines will roar to life on Saturday, in a crucial test for NASA’s powerful next-generation rocket. This long-awaited trial run won’t leave the ground, but it will be so powerful that officials have warned that it may be heard up to 60 miles away. Saturday’s test is the last step in series of tests that NASA calls a Green Run for the Space Launch System (SLS), a powerful rocket designed to launch missions to the Moon and deep space. It will test the 212 foot tall core of the SLS, which consists of four engines, liquid fuel tanks, and the computer and technical systems that NASA calls the “brains” of the rocket. ...