Technology

YouTuber Logan Paul has struck a deal to fight former boxing megastar Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a “special exhibition” match on February 20th. The bout will be streamed as a pay-per-view on Fanmio. Mayweather is an undefeated champion with a 50-0 record, multiple world titles in five weight classes, and an Olympic bronze medal. Paul is best known for his controversial YouTube video where he filmed a dead body in a Japanese forest. He has fought in one sanctioned boxing match: a loss to fellow YouTuber KSI. Needless to say, this is unlikely to be a festival of evenly matched athletic prowess. But Mayweather is not above signing up to farcical contests for the spectacle and the payday. His 50th official win involved him coming out of retirement in 2017 to face UFC star Conor McGregor, who had ...

Aptera, the company that shuttered in 2011 after failing to secure funding for its three-wheeled electric car, is back with a new solar electric vehicle it claims never needs charging, at least, for most drivers. And it predicts its top model, with a battery of 100 kWh, can get up to 1,000 miles of range. The new three-wheeled, two-person (or two adults plus pet, as its specs suggest) vehicle has a solar roof array that can provide up to 45 miles of range per day, so if you have that top model and add the charge from the solar panels while it’s parked, then the 1,000 range seems … possible. Although, as Car and Driver points out, the vehicle isn’t charging while driving. The interior of Aptera’s new electric vehicleAptera “With Aptera’s Never Charge technology, you are driven by the ...

I finished The Undoing and while it was disappointingly messy with a plot that didn’t quite come together, I think we can all agree that 1) Nicole Kidman’s coats were amazing and 2) Hugh Grant should absolutely play more villains. I’m also kind of on a kick of catching up on shows I missed because I didn’t have premium cable, and just started season one of Homeland (I know, I know). Still deciding what I think but as I’m sure has been observed by many others, Carrie is very intense! New trailers this week include Liam Neeson in The Marksman and Ralph Fiennes in The Dig (big “the” theme this week), and I managed to find five non-holiday flicks for you (you’re welcome). [embedded content] The Marksman At some point, will Liam Neeson get a break from heroically rescuing innocent victims from ...

Update December 6th, 11:35AM ET: SpaceX successfully launched its latest mission to the International Space Station, using its upgraded Dragon capsule that will dock with the station tomorrow at about 1:30PM ET. Original story: This morning, SpaceX is set to launch its latest batch of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station, but the company is using a slightly different spacecraft for this flight than resupply missions of the past. SpaceX is flying its newly upgraded Dragon capsule to transport the goods to space — the same vehicle that the company has been using to fly astronauts to the station. SpaceX has been resupplying the space station since 2012, and for all of its 20 previous missions, the company has used the original version of its Dragon cargo capsule. SpaceX start...

As drones get smarter and the Federal Aviation Administration issues more waivers for its drone regulations, we’re likely to see more law enforcement agencies using them in their day-to-day, including for 911 calls. The formidable Cade Metz writes for The New York Times about what this looks like in practice, and to be perfectly honest, it’s extremely disconcerting, as Chula Vista, California officers “chase” a “suspect” using a drone: When the man left the car, carrying a gun and a bag of heroin, a nearby police car had trouble following as he sprinted across the street and ducked behind a wall. But as he threw the gun into a dumpster and hid the bag of heroin, the drone, hovering above him, caught everything on camera. When he slipped through the back door of a strip mall, exited through...

This past week I’ve been watching eBay, trying to decide if I should sell my PS5. I wouldn’t dream of becoming a scalper, but it’s getting hard to ignore just how much it’s worth. My daughter and I had beaten Astro Bot and Miles Morales, so I thought I’d peek at the resale market. Wow, are they worth a lot! And it’s not just the PlayStation 5 — I found that Xbox Series X and S, Nvidia’s RTX 3090, 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards, and AMD’s rival RX 6800 and 6800 XT GPUs are all commanding incredibly high prices on the resale market. It no longer surprises me how each big ticket holiday gaming gadget sells out nigh-instantly anytime they’re restocked; the incentive for scalpers is just too high. They’re so high even folks like me, who bought one intending to use it, might have to thin...

China’s Chang’e-5 mission completed a tricky docking maneuver on Saturday, as it prepares to return the soil samples it collected from the Moon’s surface back to Earth. Chang’e 5 launched on November 23rd atop a Long March 5 rocket, with four main spacecraft. The mission entered the lunar orbit on November 28th, and its lander and ascent vehicle landed on the Moon December 1st, while its service module remained in lunar orbit. The lander gathered rocks and soil, and on Saturday, docked in orbit with the service module. Those samples will now be put in a return capsule for the trip home, expected to land in Inner Mongolia later in December. If the mission is successful, it will make China only the third country to return samples from the Moon, more than 50 years after the US Apollo missions...

I’m here to tell you that cheap tablets are good. I’m not here to tell you that they are the future of computing or will replace your laptop for getting work done. But I will tell you they are great entertainment devices. The best way to experience a cheap tablet is to just install the apps you use for entertainment and relaxation: Kindle, Hulu, Prime Video, HBO Max, Pocket, whatever your vice of choice is. Don’t install or set up things like Twitter, Slack, The New York Times app, email, or anything that’s going to take away from leisure time and suck you into work or the dreaded doomscroll. This is a tablet you buy to watch video and read things, not to try to replace your laptop. I’ve been testing Samsung’s Galaxy Tab A7 for the past few months and found that it is an excellent example ...

A paper co-authored by former Google AI ethicist Timnit Gebru raised some potentially thorny questions for Google about whether AI language models may be too big, and whether tech companies are doing enough to reduce potential risks, according to MIT Technology Review. The paper also questioned the environmental costs and inherent biases in large language models. Google’s AI team created such a language model— BERT— in 2018, and it was so successful that the company incorporated BERT into its search engine. Search is a highly lucrative segment of Google’s business; in the third quarter of this year alone, it brought in revenue of $26.3 billion. “This year, including this quarter, showed how valuable Google’s founding product — search — has been to people,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on a call ...

After spending six years in space, a Japanese spacecraft just landed in the desert of southern Australia, bringing a small cache of asteroid rocks to the surface of Earth. It’s only the second time in history that materials from an asteroid have been returned to our planet. Eventually, scientists will open the spacecraft up, uncovering the precious rocks within to learn more about the asteroids that permeate our Solar System. The landing is the culmination of Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission, aimed at bringing samples of an asteroid back to Earth. After launching from Japan in 2014, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft spent four years journeying to an asteroid named Ryugu. The vehicle spent a year and a half hanging around the asteroid, mapping the rock’s surface and grabbing samples of material before head...

Tesla published its first-ever diversity report on Friday, which shows the automaker’s US leadership is 83 percent male, and 59 percent white. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Impact report shows that men represent 79 percent of Tesla’s workforce, and women 21 percent. “While women are historically underrepresented in the tech and automotive industries, we recognize we have work to do in this area,” the report states. “Increasing women’s representation at all levels, especially in leadership, is a top priority in 2021.” The company also acknowledges in the report that Black employees are underrepresented— only 10 percent of the workforce and 4 percent of leadership at Tesla are Black or African-American. “We know that our numbers do not represent the deep talent pools of Black and Afric...

In the US, COVID-19 vaccines are just around the corner, leaving the entire country peering out the window in anticipation of their arrival. Officials and healthcare systems, already taxed by skyrocketing case counts are making sure that everything is prepared when they show up. Here’s a few things still on their vaccine to-do lists: Save the dates: In the next few weeks, committees with the Food and Drug Administration will meet to decide whether or not to authorize vaccine candidates for Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna. The Pfizer vaccine is up first, with a meeting scheduled for December 10th. Moderna’s meeting will happen a week later, on December 17. The committee will meet to discuss the mountains of data from the clinical trials, and decide if they are safe and effective enough to be ...