Technology

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft did its job a little too well on Tuesday, when it tried to scoop up a handful of rocks from an asteroid named Bennu more than 200 million miles from Earth. The vehicle actually grabbed too much material with its robotic arm, jamming the lid at the end of the arm open — and letting part of the asteroid sample escape out into space. “We were almost a victim of our own success here,” said Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission at the University of Arizona, in a press conference. OSIRIS-REx’s mission is to bring a sample of asteroid material back to Earth so that scientists can study the rocks in a lab. But because OSIRIS-REx bit off more than it could chew, its mission team is racing to stow the sample inside the spacecraft’s belly, ...

Samsung would like you to believe its new 85-inch Interactive Display can bridge the gap between students in the classroom and students studying at home, now that blended-learning is the new normal across the country. In reality, it’s just a slightly bigger digital whiteboard — but assuming it doesn’t cost too much, the tweaked vision does sound intriguing. Now that COVID-19 has swept the country, some students are huddling around tiny Chromebook screens at home while others stay in class, and Samsung’s internet-connected digital whiteboard promises to let students and teachers collaborate with each other, whether they’re in that classroom drawing on the board or adding to it in real-time from their laptop at home. The goal here isn’t to necessarily connect everyone better – they’ve had a ...

Buying a refurbished device rather than one that’s brand-new can save you a ton of money. However, these products don’t usually get the spotlight from retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, or B&H Photo. You also won’t find them sitting on the homepage of Apple, Google, Nintendo, Sonos, or Olympus, to name a few. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find refurbs on these sites. First, a quick description of what “refurbished” means. If it has been refurbished, that likely means the product was either broken or roughed up enough to warrant a repair. It could also mean that whoever bought it simply decided they didn’t want it and returned it to the store. The definition of what makes for a refurbished product varies depending on the seller, though something that may ease some worry is that the...

The developer of Among Us, a social intuition murder mystery game that’s fast become one of the most popular multiplayer titles of the year, is currently battling against a particularly pernicious spam attack. The spam is promoting a mysterious online handle, “Eris Loris,” and it became bad enough that Among Us studio InnerSloth had to perform emergency maintenance starting late last night. Hacking and other forms of cheating in Among Us has grown considerably since the game emerged as a popular online pastime during the pandemic this past summer, according to a report from Kotaku. And Among Us has only grabbed more of the spotlight just these past few days, following a hugely successful Twitch stream from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) alongside high-profile streamers to encourage v...

A judge in California has rejected a request from the Department of Justice to reverse a previous decision allowing WeChat to remain active in US app stores. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said new evidence the government presented did not change her opinion about the messaging app, owned by Chinese company Tencent app. WeChat will remain active in US app stores for the time being. “The record does not support the conclusion that the government has ‘narrowly tailored’ the prohibited transactions to protect its national-security interests,” Beeler wrote in her decision. The evidence “supports the conclusion that the restrictions ‘burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.’” President Trump issued an executive order in August to ba...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17th. “The hearing will focus on the platforms’ censorship and suppression of New York Post articles and provide a valuable opportunity to review the companies’ handling of the 2020 election,” according to a press release. Last week, the New York Post published a story claiming that Hunter Biden introduced his father, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, to an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Reporters at other publications disputed the allegations in the story, and Facebook and Twitter both took action to restrict the story from spreading. Facebook reduced the story’s reach and said it was eligible for third-party fact-checking. Twitter banned l...

Facebook moderators working as independent contractors in Dublin say they’re required to work in the office, despite a new nationwide lockdown across Ireland, The Guardian reports. The moderators, employed by contractor CPL, say they were told they’re considered essential workers and therefore not bound by Ireland’s Level 5 restrictions, which require people to work at home unless they’re “providing an essential purpose for which your physical presence is required.” Earlier this week, Ireland became the biggest country to implement a strict lockdown to try to contain a new spike in coronavirus cases. As of Thursday, the country has had more than 54,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 1,871 deaths, Ireland’s Department of Health reported. Facebook said in a statement its “partners have star...

Two and a half years after Mark Zuckerberg floated the idea on a podcast, and several months after organizers said it would be ready to hear cases, Facebook’s independent Oversight Board is now up and running. In a call with reporters today, the board’s co-chairs said that they are now prepared to hear appeals from the billions of people who use Facebook and Instagram each day. The ability to appeal to the board will roll out gradually around the world over the next several weeks. And when it’s complete, one of the bolder experiments in platform governance will have finally begun. Let’s begin by taking a step back. One of the more striking things about our social networks, I have argued, is how terrible they are at customer service. If your post is taken down in error, or your account is s...

You might have seen that many journalists have just received PlayStation 5 units for review, but today we also got our closest look yet at the PS5’s new DualSense controller thanks to an unboxing video from YouTuber Austin Evans. We already knew that the DualSense has some familiar PlayStation hallmarks — a D-pad and four face buttons on the top half, two analog sticks on the bottom half, four triggers, and, like the PS4’s DualShock 4, a touchpad in the middle — and Evan’s video gives a good look at all of those features and the controller’s new design. But Evans didn’t use the controller with a PS5, so we don’t get to see things like the DualSense’s new haptic feedback and adaptive triggers in action. And despite the DualSense’s box only listing compatibility with the PS5, Evans did manag...

Federal regulators are keeping their eye on the rollout of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” experiment. This week, the automaker began beta testing its latest advanced driver assist software with a select group of customers, and so far, the government is taking a wait-and-see approach. In a statement, a spokesperson for the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would “monitor the new technology closely and will not hesitate to take action to protect the public against unreasonable risks to safety.” The statement also included some footnoting of Tesla’s decision to describe its driver assist feature as “self-driving” (emphasis ours): “As we have stated consistently, no vehicle available for purchase today is capable of driving itself. The most advanced vehicle technologies av...

A year after YouTubers launched a campaign to raise enough money to plant 20 million trees, the campaign is in a critical phase: planting the trees and ensuring their survival. Even though fundraising was a resounding success, making sure the planet gets its bang for that buck will be harder. The charity coordinating the tree planting, Arbor Day Foundation, says it’s on track to reach its goal of having all 20 million trees in the ground by the end of 2022. But it faced some bumps in the road this year as the ongoing pandemic and historic wildfires unfolded. Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson got the campaign, dubbed #TeamTrees, rolling last October as a way to commemorate his YouTube channel reaching 20 million subscribers. More than 600 YouTubers, including popular creators like Mark Rober (8.7M ...

OnePlus’ Buds usually cost $79, but they’re just $59 today at Amazon and B&H Photo. That’s a great price for a set of wireless earbuds that have good battery life with IPX4 water and sweat resistance. Check out my colleague Chris Welch’s review (and very fun video review by Becca Farsace above) to find out all of the details about these earphones. At $59, that price puts them at $10 above OnePlus’ latest model, the Buds Z. The biggest difference to form and fit is that the Buds Z use ear tips for better sound isolation than the standard Buds, which are rigid like AirPods and may not fit will in every type of ear. Currently, the Buds worked best when paired with OnePlus phones, but apparently an update is coming to the app in Google’s Play Store that will enable other phones to use all ...