Technology

Chinese state media says the country has safely landed a reusable spacecraft which it claims will provide a “convenient and inexpensive” method of getting to and from space. The craft launched on September 4th and landed on September 6th after spending two days in orbit, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Very little is known about the spacecraft, including even its basic design. There are no picture or renders of the craft, but there have been rumors it is a spaceplane similar to the Air Force’s X-37B. A Chinese military source told the South China Morning Post they could not provide details on the mission but that “maybe you can take a look at the US X-37B.” The X-37B is a spaceplane roughly a quarter the size of America’s Space Shuttle orbiters, a series of spaceplanes that ...

EA has apologized for putting a full-screen, in-game ad into its UFC 4 game, after angry fans protested on Reddit. First reported by Eurogamer, the commercial break, which featured a spot for Amazon’s show The Boys, was added to the $60 game about a month after its initial release. An EA spokesperson wrote in a Reddit post that the team had turned on ad placements in the game during the “replay” moments, and that while “this type of advertising inventory is not new to the UFC franchise,” it has typically been limited to “specific main menu tiles or Octagon logo placement.” A post on Reddit’s r/assholedesign board pointing out the issue had close to 100,000 upvotes. EA says it has disabled the ads. “It is abundantly clear from your feedback that integrating ads into the Replay and overlay e...

I’ve been sort of stuck in a rerun rut the past week or so (fine, OK, yes I’ve been rewatching Battlestar Galactica and last night I watched The Matrix. Keanu forever). Maybe it just feels comforting to watch a show or movie where you know the outcome when things in the real world are so uncertain and frightening? In any case, I’m going to push myself to watch something new (or at least new to me) this week Oh but, ICYMI, September 8th is Star Trek Day so maybe I’ll hold off on that “watch something new” pledge for a day or two. There are a lot of great new trailers just out, plus a second trailer for No Time to Die. And while technically the trailer for The Forty-Year-Old Version came out last week I’m squeezing it in because Radha Blank is amazing and I can’t wait to see it. [embedded co...

LG has confirmed its upcoming phone will be called Wing (the Wing?) and will be revealed at its announcement event on September 14th. The device is believed to have two screens in a swiveling form factor, with a recent teaser video showing what looks like a sliding mechanism that can rotate into a T shape. In addition to its swiveling screens, reports about the Wing so far have indicated the device will support 5G, have a triple-rear camera array with a 64-megapixel main sensor, and will run on a Snapdragon 7-series processor. The device will be LG’s first launched under its Explorer Project, a new mobile category the company says is aimed at “discovering new ways to interact with mobile devices… and challenging established user norms,” adding that the Wing will “deliver a new and di...

Amazon is banning foreign sales of plants and seeds into the US as authorities try to weed out who may be sending packets of mystery seeds to people who did not order them, The Wall Street Journal reported. The packets of seeds bearing postmarks from China have been arriving at homes around the world for several months, with the US Postal Service, Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of Agriculture all investigating the matter in the US. Many of the seed packets were labeled as toys or jewelry. As of July, more than 27 US states had reported incidents of unsolicited seed deliveries. Chinese authorities have said that the postmark labels were not authentic. The USDA says seeds and plants smuggled into the US could do harm to gardens, farms, and the ...

Twitch Sings, the streaming platform’s live karaoke game, is shutting down, the company announced. The company says it decided to close down the game effective January 1st, 2021 in order to “invest in broader tools and services that will help support and grow the entire music community on Twitch.” Twitch Sings launched in April 2019, and let streamers choose a song from its library to perform. Singers could belt one out solo or get friends to join for a duet. The channel doesn’t seem to have attracted a huge audience, however; while Twitch’s overall Music category has more than 3 million followers, Twitch Sings only accounted for 161,000 of those followers. “Looking ahead, we’re excited to share more about the future of music on Twitch and how we’re working to make Twitch the best place to...

A new Google Magenta project (created by an intern!) lets you mix lo-fi, hip-hop music tracks to build a custom music room in your browser, with no musical ability required. Magenta is designed to use Google’s machine learning systems for the creation of art and music, and the Lo-Fi Player is a fun example of what it can do. When you open Lo-Fi Player, you’re taken to a pixellated virtual “room” where you click different objects — a clock, a cat, or a piano, for instance— in the room to change the different tracks, like the bass line and the melody. “The view outside the window relates to the background sound in the track, and you can change both the visual and the music by clicking on the window,” Lo-Fi Player creator Vibert Thio wrote in a blog post. Thio writes that the team chose the f...

Amazon-owned cloud-based comic book platform Comixology appears to be offering a wide selection of Marvel’s Black Panther comics for free this weekend. The unannounced sale was noticed by tweeters and Redditors; many Marvel comics related to the fictional African country Wakanda, where Black Panther is set, are available for free. It’s not clear how long the “sale” will last, however; there doesn’t appear to have been any official announcement. The timing of the free event follows a week after the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played King T’Challa in the 2018 blockbuster Black Panther film, and other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Boseman had battled colon cancer for four years, and died August 28th. Included on the list of free comics at Comixology, at least ...

Ring cameras and doorbells will soon be able to connect with Lutron’s smart lighting systems, so you can set lights to turn on automatically when your Ring device detects movement. It’s a useful feature to either welcome home a family member arriving late at night, or scare off a would-be intruder at the door. Lutron Caseta, Caseta Pro, and RA2 Select systems will support the integration with all generations of Ring doorbells and cameras. Once connected, the linked lights will turn on for 15 minutes at 100 percent brightness. According to Lutron’s about page, however, there isn’t currently a way to adjust the settings so the lights turn off earlier or later, or to set them to turn on at a different brightness. You also can apply advanced motion settings, timed to turn the lights on when yo...

Nine months into 2020, there’s one question on a lot of people’s minds: “Are we there yet?” We want to get back to watching weird movies in theaters, eating inside restaurants instead of on the sidewalks, and hanging out with our friends, without that pandemic dread setting in. Bad news. We are not there yet. But even in the United States, which still has the highest death toll and case count in the world, there are some signs of progress. In the US, which has relegated contact tracing efforts to the sidelines, and whose testing program is a muddled mess, most of the focus is on finding a vaccine. It’s where a lot of people have pinned their “are we there yet” hopes. “When we have a vaccine” is also when people hope they can put down their masks and their worries, and live like it’s 2019 a...

We’re likely just weeks away from Apple taking the wraps off its 2020 iPhones, and the rumor mill is in full swing, hinting at some major changes this year. If you’ve been hanging on to your first-generation iPhone SE because you just love its squared-off edges, the newest iPhones could be the ones for you — there are already a lot of rumors pointing to a brand new design with squared edges instead of rounded ones. (If you’re keeping that SE because of its smaller size, there might be good news for you this year, too.) And all signs are pointing toward this being the year the iPhone gets 5G, which should set you up for faster data speeds — once the networks can reliably deliver them. There is still a lot of mystery surrounding the next iPhones — they haven’t leaked quite as much as, say, r...

Facebook has blocked the live stream of a man in France suffering from an incurable ailment who planned to broadcast his death, Agence France-Press reported. Alain Cocq, 57, has a medical condition that causes his arteries to stick together, and stopped all food and drink as of Friday night. He has used his condition to try to bring about changes to France’s right-to-die law, and announced he would live-stream his death on Facebook. “Our hearts go out to Alain Cocq and those who are affected by this sad situation,” Facebook spokesperson Emily Cain wrote in an email to The Verge on Saturday. “While we respect his decision to draw attention to this complex and difficult issue, based on the guidance of experts, we have taken steps to keep Alain from broadcasting live, as we do not allow the d...