Technology

On Saturday, a Northrop Grumman spacecraft, designed to give a dying satellite a new lease on life, launched into space. Its objective is to latch onto an aging satellite that’s been in space for 16 years and prolong the old robot’s life in orbit by giving it a new set of engines and fuel. The spacecraft is named MEV-2, for Mission Extension Vehicle 2. MEV-2’s predecessor was the groundbreaking MEV-1 satellite, which launched in October 2019. MEV-1 made history in February when it successfully grabbed hold of another satellite already in orbit, marking the first time that two commercial satellites had docked in space. MEV-1’s target was an out-of-commission communications satellite called Intelsat 901, which has been in space for nearly 20 years. After docking with Intelsat 901, MEV-1 nudg...

Years before the pandemic, planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton was thinking about the best way to change the world. In conversations with her husband and son, she kept coming back to one thing: education. More specifically, teaching people skills that will help them continue to learn even after school and help make a difference in their own communities. “Every person has their own miraculous ability to find and solve problems,” Elkins-Tanton says. Elkins-Tanton is a professor at Arizona State University and the principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission to visit a metal asteroid. She’s also co-founder of Beagle Learning, a startup that has developed an online platform to support inquiry-based learning. In a nutshell, inquiry-based learning lets students guide their classes by aski...

Amazon’s Echo Studio smart speaker has never been cheaper than $170, where it’s at today at both Amazon and Best Buy. If you’re interested in an Alexa-powered speaker that sounds great with an interesting 3D audio feature and Dolby Atmos support, you should really check out the deal that Best Buy is offering. The $170 speaker includes a free Echo Show 5 smart display and a white Bluetooth-enabled Philips Hue smart bulb with the purchase (normally $300 altogether). So not only is this the lowest price, but it’s a fantastic value if you want to go all in on Amazon’s Alexa ecosystem. These complimentary products will be added to your cart automatically when you add the Echo Studio. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge B&H Photo is currently offering the OnePlus 7T for $400 (usually $600), th...

The partnership between Verizon and Disney seems to be working out well for both sides: today, the carrier announced that alongside the free 12 months of Disney Plus streaming it was already including with unlimited plans, it’ll now throw in Hulu and ESPN Plus, too. But the full bundle only goes to customers on either the Play More or Get More unlimited plans, which are Verizon’s most expensive options. Unlike before, where the free promo was only good for 12 months, now you’ll get continued access for as long as you remain with Verizon on those plans. The refreshed plans go into effect on August 20th. “Existing customers currently receiving 12 months access to Disney Plus on us can move to our new Play More and Get More Unlimited plans with The Disney Bundle included, or for $6 per month ...

A new online multiplayer co-op mode is heading to Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch Productions announced today. Legends, which follows four warriors of legendary renown, will be available for free this year. Its locations and enemies are inspired by Japanese mythology. “We designed Legends to be an exclusively cooperative gameplay experience,” Sucker Punch says. Players will be able to use matchmaking or play with friends in groups of up to four. In a full squad, players can try wave-based survival missions. The mode includes four character classes, with more details on their abilities to come. “With two players in Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, you’ll be able to play a series of co-op Story missions that escalate in difficulty, building on the foundation of combat from the single-player campa...

Google has published an open letter about a newly proposed government regulation that would compel it to pay media outlets for news content. Australians visiting their local Google homepage are presented with an ominous pop-up which warns that “the way Aussies use Google is at risk” and “their search experience will be hurt by new regulation.” It’s a bold lobbying move that puts Google’s arguments against the change in front of millions of Australians. Australia’s consumer watchdog pushed back, saying the letter “contains misinformation,” adding that “a healthy news media sector is essential to a well-functioning democracy.” Australia’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code law, which is currently in draft and targets Facebook alongside Google, follows a 2019 inquiry in Australia that found ...

Facebook has come under heavy criticism over the past year for how the social media behemoth has fumbled its approach to civil rights issues on the platform. A recent audit found that despite recent steps to expand its policies and prohibit discrimination, Facebook continues to undermine its own progress. A new report from The Washington Post digs into the ways the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropic organization founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, has fallen short of many of its stated goals as well. CZI is a separate entity from Facebook, but Black employees of CZI say that particularly when it comes to issues of racial justice, company leadership makes too many compromises. Some Black employees say that their voices have bee...

A bald eagle beat the crap out of a government drone mapping the shoreline of Lake Michigan, ripping off its propeller and sending it plunging to the lake’s bottom, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Yes. The agency operating the drone murdered by an eagle goes by the acronym EGLE. The agency says the incident happened near Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula area of Michigan last month. EGLE environmental air quality analyst and drone pilot Hunter King was using the drone to map shoreline erosion when the drama started. The drone started spinning as it was headed for home, King says, “like a really bad rollercoaster ride.” A couple of nearby eagle-watchers said they saw an eagle strike something, later confirmed to be the EGLE drone. Why the eagle at...

College student Liam Porr used the language-generating AI tool GPT-3 to produce a fake blog post that recently landed in the No. 1 spot on Hacker News, MIT Technology Review reported. Porr was trying to demonstrate that the content produced by GPT-3 could fool people into believing it was written by a human. And, he told MIT Technology Review, “it was super easy, actually, which was the scary part.” So to set the stage in case you’re not familiar with GPT-3: It’s the latest version of a series of AI autocomplete tools designed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, and has been in development for several years. At its most basic, GPT-3 (which stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”) auto-completes your text based on prompts from a human writer. My colleague James Vincent explains how it wo...

No Uber and Lyft rides in California? After a judge rejected the companies’ effort to delay an order that they classify drivers as employees, it seems inevitable. Uber and Lyft have until August 20th to comply with the order. But the companies have said they will need to go dark in the Golden State in order to retool their business. The judges may not have the last word. Uber and Lyft are counting on California’s notoriously mercurial voters to help them circumvent AB5, which went into effect in January and makes it more difficult for companies to use independent contractors. Uber and Lyft built their respective businesses on the concept of using freelance drivers who aren’t eligible for traditional benefits like health insurance and paid leave. Earlier this year, the companies, along with...

Secure messaging app Telegram has launched an alpha version of one-on-one video calls on both its Android and iOS apps, the company announced, saying 2020 had “highlighted the need for face-to-face communication.” In a blog post marking its seventh anniversary, Telegram described the process for starting a video call: tap the profile page of the person you want to connect with. Users are able to switch video on or off at any time during a call, and the video calls support picture-in-picture mode, so users can continue scrolling through the app if that call gets boring. Video calls will have end-to-end-encryption, Telegram’s blog posts states, one of the app’s defining features for its audio calls and texting. Telegram “Our apps for Android and iOS have reproducible builds, so anyone can ve...

A minor face-covering controversy broke out this week, thanks to a widely-misinterpreted paper involving masks, lasers, and spit. The study, which came out in Science Advances on August 7, was pretty straightforward. It laid out a method that other scientists could use to test masks in their own labs. Using a dark box, some lasers, a cell phone camera and a relatively simple algorithm they figured out a way to test how effective different kinds of masks were at containing spit. People spit when they talk. They also spew droplets out of their mouth when they breathe heavily, sneeze, or sing Hamilton tunes. That humid mess can contain viruses, which is one reason that everyone is now encouraged to wear a mask in public — to reduce the chances that you’ll pass the coronavirus that causes COVI...