Technology

After two days of intense reviews, NASA is giving its commercial partner SpaceX the thumbs-up to launch its first astronauts to space next week. There’s still more work to be done by both the agency and SpaceX, including another review on Monday, but officials decided there were no major issues standing in the way of the launch. “It was a good review, great discussion,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a press conference. “I think everybody in the room was very clear that now’s the time to speak up if there are any challenges.” Bridenstine noted that many people did speak up, and they had a lot of discussions about various aspects of the mission. “At the end we got to a ‘go,’” he said. “So we are now preparing for a launch in five short days.” On May 27th, SpaceX is slated to...

Glitch laid off “a substantial number of employees” on Thursday in an effort to cut costs and ensure “long term viability,” the company confirmed in an email to The Verge. Glitch said it had to “significantly cut operating costs” due to market conditions. At least 18 people were laid off, according to two former employees who asked to remain anonymous. Glitch had about 50 employees before the layoffs, the sources said. Glitch declined to comment on how many employees were laid off. The company said it is offering “severance, health insurance, and support in finding new employment” to employees who were laid off. Glitch CEO Anil Dash tweeted that the layoffs came as a result of being a “small company in a fiercely competitive space in a tough economy.” We had layoffs at Glitch this week. Th...

Seven months after he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to deal with $3.6 billion in personal debt, the reorganization plan laid out by Jia Yueting — the tycoon founder of troubled EV startup Faraday Future — has been approved by a judge. In overly simple terms, the majority of the many people and companies he owes money — largely thanks to the collapse of LeEco, the overly-leveraged tech conglomerate he built his fortune with in China — have agreed to swap their debt claims for pieces of Jia’s ownership stake in Faraday Future. They now only have a shot of being made whole if and when the struggling startup successfully completes a public listing on a major stock exchange. Founded in 2014, Faraday Future has spent more than $1.7 billion (around $900 million of which was Jia’s) on its own an...

Here’s something that can be easy to forget about comic book superheroes, given how popular they’ve become over the last decade: they’re really quite old. This is especially true for DC Comics characters like Batman and Superman, who were created in the 1930s. Comic books were extremely different then, and many superheroes of the Golden Age were specific to their era in ways that don’t necessarily translate to modern success outside of the odd period piece. Stargirl is a modern love letter to those old superheroes, but it never really sells you on why you should love them. Stargirl — which you can watch Mondays on DC Universe or a slightly edited for broadcasting on the CW on Tuesdays — begins 10 years before the present day in the middle of the final battle between the Justice Society of ...

They’re pulling the plug on the New York Auto Show. The show, which is typically held in April and draws over 1 million attendants, was delayed until August due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But organizers are now saying they won’t be able to meet that deadline and are focused on reviving the auto show in spring 2021. The Javits Center, which houses the auto show, is still being used as a field hospital The Javits Center, which houses the auto show, is still being used as a field hospital for patients with COVID-19. Currently there are no patients being treated there, though the convention remains in “standby mode” in case of future emergency. New York City was particularly hard hit by the virus, with over 196,000 confirmed cases and 16,000 deaths. “Since the beginning of this pandemic, we hav...

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is experiencing issues today, marking the fourth time in recent weeks. Xbox One users are currently reporting problems with signing into Xbox Live, accessing friends, and joining parties. The issues started at around 3:15PM ET, and are also affecting some multiplayer games. “We are aware that some users may be experiencing issues when attempting to sign in on Xbox One & Windows 10,” explains Microsoft. “Our teams are aware & working on a fix. Please follow here & on our status page for updates.” Microsoft says it’s also investigating issues affecting “multiple Microsoft 365 services,” suggesting the outage issues go further than just Xbox Live. Microsoft has experienced multiple outages with Xbox Live recently, and this is the fourth outage in rece...

A new leak hints at what to expect from Sony’s WH-1000XM4, the upcoming successor to the WH-1000XM3, one of the best wireless headphones on the market. The details come from Twitter user justplayinghard, who tweeted out information they obtained from a recent teardown of Sony’s Headphones Connect app. The code hints that the M4 headphones may be able to simultaneously pair with two devices, a feature not present in its predecessor. On the current model, you have to reconnect if you want to use a different device. The M4 may also include a feature called “Smart Talking,” allowing the headphones to detect voices and adjust the ambient sound so you can hear conversations without taking off the headphones. Its predecessor has something similar called Ambient Sound Mode, which lets you hear amb...

A large-scale study suggests chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine don’t help treat COVID-19, and it may even be harmful. Today, peer-reviewed journal The Lancet published a paper analyzing data from thousands of patients who took the drugs. Their outcomes were no better than those of people who didn’t — in fact, they were more likely to die or develop an irregular heartbeat. The analysis covers a registry of roughly 15,000 patients across multiple continents, all of whom were given either hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, or one of those drugs paired with a class of antibiotics called macrolides. It compares the group with roughly 81,000 patients who were not given the drugs. The results weren’t encouraging. People treated with either drug had a higher mortality rate, as well as an increased ...

Security researchers, hackers, and bloggers have had access to an early version of iOS 14 since “at least February,” according to Vice. There have already been many iOS 14 leaks over the past few months, and it seems possible the information came from this early version of the operating system. It’s common for small tidbits about Apple software updates to leak in the months and weeks before Apple officially unveils them. But it’s quite unusual for an entire pre-release build of iOS to hit the web months before its announcement — and this may be the first time it has ever happened this far in advance, according to a source referenced in Vice’s report. This might be the first time iOS has leaked so far ahead of its unveiling Current leaked features for iOS 14 include a new fitness app, a Pen...

Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish are returning for a new season of Tuca & Bertie, set to air on Adult Swim two years after Netflix’s decision to cancel the series. The network announced on Twitter today that a new season of the animated series, created by former BoJack Horseman producer and artist Lisa Hanawalt, will air in 2021. Adult Swim has ordered 10 episodes, according to The Wrap. The show follows two best friends as they navigate their adult lives, dealing with anxiety, relationship woes, and career struggles. “I’ve been a fan of Adult Swim shows since my teens, so I’m thrilled to bring my beloved fowl to the party and be a new voice for a fresh decade of absurd, irreverent, yet heartwarming adult animation,” Hanawalt told The Wrap. Tuca & Bertie first premiered on Netflix in M...

In the last week, factory employees have returned to work across the United States to make cars for the country’s four main auto manufacturers: Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Tesla. And each of those companies has published a plan showing how it will try to keep those workers from contracting or spreading COVID-19. Those plans largely take the same shape. They’re presented in glossy PDF pamphlets, each starting with a letter to employees from the respective company’s highest-ranking executive overseeing workplace safety. Like any corporate document, they occasionally get bogged down with platitudes. But they all largely describe a lot of the same basic precautions, including supplying employees with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks or enforcing physical ...

Microsoft is finally bringing cloud support to Outlook for Windows email signatures. It’s a feature that Outlook users have been requesting for more than a decade, and it has remained at the top of Microsoft’s most-requested feature list for Outlook for Windows for nearly three years. Microsoft originally acknowledged that it was planning some type of sync support for Outlook signatures back in September, and the company says it will now roll this out in a June update. Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscribers will get access to cloud signature support in Outlook for Windows, allowing users to have a consistent signature across devices. Many companies have had to turn to custom solutions to implement Outlook for Windows signatures that roam across devices, so official support from Microsoft...