Latest News - Page 1204

A study describing the new material has been published in the journal Nature.

MIT chemical engineers have created a new material dubbed 2DPA-1, which is stronger than steel, as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The study's authors suggest it could be used in several applications, such as a lightweight, durable coating for automotive parts or cell phones or as a building material in bridges or other structures.

SpaceX is helping to carry out the NROL-87 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The Falcon 9 carrying the classified payload was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on February 2nd at 12:27:26 p.m. PST (3:27:26 p.m. EST; 2027:26 UTC). The NRO owns the U.S. government's fleet of spy satellites, which map the Earth while monitoring communications between foreign entities and tracking global naval movements.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned safely to Earth just over eight minutes following launch, landing at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4. Per the NRO's request, SpaceX's livestream coverage of the event ended shortly after the first stage touched down.

A study on the new material has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst engineered a new metamaterial, a material that has a property not found in naturally occurring materials. The "elasto-magnetic" metamaterial comprises an elastic, rubber-like substance with tiny magnets embedded throughout it.

The International Space Station (ISS) will likely be decommissioned in late 2030.

NASA has provided a updated timeline for the ISS, entitled the "International Space Station Transition Report," which highlights what the station plans to achieve before the end of its operational life. The ISS National Laboratory is currently responsible for utilizing half of NASA's resources aboard the space station, facilitating experiments and research for government agencies, academic institutions, and commercial users.

The Artemis I mission will now launch no sooner than April 2022.

NASA had originally scheduled the launch for late 2021, but it has since suffered multiple delays. A pre-flight "wet dress rehearsal" was scheduled for late February, but this has been delayed until at least mid-March, thanks to a long list of tasks NASA still needs to attend to for the mission.

Astronomers observing near-Earth objects have found that a spent SpaceX rocket stage from a mission years ago is on track to collide with the Moon.

The astronomer is Bill Gray, known for the Project Pluto software that is used to track many near-Earth objects such as asteroids, comets, etc. Gray called upon fellow astronomers, both amateur and professionals, to track SpaceX's object and make additional observations. With the acquired data, Gray believes that SpaceX's spent upper rocket stage will likely impact the far side of the Moon close to the equator on March 4.

Now, if the observations prove to be accurate and SpaceX's spent rocket debris crashes into the Moon, does Elon Musk's company get sued? Firstly, no one actually owns the Moon, so no country could sue the company for debris crashing into its surface. However, if the debris were to crash into a rover, then there could be a precedence for legal action as the Outer Space Treaty of 1966, and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Causes by Space Objects of 1972 states countries can make legal claims against other countries if their spacecrafts are damaged by other spacecrafts.

Russia's central bank has been pushing the government for an outright ban on cryptocurrencies, citing that digital dollars are a threat to Russia's financial system.

Despite the pleads from the Bank of Russia to ban cryptocurrencies, the Kremlin has seen an opportunity to make money by regulating the sector and has provided estimates for the total market value held by Russians. According to a report from Bloomberg, Russians currently hold more than 16.5 trillion rubles or $214 billion worth of cryptocurrencies in various forms, which is about 12% of the total value of global holdings, or around a third of Russia's stock index market capitalization.

The publication reports that two people working on the regulation proposals said that these estimates were conceived through an analysis of IP addresses from people that were visiting the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It should be noted that Russia is also the third-highest country for Bitcoin mining, and while the Bank of Russia urges the Kremlin to do a sweeping ban on cryptocurrencies, the Russian government seem to have obeyed the demands of Russia's President Vladamir Putin, who instructed authorities to create a regulatory process for the emerging currency.

A team of astronomers captured an incredible image of the core of our Milky Way galaxy, showing "the best insight yet into the population of mysterious 'radio filaments' found nowhere else."

The image was published by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory and is comprised of 20 separate observations that took more than 200 hours of time to obtain. The radio telescope used to make the observations is a 64-antenna radio telescope called the MeerKAT array, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The array of extremely sensitive antennas was focussed at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, approximately 25,000 light-years away from Earth.

The below image showcases parallel radio-emitting magnetized threads astronomers describe as "filaments". These filaments consist of emissions from the galactic center where the 4 million solar mass supermassive black hole Sagittarius A resides at the brightest point. Researchers behind the report say that the detail of this image may be a goldmine for scientific research.

It seems that many people within the US public don't seem to believe that the Space Force is an authentic branch of the US military.

Back in October of last year, a Space Force captain was traveling with their partner and arrived at the Spirit Airlines ticket counter to receive their ticket. The Space Force captain asked the ticketer to apply the waived baggage fee for active-duty military personnel after explaining they were an officer with Space Force. The Spirit employee didn't believe the officer was on active duty or that the branch of the military existed, even after the officer showed the employee a military-issued ID card.

The officer spoke to Military.com, saying, "In the moment, I was flabbergasted. We tried to take it on methodically and convince him that the Space Force was real." Former President Donald Trump signed in the Space Force under the Department of the Air Force two years ago, and it seems that despite the time, many individuals don't seem to believe in its existence.

NASA has taken to its blog to explain that the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to observe a region of space called the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex.

The Chamaeleon Cloud Complex is a star-forming region that stretches 65-light years wide. The above photograph is a composite image called Chamaeleon Cloud I (Cha I), and it showcases the reflection nebulae glowing with the light of the young blue stars. Additionally, the dusty dark clouds seen throughout the image are regions of space where stars are forming. Radiant knots are also seen throughout the image. These are called Herbig-Haro objects.

An infamous streamer and YouTuber has been exposed for scamming his audience out of $500,000 through a cryptocurrency scheme.

The streamer and YouTuber is Paul "Ice Poseidon" Denino, who previously streamed on Twitch before the platform banned him back in 2017. Since then, Ice Poseidon has been streaming on YouTube, where he used his audience to secure investments into a cryptocurrency that he created called CxCoin, which Poseidon claimed would be a platform that streamers would be able to use to receive donations in cryptocurrencies.

The project received around $500,000 in donations, and according to Coffeezilla, a YouTuber that investigates other content creators for fraud, Ice Poseidon withdrew $300,000 out of the projects liquidity pool after stating that the invested funds were "locked" and that he wasn't able to pull the rug out from under the project "even if he wanted to". Coffeezilla interviewed Poseidon where he expressed little remorse for his actions, saying that he was "looking out" for himself and that it was everyone else's fault for "putting too much emotion into it".

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that Tesla will be recalling a selection of its vehicles ranging from 2016 - 2022.

Reports indicate that Tesla announced last week it would be rolling out its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software to an thousands of more vehicles, bringing its total 60,000 from what was only a couple of thousand back in September, 2021. The car manufacturer is currently testing the FSD beta on tens of thousands of vehicles that are driving on public roads, while simultaneously the NHTSA and Tesla have said that the software doesn't make the are "autonomous".

Back in October, 2021 Tesla said to the regulator that it has rolled out a feature called "rolling stop". Tesla stated that this feature would only work if the car was travelling below 5.6 miles per hour and there was no moving cars, pedestrians, or cyclists detected in the area. Reports indicate that this new feature violated state laws as the affected vehicles didn't come to a complete stop, resulting in the regulator issuing a recall.

MSI has just revealed its new SPATIUM M450 series SSDs available on the super-fast PCIe 4.0 standard and using high-quality, high-density 3D NAND flash.

The new MSI SPATIUM M450 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs come in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities with speeds topping out at 3.6GB/sec (3600MB/sec) reads, and up to 3GB/sec (3000MB/sec) writes on the 1TB model. MSI's new SPATIUM M450 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD in the 500GB capacity offers 3.6GB/sec (3600MB/sec) reads, and up to 2.3GB/sec (2300MB/sec) writes, while the 250GB model has up to 3.5GB/sec (3500MB/sec) reads and up to 1.2GB/sec (1200MB/sec) writes.

All of the new MSI SPATIUM M450 SSDs use the Phison's E19T controller, arrive in the M.2 2280 form factor, and are -- as always -- backward compatible with PCIe Gen3, Gen2, and Gen1. There's a 5-year warranty on the drives, or once you hit their TBW (terabytes written) which is up to 150, 300, and 600 for the 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB models respectively.

Netflix has slowly updated its user interface over the years and as more competitors enter the streaming space -- Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu -- but it looks like a much bigger redesign is in the works.

The new redesign for Netflix was spotted by BGR, who noticed that when visiting Netflix through his browser he was greeted with a new style Netflix. It's not available for everyone just yet, but the Netflix redesign might just be a glitch in the Matrix... or it could be a sign of some things that will be changing with Netflix in the coming months.

It looks like Netflix could be offering up some of its more secret categories, upright in front of you now -- where you can see from left to right there's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window and the categories deadpan, absurd, and offbeat. Meanwhile, something like Transformers gets categories including sci-fi, adventure, alien sci-fi, and sci-fi movie.

You've just walked into an Apple Store and plonked down around $449 for the absolutely amazing (I personally purchased a pair, and they are the best headset I've ever used) Apple AirPods Max headphones... but what do you put it in?

A $980 bag from Gucci, poser.

Gucci's new "Ophidia case for AirPods Max" include style (and price) that only Gucci can pull off, but if you're into that type of thing then I'll let Gucci explain it best: "The Aria collection explores Gucci's archives, combining vintage-inspired details with the contemporary".

Sony currently has about $10 billion left to spend on future acquisitions, buyouts, and share buybacks.

Back in May 2021, Sony outlined its spending budget for its fourth mid-year plan which stretches from FY21 - FY23 (March 2024). The company's board of directors authorized a 2 trillion yen budget (roughly $17.4 billion) for strategic investments, acquisitions and buyouts, and share repurchases.

Sony has now revealed it has spent 850 billion yen (roughly $7.4 billion) of its allocated budget, leaving about $10 billion left for further purchases. Sony's current bill includes the substantial $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie, as well as billions in share buybacks.

Sony's current- and next-gen console duo have sold nearly 2 billion games combined, new figures reveal.

Although console shipments (and sales) are dropping, software is rising exponentially with over $3 billion earned from digital games and add-ons in Q3. Sony also provided updated figures on PS4 and PS5 combined software sales...and the numbers are quite surprising.

According to our findings, the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles have sold 1.817 billion games as of December 31, 2021. This data is based on the 1.181 billion software sales figure Sony provided in Q3'19 added to the sum of FY20's full-year software sales and FY21 Q1-3 data.

Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie includes a hefty incentive program for the Destiny-maker's workers.

In its recent Q3'21 earnings report, Sony confirmed it plans to spend a sizable portion of its Bungie buyout offer on retention. Sony says it is prepared to pay 1/3rd of its $3.6 billion buyout proposal, or roughly $1.2 billion, on a long-term incentive plan that will reward Bungie employees who stay with the company.

Sony will pay the remainder $2.4 billion for a direct buyout of Bungie's private shares. The bonus is aimed at keeping Bungie's current staff intact after the acquisition.

Sony's latest Q3'21 earnings report delivers updated PS4 and PS5 shipment numbers...and they're not incredibly impressive.

The worldwide semiconductor shortage is taking a big bite out of consumer hardware sales. Sony's video games consoles are being hit particularly hard by the scarcity, leading to constrained supply of its PlayStation 4 and newer PlayStation 5 consoles.

Choked supply lines have dropped overall sales of the PS5, which has not met the PS4's shipments during the same period. The PS5 has now shipped 17.3 million units worldwide in its first 13 months, as compared to the PS4's 20.2 million units sold during the same period (a 2.5 million difference).

Delay season strikes again: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the new game from Batman Arkham series developer Rocksteady, has been pushed back to 2023.

Warner Bros. Games, a subsidiary of WarnerMedia, has delayed one of its most anticipated games to next year. Sources tell Bloomberg that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been moved from its expected 2022 launch to an undetermined release in 2023.

Just days ago WarnerMedia CEO Justin Kilar said the company would deliver "full slate of highly anticipated games" in 2022, and re-iterated original launch windows for Gotham Knights and the new Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy. We noted Suicide Squad's absence, and we also noted that any one of the 2022 games could be delayed.