After the month has passed, the craft will spend another year gradually deorbiting.
It’s a rare achievement in spaceflight, and notable when LightSail relied partly on crowdfunding to make their project a reality. What’s important, though, is what comes next. The Scoiety intends to share data with others so they can implement or refine plans for solar sailing in their own vehicles, such as NASA’s asteroid-bound NEA Scout cubesat. You could see a wave of mini satellites that only need solar nudges to adjust their positions, and possibly larger spacecraft beyond that.
The GMT is an international effort to create a telescope that delivers images 10 times clearer than those produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. When it’s up and running, the GMT will help scientists tackle some of the biggest questions, like are we alone in the universe? It will allow astronomers to collect more light than any telescope ever built and at the highest resolutions yet.
But achieving this is no simple task. The team broke ground in 2015, and the telescope isn’t expected to be complete until 2027. That’s partly because of the complexity of the mirrors. Each primary segment is curved to a precise shape and polished to within a wavelength of light — about one-millionth of an inch. And thanks to an intricate honeycomb mold, the finished glass is mostly hollow, making it lightweight and easier to cool.
While this second segment took seven years, the University of Arizona was able to significantly speed up the front surface polishing process. The GMT team hopes replicating the technique will help future segments get through production even faster.
It is true that many of those downloads came shortly after the game’s launch. The creators were celebrating the 500 million mark in September 2016, or just weeks after its debut. Growth has clearly been much slower since — it’s just that the game managed to keep and foster its player base well after others gave it a pass.
The figure illustrates the challenge Harry Potter: Wizards Unite faces in gaining widespread adoption. There are legions of Pokémon Go players, and they might not be in a rush to take on a second game that plays like the one they already know. With that said, Pokémon‘s endurance shows precisely why you can’t rule out success for other Niantic games, even if they don’t quite become cultural phenomenons.
The Protenus’ 2019 Mid-Year Breach Barometer Report found that 60 percent of all breaches were due to hacking, including the single largest breach. In that incident, hackers targeted a medical collections agency and obtained the data of roughly 20 million patients, including those who’d used LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics. Their data was found for sale on the dark web.
Patient records aren’t the only sensitive information floating around on the web. This week, the City of Los Angeles warned that a breach may have leaked data on 20,000 police officers and applicants. The Bulgarian government is dealing with a major data breach that may have impacted five million people — in a country of seven million. And TrickBot malware may have hacked 250 million email accounts — including millions belonging to governments in the US, UK and Canada. Those are just a few of the most recent incidents.
While data breaches may feel all too common, the rate at which they’re increasing, especially in the medical world, is cause for alarm. Just a few years ago, we were surprised when researchers reported that 29 million patient records were breached over four years. Now, we surpass that in six months.
The service is currently limited to women in a wide range of sizes, including shoes from size 5 to 12. Men’s styles are coming in the near future. You won’t necessarily see all your favorite brands, but that’s not really the point — this is more about providing a helping hand to people who don’t have the time to shop, wouldn’t know where to start or want to try something outside of their usual brands.
It might stand a chance of success. Amazon has carried apparel for ages, but it’s far from a household name compared to fashion- and brand-specific stores. This would take advantage of its massive catalog and data to give you a personalized experience that many of those stores can’t offer — it’s not the same as having your own fashion consultant, but it might be close enough.
And yes, this pits Amazon against other companies who’ve had similar ideas. Personal Shopper is likely to clash directly with Stitch Fix, which offers similar functionality. The biggest difference, as Vogueexplained, is the option to preview what you’re going to get. Whether or not Amazon prevails is far from clear. It doesn’t have the biggest brands, but its enormous resources and familiarity give it better odds than many competitors.
The lawsuit also alleges that Locast exists to help AT&T and Dish avoid paying to carry broadcast content. Both DirectTV and Dish customers are directed to Locast on their set-top box menus. The lawsuit claims that when Locast retransmits signals, the broadcasters lose out on vital viewership information.
In its defense, Locast says its nonprofit status allows it to operate as a “booster” and strengthen a TV station’s signal to reach antennas. But as The Wall Street Journal points out, the fees broadcasters receive from pay TV distributors have become crucial to their survival. If Locast continues to grow, it could put a significant dent in the networks’ revenue. Launched in 2018, the service already reaches 35 million homes in 13 cities — an estimated 31 percent of the market.
This case may remind you of another. In 2014, broadcasters accused Aereo of copyright infringement. Aereo charged customers $8 per month to rent a physical antenna that offered local channels and cloud DVR service streamed to smartphones, tablets and computers. But broadcasters and the federal government claimed that was a violation of copyright law, as re-broadcasting content from the airwaves via the internet is not allowed. In the end, Aereo was forced to pay broadcasters $950,000. It’s too soon to guess whether Locast will face a similar fate.
Epic is finally ready to show a sliver of Fortnite season 10 a day before its August 1st debut, and it seems like nostalgia is the order of the day. The company has posted a brief story trailer suggesting that you’ll see locations, goodies and themes from the game’s two-year history, such as the golf carts from Lazy Links and seasonal items. It’s not certain just what will make the cut. If there’s a place or pickup you miss dearly, though, there’s a chance you might see it again.
“We are continually testing ways to give our members a better experience,” Netflix toldThe Next Web. “This was part of a test to see how we can improve video playback quality when a member is on the go. Only some accounts are in the test, and we don’t currently have plans to roll it out.” Netflix may be using an Android Q setting that allows developers to track step counts or figure out if you’re walking, biking or in a vehicle as you use their apps.
It makes a lot of sense Netflix wants to optimize video streaming in as many situations as it can, including when you’re watching on public transport. I’ve used Netflix as a soundtrack for walks, particularly shows I can largely just listen to like comedy specials,My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman or Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. So, there some clear use cases Netflix could be keeping in mind here, but the test will depend on whether users are comfortable letting it see how much they’re moving around instead of, you know, watching Netflix on their couch.
The festival will also include some YouTube-exclusive canned segments, including backstage moments that will sometimes pop up inside the live streams. In that light, Lollapalooza is as much a opportunity for YouTube to flex its creative muscles as it is about raking in views. Don’t be surprised if you see the company leaving more of its mark on festivals going forward.
It approached Netflix, Disney, Hulu (which Disney controls), HBO and Amazon about bringing their services to the new device, according to The Information. Facebook reportedly sees the streaming services as an additional selling point for the camera — its main intended purpose is for video calls through Messenger and WhatsApp. The system is also likely to include augmented reality features that could allow people to interact with virtual objects, like kids’ books, while they’re on a call.
If that seems familiar, Facebook said at its F8 developer conference in April that Portal users would be able to access Amazon Prime Video via the smart display. It added YouTube and news channels to the device in December. Portal also uses AI to track people with its camera as they move around rooms — the video chat device will apparently offer a similar feature.
Facebook is said to be aiming for an October release for the video chat device, which comes with a remote control. The company’s head of hardware Andrew Bosworth recently said Facebook would reveal “new form factors” of Portal this fall.
