Blue Origin will stream the launch on its site. | Screenshot: The Verge Space tourism company Blue Origin has set its sights on a New Shepard launch window that starts tomorrow at 9:30AM ET, its first attempt since the rocket booster failed during its September 2022 launch. The company says its New Shepard rocket will launch from its Launch Site One in West Texas. Blue Origin will livestream the launch on its website 20 minutes before the countdown.This will be the 24th launch of the reusable New Shepard rocket, and will carry 33 science payloads. Most of its launches have been uncrewed, but as Engadget noted, six of them have had human beings on board, including William Shatner. Last year, Blue Origin’s uncrewed NS-23 launch failed, prompting a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation.The FAA... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, may have broken the European Union’s tough new Digital Service Act rules, regulators said as they announced the opening of a formal investigation today. A key concern of the investigation is “the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel,” the European Commission says.In a press release, the Commission said it will look at X’s attempts to counter the spread of illegal content on its platform and will examine X’s efforts to stop “information manipulation” via its Community Notes system and other policies. It’s also looking into matters beyond content moderation, including “deceptive design” relating to “the so-called Blue checks,” advertising... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney has dropped Jonathan Majors from his leading Marvel role as Kang the Conqueror after he was found guilty of reckless assault in the third degree and of harassment, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The verdict comes after a two-week trial following Majors’ arrest last March after an altercation with his ex-partner Grace Jabbari.Marvel had been setting up for Majors to be the next supervillain for the franchise, but now the company is changing course. It’s unclear if Disney plans to recast Kang or change its planned storylines more drastically. Majors had already appeared in both seasons of Loki and in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and was set to star in one of the next planned Avengers movies, subtitled The... Continue reading…

Image: May Mobility You probably haven’t heard of autonomous vehicle operator May Mobility because the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company is exceptionally good at avoiding the types of headlines generated by other AV companies. In its six years in operation, there haven’t been any injuries, crashes, blocked intersections, or mass layoffs. While there have been some struggles, the company has proven to be an outlier among AV operators by continuing to raise money while others have seen their funding dry up. And now, May Mobility is ready to go fully driverless, a milestone that has the company taking stock of its successes — and looking ahead to the future. “The most capital-efficient AV company that the world has ever seen”“It’s not robotaxis,” May... Continue reading…

Playing a game that heavily relies on your CPU? For the best possible performance, you'll want to ensure that other things aren't eating up processing power in the background. In this guide, we'll look at ways to reduce CPU usage for the smoothest gaming sessions, regardless of your processor.

Image: Xfinity Xfinity is notifying customers of a “data security incident” it says resulted in the theft of customer information, including usernames, passwords, contact information, and more. In a notice on Monday, Xfinity says “there was unauthorized access” to its systems from October 16th to October 19th, 2023.Xfinity traces the breach to a security vulnerability disclosed by cloud computing company Citrix, which began alerting customers of a flaw in software Xfinity and other companies use on October 10th. While Xfinity says it patched the security hole, it later uncovered suspicious activity on its internal systems “that was concluded to be a result of this vulnerability.”The hack resulted in the theft of customer usernames and hashed... Continue reading…

The CMA has a deadline of February 25th to make a final decision. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Adobe is, unsurprisingly, standing its ground after the UK’s competition watchdog slammed the brakes on its $20 billion plan to purchase the cloud-based product design platform Figma. Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally determined that the deal would harm the product design software market should it go ahead — effectively blocking the acquisition until Adobe addressed the regulator’s concerns, which involves the divestiture of “overlapping operations” like Figma Design and the company’s competing Adobe XD app.A response to the CMA’s request for remediations, dated December 14th, was published on the Authority’s website on Monday. In short, Adobe is refusing to make any of the suggested compromises to... Continue reading…

A dog passes a pile of destroyed items that were removed from a once flooded home as residents begin the recovery process from Hurricane Harvey August 31, 2017 in Houston, Texas. | Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images More than 16 million people in the contiguous US — roughly 5 percent of the population — live in a place with heightening flood risk and a shrinking population, according to new research. It makes the case that “climate abandonment areas” are becoming a more prevalent phenomenon in the US as people avoid places particularly vulnerable to climate-related disasters.What’s a climate abandonment area? It’s a census block where flood risk has grown high enough to start pushing people to leave. Many of these areas lie along the Texas Gulf Coast, coastal Florida, and the mid-Atlantic. But it’s by no means confined to these regions, which can get hit repeatedly by storms during the Atlantic hurricane season. Climate abandonment areas are... Continue reading…

Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) are two different partitioning schemes that you can use for your SSDs and HDDs. They play a vital role in managing the disk structure, and determining how the data is stored or accessed. MBR dates back to the 80s, meaning it works well with older computers with legacy BIOS firmware, whereas GPT is a more modern alternative that was developed as a part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

Around a year ago, Intel put its foot forward in the discrete GPU market with its most powerful Alchemist GPUs — the Arc A750 and Arc A770. Much more powerful than the entry-level Arc A380 released months prior, these mid-range cards sought to offer more competition in the Nvidia-AMD duopoly. And, despite some initial hiccups, Intel managed to do exactly that in the mid-range segment, becoming a strong contender for one of the best GPUs if you're on a budget.

YouTube Former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan has been in prison since August for illegally selling state gifts — but that hasn’t stopped him from campaigning. The leader’s political party released a four-minute video on Sunday evening that used AI-voice cloning technology to replicate his voice. In the video, which aired during a “virtual rally” in Pakistan, the dubbed audio is accompanied by a caption that states, “AI voice of Imran Khan based on his notes.”Jibran Ilyas, a social media leader for Khan’s party (known as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI), posted the video on X. Founding Chairman Imran Khan's speech in AI voice. Can't stop praising Dr Asma for staying up 36 hours to get this done in time, Nausheen for... Continue reading…

Shanghai recently played host to TECNO's much-anticipated annual event, Future Lens 2023. The renowned mobile technology giant unveiled three pioneering imaging technologies set to reshape the smartphone camera landscape. Showcasing these innovations marked another milestone in TECNO's relentless pursuit of cutting-edge mobile imaging.