NASA’s successful asteroid impact test created a beautiful mess, apparently. As the Associated Press reports, astronomers using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile have captured an image revealing that DART’s collision with Dimorphos left a trail of dust and other debris measuring over 6,000 miles long. The spacecraft wasn’t solely responsible — rather, the Sun’s radiation pressure pushed the material away like it would with a comet’s tail.
The trail is only likely to get larger, according to the researchers. It should eventually stretch to the point where the dust stream is virtually unrecognizable from the usual particles floating in the Solar System. NASA didn’t create headaches for future probes and explorers. The space agency chose Dimorphos (a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos) as the deliberate crash wouldn’t pose a threat to Earth.
The capture was about more than obtaining a dramatic snapshot, of course. Scientists will use data collected using SOAR, the Astronomical Event Observatory Network and other observers to understand more about the collision and Dimorphos itself. They’ll determine the amount and speed of material ejected from the asteroid, and whether or not DART produced large debris chunks or ‘merely’ fine dust. Those will help understand how spacecraft can alter an asteroid’s orbit, and potentially improve Earth’s defenses against wayward cosmic rocks.
Meta’s quarterly revenue dipped for the first time ever in the second quarter. It’s looking to make those numbers go back up and keep smiles on investors’ faces. One of the strategies it’s employing to do that is by attempting to squeeze more money out of Instagram. As such, it will shove ads into more areas of the app, namely the Explore feed as well as the feed of posts from a user’s profile.
Brands can now place ads in the Explore feed, but profile feed ads are still in the testing phase. The company will also offer some creators the chance to earn a cut of revenue from ads that are displayed in their profile feeds.
Meta announced a slew of other updates for its advertising products. Some of those will impact Instagram. For one thing, the company will try out augmented reality ads in both the feed and Stories. Meta suggests that brands might use these to let people test virtual furniture in their home or get a closer look at a car.
Meta
In addition, the company is experimenting with new formats for ads in Facebook and Instagram Reels. These include a “post-loop” format — skippable ads lasting between four and 10 seconds that play after a reel. After the ad finishes, the reel will play again. The company is also testing image carousel ads, which you may start to see at the bottom of Facebook Reels starting today. In addition, brands will have access to a free library of music to use in Reels ads.
As for how many ads you’ll actually see, that may be different for each person. You may or may not see more of them, but they’ll at least pop up in places where they weren’t present before. “The number of ads across the platform varies based on how people use Instagram,” an Instagram spokesperson told Engadget. “We closely monitor people’s sentiment — both for ads and overall commerciality.”
It doesn’t seem that Meta is considering the sentiment that some people don’t want to see ads at all. The company swiftly took action against an unofficial, ad-free Instagram client that popped up last week.
Update, 5PM ET: This post originally stated that ads would appear in a profile’s grid view. They don’t show up there, but they can appear in the profile feed.
Crypto is still loaded with uncertainty, but Mastercard is betting that it can assuage buyers’ minds. The credit card giant has introduced a Crypto Secure service meant to boost trust in crypto purchases. The offering uses AI from CipherTrace (a blockchain security firm Mastercard bought in 2021) to create a “risk profile” for digital asset providers and help card issuers decide whether or not to approve a transaction. Your bank might block a purchase if a merchant has significant fraud problems.
The system shows color-coded risk ratings that vary from green (safe) to red (dangerous). Mastercard also offers a “benchmark” rating to compare with a peer financial group, and helps issuers track the volume of approved and declined transactions. The company already uses a similar method for conventional currency — it’s just shifting the concept to the crypto realm.
The service might not thrill you if a seemingly innocuous crypto buy falls apart. As Mastercard’s Ajay Bhalla explains to CNBC, though, this is as much about helping companies as it is customers. Crypto Secure ideally helps card providers navigate the current regulatory maze for virtual assets. They shouldn’t run into trouble by approving a shady deal that leaves people stranded.
As it is, Mastercard has a vested interest in improving the reliability of crypto transactions. It started supporting some cryptocurrency payments in 2021, letting more retailers adopt the technology. The more trustworthy those payments are, the more Mastercard can profit from them. Regardless of the motivations, you might not mind if you find more places to spend your Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Twitter has agreed — once again — to Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company for $54.20 a share. In a statement, Twitter confirmed it had received Musk’s letter that “the intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.”
The agreement follows months of legal drama after Musk tried to back out of his original agreement to buy the company for $44 billion this spring. The two sides were set to go to trial later this month as Twitter attempted to force Musk to keep up his end of the agreement. Musk had claimed Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform, and had raised concerns about issues disclosed by the company’s former head of security who filed a whistleblower complaint against the company.
Twitter issued this statement about today’s news: We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.
But Musk, once again, abruptly reversed course on Tuesday, telling Twitter that he would be willing to proceed with the original terms of the deal. In the letter filed with the SEC, Musk’s lawyers say they will go ahead with the agreement first struck in April if Delaware Chancery Court will “adjourn the trial and all other proceedings related” to the ongoing lawsuit.
It’s not yet clear when the acquisition could actually close. Twitter’s shareholders have already voted to approve the deal, but both sides will now also need to wait for Delaware’s Chancery Court’s response.
Musk, who has said he intends to take Twitter private, could eventually bring dramatic changes to Twitter. He has publicly mused about opening sourcing the site’s algorithms and taking a more lax approach to content moderation. In messages to CEO Parag Agrawal, made public last week, he also stated that he wanted to “unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.”
Kinetic installation artist David Bowen has given a rhododendron a really big knife, the power to use it, and therefore, a degree of agency not enjoyed by the kingdom Plantae since the Cambrian era. His latest piece, Plant Machete, melds a woody shrub …
Bulletin, Meta’s foray into the newsletter subscription space, is going away in early 2023, as The New York Times first reported. The company confirmed to Engadget that it will pay out all Bulletin writer contracts. Writers can keep earning subscription revenue until the service shutters, and take their email lists and content archives to other platforms if they wish.
“Bulletin has allowed us to learn about the relationship between Creators and their audiences and how to better support them in building their community on Facebook,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. “While this off-platform product itself is ending, we remain committed to supporting these and other Creators’ success and growth on our platform.”
Meta launched the Bulletin platform in June 2021 amid a boom in newsletter subscription services driven by the likes of Substack. Closing down Bulletin in early 2023 means it will have lasted a little over 18 months.
The company brought in prominent figures including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Malcolm Gladwell and Queer Eye‘s Tan France to use Bulletin, but it evidently wasn’t as successful as Meta hoped. The Times notes that some of the writers have six-figure contracts.
Meta will shift resources from Bulletin into Facebook, with the aim of making the latter more of a place where people can discover engaging content. It plans to take what it learned from Bulletin and apply that to its other creator-focused products.
Recent reports have suggested that Meta is restructuring parts of the company as part of an effort to focus on core products and cut costs. The company has also reportedly warned staff about possible layoffs. Many other tech companies are feeling the sting of an economic slowdown. Substack, which just released an Android version of its app, laid off 14 percent of staff in June.
Motive and EA have finally shared a gameplay trailer for their long-expectedDead Space remake. To an extent, the clip shows what you’d expect. It’s a familiar retelling of Isaac Clarke’s horror-filled mission to the mining ship USG Ishimura, but with much-improved visuals and sounds that make better use of modern hardware. You’re still severing the limbs of Necromorphs and floating through zero-gravity segments, just with eerie volumetric lighting and more realistic, context-sensitive sounds.
It’s not quite a rehash, thankfully. Isaac is no longer silent like he was in the 2008 original, and there’s a better feel for a story that involves the battle for sanity and discovering the fate of Isaac’s girlfriend Nicole. To some extent, the remake is an opportunity to refine Dead Space rather than simply profiting from a well-known name.
The revived Dead Space will be released January 27th, 2023 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. While it isn’t a brand new game like fans might want, this preview suggests Motive is at least delivering what you’d expect from a remake: a modernization of graphics and gameplay that’s still true to the experience that drew people in the first time around.
On Tuesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released its long-awaited Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights (BoR). The document will, “help guide the design, development, and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and other automated systems so that they protect the rights of the American public,” per a White House press release.
As such, the BoR will advocate for five principles: Safe and Effective Systems, Algorithmic Discrimination Protections, Data Privacy, Notice and Explanation, and Human Alternatives, Consideration, and Fallback. “Simply put, systems should work, they shouldn’t discriminate, they shouldn’t use data indiscriminately,” BoR co-writer Suresh Venkatasubramanian, wrote in a tweet thread Tuesday. “They should be visible and easy to understand, and they shouldn’t eliminate human interlocutors.”
“There were thousands of edits and comments that made the document strong, rich, and detailed,” Venkatasubramanian continued. “The AI Bill of Rights reflects, as befits the title, a consensus, broad, and deep American vision of how to govern the automated technologies that impact our lives.”
“Automated technologies are driving remarkable innovations and shaping important decisions that impact people’s rights, opportunities, and access. The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights is for everyone who interacts daily with these powerful technologies — and every person whose life has been altered by unaccountable algorithms,” said Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Science and Society Dr. Alondra Nelson. “The practices laid out in the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights aren’t just aspirational; they are achievable and urgently necessary to build technologies and a society that works for all of us.”
The Administration has spent more than a year developing the BoR to its current state, including extensive public outreach through panel discussions, public listening sessions, and meetings with everyone from workers and activists to CEOs and entrepreneurs. In addition to the bill itself, the OSTP has also released a companion work, From Principles to Practice, which details concrete steps for both government and NGO entities, public and private companies alike, take to ensure they are operating within the scope and spirit of the document.
“Effectively implementing these processes require the cooperation of and collaboration among industry, civil society, researchers, policymakers, technologists, and the public,” the BoR reads. Of course, the blueprint details no actual enforcement mechanisms.
More than 100 Amazon employees conducted a work stoppage for around three hours after a fire broke out at a fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York. Night shift workers were moved to a break room as firefighters tackled a dumpster fire on a shipping dock next to the JFK8 warehouse. No one was injured, according to the New York City Fire Department, which was called to the scene at around 4PM ET on Monday.
Amazon Labor Union (ALU) president Chris Smalls said around 500 employees declined to return to work. Amazon put the figure at 100 and said another 1,000 kept working. The workers who downed tools occupied the human resources office and demanded paid time off for the night, as Motherboardreports.
Warning ⚠️ Workers screaming EVACUATE yet Amazon refuses to let Night Shift be excused with pay the burnt chemicals from the compactor still linger by docks hundreds of workers want to go home. Amazon will be held accountable @amazonlabor ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/XOpiRHLkQH
“All employees were safely evacuated, and day shift employees were sent home with pay,” Amazon spokesperson Paul Flaningan told Gothamist. “The FDNY certified the building is safe and at that point we asked all night shift employees to report to their regularly scheduled shift. While the vast majority of employees reported to their workstations, a small group refused to return to work and remained in the building without permission.”
Workers at the warehouse voted to form a union earlier this year. Amazon has contested the results of the election. Last month, a hearing officer recommended that the National Labor Relations Board should reject Amazon’s claims that the vote was invalid and authorize the union. Pending further appeals, Amazon has not started union contract negotiations.
Meanwhile, workers at another Amazon warehouse are seeking to unionize with the ALU. An election will be held at a fulfillment center outside of Albany later this month. Amid unionization efforts across the company, Amazon this week announced it will increase hourly workers’ pay.
Happening Now‼️ after a raging fire on ship dock 500 plus workers sat in the break room demanding to be sent home with pay for safety due to the smoke. @amazonlabor Lead organizes are now Marching on the Boss with hundreds of workers!✊🏽 #Alllaborwinter#ALU#UnionStrongpic.twitter.com/PsBrj27NKj
CD Projekt Red may be much busier than you expect. The developer has shared a long-term roadmap that elaborates and expands on its plans. To start, a project codenamed “Orion” is effectively a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 that will “further develop the potential” of the sci-fi franchise. It’s in development by CDPR’s teams in Boston and Vancouver.
And while it’s no secret that there’s a new Unreal Engine 5-based The Witcher game in the works (it entered pre-production this spring), it’s really just the start of a new trilogy. You might not have to wait long to see the story reach its conclusion, either. CDPR hopes to release all three games within a six-year span, with the first (codenamed “Polaris”) serving as a technology foundation for the remaining two.
Other titles include “Sirius,” a The Witcher spinoff with solo and multiplayer elements aimed at a “broader audience.” It’s developed by The Flame and the Flood studio The Molasses Flood. Another project, “Canis Majoris,” is a “full-fledged” Witcher universe game built by an outside developer using UE5. And no, CDPR won’t be stuck making Cyberpunk and Witcher games for all eternity. “Hadar” will be new, from-scratch universe. It’s still in the extremely early stages of development (conceptual work only began in 2021), so it’s likely years away.
Regardless of what you play, you should expect online gameplay to become a staple feature. In its roadmap presentation, CDPR said “most” of its new games will have a multiplayer component. The company was shy on what this will entail.
CDPR isn’t shy about the reasons for the expansion. The wider catalog and cooperation with outside developers will help it “reach new consumers” while maintaining three lasting franchises. If all goes well, a producer best known for rare, single player-focused releases will offer a steady stream of games that help it become more of a household name akin to Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft — in size, if hopefully not in quality.
