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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Disney co-chairman reveals why The Acolyte was...
Lucasfilm may be in the midst of experiencing a wave of positive attention and success thanks to its latest TV series, Skeleton Crew, but the Jude Law-starring sci-fi show isn’t the only Star Wars title that has premiered on Disney+ this year. This past summer Lucasfilm also debuted The Acolyte, a Sith-centric show set around 100 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. Across its eight episodes, the series proved to be critically...

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OnePlus 13 vs. iPhone 16 Pro: Can...
Table of Contents OnePlus looks like it’s hit another one out of the park with this year’s OnePlus 13. The enthusiast brand’s latest flagship launched in China in late October, and this week, the company officially announced it will be landing in North America on January 7, 2025. As one of the first mainstream phones to be powered by Qualcomm’s bleeding-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, it should bring significant improvements in the OnePlus 13’s performance, battery life, and photographic...

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Ram postpones electric pickup to 2026 as...
It seems to be yet another sign that hybrids are leading the charge forward as sales of electric vehicles (EVs) slow. Giant auto group Stellantis is reshuffling the planned launches of two much-awaited Ram models. The brand’s first electric pickup truck has been postponed to 2026, while the Ramcharger plug-in hybrid (PHEV) will take center stage next year. Recommended Videos “The decision to launch Ramcharger first was driven by overwhelming consumer interest, maintaining a competitive advantage in the technology...

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Google proposes big changes for the future...
Google’s ongoing antitrust tussle spawned a list of sweeping policy suggestions — including a proposed sale of the Chrome business — by the Department of Justice. The focus of the lawsuit centers on the Search monopoly, but it has serious ramifications for Android and the overall browser situation. Now, Google has shared its own “remedies proposal” to the DOJ’s recommendations, which it claims are going “far beyond what the Court’s decision is actually about.” Recommended Videos The first remedy...

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Windows PCs now works with the Quest...
Table of Contents Microsoft and Meta teamed up on a new feature that lets me use my Windows PC while wearing a Quest 3 or 3S, and it’s super easy to connect and use. I simply glance at my computer and tap a floating button to use Windows in VR on large displays only I can see. Meta’s new Quest 3 and 3S are among the best VR headsets for standalone gaming and media consumption. When I want more...

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The Price of Humiliating Nicolás Maduro
For many years, Venezuelans understood instinctively what was meant when someone invoked la situación in conversation. The rich started leaving the country because of la situación. One would be crazy to drive at night, given la situación del país. The main features of this “situation of the country,” in the years around President Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, were an economy in free fall, empty supermarket shelves, and the normalization of new forms of criminality—such as “express kidnappings,” or...

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Mystery Drone Sightings Lead to FAA Ban...
It’s been a busy year in cybersecurity, but it’s not over yet. This week, we revealed how hackers figured out how to “jailbreak” digital license plates—which are legally issued in at least a couple of states and are valid across the US—allowing them to change the license plate number to basically anything. That means someone with this capability can avoid tolls and tickets, or even change their plate to be the same as their enemy. While the company that...

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Pairing live support with accurate AI outputs
In association withTP A live agent spends hours each week manually documenting routine interactions. Another combs through multiple knowledge bases to find the right solution, scrambling to piece it together while the customer waits on hold. A third types out the same response they’ve written dozens of times before. These repetitive tasks can be draining, leaving less time for meaningful customer interactions—but generative AI is changing this reality. By automating routine workflows, AI augments the efforts of live agents,...

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Enabling human-centric support with generative AI
In association withTP It’s a stormy holiday weekend, and you’ve just received the last notification you want in the busiest travel week of the year: The first leg of your flight is significantly delayed. You might expect this means you’ll be sitting on hold with airline customer service for half an hour. But this time, the process looks a little different: You have a brief text exchange with the airline’s AI chatbot, which quickly assesses your situation and places...

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Puzzle Corner
Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the January/February Puzzle Corner, brought to you with a special Mystery Hunt twist by guest editor Dan Katz ’03. This column includes solutions to three September/October 24 problems. Find solutions to the other three problems here.

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Puzzle Corner September/October 2024 bonus solutions
Here are solutions for the three bonus problems that appeared in the September/October 2024 Puzzle Corner column we guest edited. Solutions for S/O2, S/O4, and S/O6 are below; those for S/O1, S/O3, and S/O5 can be found here. S/O2. Frank notes that a repunit Rk is a decimal integer consisting of the digit 1 repeated k times, with k > 0. For example, R1 = 1, R2 = 11, R3 = 111, etc. Let N be any integer not...

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South Korea’s Crisis Is Nowhere Near Over
The past two weeks in South Korean politics have featured enough twists to fill a Netflix K-drama. President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, shocking even some of his own advisers. In a late-night session, the national legislature overturned it. A few days later, the besieged president begged forgiveness from his people, while a corruption scandal engulfed the first lady. Legislators voted to impeach Yoon last weekend and suspend his powers, which have been transferred to a caretaker government...

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The Download: shaking up neural networks, and...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The next generation of neural networks could live in hardware Networks programmed directly into computer chip hardware can identify images faster, and use much less energy, than the traditional neural networks that underpin most modern AI systems. That’s according to work presented at a leading machine learning conference in Vancouver last week. Neural networks, from GPT-4 to...

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Bashar al-Assad Exploited Alawites’ Fear
For decades, the Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad built his power on a single, relentless narrative of survival: The regime presented itself as the only shield against annihilation for the Alawites, the ethno-religious minority that makes up about a tenth of Syria’s population and has long understood itself to be threatened by the country’s Sunni majority. Supporting Assad, himself an Alawite, was a matter not of loyalty or politics for this community, the regime insisted, but of choosing between existence...

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