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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.

 
These Black Friday Tineco deals will help...
By now, we’ve covered enough of Tineco’s products that the lot of us should be familiar with its smart home cleaning solutions. There are a lot of great options from the FLOOR ONE S5 to the Carpet One Cruiser, helping you clean, well, whatever it is you need to clean, from a wood or tile floor to a shaggy carpet. If you’ve been eyeballing the brand’s latest offerings all year like us, you’ll be pleased to know there are...

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Best home security camera deals: Ring, Arlo,...
If you’re the sort of person who worries about the physical safety of their home or live in a rough area, then having home security cameras can help give you much more peace of mind. The great thing is that in the past decade or so, security cameras have come a long way, and nowadays, you can get things like wireless security cameras that let you access them remotely from wherever you are through an application. Of course, that...

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Future Android phones may come with another...
If you have an Android phone, you know it comes with many preinstalled Google apps, such as Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. In future Android versions, another Google app might be automatically added to the mix. As 9to5Google first noted, the Oppo Find X8 has Google’s Fitbit app preloaded on the device. It’s now part of Google’s Android app suite on that handset and replaces Google Fit. The site suggests, and probably rightly so, that more Android-based devices will...

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At basically $105, the Ryzen 5 7600X...
I don’t usually get my hopes up for Black Friday CPU deals, but I found one that’s just too good to pass up. Right now, you can get the Ryzen 5 7600X — still one of the best processors for value-focused gaming — for basically $105. No, that’s not the actual price listed on Newegg where you’ll find the deal, but there’s a lot going on with this sale. For starters, the CPU itself is marked down by 24%,...

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Tubi’s new Scenes feature plays clips to...
Tubi, Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV service (FAST), boasts a content library of more than 250,000 movies and TV episodes and 200 live TV channels, which makes finding something to watch a tricky proposition. Today, however, Tubi’s 81 million active users are getting a new way to help them find something to watch in the form of Scenes, a feature that serves up short clips of your favorite shows and movies on your mobile device. Scenes, which can now...

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Air fryer or cordless vacuum, you choose:...
Going down probably as two of the most random, unique contenders for smart home and Black Friday deals in a mashup together, we have the COSORI TurboBlaze Air Fryer and LEVOIT LVAC-200 Cordless Vacuum. One will cook your food fast and crispy the other will clean your home fast and effectively. Why not, right? You could even throw some food into the air fryer and get to cleaning while it heats up with the vacuum. Okay, maybe it really...

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I tried the RayNeo Air 2s glasses...
With the holidays coming, I’ve been trying a spat of unique VR and AR devices. One pair I got my hands on, called the RayNeo Air 2s, basically gives you a portable 201-inch display that you can put on and use anytime, anywhere. They work with Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and — my favorite — Steam Deck. Our team has used the RayNeo Air 2 previously and also gave them high marks. Fun Fact I learned from reading...

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The Download: AI replicas, and China’s climate...
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. AI can now create a replica of your personality Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to...

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China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data...
China has long been a billion-plus-person experiment in total state surveillance, with virtually no legal checks on the government’s ability to physically and digitally monitor its citizens. When so much control of citizens’ private data amasses within a few government agencies, however, it doesn’t stay there. Instead, that bounty of private info has also leaked onto a lively black market—one where insiders sell off their own access to any scammer or stalker willing to pay. At the Cyberwarcon security...

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China’s complicated role in climate change
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. “Well, what about China?” This is a comment I get all the time on the topic of climate change, both in conversations and on whatever social media site is currently en vogue. Usually, it comes in response to some statement about how the US and Europe are addressing the issue (or how they need to be)....

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Four ways to protect your art from...
MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done.  Since the start of the generative AI boom, artists have been worried about losing their livelihoods to AI tools. There have been plenty of examples of companies’ replacing human labor with computer programs. Most recently, Coca-Cola sparked controversy by creating a new Christmas ad with generative AI.  Artists and writers have launched several lawsuits against AI companies, arguing that their work has been scraped into databases for training...

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AI can now create a replica of...
Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to embody your values and preferences with stunning accuracy. That’s now possible, according to a new paper from a team including researchers from Stanford and Google DeepMind, which has been published on...

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Shortlisted Images for the 2024 Close-Up Photographer...
The Close-up Photographer of the Year competition is now in its sixth year, and recently released its shortlisted picks, with the winners set to be announced in January. The contest “celebrates close-up, macro, and micro photography,” among 11 separate categories. Competition organizers were once again kind enough to share some of these amazing images with us here. To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here.

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The Problem With Boycotting Israel
When you hear that thousands of writers have signed a petition, you can already guess what they are calling for: What other than boycotting Israel could generate such enthusiasm among the literati? A staggering 6,000 writers and publishing professionals have signed a letter to address “the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.” They are calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions. The letter says that these institutions have played a crucial role in...

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Inside the Booming ‘AI Pimping’ Industry
Instagram is flooded with hundreds of AI-generated influencers who are stealing videos from real models and adult content creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing their bodies with links to dating sites, Patreon, OnlyFans competitors, and various AI apps. The practice, first reported by 404 Media in April, has since exploded in popularity, showing that Instagram is unable or unwilling to stop the flood of AI-generated content on its platform and protect the human creators on Instagram who say...

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