Category: Technology

SpaceX launched a high-altitude Starship prototype rocket and successfully landed it for the first time on Wednesday, overcoming a key challenge in Elon Musk’s whirlwind quest to build a fully reusable Mars rocket. Musk has said the SN15 rocket contained “hundreds of design improvements” over past high-altitude prototypes, which were all destroyed during explosive landing attempts.

Starship SN15 lifted off at 6:24PM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities, soaring more than 6 miles in the sky to test in-flight maneuvers. As it reached peak altitude, SN15’s three Raptor engines gradually shut down to begin a horizontal free-fall back to Earth. Nearing land, two engines reignited to execute a complex “landing flip maneuver,” where…

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Getting asked to shoot five weddings for a massively popular Netflix show might seem like a dream opportunity, but according to photographer Megan Saul, the show’s producers weren’t planing on paying for it. In a Facebook post on May 4th, she says she was contacted by Kinetic Content (the company producing Love Is Blind for Netflix) about working with them on the show, but was told in a follow-up email that, instead of money, the company was offering the opportunity for her work to appear in promotional materials and magazines (via PetaPixel).

In her post Saul says that getting the email was “super exciting for all of 20 minutes,” until she found out that she was being asked to basically donate her time and expertise. She called the…

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The young attractive royal couple that is not Harry and Meghan has dropped a truly chaotic intro video for their shiny new official YouTube channel. In the video, the presumed future queen and king of the United Kingdom (also known as Kate Middleton and Kate Middleton’s husband) laugh and chat awkwardly in what looks like their home. It’s well-lit but not too well-lit: a reasonably good YouTuber rig but not exactly one of royal magnificence.

“Be careful what you’re saying, these guys are going to start filming,” says Prince William to his smiling wife, as though she doesn’t know how cameras work. The general feel of the clip is the first few seconds after a camera starts rolling but before the YouTube stars start vlogging in earnest….

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Nintendo’s next game for the Switch is one you build yourself. Today the company revealed Game Builder Garage, a new software title that’s designed to teach beginners the basics of programming and game design. It utilizes visual programming, has pre-built lessons and games, and will be launching on the Switch next month.

Game Builder Garage appears to build off of some of the ideas featured in past Nintendo projects, like the DIY series of Labo experiences and Super Mario Maker. The core of the experience is a playful, visual programming language that utilizes cute characters called Nodon that you can move around and assign properties to. For instance, once you insert a character node, you can attach a “stick” node and assign the…

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The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it supported waiving patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines, calling the pandemic a “global health crisis.”

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement.

Waiving those protections would theoretically let countries and organizations manufacture patented vaccines without facing repercussions. But they would need to have the expertise and materials on hand to…

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