Earlier this year William Shatner became the oldest person to ever fly to space, and his trip is now set to become an Amazon Prime documentary called Shatner in Space. The Star Trek actor revealed the news himself during a virtual panel for the pop culture conference CCXP Worlds, Deadline reported.
“The Shat” was one of four crew members on Blue Origin’s second manned NS-18 mission that flew to an altitude of 66 miles aboard New Shepherd, crossing the so called Kármán line into space (though not orbiting the Earth). At 90 years old, he edged out 82-year-old Wally Funk, who set the previous age record for space flight just months earlier.
The documentary will give a look at what happened before, during and after the trip. The flight also included Blue Origin VP Audrey Powers, Planet Labs co-founder Dr. Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries, Medidata co-creator. This is the second of three crewed missions Blue Origin has planned for 2021, with the third (NS-19) set for December 9th. That flight will include Alan Shepard’s daughter Laura Shepard Churchley and GMA co-anchor Michael Strahan, along with four paying customers.
“My time in space was the most profound experience I could have ever imagined,” Shatner told Deadline in a statement. “This special documenting my journey gives a dramatic view of that experience, and my hope is that it inspires the world to see we must go to space to save Earth.” The documentary is set to air on Amazon Prime in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand on December 15th, and in other territories in 2022.
If you’d asked a panel of experts 10 years ago what smartphones would look like in a decade, you’d have gotten all kinds of wild responses. Recall that in 2001 the biggest thing in cell phone technology was the Nokia 8250, the chief selling point of which was its colorful display. Instead of black-and-white, this…
The wait is finally over. After a year-long delay, Xbox’s iconic hero, Master Chief, is back. With Halo Infinite, there are new toys and fight mechanics, while many players will also benefit from major cosmetic upgrades if they’re playing on the newest Microsoft consoles.
Senior Editor Jessica Conditt has been playing through the single-player campaign mode — while we wait for the rest of the game to appear – and it still seems very much like a Halo experience, for better and worse. Read her full impressions right here.
Epic has officially released a trailer that outlines what to expect both in Chapter 3 and its first season, “Flipped.” The new island is the star, with the flip from the Chapter 2 finale leading to a complete landscape overhaul that includes chaotic weather. However, the gameplay changes are arguably more important — you’ll have to rethink your tactics.
Sliding and swinging mechanics should help characters move (and dodge) faster than before, while camps help your squad heal and store items that persist between matches. You can also earn XP beyond battle royale and hold on to a Victory Crown if you keep winning — possibly marking you out as a major threat during battles.
New characters? Spider-Man should be well suited to the new swinging mechanic, but you can also play as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Fortnite character, The Foundation, or Gears of War‘s Marcus and Kait.
eBay has confirmed it suspended a “small number” of users by mistake on December 3rd. The company didn’t provide a cause or reveal the extent of the problem, but said it had fixed the slip-up and notified those affected.
There may have been a significant number of victims. Reddit users devoted a large thread to the bans, noting there weren’t any potential red flags for at least some of the accounts. People were suspended even if they had excellent buyer and seller histories or hadn’t used eBay for years.
IKEA has sold a variety of wireless chargers since 2015, but never one you could use without plugging into a wall outlet. It looks like that’s about to change, with images of a new portable Nordmärke Qi charger making their way online courtesy of a few hawk-eyed Reddit users. We also have some details on the device thanks to German media outlet mobiFlip, which obtained them from a reader who bought one at a store in Cologne. No word yet on whether the charger will appear elsewhere, but with these specs, you’re probably not missing out on much.
The crypto exchange BitMart has lost the equivalent of $196 million (originally estimated at $150 million) to a hack. The intruder breached Ethereum and Binance wallets with a flood of transfers starting around 2:30 PM ET on December 4th, followed by an exodus of tokens two hours later that included Shiba and USDC.
It’s not clear who was responsible, and the stolen funds have been sent to an Ethereum mixing service that could make it difficult to trace.
While this isn’t the biggest digital heist (the Poly attacker back in August grabbed $610 million), Coindesk notes this is one of the larger centralized exchange hacks to date.
The company doesn’t want to let app makers mention payment alternatives.
Apple is asking for a judicial review of a Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service warning from August that allows developers to mention alternatives to the App Store’s in-app payment system. FAS gave Apple until September 30th to alter its policies, but the company declined to change its rules despite the threat of a fine.
The opposition parallels Apple’s legal battles in the US. The judge in Epic’s lawsuit against Apple ordered the tech firm to let App Store developers point to other payment systems, but Apple appealed the injunction in hopes of a delay. The court denied the request, and Apple will have until December 9th to let app makers point to other options. The company will make exceptions to its policy for some media apps in 2022.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration will remove an enormous pedestal that until earlier this year held a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Donald Trump’s new tech company has raised $1 billion from investors, according to a press release from the former president and a report from CNBC. But there’s no way of independently checking whether Trump, a man known for lying about literally everything, has actually been able to secure such a huge sum in a…
As it promised, Google Photos is starting to roll out the Locked Folder feature to Samsung and other non-Pixel phones, Sammobile has reported. The idea is that it keeps your most private photos away from your primary image set and offline, as well. It has only been available on the Pixel 3 or later devices until now, but is now rolling out to older Pixel models too, The Verge noted.
Locked Folder immediately got tagged as the “nude storage folder” by pundits when it first launched at Google IO 2021 in May. Whether you have those or other sensitive photos, it stores them in a passcode or biometric-secured spot so kids, friends or others won’t accidentally stumble across them.
To use the feature, simply launch Google Photos, go to “Library” then the “Utilities” section at the top. Click on that and the feature should appear in a card, provided you have the update from around November 29th.
It worked just fine for me on Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold3 devices, and Android Central reported that it has also appeared on Oppo and OnePlus devices. If you decide to use it, bear in mind that your photos won’t be backed up to the cloud, so they’ll disappear if you delete Google Photos or wipe/lose your smartphone. Google has more information about the feature here.
Engineered Arts, the company behind the human-like Mesmer robot series, has unveiled a new creation that may weird you out even more. “Ameca” is a new humanoid robot that doesn’t have realistic hair and skin like Mesmer, but can instead show more human-like, natural-looking expressions than others we’ve seen, as The Verge has reported.
Ameca at first displays confusion as it appears to wake up, then shows mild astonishment when it moves its hands (the hand gestures looks fairly real, too). It then appears surprised to see the viewer or camera, and finishes the video with a smile and welcoming hand gesture.
The improvements in facial animation look to be the result of more fluid movements than we’ve seen before. By contrast, the Mesmer “Fred” robot had decent head movements, but he “looks like he just had a shot of Novocain in his entire lower face” when he speaks, I wrote back in 2018.
It appears to have a fully articulated head, face, neck, shoulders, arms and hands, but Engineered Arts notes that none of its robots can walk — though the company is studying that capability. It’s not clear how Ameca’s facial expressions were animated, but some form of motion capture seems a good bet. The company said that Ameca is a “platform for developing AI,” but is letting others develop the necessary machine learning algorithms.
Engineered Arts has previously said that it uses “powerful, silent, high-torque” motors to drive Mesmer’s body and head movements, with everything designed from scratch to work together perfectly. It also uses sensors like cameras, depth sensors, LiDAR and microphones. To control movements, it has developed browser-based software that works much 3D apps used for VFX or gaming animation.
There’s no word on pricing or availability for Ameca or Mesmer, though the company’s more basic RoboThespian models reportedly cost $79,000 and up in 2018. In any case, we’ll soon get a close-up look at Ameca, as Engineered Arts plans to show it off at CES 2022 in Las Vegas.
After a longer-than-expected wait, Halo Infinite is here at last. Well, it would be better to say that Halo Infinite is now complete since the free-to-play multiplayer enjoyed a surprise release last month. The single-player campaign is out later this week as a separate release, completing Halo Infinite and giving us the long-awaited continuation of Master Chief’s story. I’ve been … Continue reading
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