Hasta La Gadget!

This week on the show, Cherlynn is joined by guest co-host Sam Rutherford to talk about the newly launched OnePlus 10T. Why did the company choose to sacrifice an alert slider, wireless charging and some other features in exchange for extreme speed? How does the OnePlus 10T stack up against other midrange phones like the Pixel 6a? Then, our hosts discuss the cloud-gaming handheld that Logitech and Tencent are working on, as well as the curiousheadlines that permeated the consumer tech news cycle this week. 

Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Our OnePlus 10T review – 1:37

• Logitech and Tencent are working on a handheld cloud gaming console – 24:15

• It’s not just you: Uber receipts are actually crashing Outlook – 30:34

• Spotify finally adds a play button that doesn’t shuffle, but only for premium users – 32:22

• PlayStation Accolades feature is being discontinued because online gamers aren’t nice – 36:09

• Microsoft negs Activision Blizzard’s game library amid acquisition process – 37:33

• No, Google Stadia isn’t shutting down – 39:28

• Discovery+ merger leaves HBO Max’s future in doubt, and Batgirl cancellation – 43:04

• Working on – 51:58

• Picks – 53:12

Video Stream

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos, Luke Brooks
Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Brian Oh
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed chief of Roscosmos, recently announced that Russia is pulling out of the International Space Station after 2024. NASA and Russia’s space agency work in tandem to keep the station running, and the latter’s exit would change ISS operations tremendously. According to Reuters, though, NASA has actually been preparing for such a possibility way before Borisov made his announcement — and even before the invasion of Ukraine began — in light of the increasing tensions between Russia and the US.

Reuters‘ sources said NASA and the White House drew up contingency plans for the ISS late last year. Those plans include ways to pull astronauts out of the station if Russia leaves abruptly and ways to keep the ISS running without Russian hardware. While the US module keeps the station balanced and provides the electricity it needs to run using its solar arrays, Roscosmos’ module has the thrusters needed to keep the flying lab in orbit. And that is why NASA’s contingency plans also reportedly include examining ways to dispose of the station years earlier than planned. 

Apparently, NASA was working on creating a formal request for contractors to conjure up ways to deorbit the space station over the past few weeks. That said, the agency roped in private space companies into its contingency planning in hopes of keeping the ISS in orbit even without Russia. The sources said Boeing already formed a team of engineers to figure out how to control the ISS without Russia’s thrusters. SpaceX chief Elon Musk also previously expressed interest in helping out when former Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin slammed Western sanctions against his country, asking who would “save the ISS from uncontrolled deorbiting” if the West blocks cooperation with Russia.

Back in June, Northrop Grumman was successfully able to adjust the station’s orbit for future operations using its Cygnus capsule, which was then docked to the ISS. Reuters‘ sources said SpaceX is also looking into the possibility of using its spacecraft to boost the station’s orbit. 

Borisov said Russia hasn’t set a date for its exit yet, but that it would honor its obligations and will give partners a one-year notice before it leaves. Roscosmos and NASA will most likely continue working closely until Russia pulls out of the program — they even recently agreed to swap seats on Crew Dragon and Soyuz flights to the ISS.

Tens of thousands of tech employees in jobs previously thought to be secure and high-paying have had to pack their bags in recent months. They’re seeking out new positions as a downturn in the wider economy hits the tech industry especially hard. SoundCloud, one of the leading music streaming platforms favored by…

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Last year, NASA launched the Lucy spacecraft designed to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter’s Lagrange points. However, a problem arose just 12 hours after launch — one of the large solar arrays designed to generate power from an increasingly distant Sun had failed to fully deploy and latch. Now, NASA has announced that a team was able to troubleshoot the problem sufficiently for the mission to continue — thanks to several clever tricks. 

Hours after the problem was first discovered, NASA pulled together an anomaly response team with members from the science mission lead Southwest Research Institute, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the spacecraft’s builder, Northrop Grumman. 

Since there’s no camera aimed at the solar arrays, the team had to figure out another way to find the problem. To that end, they fired the spacecraft’s thrusters to measure any anomalous vibrations, and created a detailed model of the array’s motor assembly to determine the array’s rigidness. They finally figured out that a lanyard designed to pull the array open was probably snagged on its spool. 

The team quickly honed in on two potential solutions. One was simply to use the array as it was, because it was still generating 90 percent of expected power. The other was to attempt to pull the lanyard harder by using the back-up deployment motor as well as the primary motor, hopefully allowing it to wind further and engage the latching mechanism. 

Both motors were never designed to work at the same time, so the team modeled it to test out possible outcomes and potential ripple effects. After months of simulations, they decided to proceed with the two-motor option. They ran both the primary and backup solar deployment motors simultaneously seven times, and succeeded in further opening and tensioning the array. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t close enough to latch, but it’s now “under substantially more tension, making it stable enough for the spacecraft to operate as needed for mission operations,” NASA said. It’s now “ready and able” to complete its next deadline, getting a boost from Earth’s gravity in October 2022. It’s scheduled to arrive at its first asteroid target in 2025. 

Virgin Galactic has announced that its commercial space tourism service has been delayed yet again, from the end of this year until Q2 2023. During its earnings report, the company said that the delay is “due to the extended completion dates [i.e., delays] within the mothership enhancement program.”

The mothership VMS Eve is a crucial part of its launch system, carrying the VSS Unity spacecraft to 50,000 feet before it launches to the edge of space. The enhancement program launched July 7th with the aim of improving flight frequency, along with “reliability, predictability and durability.” 

At the same time it revealed the updates, Virgin Galactic announced that Boeing’s Aurora Flight Sciences will design and manufacture its next-gen motherships, expected to enter service in 2025. The company is also working on a new spaceship, the VSS Imagine, set to make a debut test flight in Q1 2023. 

Virgin Galactic had already delayed its first paid flights from Q3 to Q4 2022 out of an “abundance of caution” due to a possible flight control system issue. The next flight was supposed to launch three Italian Air Force members to the edge of space, to study the effects of transitioning from regular Earth gravity to microgravity on both humans and the environment. Yesterday, the company reported a $111 million quarterly loss and plans a $300 million stock offering.