Month: August 2021

Lawsuit filed after Blue Origin offered Nasa $2bn if it would change its mind on lunar lander contract Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has sued the US government over Nasa’s decision to award a $2.9bn lunar lander contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Related: Billionaire space cowboys could become heroes by focusing on the climate crisis Continue …

Bezos’s Blue Origin sues US over Nasa’s decision to award contract to SpaceX Read More »

• Investigators to review 765,000 vehicles made since 2014 • NHTSA identifies 11 crashes involving first responder vehicles The US government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driving system after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles. The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the …

Tesla’s Autopilot faces US investigation after crashes with emergency vehicles Read More »

Schools already have pupils’ mobile phone use under control, say leaders in response to government plans School and college leaders have condemned the government’s plan to ban mobile phones from classrooms as outdated and out of touch, arguing that schools should be allowed to decide on appropriate rules. Responding to a Department for Education (DfE) …

Plan to ban phones from classrooms is out of touch, say UK school leaders Read More »

By turns as cerebral as Star Trek, as hopeful as Asimov and as dramatic as Battlestar Galactica, the video game series deserves a place among the sci-fi greats Our species will one day end. Whether it’s down to our own hubris, the disastrous effects of unbridled wealth accumulation and social division, war, the climate crisis, …

Why Mass Effect is some of the best sci-fi ever made Read More »

Demand for voice actors increases, providing relief for workers whose other sources of income has dried up Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage It was not only audiences that turned to video games during the pandemic. With theatres closed, and TV and film production on hiatus, British actors chose work they could …

Game (voice)over: actors turn to video game work during pandemic Read More »

The artist and social media critic on his work subverting the manipulative practices of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter When the history of the first decades of this century comes to be written, there will be few more telling artworks than Ben Grosser’s film Order of Magnitude. In the 47 minute video, Grosser, a digital artist …

How artist Ben Grosser is cutting Mark Zuckerberg down to size Read More »

Within weeks of her appointment to the commission, Facebook and Amazon asked that she be recused from antitrust investigations Lina Khan has some of the biggest companies in the world shaking in their boots. The 32-year-old antitrust scholar and law professor in June became the youngest person in history and the most progressive in more …

‘They should be worried’: how FTC chair Lina Khan plans to tackle big tech Read More »

Brits didn’t ditch pizza and curry takeaways after lockdown ended, but delivery firms’ valuations don’t reflect this Ordering a takeaway and sitting down with a box set was the height of entertainment for most people during successive coronavirus lockdowns – and this served up bumper sales and profits for a string of food delivery companies. …

Despite healthy orders, can Just Eat deliver on share price growth? Read More »

Four householders with recently installed air source heat pumps discuss the ups and downs of ownership John and Carol Deed, Thriplow, Cambs“We had an air source heat pump fitted in January 2020 and it has proven to be a really good decision,” says John Deed, a former marketing executive in the car industry. Deed and …

At home with a heat pump: ‘It makes hot water when it’s freezing outside’ Read More »

The tech giant says its iCloud security update is designed to help weed out images of abuse their children, but activists have voiced concerns Once upon a time, updates of computer operating systems were of interest only to geeks. No longer – at least in relation to Apple’s operating systems, iOS and Mac OS. You …

Is Apple’s image-scan plan a wise move or the start of a slippery slope? | John Naughton Read More »