OnePlus 10 Pro will launch in North America, Europe and India on March 31st

OnePlus’ latest flagship phone will launch in Europe, North America and India on March 31st. The company previously said the OnePlus Pro 10 would arrive in those markets by the end of March, so that’s right on schedule. It released the smartphone in China in January.

The OnePlus 10 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip and OxygenOS (which is based on Android 12). It has a 6.7-inch 120Hz Fluid AMOLED with LTPO screen which allows for adjustable refresh rates to improve the battery life. The device has a 5,000mAh battery, along with support for 80W fast charging and 50W wireless charging. It comes with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.

There’s an array of three Hasselblad cameras on the rear: a 48MP wide-angle sensor, an eight-megapixel telephoto lens and a 50MP ultrawide camera. To show off the cameras, their 10-bit color capabilities and the OnePlus Pro 10’s color processing knowhow, the company sent the handset 38,000 meters (23.6 miles) up into the stratosphere to take some shots of the horizon.

OnePlus Pro 10
OnePlus

Folks in North America, Europe and India will be able to pre-order the OnePlus Pro 10 from the OnePlus website and Amazon on March 31st at 10:20AM ET. You’ll get the OnePlus Buds Pro as a freebie if you pre-order. Those who order from Amazon or elsewhere will need to claim their earbuds through the OnePlus store app.

NASA to accept new Artemis lunar lander proposals from commercial companies

Back in April 2021, NASA chose SpaceX to develop a lunar lander that will take astronauts to the moon for its future Artemis missions. SpaceX’s vehicle won’t be the only one flying astronauts to the surface of the Moon, though: NASA has announced that it’s welcoming proposals from American companies for landers that can take human spacefarers from the Gateway station in the lunar orbit to the Moon itself. By having that capability, the lander design can be used for missions beyond Artemis III, which will be the first crewed landing on the Moon since Apollo 17.

In its announcement, the agency said it’s also exercising an option under its existing contract with SpaceX and is asking the company to change the landing system it proposed to meet the new requirement. “Pursuing more development work under the original contract maximizes NASA’s investment and partnership with SpaceX,” the agency said. Having a second lunar lander “provides redundancy in services” and can help ensure reliable transportation for astronauts that will be part of future lunar missions.

While the call for a second lunar lander is new, the plan to have more than one company working on the project isn’t. NASA was originally supposed to choose more than one lunar lander provider for Artemis, but the agency didn’t receive enough funding from Congress, prompting it to go with SpaceX alone. 

Blue Origin, one of the finalists for the contract, filed a complaint with the US Court of Federal Claims, calling the decision “fundamentally unfair.” The Jeff Bezos-owned space corporation argued that NASA allowed SpaceX to modify its bid and wasn’t given the same chance to do so. To note, the contract SpaceX won was worth $2.9 billion, while Blue Origin’s bid was almost twice that at $5.9 billion. NASA believed Blue Origin bid high on purpose on the assumption that NASA would haggle and that it would receive more funding than it did. While the court dismissed Blue Origin’s lawsuit in November, SpaceX had to pause work on the lander twice, losing months in the process. When NASA pushed back the Artemis III mission to 2025, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Blue Origin’s lawsuit was partly to blame.

NASA will issue a draft solicitation for the second lunar lander in the coming weeks before issuing a formal request for proposals this summer.

Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s Human Landing System Program manager, said:

“This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe. We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the Moon under NASA’s guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market.”

Instacart will offer its own tech to help grocery retailers speed up deliveries

Instacart will start offering its tech to all grocery retailers. The company says the Instacart Platform will help them handle ecommerce, delivery fulfillment and ads, while offering access to insights and other data.

Retailers will be able to use the software’s features (which also include options to manage scanless carts and other aspects of brick-and-mortar operations) on an à la carte basis or to run most of their business on a single platform. All grocery store operators will be able to use the software, not only those with which Instacart has partnered for deliveries.

In the coming months, Publix will start using the platform’s fulfillment features in Atlanta and Miami to make deliveries from Instacart’s purpose-built warehouses in as little as 15 minutes. Some of Instacart’s rivals, such as Gopuff, DoorDash and Getir, are also embracing ultra-fast grocery deliveries. Some jurisdictions have raised alarm bells about such services, in part because they could make things unsafe for couriers who might be under pressure to meet deadlines.

Other retailers, including Good Food Holdings and Schnuck Markets, are piloting Instacart’s ad service, which will be rolled out more widely later this year.

Licensing the Instacart Platform could open up a key stream of revenue for the company. The economics of the gig worker model make it difficult for companies in that space to turn a profit, especially given the stiff competition they face in certain markets. Dealing with retailers directly could improve Instacart’s bottom line, though the gig workers Instacart has worked with to handle deliveries could be affected.

We’re seen other instances of ecommerce companies offering their tech to physical retailers. Starbucks and Sainsbury’s are testing Amazon’s cashier-free Just Walk Out tech.

The Morning After: Our verdict on Apple’s Studio Display

Apple’s new display is here, ready for the Mac aficionados unwilling to deck their workstation in anything less than brushed metal and soft corners. The Studio Display is a bit brighter than the 5K iMac; otherwise it’s the same 27-inch screen. That does mean it lacks features we’ve seen on the latest MacBook Pros, like ProMotion refresh rate and Mini-LED backlighting. 

There is an A13 Bionic chip to drive its webcam (which needs the help) and augment its speakers. For the $1,599 price, though, it’s missing some pretty standard features, like an adjustable stand, HDR and high refresh rates. If you want a Mac screen and don’t want to pay more than $2,000, it may still be the best fit. Read our full review here.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

YouTube makes thousands of TV show episodes available to stream for free

The ad-supported series include ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ and ‘Heartland.’

YouTube is letting users in the US stream thousands of free ad-supported TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Heartland and Unsolved Mysteries. YouTube plans to offer around 4,000 free TV episodes on top of the 1,500 movies already available. This month, it added a raft of new movie titles, including Gone in Sixty Seconds, Runaway Bride and Legally Blonde, now available to stream for free with ads.

Continue reading.

PS5 will catch up to Xbox with variable refresh rates

Sony teased the feature will arrive in a few months.

Variable refresh rate (VRR) is coming to the PlayStation 5 in the “coming months,” Sony announced. If you have an HDMI 2.1-compatible TV or PC monitor, it will dynamically sync the display refresh rate to the PS5 console’s graphical output, Sony explained in a blog post. The feature is long overdue. VRR has been available on the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles since they debuted. VRR will help minimize visual artifacts, like screen tearing, offering a more consistently smooth picture.

Continue reading.

IKEA’s latest experiment in speakers is an outdoor LED lamp

It’s a Spotify-enabled Bluetooth speaker.

TMA
IKEA

IKEA has unveiled the Vappeby Bluetooth speaker with a Spotify Tap button that doubles as an outdoor lamp, confirming an FCC filing we saw last year. With IP65 dust and water splash resistance, it’s designed to illuminate outdoor parties, BBQs, etc. with LED light while delivering 360-degree sound. The new model is now available to order for $65 in blue or gray.

Continue reading.

Nothing’s first phone will launch this summer

The Phone 1 will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon and run a modified version of Android.

As teased, Nothing will release its first smartphone this summer and, in the usual marketing style of its CEO, OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei, Nothing shared a handful of details while promising to reveal more soon. The phone will run Nothing OS, a modified version of Android that “captures the best features” of Google’s mobile OS while distilling it “to just the essentials.” Which I guess are two ways of saying the same thing. It’s a huge challenge to launch a new smartphone in a land of Galaxies, Pixels and iPhones, but I was pleasantly surprised with Nothing’s slick Ear 1 wireless buds. The company could pretty much win me over with a transparent smartphone, to be honest.

Continue reading.

Polestar’s long range single motor Polestar 2 arrives in the US

Following the release of its dual-motor variant late last year, Polestar announced on Wednesday that the 270-mile long range, single-motor version of its Polestar 2 EV is now available for sale in the US. 

Starting at $45,900 — $33,400 after federal and state incentives — the single-motor Polestar 2 is $4,000 less expensive than its AWD sibling (which starts at $51,200) and provides 16 extra miles of driving range to the all-wheel’s 249 miles. Other than the number of e-motors affixed to their axles, the two are functionally identical.

“All variants of the Polestar 2 exude the brand’s leadership in cutting-edge technology with the Google infotainment system, premium sustainable materials, and unparalleled avant-garde design,” Gregor Hembrough, Head of Polestar North America, said in a press statement. The $4,000 creature comfort “Plus” upgrade and $3,200 “Pilot” sensor and safety package are likewise available with either powertrain setup. 

Folks looking to stick it to their local petrochemical conglomerate can schedule a test drive either through the Polestar 2 configurator site or at one of the company’s physical retail locations located in major cities throughout the US.

GIF inventor Stephen Wilhite has died

GIF inventor Stephen Wilhite has died from COVID-19 at the age of 74 with his wife Kathaleen at his bedside, NPR has reported. He worked at CompuServe when he developed the “Graphics Interchange Format,” designed to allow photo transfers over slow modem connections. GIFs have since become synonymous with short meme videos, regardless of how you pronounce it (though it’s “JIF” with a soft “G,” according to Wilhite himself). 

Wilhite invented the GIF in 1987 virtually on his own, according to his spouse. It was designed as an “exchange and display mechanism for graphic images” at a time when internet speeds were glacial compared to today. “He actually did that at home and brought it into work after he perfected it,” Kathaleen told The Verge. “He would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer.”

With limitations like 256 colors per animation, the format could easily have died out a long time ago. It had another trick, though — it was designed by Wilhite to store multiple frames, making it natural for short animations. It took on a life of its own after AOL purchased CompuServe and let the patent expire, particularly with artists and Tumblr users, according to a Daily Dot explainer.

Besides developing GIFs, Wilhite made other key contributions to CompuServe that helped it become the internet juggernaut of its time. “I greatly admired his intelligence and perseverance as he consistently created software products that were woven into CompuServe’s tapestry of offerings for corporate, hobbyist, and home consumers,” said co-worker Ty Wait on Wilhite’s obituary page. 

Wilhite retired in 2000 to pursue his hobbies and interests, including travel and model trains. He always came back to his first love of programming, however — he was still doing that just weeks before he was struck ill with COVID, Kathaleen told NPR. “”He was probably one of the kindest, humble men you’ve ever met,” she said. “I’ve been reading about [the responses online] all afternoon, and I can’t even tell you how it comforts you.”

‘Elden Ring’ update fixes bug that could put players in an endless death loop

You may want to update your copy of Elden Ring on PC to make sure that you don’t end up losing hours of gameplay to the endless death loop exploit. Bandai Namco has rolled out a patch for the game, which fixes a bug in multiplayer that “allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates.” A few days ago, reports surfaced about bad actors exploiting a bug that gives them a way to crash your game and teleport your character off the map. Upon reloading, you’ll just find yourself falling to your death and seeing the reviving/loading screen again and again. 

Here’s the infinite death loop in action:

As The Verge notes, some players were able to save their game by quickly teleporting elsewhere, but others reported losing as much as 100 hours of gameplay to the death loop. In addition to fixing this particular bug, the update also patches other issues, including ones that will prevent you from advancing certain quests. 

Elden Ring has been out for less than a month, but it has become huge very, very quickly. It sold 12 million units worldwide merely 18 days after its release, smashing the records of other Souls-type titles — Dark Souls 3, the best-selling game in the franchise, only reached 10 million units sold four years after it became available. When Bandai Namco and Elden Ring developer FromSoftware announced the milestone, they also said that the IP could be expanded “beyond the realm of games.” 

HBO Max’s new shuffle play feature is limited to 45 shows

Almost a year after Netflix introduced its shuffle play button, HBO Max has also launched its own. Unlike Netflix’s version that randomly plays shows and movies from the service’s whole catalog based on your viewing history, though, HBO Max’s has a pretty limited scope. When you tap on the shuffle button, the service will pull random episodes from one of the 45 shows included in the feature. Also, it’s only available on the service’s desktop interface at the moment. 

It’s unclear if HBO Max plans to expand the number of shows included in the list it can randomly play. The WarnerMedia-owned service also didn’t say whether the feature will eventually be available on its apps, though it’s hard to believe that it’ll stay a desktop exclusive. When Netflix first introduced its “play something” button, the company initially made it available on TV devices only. Six months later, though, Netflix released it for Android devices and told us testing for iOS devices would begin in the following months. 

Here are the 45 shows included in HBO Max’s list, per Deadline:

  • A World of Calm

  • Adventure Time

  • Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

  • Apple & Onion

  • Chappelle Show

  • Courage the Cowardly Dog

  • Craig of the Creek

  • Curb Your Enthusiasm

  • Ed, Ed and Eddy

  • ER

  • Flight of the Conchords

  • Fresh Prince

  • Friends

  • Full House

  • Great Pottery Throwdown

  • Hot Ones

  • How It Really Happened

  • Impractical Jokers

  • Key and Peele

  • Looney Tunes

  • Martin

  • Mike & Molly

  • Regular Show

  • Reno 911!

  • Rick & Morty

  • Robot Chicken

  • Scooby-Do, Where Are You!

  • Selena + Chef

  • Sesame Street

  • South Park

  • Teen Titans Go!

  • The Amazing World of Gumball

  • The Big Bang Theory

  • The Boondocks

  • The Mentalist

  • The Middle

  • The Nanny

  • The Office

  • The Shot: Uninterrupted

  • Tom and Jerry

  • Total Dramarama

  • Two and a Half Men

  • We Bare Bears

  • Whose Line is it Anyway

  • Young Sheldon

Cybersecurity researchers trace Lapsus$ attacks to a teenager from England

A hacking group calling itself Lapsus$ recently made waves by releasing sources codes it claimed to have stolen from Microsoft and Okta. Now, cybersecurity researchers investigating the attacks have traced them to a 16-year-old living with his mother near Oxford, England, according to Bloomberg. While the researchers have identified seven accounts associated with the hacking group — including one traced to another teenager in Brazil — they believe the teenager from England is the mastermind and is behind some of the major Lapsus$ hacks. However, they weren’t able to connect the teen to all the attacks the group carried out.

The researchers looked at forensic evidence from the hacks, as well as public information to determine that the teen was indeed involved. Apparently, rival hackers posted the teenager’s details online, including his address and information about his parents. Bloomberg didn’t release the teen’s personal information and only mentioned that he goes by the aliases “White” and “breachbase.” White is reportedly so skilled at hacking and so fast at what he does that researchers previously thought the attacks were automated. 

Some cybersecurity researchers believe that the group is motivated by not just money, but also notoriety, seeing as the actor doesn’t cover its tracks. As Microsoft detailed in its investigation of the Lapsus$ attacks, the group even announces its hacks on social media and publicly posts calls for employees willing to sell their company logins. The bad actor also joins targets’ communications channels, such as their Zoom calls, to taunt the people responding to their attacks.

Microsoft said the group started by targeting organizations in United Kingdom and South America, but that it has since expanded to target entities around the world, including government agencies, telecoms, and companies in the health sector. Both Microsoft and Okta admitted that they suffered a security breach, but both claim limited impact from the attacks.