Skydivers Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington will attempt a feat that has never been done before (and likely for good reason): The two cousins and professional daredevils will each fly their own Cessna 182 “experimental aircraft” to an elevation of 14,000 feet, simultaneously pitch the planes into a vertical nosedive and then proceed to leap into each other’s’ respective aircraft.Hulu will be livestreaming the aeronautical feat, courtesy of Red Bull TV, on April 24th.
Both Aikin and Farrington regularly perform aerial acts that are not for the faint of heart as members of the Red Bull Air Force, the members of which are some of the best professional skydivers and wingsuit flyers in the world. Aikin made history in 2016 by becoming the first person to jump 7600 meters without a parachute, engineers designed what amounts to a human-sized fish net to break his fall. Andy Farrington’s career highlights include winning the Red Bull ACES championship — a global wingsuit racing competition — twice. Despite being the youngest member of the Red Bull Airforce, the 39-year old has more skydives, BASE jumps and flying hours under his belt than any other member of the team.
The act of plane swapping wouldn’t be technically possible without significant alterations to the aircraft themselves. Aircraft engineer Dr. Paulo Iscold designed a custom airbrake system that allows for both planes to maintain a controlled vertical descent after the cousins disembark. In other words, both planes will descend in a more controlled fashion, roughly at the speed of the skydivers’ descent.
Plane Swap will be livestreamed on Hulu on Sunday, April 24th at 4:00 pm PT/7:00 pm ET.
Foxconn, which is perhaps most known for assembling Apple’s devices in its factories, has partially restarted operations in Shenzhen. The company closed its factories in the city a few days ago after the government imposed new lockdowns and restrictions in an effort to curb the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. According to Bloomberg, two of Foxconn’s campuses in Shenzhen, one of which makes iPhones, won approval to partly restart their operations by adopting a “closed loop” management process.
Shenzhen is one of China’s special economic zones and is known for serving as home to many electronics manufacturers. The tech hub has experienced tremendous economic growth over the past 10 years or so and contributes immensely — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars — to China’s GDP. A long lockdown could lead to considerable economic loss for the country, which is most likely why Shenzhen said it would allow companies to operate, so long as they implement a “factory bubble” approach.
In this closed loop or factory bubble system, workers would have to live on site and can only travel from company housing to their workplaces. They also have to be tested regularly. Wuhan adopted similar measures when it went under a lockdown that lasted for months at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s also similar to the bubble system used to protect athletes and locals during the Beijing Winter Olympics.
It’s unclear if the factory shutdowns will have a huge effect on Apple’s production rates, though it’s worth noting that the tech giant has been grappling with supply chain issues and has been struggling to keep up with demand since last year.
Kitchen robots are making more than just sliders and pizzas. Chipotle is testing Chippy, a version of Miso Robotics’ arm-based automaton (already in use at White Castle) customized to make tortilla chips. The bot not only knows how to replicate Chipotle’s recipe, but is smart enough to add “subtle variations” to keep things interesting — you might get a little more lime or salt.
The test is currently limited a Chipotle “innovation hub” in Irvine, California. However, the Mexican-themed restaurant chain also plans to use Chippy in a southern California restaurant later this year. Feedback from customers and workers will help shape any potential national rollout.
People will still be involved in making most of your burrito or taco, Chipotle said. Like an earlier rollout of the Pepper chat bot, Chippy will be there to “improve the human experience” rather than replace back-of-house cooks. You might get your meals sooner and with more consistent quality, particularly during busy hours.
It’s easy to be skeptical, though. Zume transitioned from pizza-making robots after technical hurdles made them impractical, while McDonalds’ AI-powered drive-thrus aren’t yet accurate enough to be reliable. There’s also the perpetual concern that companies will eventually automate workers out of their jobs. For now, though, Chipotle appears focused on making life easier for kitchen staff rather than replacing them with machines.
Just when I thought the NFT chaos had calmed, here comes Instagram. Speaking at SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed digital collectibles would be arriving on Instagram “in the near term.” Zuckerberg said NFTs could one day play a role in the company’s eventual metaverse. “I would hope that, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse… can be basically minted as an NFT, and you can take it between your different places,” he said.
SXSW 2022 is this week, and we’re remotely reporting on all the major panels, announcements and reveals. Just, sadly, without the Austin food scene on hand.
Google mentioned in its Games Developer Summit keynote that a Steam alpha test for Chrome OS will be available for “select” Chromebooks. Details weren’t available as of this writing, but Google pointed would-be players to a (currently unavailable) Chromebook community forum post. What about minimum specs? According to rumors, you might be limited to models with at least an 11th-gen Core i5 and 7GB of RAM. And hey, what about Stadia?
The API is available to game developers right now.
“Windows games can ship with DirectStorage,” starting today, Microsoft has announced. DirectStorage is the tech giant’s fast game-loading technology that was introduced with the Xbox Series X and S consoles. In September 2020, Microsoft revealed it’ll also make the DirectStorage API available on Windows, allowing games for PCs to take advantage of the technology. It may take a while for more titles to come with DirectStorage, especially since not everyone has upgraded to NVMe SSDs yet.
Tesla has raised the prices of its electric vehicles for the second time in a month. After adding $1,000 to some long-range models last week, the automaker has now implemented a much larger price increase across its lineup. Prices now start at $46,990 for the base Model 3, $2,000 higher than before. Although Tesla has quietly raised prices overnight, the move didn’t come out of left field. On Twitter, company chief Elon Musk hinted at the possibility of a price hike. He said both Tesla and SpaceX are seeing “significant recent inflation pressure in raw materials [and] logistics.”
Ms. Marvel, one of several Marvel Cinematic Universe shows coming to Disney+ this year, will premiere on June 8th. It centers around Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Pakistani–American whose idol is Captain Marvel. She’ll be the MCU’s first Muslim superhero and will also appear in The Marvels movie, which is scheduled to hit theaters on February 17th, 2023.
The company’s still awaiting the go-ahead from US regulators.
European Union officials have unconditionally OKed Amazon’s $8.45 billion bid to buy famed movie and TV studio MGM. The European Commission’s antitrust regulators determined there was limited overlap between the companies and said the merger wouldn’t severely reduce competition in the movie business.
Amazon still needs the green light from the Federal Trade Commission before it can close the deal, which was announced last May. Recent reports suggested the FTC was planning to challenge the merger with an antitrust lawsuit. However, that requires a majority vote by commissioners.
When Audio-Technica introduced its latest true wireless earbuds last month, the company only shared UK and EU pricing and availability. Starting today though, you can purchase the lost-lasting ATH-CKS50TW model in the US. For $149, you can expect up to 20 hours of battery life with active noise cancellation (ANC) disabled, and up to 15 hours with it on. That’s well beyond what most of the competition offers — with or without noise canceling abilities.
The IPX4-rated ATH-CKS50TW supports multipoint Bluetooth pairing, so you can be connected to two devices at once and easily switch between the two. On-board controls give you quick access to music, volume, calls and enabling ANC or transparency mode. A handy sidetone feature will allow you to hear yourself during calls so you don’t feel the need to shout.
Inside Audio-Technica’s app, you can turn on a low-latency mode for streaming or games, adjust the EQ, locate lost earbuds and change audio codecs. For that last item, aptX, aptX Adaptive, AAC and Sony 360 Reality Audio are all supported. Google Fast Pair is available for Android devices and a quick-charge feature will give you 90 minutes of use with a 10-minute rest inside the included case.
Bandai Namco expected FromSoftware’s Elden Ring to sell 4 million copies in five weeks. It would’ve been already impressive if that’s what had happened, considering Dark Souls 3sold 3 million copies within a month of its release. Elden Ring, however, eclipsed the company’s expectations: It sold 12 million units worldwide, 1 million of which were sold in Japan alone, within 18 days of its release. The companies have announced the game’s blockbuster sales numbers in a press release and also mentioned the possibility of expanding the IP “beyond the realm of games.”
According to the announcement, those numbers came from the “distribution figures of the package version and sales figures of the downloadable versions” as of March 14th, 2022. With those sales numbers, Elden Ring smashed a bunch of other records associated with Souls-type games. FromSoftware’s previous release, Sekiro, sold 2 million copies in 10 days, and it took four years for Dark Souls 3, the best-selling game in the series, to reach 10 million units sold worldwide. Based on how well it’s doing, it seems apt to compare Elden Ring to Pokémon Legends Arceus, which sold 6.5 million copies in seven days — and that’s a game from a franchise that already has a massive following.
FromSoftware developed Elden Ring with help from A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R. R. Martin, who wrote the overarching mythos for the game that features Lovecraftian creatures and dragons. At the helm of the project was Hidetaka Miyazaki, known for creating the notoriously difficult Souls games, as well as directing Bloodborne and Sekiro. It was supposed to be available back in January but was ultimately released on February 25th for the PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC via Steam.
Several organizations in Russia have found themselves locked out of their Slack accounts without notice, according to Axios. The Salesforce-owned business messaging app has started cutting off Russian users from its platform to comply with international sanctions against the country, as well as with the policies its parent company implemented following the invasion of Ukraine. Axios said it was mostly organizations directly affected by the sanctions that were locked out and that the terms of the restrictions against them require an immediate cutoff.
Since Slack serves as companies’ main internal form of communication and can also be used to share files within organizations, it typically hosts a lot of important data for its customers. The organizations that suddenly lost access to their accounts may have also lost the chance to download their data, unless they’d prepared for the possibility of getting locked out.
Salesforce published a statement earlier this month that it’s exiting business in Russia, after all. The company said that it has a very small number of customers in the country and that it had already started exiting those relationships the week before. In a statement, Slack told Axios:
“Slack is required to take action to comply with sanctions regulations in the U.S. and other countries where we operate, including in some circumstances suspending accounts without prior notice, as mandated by law. We are in contact with affected customers regarding the impact of these actions on their account status, where permitted by law.”
While Slack isn’t deleting data owned by the Russian customers it suspended, the sanctioned organizations also won’t have access to their data until the sanctions affecting them are lifted.
Doordash has launched a gas rewards program aimed at helping delivery drivers mitigate the high cost of fuel. While it’s better than nothing, it’s more complicated and possibly less impactful than the fuel surcharges recently added by Uber and Lyft.Beg…
GM’s Super Cruise will learn two new tricks this summer. GM announced on Tuesday that the driver assist system will offer Automatic Lane Change and Trailering capabilities for eligible owners.
Owners of the 2021 Cadillac CT4 and CT5 will have the opportunity to purchase Automatic Lane Change capabilities while 2021 Escalade owners will be given the Trailering option, which allows the SUV to tow without touching the steering wheel. The company estimates that some 12,000 CT4s, 5s, and Escalades will be eligible for the paid updates. “Eligible customers will receive communication from Cadillac about pricing, and how they can purchase and install these new upgrades in the near future,” a GM spokesperson told Engadget via email.
Super Cruise, which can be found on a variety of GM products including the new Hummer EV is a Level 2 system, in that it is a driver assist and not fully-autonomous. It relies on a mixture of LiDAR mapping, GPS, visual cameras and radar sensors to navigate traffic. GM originally announced these new features back in 2020, however the COVID pandemic and a global processor shortage have hampered their rollout.
Apple ordered the evacuation of a "portion" of its Apple Park headquarters on Tuesday after first responders from the Santa Clara County Fire Department found an envelope containing an unidentified powdery white substance, according to NBC Ba…
