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The mission appeared to have started smoothly. At around 10PM GMT on Monday, the Boeing 747 carrying Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket successfully took-off in southwest England. The jet then climbed around 35,000ft before releasing the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. But then, disaster struck. “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information,” Virgin Orbit announced on Twitter. — Virgin Orbit (@VirginOrbit) January 9, 2023 The US company soon provided further details....

According to the space agency, it’s the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early, distant universe to date. Behold: Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, the picture shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. As per NASA, the combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Thanks to the agency’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which allows deep field views, the telescope has brought these distant galaxies into sharp focus....

As a precautionary step, it has reset all users’ passwords. While you can continue using Flipboard from devices you’re already logged in, you’ll be prompted to create a new password if you try signing in afresh. Flipboard has more than 145 million monthly active users. The company didn’t disclose the exact number of accounts that had been breached, but said only a “subset of user data” had been compromised. It also said it is in the process of notifying all affected users....

Featuring a navy blue and copper design, the Celestee sit below the company’s Stellia ($2,999)and Radiance ($1,300) headphones, but are replacing the company’s earlier Elegia. If the Celestee is anything like Focal’s other fancy headphones, the large leather earpads should provide hours of comfort. The headphones should also provide a decent amount of isolation from ambient sounds, although with no active noise-cancellation circuitry, don’t expect these to block out sounds like a Sony or Bose....

Some sales experts will tell you having the right call to action will help any salesman close more deals. Still others say understanding the true value of your product or even presenting as if a deal is already completed will boost conversions. And there are even some seasoned pros that will tell you the best way to close a sale…is to stop trying so hard to close a sale. Techniques for getting a customer to sign on the dotted line are as varied as the number of salesmen and women on the beat....

Great web design starts with a sharp sense of visuals. Without that stylistic flair, even a well-structured web experience is just…meh. Presentation matters, which is why the scalability and versatility of vector graphics are all but essential to today’s graphic designers. As the leader in basically all digital media software, Adobe’s Illustrator remains the gold standard for vector graphic creation and editing. And with The 2020 Adobe Illustrator CC Master Class Bundle ($39....

Under the rules, cryptocurrency-related firms will voluntarily abide by a regulatory framework that requires them to pay tax, provide consumer protection, and meet capital requirements, Reuters reports. Authorities will implement regulations later this month. Firms that follow France’s rules will receive approval from the country’s Financial Markets Authority (AMF), and will effectively be white listed. “We are in talks with three or four candidates for initial coin offerings (ICOs),” executive director for legal affairs at France’s Financial Markets Authority, Anne Marechal, told Reuters....

The Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) has issued a warning against the cryptocurrency exchange stating that it is operating without a license. What’s more, the BaFin claims CoinBene has been recruiting freelance cryptocurrency traders to perform trades on behalf of the exchange. CoinBene LTD Germany is not registered on the commercial register in the country, the announcement reads. In Germany, cryptocurrencies are typically classed as “financial instruments.” As such, trading the digital assets on behalf of clients should be conducted under authorization from the German Banking Act Kreditwesengesetz (KWG)....

Generally, this is all well and good(-ish), but it leaves out one vital ingredient of life: getting shitfaced. It’s terrible oversight, right? A borderline unforgivable mistake. Imagine it — waking up on Sunday without a thumping headache, dry mouth, and a deep, endless sense of shame. It hardly bears thinking about. So, if Soylent is meant to be the nutrition of those with no time — and we needed to create an alcoholic version of it — we needed to create a drink that bought into this aesthetic....

Page and Brin note that now that Alphabet is established and its various companies are operating independently, “it’s the natural time to simplify [the company’s] management structure.” While Alphabet was founded in 2015 and became Google’s parent company then, the big G remains the face of the company in the public eye; it makes some basic sense that Pichai would lead both. For his part, Pichai says that the change won’t affect Alphabet’s day-to-day work....

Here we go again. Add it to the long list of Google’s attempts to get people to talk to one another. Off the top of my head, there’s Gmail, Hangouts, Google+, Gchat, Allo, Duo, Spaces, Wave, RCS, Inbox, that weird chat interface in YouTube, and probably something else I’m forgetting. How many of those do you actually use, among those that actually remain? Keeping up with Google’s communications efforts is harder than keeping up with the plot of the Marvel universe....

The event was scheduled to take place on May 12-14, but has apparently been canceled with no immediate plans to reschedule. Per 9to5 Google’s report, Google has begun sending notifications to ticket-holders: Credit: 9to5 Google Google joins myriad other tech companies in canceling events scheduled to take place throughout the year. Facebook’s F8 and Adobe Summit have also been outright canceled while other events, such as TNW’s own 2020 conference, have been rescheduled....

It’s no different than any other media industry. If you’re a musician, you want your song to show up on Spotify’s main page. If you’re in a comedy movie, you want it to be listed first in the “comedy” section on Netflix. That’s why one of my crowning achievements as a journalist was convincing the Google News algorithm I was the queerest artificial intelligence reporter in the world. How it started Back in June I published this article explaining how my TNW author profile was influencing the number of my articles that showed up in Google News if you did an in-app search for “artificial intelligence queer....

The search giant’s new policy for in-app payments on the Play Store came into effect on April 1. It requires developers to mandatorily use the company’s own billing system. What’s more, apps can’t use external links or promotional text to tell users about their paid plans within the UI. The new rules state that if these conditions are not followed, developers won’t be allowed to update their apps, starting this month....

Last month, Google finally took a stance on how it will handle political ads on its platforms, including YouTube. Now, the internet giant will limit political advertisers from targeting ads based on voters’ political leanings or public voter records. Over the summer, Google and YouTube reportedly removed over 300 ads from President for “violating company policy.” As first reported by 60 Minutes, when correspondent Lesley Stahl asked YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki if the video-streaming service had taken down any of Trump’s ads, Wojcicki said: “There are ads of President Trump that were not approved to run on Google or YouTube....

According to the Economic Times, the internet giant has been conducting multiple pilots with special focus on “how entry level hirings were made in various sectors.” The app will be officially available in India on Friday, the report adds. “Since we launched Kormo in Bangladesh in 2018 and in Indonesia this year, we’ve connected over 50,000 job seekers to jobs from hundreds of employers who use Kormo for their hiring needs, specifically entry level jobs,” said Bickey Russell, project lead of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, told TNW....

9to5Google picked apart the latest update in an APK Insight post, in which it uncovered some potential future features. Among other things, the update contains various lines of code that indicate certain features are on the way. The most promising appears to be a free trial for Stadia Pro, the paid tier: “Button text for the Pro details page that allows you to start the free Pro trial.” A similar line of code implies Stadia Base, the promised free tier, by offering the chance to bypass entering a code, which is currently how users redeem paid Stadia subscriptions....

The scarcity of lumber brought prices to an all-time high of $1,686 per thousand board feet in May, a 400 percent peak from pre-pandemic levels when prices shuffled between $350 to $500. In August, there was some good news as wood fell to $399 per thousand board feet. But that didn’t last too long as lumber shot back up by 50 percent a few weeks later. For consumers, this means that it’s gotten even more expensive to build, buy, or remodel your house....

Ok, $15 million isn’t all that much when we’re talking about creating an entirely new mode of transport. But it’s a clear acknowledgment by the European Commission that hyperloop is a sustainable means of transport. The idea actually has legs – or in this case, tubes. Hardt hyperloop as green mobility It’s all part of a bigger mission of sustainability underpinned by the European Green Deal, which mentions hyperloop as a form of sustainable and smart mobility....

Last year we put together a list of the best hacking movies, and obviously, the next logical step from there was to catalog the coolest movies and series about developers. So, after putting in hours and hours of screentime watching all of these so-called ‘developer films’ from the last two decades, I’m pretty confident I’ve got a solid list of movies that will meet most of your expectations (I hope)....