Just two days after officially (and quietly) confirming that it intends to replace the International Space Station with a commercial station by 2030, NASA has awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans.
The three companies, which received the awards under the agency’s Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Destinations program, are: Nanoracks for $160 million Blue Origin for $130 million Northrop Grumman for $125.6 million
RESEARCHERS SAID THEY’VE discovered a batch of apps that were downloaded from Google Play more than 300,000 times before the apps were revealed to be banking trojans that surreptitiously siphoned user passwords and two-factor-authentication codes, logged keystrokes, and took screenshots.
The apps—posing as QR scanners, PDF scanners, and cryptocurrency wallets—belonged to four separate Android malware families that were distributed over four months. They used several tricks to sidestep restrictions Google has devised in an attempt to rein in the unending distribution of fraudulent apps in its official marketplace. Those limitations include restricting the use of accessibility services for sight-impaired users to prevent the automatic installation of apps without user consent.
Uber Eats deliveries to Mars are going to be expensive, so the first colonists of the Red Planet will need to figure out how to grow their own food locally. A new study has shown that dosing plants with symbiotic bacteria can drastically improve their growth in barren Mars-like soil.
Extremely dry and dusty, the rocky dirt that gives the Red Planet its characteristic tinge is terrible for farming. The regolith, as it’s known, lacks the usual organic matter from plants and animals that provide nutrients for crops, meaning attempts to grow things in this dirt alone have left scientists hungry.
Swedish retailer Ikea is becoming a landlord in Japan with a tiny apartment it will rent out in Tokyo.
The 10-square-meter (107-square-foot) apartment is located in the Shinjuku district and will cost just 99 yen ($0.86) per month to rent, according to details released by Ikea this week.
Only one unit is available, and it is fully furnished with Ikea furniture and accessories. The company is accepting applications from potential tenants, who must be over 20 years old, until December 3.
Though the use of renewable energy is growing—in 2020, wind, solar, and other sources of renewable electricity accounted for nearly 20% of electricity generation in the U.S., up 90% from the year 2000—the basic infrastructure of the grid itself has been slower to change. Almost all overhead electricity lines use the same basic, inefficient design that’s been in use since 1908. The technology isn’t a good fit to accommodate the shift to renewables.
“You may have an existing grid, but if you put in over 500 megawatts of wind because you build a new wind farm, and you connect it to the grid, the grid itself may not be able to absorb that electricity,” says Herve Touati, chief strategy officer for TS Conductor, a startup making high-efficiency conductors for the electricity grid. “So you need to increase the capacity of the grid.”
A couple from Seattle have been indicted for carrying out over $1m in fraud on Covid-19 relief programs.
Brian Sparks, 40, and Autumn Luna, 22, are charged in a 16-count indictment with defrauding the Washington State Employment Security Division (ESD) of more than $500,000 in benefits and defrauding the Small Business Administration (SBA) of approximately $520,000.
As well as fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits with false bank accounts, the couple used stole identities to apply for loans, including Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
The SBA paid the couple around $520,000 in Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) proceeds.
In a somewhat historic first, Nintendo is partnering with Panda Global on an officially licensed series of Super Smash Bros. esports tournaments. There will be official tournaments for Super Smash Bros Ultimate and, shockingly, GameCube classic Super Smash Bros. Melee.
The relationship between Nintendo and the Smash Bros competitive community has never been a smooth one. Throughout the years, the company has called for many cease and desist orders against various community events, giving it a bad image in the eyes of the tournament faithful. That rocky past makes this inaugural licensed tournament circuit even more monumental.
Looks like the streaming adage of “new content drives subscribers” is true. Paramount+ announced that it’s had its “most successful week ever,” adding more than 1 million new subscribers, as well as setting a new record for total sign-ups since the streaming service rebranded from CBS All Access in March 2021.
While owner ViacomCBS doesn’t break out specific subscription numbers, we can put things into a little bit of context. Globally, ViacomCBS added 4.3 million subscribers in the third quarter of 2021 for a total of 47 million. So more than a million new subscribers in a single week is a big deal.
US drug company Pfizer has penned a deal to allow its experimental Covid-19 treatment pill to be made and sold in 95 developing nations.
The deal with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool not-for-profit could make the treatment available to 53% of the world’s population.
But it excludes several countries that have had large Covid-19 outbreaks, including Brazil.
Pfizer says the pill lessens the risk of severe disease in vulnerable adults.
Amazon has reached a legal settlement in California over claims it failed to adequately inform its warehouse workers about Covid-19 cases in the workplace.
California’s attorney general said workers had been left “terrified and powerless”.
The delivery giant will pay $500,000 but did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing on the settlement.
Amazon said the law did not require it to share total numbers of cases with staff, but it had now started to do so.
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