Rocket builder Astra Space on Saturday launched its first rocket since the company went public. After a wobbly liftoff, the rocket failed to achieve its goal of reaching orbit. At liftoff, the rocket appeared to move sideways rather than straight up. Astra founder, chairman and CEO Chris Kemp told CNBC that about a second into the flight; one engine shut down. The company is currently investigating the reason. Astra founder and Chief Technology Officer Adam London added that the system performed relatively well under the circumstances. The rocket had sufficient thrust even with one engine out to very slowly lift…
Author: Abiodun A.
Snapchat had introduced Scan two years ago to make it easier for its users to access the world around them with the Snap camera. Now the platform is rolling out its next generation of Scan with increased functionality that will allow users to find helpful experiences across categories like fashion, food, plants, etc. The next generation Scan has already begun rolling out globally to iOS users and Android users will be getting it over the next few weeks. Initially, when Snapchat rolled out Scan, it was restricted to scanning Snapcodes to unlock AR experiences. The company realised that this was…
About a week ago, T-Mobile experienced a data breach in which a lot of customer data was stolen. How much data? It was initially said to have affected over 100 million customers; but later T-Mobile’s official figures put it around 50 million, which is still a lot of users who have been affected. That being said, T-Mobile’s CEO has since stepped forward and publicly apologized to the company’s customers. In an open letter on its website; T-Mobile’s CEO Mike Sievert apologized to customers while sharing additional details of the attack and what they’ve learnt so far. According to Sievert, “Attacks…
As I reported recently, WhatsApp has got a lot of great new functionality over the past six months, and looks set for more great features; too, with emojis reportedly coming to the messaging app shortly. And, talking of the WhatsApp application; another really exciting piece of news that has just dropped this week is that; the app is reportedly coming to Apple iPad models and Android tablets. The news comes courtesy of WABetaInfo, who stated earlier this week that not only is the WhatsApp development team working on multi-device 2.0 functionality; but also that when the new functionality is ready…
The official Twitter account for the British Embassy in Afghanistan has been deleted without explanation; with the page suddenly disappearing just as UK forces wrap up chaotic evacuation efforts in Kabul. The embassy’s Twitter handle, created in 2013 and boasting more than 109,000 followers; appears to have been deactivated sometime on Friday; leaving observers online baffled as the government has yet to offer any reasoning for the decision. The official website for the embassy notes that operations at its Kabul mission are “temporarily suspended in response to the deterioration in the security situation” in Afghanistan; though it’s unclear why the…
After Amazon took aim at his Starlink satellite internet project, SpaceX’s Elon Musk fired a verbal shot at Jeff Bezos; sarcastically claiming he retired to take up a “full-time job filing lawsuits” against the aerospace firm. The latest salvo in an ongoing one-sided war of words was prompted by a letter an Amazon subsidiary sent this week to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC); in which it urged the agency to reject SpaceX’s plans to deploy another group of satellites to power Starlink. Earlier in the month, Blue Origin – the rival space firm headed by Bezos; – sued NASA…
Three of the world’s largest internet companies have been hit with hefty financial penalties; after a Russian court ruled they had fallen foul of rules requiring them to process users’ private data exclusively within the country. On Thursday, media watchdog Roskomnadzor issued a statement confirming that; Moscow’s Tagansky Court had slapped steep fines on three American social platforms, microblogging site Twitter, messaging service WhatsApp and its parent company, Facebook. “By court order, WhatsApp was fined 4 million rubles ($54,000),” officials said. “Facebook – 15 million rubles (around $200,000); Twitter – 17 million rubles. ($230,000) for repeated violations of the requirements…
Microsoft says it has warned thousands of its cloud computing clients of a recently discovered flaw that left their data vulnerable for y8an extended period. The problem involved keys used to access Azure’s flagship database service Cosmos DB, and was discovered two weeks ago by cybersecurity company Wiz. “Imagine our surprise when we were able to gain complete unrestricted access to the accounts and databases of several thousand Microsoft Azure customers; including many Fortune 500 companies,” Wiz said on its blog Thursday. Companies including Coca-Cola and Exxon-Mobil use Cosmos DB “to manage massive volumes of data around the world in…
A person claiming to be behind the T-Mobile data breach that exposed almost 50 million people’s info has come forward to reveal his identity and to criticize T-Mobile’s security; according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. John Binns told the WSJ that he was behind the attack and provided evidence that he could access accounts associated with it, and he went into detail about how he was able to pull it off and why he did it. According to Binns, he was able to get customer (and former customer) data from T-Mobile by scanning for unprotected routers. He…
With the COVID-19 lockdown, we realised that our smartphones and laptops have become integral parts of our lives. We have been spending most of the hours of our day looking at our laptop screens; which is why we need to ensure that the display technology that we are using is the best. Asus wants to solve this by introducing a wide range of OLED panel laptops. The company has already launched two OLED laptops in India under its ZenBook series. With such a surge in OLED based laptops, we were excited to get answers to some of our questions. Mr.…