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An Israeli spacecraft rocketed toward the moon for the country’s first attempted lunar landing, following a launch Thursday night by SpaceX. A communications satellite for Indonesia was the main cargo aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, which illuminated the sky as it took flight. But Israel’s privately funded lunar lander — a first not just for Israel but commercial space — generated the buzz. Israel seeks to become only the fourth country to land on the moon, after Russia, the US and China. The spacecraft — called Beresheet, Hebrew for Genesis or “In The Beginning” — will take nearly two months to reach the moon. “We thought it’s about time for a change, and we want to get little Israel all the way to the moon,” said Yonatan Winetraub, co-founder of Israel’s SpaceIL, a nonprofit organization behind the effort. The moon, nearly full and glowing brightly, beckoned as it rose in the eastern sky. Within an hour after liftoff, Beresheet was already sending back data and had depl...

Hey, remember that terrible Mars mission startup that just officially died because it totally ran out of money and it wasn’t even close to doing anything meaningful? Well, good(?) news! It’s back and it apparently found someone that’s willing to part with a whole heap of cash to fund its ongoing existence. In a news press release — the first official word from the company since July 2018, by the way — Mars One Ventures confirms reports that it has hit bankruptcy, while noting that it has a month to figure out how to drag itself out of its grave. As luck would have it, an unnamed investor has materialized to save the day. A portion of the press release explains what the company has been doing lately, which has very little to do with traveling to Mars: During the last few months, discussions have been held with a new investment company. The goal of the investor and Mars One is to achieve either a reversal of the administration or a restart based on a financial...

The exclusive list of countries that have landed spacecraft on the Moon could get a new addition this year. This February, Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Beresheet, which is the Hebrew word for “beginning,” is expected to land on the lunar surface about two months later. The unmanned spacecraft will take Israel into a select group of nations. Only three countries — the US, the Soviet Union and China — have made successful ‘soft landings’ on the lunar surface. The landing also will be the first private mission to reach Earth’s natural satellite. Beresheet was born out of the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition to land an unmanned probe on the moon. The $30 million competition was scrapped with no winner last year after the organizers said none of the five finalists would make the March 31, 2018 deadline for a Moon launch, Space.com reports. Nonetheless, the Israeli team pressed on with...

The US government shutdown has led to a cascade of scary national security-related consequences, according to a new report, and we need to start being seriously concerned. None of the cybersecurity concerns have bubbled up to the surface enough to merit prominent national news coverage, but a newly released 72-page report from the FBI Agents Association walks through some of the consequences, and their ramifications could potentially be profound. Among them, the report quotes an FBI agent in the bureau’s Northeast region lamenting that it has no funds available to pay its confidential human sources. “In my situation,” this agent is quoted in the report as saying, “I have two sources that support our national security cyber mission that no longer have funding. They are critical sources providing tripwires and intelligence that protect the United States against our foreign adversaries. “The loss in productivity and pertinent intelligence is immeasurable.” In...

Prospective Consumer Electronics Show attendees must really love punishment. Tooling around a Las Vegas convention center listening to awkward humans talk about how robots are going to put everybody out of work is our idea of hell. But even those who live for this stuff are carping about the change in show dates, which will force them to pay more expensive weekend hotel rates. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– Attendees will be trying to cram it all into two days, since CES now runs Thursday, Jan. 5, to Sunday, Jan. 8. (Last year it started on a Wednesday.) We tried The Venetian Hotel to check rates and were quoted $1,191.68 (that’s per night) — and only if you check in on Wednesday, Jan. 4. You have to be a special brand of crazy to want to spend the first full weekend of the year in Vegas, but if you are going, you should know that tech adviser Shelly Palmer is offering tours for both media and industry. “This year, CES is going to be challenging. A lot of people wi...

When buying a smartphone or tablet, the battery life is arguably one of the most important things people consider. Luckily consumer group Which? has taken the guess work out of it by compiling a guide of smartphones, tablets, laptops, Bluetooth speakers and wireless headphones that offer the best and worst battery life. It turns out some smartphones will die after just 180 minutes of browsing the web – not what you want from a modern phone. The HTC 10 took top place for the longest battery life of a smartphone. The $575 phone took a whopping 1,859 minutes of continuous talk time to run out of battery – that’s just one minute short of 31 hours. Coming in as the worst buy for battery life was the EE Rook, which will run out of juice within three hours of browsing the web. Looking for a tablet? Then the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7 is going to give you the best value for money when it comes to battery life. On average, the $250 tablet lasted almost 16 hours before i...

SEOUL, South Korea — Samsung Electronics says it is stopping production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, a day after it halted global sales of the star-crossed devices. The South Korean company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it has made a final decision to stop production for the sake of consumer safety. Samsung is struggling to regain consumer trust after a first round of recalls. The company stopped selling the device after finding that even the supposedly safer replacements it was providing for recalled Note 7 phones were catching fire. South Korean media reported Monday that Samsung’s factories stopped making the fire-prone phones but Samsung insisted it was making production adjustments to improve inspections and quality control.

The Galaxy Note 7 has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for Samsung. Following a seemingly endless number of reports involving Note 7 devices catching fire or even exploding, Samsung took an unprecedented step of issuing a global recall for its flagship device earlier this month. An official Note 7 recall program through the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was initiated last week. As expected, Samsung urged consumers to stop using their devices altogether and to power down any Galaxy Note 7 units purchased before September 15. Incidentally, Samsung has since claimed that replacement devices will be available at retail outlets beginning on September 21. In the meantime, what will likely be an inevitable stream of Note 7 lawsuits has already begun. According to report from Reuters, a Florida man named Jonathan Strobel sued Samsung this past Friday after a Note 7 tucked away in his front pocket burned a hole through his pants. Strobel reporte...

Cops are already using computers to stop crimes before they happen, academics have warned. In a major piece of research called “Artificial Intelligence and life in 2030”, researchers from Stanford University said “predictive policing” techniques would become commonplace in the next 15 years. The academics discussed the crime fighting implications of “machine learning,” which allows computers to learn for themselves and then solve problems just like a human. This technique will have a major effect on transport, healthcare and education, potentially bringing massive benefits as well as putting millions of jobs at risk. But in the hands of cops, AI has the potential to have a massive impact on society by allowing law enforcement to have an “overbearing or pervasive” presence. “Cities already have begun to deploy AI technologies for public safety and security,” a team of academics wrote. “By 2030, the typical North American city will rely heavily upon them.” “These in...

The iPhone 7 isn’t the hottest new smartphone on the market — and that may be a good thing. That’s because archrival Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 7 phone has been literally overheating, with faulty batteries causing explosions, fires and injuries since its launch last month.  A  6-year-old Brooklyn boy was burned Saturday night when a brand-new Note 7 exploded in his hands. Last week, in Florida, a jeep burst into flames when a motorist left his Note 7 charging on the dashboard. All of this, experts say, has begun to overshadow Apple’s headaches with the iPhone 7, whose unveiling last week sparked furor over the new gadget’s lack of a headphone jack. The result: The new iPhone may be able to cherry-pick customers away from Samsung during the crucial fall and holiday seasons. For Samsung, “this p.r. disaster could not have come at a worse time,” says Anindya Ghose, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business. “It definitely gives a temporary edge t...

U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire. The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing “recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung” about the devices. It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product. Last week, Samsung ordered a global recall of the jumbo phones after its investigation of explosion reports found the rechargeable lithium batteries were at fault. In one case, a family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle. Samsung launched the latest version of the Note series in August. The Note series is one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung, and the devices usually ...

Apple is expected to show off new iPhones, an updated smartwatch — and maybe some new gear for listening to both — during its annual fall product launch event Wednesday. Hard-core Apple fans will be watching closely for details about the newest features coming to Apple’s gadgets, from a widely anticipated dual-lens camera for the iPhone to a rumored GPS sensor in the Apple Watch. But even casual users of consumer technology may be interested to see if Apple follows through on reports that it’s eliminating the iPhone’s analog headphone jack, since that could pave the way for a big shift in the way people listen to digital music. Getting rid of the traditional analog jack means future iPhone owners will need earbuds or headphones that use a digital connection, either through a wireless signal like Bluetooth or a cord that fits in the same port used for recharging the device. Apple may ship the next iPhones with an adapter that lets older headsets plug into the charging ...

the camera features of the iPhone7. The biggest news at Apple’s iPhone 7 product launch on Wednesday wasn’t about what’s in, but rather, what’s out. The latest version of the iPhone will be entering a brave new wireless world — without a standard headphone jack. Apple called the move courageous, while Twitter and other online critics quickly let out a collective groan. “The reason to move on: courage,” insisted Apple executive Phil Schiller during the presentation. “The courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us.” The new, sleeker model — which is water and dust resistant — will come with special headphones that fit into the device’s Lightning connection port, which in past models was solely the charging port. the water resistance of the iPhone7 But the tech giant hopes users will splurge on its new wireless earbuds, called Apple AirPods, which require charging and will cost an extra $159 when they become available in...

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug may have brought researchers one step closer to preventing the disease altogether. The new drug targets, then destroys and removes amyloid plaques, toxic proteins that clump together and build up in the brain. Most aging brains have these buildups, but not nearly at the level linked to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company Biogen developed the drug, aducanumab, and funded the study. The results were published Wednesday. Though researchers remain “cautiously optimistic” due to the small trial size, neurologist and study co-author Stephen Salloway told the magazine: “This is the best news we’ve had in 25 years of doing Alzheimer’s research.” One hundred sixty-five people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s participated in the study, and were given a monthly intravenous dose of either aducanumab or a placebo. Over the course of a year, 103 patients received varying doses of the drug. PET scans revealed th...

It’s not just privacy advocates who are freaking out over Facebook’s decision to extract user data from its popular WhatsApp messaging service. The move is also giving corporate America pause when it comes to setting up shop on the world’s biggest messaging platform. Companies are worried about how it might affect their efforts to use the free messaging platform to communicate with customers while also protecting confidential corporate and customer data. WhatsApp said earlier this year it would start testing business accounts as a way for banks, airlines and other businesses to send one-way messages to customers. That could mean a bank alerting you to a fraudulent transaction or an airline informing you about a delayed flight. Businesses also envision wading deeper onto the platform with better tools, such as sending mass notifications and using “chat bots,” or artificial intelligence, to talk to customers. Last week, Facebook said WhatsApp would begin sharing da...

With September right around the corner, we’re just a few short weeks away from Apple introducing the iPhone 7. While nothing is official quite yet, rumor has it that Apple will be holding a special media event on Wednesday, September 7 where it will introduce the highly anticipated iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Though the iPhone 7 may not introduce any game-changing new features — aside from marked improvements in camera quality — there’s a good chance that the iPhone 7 will still manage to break all previous iPhone sales records. The reason? The current pool of iPhone users looking to upgrade is larger than it’s ever been before. If you’re an existing iPhone owner interested in the iPhone 7, you’ll naturally want to know how to squeeze the most amount of money out of your current device before upgrading to Apple’s latest and greatest. Whether you’re aiming to sell your device or trade it in for credit, there are certainly no shortage of options worth exploring these...

Where Midtown is filled with taxis, but the front seats are empty. Where you’ll no longer have to smell what your driver had for lunch. That brave new world will get its off-Broadway debut in Pittsburgh in a few weeks, when Uber begins to operate self-driving cars as part of a pilot program. The automated Volvo XC90s — which will be capped with a high-tech navigation array that includes GPS, radar, cameras and even lasers — will have real paying passengers The company hopes to roll out the robocars nationwide one day. “This is just the start,” said Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive officer. “Especially when it comes to safety.” Because the world of “The Jetsons” still hasn’t totally arrived, the cars will, for now, have a person behind the wheel to take over if something goes wrong. Rides will cost the same as a normal Uber ride. But if you are hoping to head to the Steel City and try them out, the company will not let you choose a self-driving car from its ...

It’s the ad blockers that need to be blocked, according to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s social-networking giant said on Tuesday it will begin thwarting ad-blocking software on its site, escalating a battle between advertisers and users who are annoyed by ads. Facebook said that while it will protect ads from being blocked, it also is striving to make ads less annoying by making them more relevant and beneficial to users. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– “What we’ve heard is that people don’t like to see ads that are irrelevant to them or that disrupt or break their experience,” Andrew Bosworth, vice president of ads and business platform, wrote in a blog post. Accordingly, Facebook is introducing “tools to help people control their experience,” he said, by, for example, letting them opt out of seeing certain kinds of ads. Separately, Procter & Gamble told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday it is cutting back its use of targeted ads on Facebook, saying they weren’...

Criminals are preying on iPhone users who have lost their phone or had it stolen to nab more cash from the unfortunate owners. One unlucky man described how he was singled out by an expert hacker after having his phone stolen from a car through a broken window. Joonas Kiminki immediately logged his phone as lost and asked the Find My Phone app to send him an email if it was found. The iPhone user later received an email saying his iPhone had been found and asking him to follow an email link to log in to his iCloud account to view its location. Kiminki was almost caught by the elaborate scam, but cleverly noticed the URL led to show-iphone-location.com , and not a legitimate Apple address. He believes the thieves who stole his phone found his name through Medical ID and used it to reverse-engineer his email address — a smart trick used by hackers to gain access to people’s personal details. If the scammers had gained access to his ID and password, they could have...

 Women holding their smartphones show the ride-hailing apps Uber Technology Ltd., left, and Didi Chuxing at a residential compound. Uber, after a bruising two-year battle and $2 billion+ in spending, is selling its China operations to bigger local ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing in a deal that will give Uber a one-fifth stake in Didi. The merged entity is worth around $35 billion — combining Didi’s most recent $28 billion valuation and Uber China’s $7 billion worth — said a source familiar with the matter who did not want to be named before the deal was made public. Didi confirmed the agreement on its company blog, but gave no valuation. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote the company would have a one-fifth stake in Didi, making it the Chinese firm’s biggest shareholder. Kalanick will join Didi’s board, with Didi Chuxing chief Cheng Wei joining the Uber board. Uber will continue to operate independently, the Didi posting said. “Cooperating with Uber will give t...