156 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Virgin Galactic’s first crewed flight since 2021 was the last one before it goes commercial.

    Unity 25 was the company’s first trip in nearly two years, but now Virgin Galactic (not Virgin Orbit, RIP) is preparing to launch “commercial spaceline operations” with the Galactic 01 mission in late June.

    The mission flew 54.2 miles away from Earth’s surface (Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have opinions on whether or not that counts as spaceflight), and you can watch the recap right here.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    ChatGPT mobile arrives in more countries.

    Just hours after the last international expansion of OpenAI’s generative AI app for the iPhone added 11 countries to the list, it’s adding more than 30 more.

    The app launched a week ago in the US.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Elon Musk is trying Twitter Spaces again, and this time it’s with Ford CEO Jim Farley.

    The last Twitter Space Elon Musk attempted to host didn’t go so well, but he’s trying again anyway. Instead of a politician announcing a run for president, however, he’s logging on to talk with Ford CEO Jim Farley about “Accelerating EV adoption.”

    With competition for electric cars heating up — are we about to see a new partnership for Tesla? The event is scheduled to start at 5:30PM ET.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    DirecTV is still selling NFL Sunday Ticket — if you’re a business.

    Even though YouTube snatched up the rights to the NFL’s popular (and expensive) package of out-of-market games, for commercial customers, it’s being sold through a different company, EverPass Media.

    EverPass, in turn, is licensing the package to DirecTV, so your local sports bar, hotel, or other business that shows League Pass has a way to keep subscribing. Interestingly, CNBC’s Alex Sherman notes that, unlike the old days, this deal isn’t exclusive, so locations that don’t have DirecTV could get access too, if other services cut a deal with EverPass.

    NFL Sunday Ticket Continues to be Available to Commercial Establishments Nationwide Through DIRECTV

    [PRNewswire]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Enhance.

    Sure, 8K TV seems completely stalled as a consumer product, but that didn’t stop Chinese manufacturer BOE from bringing this 110-inch 16K display to SID Display Week 2023.

    Vincent Teoh took a look at all of its pixels, which were unfortunately forced to display upconverted low-res 8K content.

    Here’s what BOE had to say about it:

    The product adopts BOE’s cutting-edge oxide TFT technology and features high charge carrier mobility and an ultrahigh resolution, improving the image finesse by four times on the basis of 8K. It adopts BOE’s proprietary image enhancement technology to further boost the charging and drive capabilities, delivering exquisite and breathtaking image effects.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Elon’s jet-tracking mess could’ve been avoided if SpaceX filed the right paperwork?

    Vice used FOIA requests to uncover some key emails between SpaceX and the FAA.

    The Federal Aviation Administration’s Privacy ICAO Aircraft Address program (PIA) allows private jet owners to essentially create a dummy or “temporary” aircraft registration number that is known only to the jet’s owner and the U.S. government.

    Emails obtained by Motherboard show that SpaceX enrolled Elon Musk’s private jet in this program sometime prior to August 2022, but failed to properly implement the temporary tail number, allowing the plane to continue being tracked under its real, permanent tail number.

    Plus, they were sent at around the same time as Musk and Twitter were banning / unbanning @ElonJet and journalists who mentioned it. Meanwhile, the guy behind the account is just starting another tracker for Ron Desantis.

    Emails Show SpaceX Bungled Elon Musk's Private Jet Privacy

    [vice]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    So that’s it for Virgin Orbit.

    At the end of March, we learned satellite launching company Virgin Orbit had laid off most of its staff and would cease operations “for the foreseeable future.” Now the door to a comeback has been closed after it failed to find a wholesale buyer or cash infusion and will shut down for good (Virgin Galactic, which it spun off from in 2017, is still going).

    CNBC reports the bankrupt company’s assets and gear were sold at auction to Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and Launcher, which is a subsidiary of Vast Space.

    Virgin Orbit shuts down after bankruptcy sales

    [CNBC]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Is this Apple’s sneaky way of teasing an AR headset at WWDC 2023?

    At the exact same time as Microsoft’s Build developer conference kicked off, the folks at Apple released schedule details for their own developer event, WWDC.

    The updated page also has a small embedded video that, if you look at it with a designer’s eye, either shows a clear lens moving over the 3D logo, causing it to animate, or a pass-through transition. Our list of anticipated announcements has been adjusted accordingly.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lays out his company’s view of AI regulation.

    As James Vincent wrote about the Senate hearing last week regarding artificial intelligence, “Industry reps — primarily OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — merrily agreed on the need to regulate new AI technologies, while politicians seemed happy to hand over responsibility for drafting rules to the companies themselves.”

    Altman and others from OpenAI provided more information on the kind of regulation they consider worth pursuing in this blog post, so you can read it and see if it makes any sense.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Google’s Flood Hub’s machine learning-powered warnings are now available in 80 countries.

    The project started with the Patna region of India in 2018 before expanding to Bangladesh in 2020, and last fall, Google launched the Flood Hub with forecasts available up to a week in advance. Today Google said it’s adding 60 new countries to the list.

    With the addition of 60 new countries across Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and South and Central America, our platform Flood Hub now includes some of the territories with the highest percentages of population exposed to flood risk and experiencing more extreme weather, covering 460 million people globally.

    Flood Hub’s AI uses diverse, publicly-available data sources, such as weather forecasts and satellite imagery. The technology then combines two models: the Hydrologic Model, which forecasts the amount of water flowing in a river, and the Inundation Model, which predicts what areas are going to be affected and how deep the water will be.

    Helping more people stay safe with flood forecasting

    [Google]

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