All posts
- Wearables Had a Big 2020 — CES Is About to Show You Why
Fitness trackers and smart-home gadgets became pandemic staples in 2020, and next-gen wearable silicon debuting ahead of CES 2021 suggests the category is only getting started.
- Google Puts $350K Behind the Python Software Foundation
Google is funding malware detection on PyPI and a full-time CPython developer role, a small but telling move toward securing open-source supply chains.
- 13 Million Doses Shipped, 4.2 Million in Arms: The Vaccine Rollout's Slow Start
The CDC's early January numbers show a wide gap between vaccine doses distributed and shots administered, just as a faster-spreading variant gains ground in the US.
- Two Months Later, You Still Can't Buy a PS5 or Xbox Series X
Chip constraints at AMD, not just hype, are why PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles remain nearly impossible to find two months after launch.
- Software and AI Trends Worth Watching in 2021
Remote-first dev culture, early GPT-3 experimentation, and a brewing chip shortage set the stage for software in 2021.
- New Year's Eve, and Flash Finally Flatlines
Adobe officially ends support for Flash Player today, closing out decades as the web's default plugin for video, games, and animation.
- 2020 in Hardware: The Year Everything Sold Out
A look back at how nearly every major hardware category — consoles, GPUs, CPUs, and even Macs — ended 2020 impossible to buy.
- 2020 Was the Year AI Stopped Being a Demo
A look back at GPT-3 and AlphaFold, the two AI stories that made 2020 the year machine learning stopped feeling like a lab trick.
- A 5,700-Year-Old Piece of Gum Just Gave Up a Full Human Genome
Scientists sequenced a complete ancient human genome from chewed birch pitch, the first time DNA has been recovered from something other than bone or teeth.
- One Month In, the M1 Mac Reviews Aren't Cooling Off
A month after launch, the M1 MacBook Air and Pro are still surprising owners with battery life and fanless performance that upends ARM-vs-x86 assumptions.
- SolarWinds Has Everyone Staring Hard at the Software Supply Chain
In SolarWinds' wake, package registries and security researchers are pushing code-signing, provenance, and MFA for publishing to the front of the conversation.
- The Best Present From Space Won't Arrive for Another Three Years
OSIRIS-REx is cruising home with a sample from asteroid Bennu so large it jammed its own collector — but Earth won't see it until 2023.
- Christmas Eve and the Gifts Nobody Can Actually Buy
PS5s, Xbox Series X consoles, and RTX 30-series cards remain scarce at MSRP on Christmas Eve, with resellers cashing in on the gap.
- Kubernetes Won. Now the Fight Moves Up a Layer
With Kubernetes now the default for container orchestration, 2020's cloud-native attention is shifting to service meshes and developer-experience tooling.
- SpaceX Wraps Its Busiest Year Ever With a Satellite Nobody Will Ever See
SpaceX closed out a record 26-launch year on December 19 with the classified NROL-108 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office.
- Tesla's $625 Billion Entrance Into the S&P 500
Tesla joined the S&P 500 today in one giant leap, entering as the sixth most valuable US company after a roughly 700% run-up in 2020.
- Firefox 84 Ships as the Last Browser to Say Goodbye to Flash
Mozilla's Firefox 84 drops native Apple Silicon support and wider WebRender rollout, while quietly becoming the final Firefox release to carry Flash support before its industry-wide death.
- A New, Faster-Spreading Coronavirus Variant Turns Up in South Africa
South African officials flagged a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, 501.V2, that appears more transmissible, days after a similar UK variant was reported.
- iOS 14.3 Quietly Turns the iPhone 12 Pro Into a RAW Camera
Apple's iOS 14.3 update adds ProRAW support for the iPhone 12 Pro line, plus AirPods Max pairing, Fitness+, and new App Store privacy labels.
- The Day Your Google Login Just... Stopped Working
A 45-minute Google Cloud authentication failure on December 14 knocked out YouTube, Gmail, and sign-ins for third-party apps like Discord.
- Chang'e 5 Comes Home: China Delivers the First New Moon Rocks Since 1976
Chang'e 5's return capsule landed in Inner Mongolia with about 1,731 grams of lunar material, the first fresh Moon samples since Luna 24 in 1976.
- Apple's $549 AirPods Max Land, Mesh Case and All
Apple's over-ear AirPods Max ship today at $549 with adaptive EQ and spatial audio, aiming squarely at Sony and Bose.
- SolarWinds: How a Trusted Software Update Became a Backdoor Into the US Government
FireEye's disclosure of a compromised SolarWinds Orion update exposes one of the most consequential software supply-chain breaches yet.
- SpaceX Quietly Launches Another Satellite, and That's the Whole Story
A Falcon 9 carried SiriusXM's SXM-7 broadcast satellite to orbit on December 11, and the routine nature of it is the actual news.
- DeepMind Says It Cracked the Protein-Folding Problem
AlphaFold2's CASP14 results put it near experimental accuracy on protein structure prediction, a 50-year grand challenge in biology.
- Cyberpunk 2077 Launches to Record Numbers and a Rocky Start
CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 broke concurrent-player records on launch day while console versions buckled under bugs.
- Hubble Catches One of the Most Perfect Einstein Rings Ever Seen
ESA/Hubble share a striking image of a near-complete Einstein ring, a gravitational-lensing effect that bends a distant galaxy's light into a circle.
- The PS5 Scalping Economy: Bots, Bundles, and a $30 Million Payday
A month after launch, PS5 and Xbox Series X restocks still sell out in minutes, and resellers are walking away with tens of millions in profit.
- Python 3.9.1 Lands as Developers Get Comfortable With the New PEG Parser
Python 3.9.1 shipped as a bugfix release, giving developers their first patch cycle since October's parser and typing overhaul.
- SpaceX's New Cargo Dragon Makes Its Debut on CRS-21
SpaceX launched the first of its upgraded cargo Dragon capsules to the ISS on a Falcon 9, carrying 3.2 tons of supplies on the CRS-21 mission.