Technology

NBC News reports: The aviation industry faces “catastrophic” disruption from the rollout of a new 5G service this week, airline leaders have warned. In a letter sent Monday to United States transportation and economic officials and obtained by NBC News, the CEOs of major carriers said that the launch could ground flights and leave “tens of thousands of Americans” stranded …

The New York Times reports: To legions of executives, journalists and politicians — even the leader of the free world — they were once-indispensable devices for staying connected when ordinary cellphones wouldn’t suffice. Anything else was for amateurs. The devices, with the quirky-sounding name BlackBerry and the QWERTY keyboard that conditioned many people to type with their thumbs, were more …

Space.com reports: Three days after launch, the pallet holding Webb’s huge sunshield — a five-layer structure designed to keep the infrared telescope and its instruments cool — will be lowered. Each of the shield’s five sheets is about the size of a tennis court when fully extended, far too wide to fit inside the payload fairing of any currently operational …

Ars Technica reports: Tesla will issue a software update that will prevent games from being played on the infotainment display. The carmaker moved quickly to issue a software update that will roll out to the affected vehicles this week. “Following the opening of a preliminary evaluation of Tesla’s ‘Passenger Play,’ Tesla informed the agency that it is changing the functionality …

The Washington Post reports: NASA’s revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope is finally in space. The Webb, charged with seeing deeper into the universe than any telescope ever built, blasted off right on time at 7:20 a.m. Saturday from the European Space Agency’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on South America’s northeast coast. At launch, the $10 billion telescope, NASA’s long-delayed …

Protocol reports: TikTok has dethroned Google as the most popular domain in 2021, according to Cloudflare’s 2021 Year in Review for internet traffic. In 2020, the video-sharing platform was ranked No. 7 while Google came in at No. 1. This year, TikTok came in first, followed by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, in that order Read the full article. TikTok …

The Data Center reports: Amazon Web Services is down again, in its third outage this month. There is a problem with AWS at its US-East-1 (Virginia) cloud region, impacting a number of customers and users. Among those impacted are Coinbase, Fortnite, Hulu, Instacart, Rocket League, Acadly, Peloton, Hinge, Quora, the Epic Games Store, Slack, GitHub rival Bitbucket, Samsung Smart Lights, …

The Verge reports: Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics has released a holiday video featuring its dog-like Spot robot, and it’s turned out as creepy as ever. The video, posted to Twitter, starts innocuously enough — there’s a large present of the type anyone would be happy to see under their tree, sitting in a courtyard. Then, the gift stands up and walks …

The Verge reports: TikTok is changing its For You Page algorithm to prevent users from seeing too many similar videos that could be harmful when viewed in clusters, the company said today. The goal is to steer users away from clusters of videos that might “reinforce a negative personal experience,” listing extreme dieting, sadness, and breakup content as examples. Read …

New Scientist reports: A region of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars, one of the biggest in the solar system, appears to contain large amounts of water locked just beneath the surface, making it potentially useful for future astronauts. This is far from the first time researchers have seen water on Mars, but previous discoveries have been concentrated at …

NBC News reports: Spies for hire are secretly targeting journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents on behalf of corporations and governments to an extent not previously understood, Facebook’s parent company says in a new report, while banning six companies and a Chinese network named in the report from its social media platforms. “The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across …

Via press release from NASA: For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as …

The Associated Press reports: Norway’s data privacy watchdog on Wednesday fined gay dating app Grindr 65 million kroner ($7.16 million) for sending sensitive personal data to hundreds of potential advertising partners without users’ consent — a breach of strict European Union privacy rules. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority said it imposed its highest fine to date because the California-based company …

The Verge reports: Apple has released an app called Tracker Detect, which the company says will let Android users search for AirTags or other Find My-compatible trackers, such as the Chipolo One Spot tracking tag. Apple announced that this app was coming in June, promising that it would allow Android users to find potentially malicious trackers being used without their …

The Verge reports: Twitter says it is testing an overhaul to the process for reporting tweets, which it says will ultimately make it easier for users to alert the company to abusive or suspicious behavior. The approach being tested with a small group of users in the US streamlines the current reporting process so that a person reporting a tweet …

The New York Times reports: Not long after buying a Tesla Model 3 this summer, Vince Patton saw a YouTube clip highlighting a feature that took him by surprise: three video games that can be played on the large touch screen mounted in front of the dashboard — while driving down the road. “I thought surely that can’t be right,” …

The Associated Press reports: Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday, the company said, limiting service at many key and popular sites. The company provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press. Amazon said in a post an hour after the outage began that it had identified the root cause and was “actively …

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk built his electric car company, Tesla, around the promise that it represented the future of driving — a phrase emblazoned on the automaker’s website. Much of that promise was centered on Autopilot. Over and over, Mr. Musk declared that truly autonomous driving was nearly at hand — the day when a Tesla could …

CTV News reports: Police in York Region say they have discovered a new way in which thieves are using Apple technology to track and eventually steal high-end cars in the area. In a news release issued Thursday, investigators said they have identified at least five incidents since September where suspects have placed Apple AirTags in “out-of-sight” areas of the vehicles …

Global News reports: Robot engineers at Cornwall-based Engineered Arts have unveiled a remarkably human-like android, named “Ameca.” A short promo video released by the company shows Ameca seemingly “waking up,” looking at its hands and then towards the camera. The 40-second clip has racked up well over 10 million views online since Engineered Arts released it earlier this week. Ameca …