A new satellite has become one of the 20 brightest stars in the sky

Enlarge / Observation of a BlueWalker 3 pass from Oukaimeden Observatory on Nov. 16 2022. The bright star lower left is Zeta Puppis. (credit: CLEOsat/Oukaimeden Observatory/IAU CPS/A.E. Kaeouach) Last month, a Texas-based company announced that it had successfully deployed the largest-ever commercial communications satellite in low-Earth orbit. This BlueWalker 3 demonstration satellite measures nearly 65…

The most ingenious engineering feats of 2022

It’s the Best of What’s New. IBM Zero-emissions vehicles, artificial intelligence, and self-charging gadgets are helping remake and update some of the most important technologies of the last few centuries. Personal devices like headphones and remote controls may be headed for a wireless, grid-less future, thanks to a smaller and more flexible solar panel. Boats…

Frore secures $100M, collabs with Intel to create a new way to cool processors

One of the top problems facing device manufacturers today is overheating hardware. The chips inside PCs generate heat, which — when allowed to build up — majorly hurts performance. Cooling is less of a challenge when space isn’t at a premium. But as the marketplace pushes for ever-thinner notebooks and so-called ultraportables, manufacturers are being…

LinkedIn rolls out focused inbox and messaging safety tools as it gets to grip with spam and scams

LinkedIn, the social platform for the working world for networking and recruitment, hasn’t been the biggest name in headlines when it comes to how social media is leveraged for spam, scams, toxicity and fake news, but they’re all significant problems on the platform that will only get bigger as traffic grows (as it’s doing currently,…

How Up.Labs threads the needle between corporate venture capital and accelerators

One element of the 2021 venture capital apotheosis that doesn’t get enough attention is corporate venture capital. CVC boomed through last year, leading TechCrunch to interview a number of CVC investors last August to better understand the trend. As with other forms of venture capital, CVC has pulled back some this year. Accelerators also had a…

Mozilla acquires the team behind Pulse, an automated status updater for Slack

Firefox developer Mozilla is making a rare foray into the world of mergers and acquisitions, with news that it has snapped up recently-shuttered California-based productivity startup Pulse. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but the deal is tantamount to an “acqui-hire,” with Mozilla looking to deploy the Pulse team across an array of machine…