Month: April 2019

Enlarge / Technicians at the Boeing Space Environment Test Facility in El Segundo, California, position Starliner inside the acoustics test chamber. (credit: Boeing)

After several weeks of rumors, NASA has officially announced that the first test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will slip from April to August. However, it's worth noting that NASA still characterizes that as a "working date" rather than a confirmed launch date.

As part of the announcement, the agency also said that the first crewed test flight of Starliner to the International Space Station—which theoretically could come before the end of 2019, but now seems doubtful—will be of extended duration. "NASA’s assessment of extending the mission was found to be technically achievable without compromising the safety of the crew,” said Phil McAlister, director of the commercial spaceflight division at NASA Headquarters, in a news release. The agency did not say how many months the crew would stay on station.

Extending Starliner's first flight gives NASA more options as it seeks to keep its crew members on the space station. In February, the space agency also began exploring the possibility of buying additional Soyuz rides to the space station through September, 2020, as it waits for Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to begin operational service. Sources have indicated that this may also be one way to funnel more money to Boeing above its fixed price contract value in the commercial crew program, as NASA will in effect be "purchasing" these seats as part of an operational mission.

Enlarge / Follow us to a new PC platform!

Borderlands 3 is the latest high-profile game to announce that it is ignoring Steam and other PC platforms in favor of an exclusive launch on the Epic Games Store. Developer Gearbox Software and publisher 2K revealed this morning that the game will be an Epic exclusive from its Sept. 13 launch through April 2020.

"The PC gaming community has been an important part of the success of the Borderlands series, and we are excited to be partnering with Epic who recognize its worldwide popularity and share in our commitment to bring Borderlands 3 to this rapidly expanding audience," 2K President David Ismailer said in a statement. "Our mission, in addition to delivering the most engaging and captivating entertainment experiences, is to embrace new distribution platforms that will contribute to our effort to grow the audience for Borderlands 3."

Borderlands 3 joins previous Epic exclusives including The Division 2 and Metro Exodus and upcoming PC releases including Control and Detroit: Become Human, which will only be available on Epic's storefront.

Google Duplex—the Google Assistant's restaurant-booking phone call bot—is finally getting a wider rollout. The tool was previously only available on Google's Pixel phones, but now you can send out a robocall from most smartphones. An updated Duplex support page (which was first spotted by XDA Developers) now shows support for "iPhones with the Google Assistant installed" and "Android devices running version 5.0 or newer."

Google Duplex is one of the more impressive products Google has shown off in recent years. Just ask the Google Assistant to make a restaurant reservation at a certain time, and it will do it. By "do it," I mean it will make a phone call to a business, speak to the business on your behalf with one of the most human-sounding computer-generated voices ever made, negotiate a reservation time, and get back to you.

Google's video is a good representation of how it works:

Enlarge (credit: Toolstotal)

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Bergen details in damning specificity how YouTube has allowed extremist content to run rampant on its site. According to the report, YouTube executives, including CEO Susan Wojcicki, repeatedly ignored warnings from YouTube employees regarding extreme and misleading videos gaining popularity on the site. This was done reportedly for "fear of throttling engagement."

Reportedly, "scores" of YouTube and Google employees raised concerns about incendiary content on YouTube. Some also offered solutions—one engineer suggested removing videos from recommendations that were "close to the line" of the company's takedown policy, while another employee wanted to track toxic videos in a spreadsheet to monitor how popular they became over time. YouTube did not take these employees up on their suggestions and continued to turn a blind eye to many types of extreme content.

While none of these rebuttals seem to be documented on paper as official policy, employees were reportedly discouraged from being proactive. YouTube lawyers told employees who were not assigned to moderation tasks to not research toxic content on their own.

Enlarge / Acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Daniel Elwell and Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Robert Sumwalt testify during a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on March 27, 2019. The committee chair, Sen. Roger Wicker, is now launching an investigation into the FAA's certification process for the 737 MAX. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Multiple whistleblowers have raised issues over the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety inspection process connected to Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft, according to a letter to the FAA from Senate Commerce Committee chairman Sen. Roger Wicker on April 2. And the FAA’s leadership was informed of these concerns as far back as August of 2018.

The whistleblowers cited “insufficient training and improper certification” of FAA aviation safety inspectors, “including those involved in the Aircraft Evaluation Group (AEG) for the Boeing 737 MAX," Wicker said in his letter to FAA acting administrator David Elwell.

According to the whistleblowers cited by Wicker, some of the inspectors that had not been properly trained or certified may have been participants in the Flight Standardization Board (FSB) for the 737 MAX--a body formed by the FAA’s AEG to determine pilot-training requirements to receive “type ratings” for the 737. The FSB’s report determined that 737 type-rated pilots required no additional training to fly the 737 MAX, and no additional documentation was added to the 737 MAX’s operations manual regarding the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).