Month: October 2023

Enlarge / Then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal walks to a morning session during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 7, 2022, in Sun Valley, Idaho. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )

Elon Musk's X Corp. has to pay $1.1 million in reimbursements for legal fees to former Twitter executives that he fired, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, a judge reportedly ruled yesterday. Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled against Musk's firm during a hearing yesterday, Bloomberg reported.

The former Twitter executives said that after being fired by Musk, the company now known as X refused to reimburse them for expenses related to federal investigations and civil lawsuits. The former executives' lawsuit filed in April said the company "has breached its obligations... by refusing to advance Plaintiffs' Expenses."

"After hearing arguments, McCormick noted Delaware courts lean in favor of granting executives' request to have legal fees covered when tied to their actions on behalf of companies. She said she didn't see any reason to deviate from the norm in the case," Bloomberg wrote.

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  Google's generative AI wallpaper maker. I get why the spaceship image is foggy and grainy, but why does the prompt of a house with flowers look like a washed out image from a horror movie? [credit: Google ]

Android 14 is out today, along with a new Pixel phone. The OS is shipping to supported Pixel devices now, which means the Pixel 4a (5G) and every variant of the Pixel 5, 6, and 7, plus the Fold and Tablet.

The big feature this year is a somewhat customizable home screen. You can pick from several different lock screen clock styles and customize the two bottom app shortcuts. This feels like a response to iOS 16's lock screen widgets (a feature Android used to have back in the 4.2 days) but not nearly as customizable. It's honestly hard to highlight a second Android 14 feature because this is one of the smallest Android releases ever.

The first feature Google mentions in its blog post is a new wallpaper picker. On the Pixel 8, Android now has a built-in text-to-image AI wallpaper maker, presumably a feature that lets the Android team adhere to Google's "mandatory AI" company mandate. There's also a new monochrome theme if you're tired of all those "Material You" colors.

Enlarge / We'd like to imagine there's an actual Switch like this that Nintendo will be flipping in April. (credit: Flickr / Andrew Huff)

The end is nigh for online network support on the aging Wii U and Nintendo 3DS platforms. Nintendo announced overnight that "online play and other functionality that uses online communication" on those consoles will stop working in "early April 2024," just over a year after Nintendo shut off downloadable game purchases on both platforms through the eShop.

In a brief FAQ, Nintendo clarified that players will still be able to redownload purchased software and download game update data "for the foreseeable future." Players will also still be able to transfer Pokémon off of a 3DS using the Pokémon Bank system after the planned shutdown. And software that uses the 3DS's unique Street Pass system will also still work since it uses local wireless communication between systems without the need for a central server.

While there are still some people using this now-classic Nintendo hardware online, spot tests suggest that the player numbers aren't huge these days. A GameXplain test from the beginning of 2023 found a handful of online players for Mario Kart 8 and Call of Duty games on Wii U, for instance, but failed to find opponents for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Mario Tennis Ultra Smash. A similar 3DS test by a YouTuber in January found similarly mixed results, though 3DS launch titles like Super Street Fighter 4 and Steel Divers still apparently had surprisingly strong online communities.

Enlarge / Russia outlined a plan for future spaceflight activities this week. (credit: IAC/Roscosmos)

The leader of Russia's space corporation, Yuri Borisov, discussed his country's future ambitions in space on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress. He spoke expansively about Russia's plans to build a new space station in low-Earth orbit, the Russian Orbital Station, as well as other initiatives.

"We are expecting to design, manufacture, and launch several modules by 2027," Borisov said via a translator at the conference, which is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, this year. The conference's plenary sessions are being livestreamed on YouTube.

This space station will reside in a polar orbit, Borisov added, allowing it to observe the entire planet's surface. Its purpose will be to test new materials, new technologies, and new medicines. “It will be like a permanently functioning laboratory,” he said.

Enlarge / The Novavax Inc. Nuvaxovid COVID-19 vaccine. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg )

Novavax's updated protein-based COVID-19 vaccine has finally won authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, a late-coming achievement that provides Americans with their only alternative to mRNA-based shots for the fall booster campaign now underway.

While the FDA's authorization was announced Tuesday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already signed off on recommending the shot. Its September 12 recommendation that all Americans ages six months and up get an updated COVID-19 vaccine was a blanket recommendation for any updated shots authorized or approved by the FDA, which now includes Novavax. The vaccine will be available to everyone ages 12 and up.

The Novavax vaccine uses a traditional protein subunit-based design; it directly introduces the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to our cells along with an established adjuvant that enhances immune responses. The spike protein is a key outer protein the virus uses to get into human cells. The mRNA vaccines, by contrast, are a newer design that introduces the genetic code for the spike protein, which the cells then translate into protein on their own. In either case, with a disembodied spike protein, the immune system gets a chance to identify and train defensive responses against the pandemic pathogen before a live SARS-CoV-2 virus comes knocking.