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At today's 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple dropped the first teaser trailer for Foundation, a new TV series for Apple TV adapted from Isaac Asimov's seminal Foundation series of novels. The new show, which stars Jared Harris and Lee Pace, had already begun filming when the global pandemic shut down production in March. The teaser offers our first glimpse of what this highly anticipated series will look like, as well as a few peeks behind the curtain on set.

(Mild spoilers for the first book in the Foundation series below.)

The series started out as eight short stories by Asimov that appeared in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and early 1950, inspired in part by Edward Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The first four of those stories were collected, along with a new introductory story, and published as Foundation in 1951. The next pair of stories became Foundation and Empire (1952), with the final two stories appearing in 1953's Second Foundation. Asimov's publishers eventually convinced him to continue the series, starting with two sequels: Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). Next came a pair of prequels: Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993), the latter published posthumously. (Asimov died in 1992.)

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook starts the WWDC 2020 keynote.

Today, Apple made one of its biggest announcements in years: that Macs will begin to transition away from Intel processors. The company also outlined plans for new versions of iOS, macOS, and watchOS. But while those were the headlining changes, there are a bunch of smaller announcements that are worth looking into.

We're not listing every little feature in iOS right now—that's for the review later this year, after all—but we will flag a few of the bigger standalone announcements that we didn't get to during our event coverage. We'll start with tvOS, which is getting its biggest software update in a good long while.

tvOS gets expanded multi-user support and picture-in-picture

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  This is the panel used for multi-user switching. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

tvOS, the software that drives Apple TV set-top-boxes, is getting what might be its most substantial new version since 2017. The headlining feature is arguably expanded multi-user support, though Apple has not been crystal clear on exactly what that support will entail yet. Still, expanding that has been one of the most requested features for the Apple TV, so we're looking forward to seeing more.

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  A surprisingly long list of devices makes the iPadOS 14 list—but my own iPad 4th gen didn't make the cut. [credit: Apple ]

Today's WWDC virtual conference exposed tons of new and exciting features for devices across the entire Apple ecosystem. If your device supports the newest version of its OS, it will get those features for free in an over-the-air update. For the most part, if you bought your Apple device new in 2015 or later, you made the cut—but there are some exceptions both ways.

The Apple Watch line is the easiest to understand, since it has so few models available. All Apple Watch models in Series 3 or later can update to watchOS 7—at least, they can as long as they're paired to an iPhone which can run iOS 14.

All iPhones newer than the iPhone 6s (which came out in September 2015) can upgrade to iOS 14. This includes both generations of the iPhone SE. The seventh-generation iPod touch can also upgrade to iOS 14; all previous generations of iPod are out of luck. If you're not certain which model of iPhone you own, you can find identification tips at Apple's support site here.

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Hackers are abusing Google Analytics so that they can more covertly siphon stolen credit card data out of infected ecommerce sites, researchers reported on Monday.

Payment card skimming used to refer solely to the practice of infecting point-of-sale machines in brick-and-mortar stores. The malware would extract credit card numbers and other data. Attackers would then use or sell the stolen information so it could be used in payment card fraud.

More recently, these sorts of attacks have expanded to use against ecommerce sites after hackers have compromised them. Hackers use the control they gain to install unauthorized code that runs deep inside the back-end system that receives and processes payment card date during an online transaction. The malicious code then copies the data.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Mixer, the game-streaming platform acquired by Microsoft in 2016, is done. Xbox team lead Phil Spencer confirmed the news on Monday, announcing a 30-day end-of-life period before Microsoft formally pulls the plug on July 22.

What's more, Microsoft used the opportunity to offer all of its users, particularly its moneymaking "partner" members, a transition path to another streaming service: Facebook Gaming.

"Beginning today, Facebook Gaming will make it easy for anyone in the Mixer community to join, if they choose to do so," Spencer writes at Xbox Wire. He guides affected users to check out a Mixer FAQ on the transition, but unsurprisingly, the guidance about jumping from Mixer to Facebook Gaming is full of caveats about "eligibility" and having financial agreements matched by Facebook "as closely as possible."

Enlarge (credit: NASA/APL/SRI)

Pluto’s recategorization as a dwarf planet may have caused some past anger, but there has never been a better time to be a Pluto fan. Since the New Horizons mission gave us our first real look at Pluto in 2015, researchers have been digging into the rich reality of this icy world. The latest question under the magnifying glass: what was Pluto like at its birth?

Beneath its surface—composed of frozen water, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and more—Pluto is today thought to have a liquid water ocean surrounding a rocky core. But scientists are trying to figure out how long it has been that way. In the "cold start" model, Pluto's interior ocean is thought to have been frozen but then gradually thawed due to heat from radioactive decay in the core. But it remains possible that a "hot start" model is more accurate, one where the planet started out warm enough to form some liquid water.

Cold start vs. hot start

Although the dwarf planet’s beginnings are buried deep in the past, its two possible origins should have left marks on the surface.

Enlarge / Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity comes in for a landing after its first suborbital test flight. (credit: GENE BLEVINS/AFP/Getty Images)

Last October, the space tourism company Virgin Galactic, founded by Sir Richard Branson, became publicly traded. After opening at $11.75 a share, the SPCE stock value generally declined, briefly reaching a low just under $7 a share late in 2019.

At around the same time, the company's chairman, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, began to talk about developing point-to-point suborbital travel. This advance, he said, would come after Virgin Galactic developed its space tourism business based upon a small rocket-powered spacecraft launched from a large airplane. Such trips, which provide a few minutes of weightlessness, cost at least $250,000 per person. Commercial service may begin in early 2021.

Moving from this technology to a rocket-powered vehicle capable of carrying passengers on long suborbital hops around the world represents a significant step forward. It would involve getting a larger, much more powerful spacecraft to work, making it safe, convincing regulators to allow spaceflights near populated areas, and finally bringing costs down to something that more than a handful of the ultra-wealthy can afford.