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Alphabet is cutting dozens of jobs at its X moonshot lab
Alphabet has laid off dozens of workers from its X moonshot lab in its latest round of downsizing.
Alphabet's Project Taara is beaming high-speed internet across the Congo River
Alphabet's Project Taara moonshot successfully established high-speed internet in the Congo.
Alphabet's next moonshot: protect the ocean
Alphabet's moonshot factory is turning its attention back toward the ocean. But whereas Project Foghorn looked to turn seawater into a carbon-neutral fuel, the newly-announced Tidal has a broader mission to protect the sea and its aquatic inhabitants. "This is a critical issue," Neil Davé, general manager for Tidal said in a blog post. "Humanity is pushing the ocean past its breaking point, but we can't protect what we don't understand." The team, which operates under the company's "X" lab for now, is starting with a camera system that can help fish farmers monitor and, hopefully, better understand every living creature inside their pens.
Google needs a sustainable phone moonshot
"Developing sustainable solutions to mass production and consumption is one of the biggest challenges we face today as an industry," Rick Osterloh, Google's senior vice president for devices and services said onstage yesterday. "It impacts all of us and it will for generations to come." Sustainability was a major focus of the Pixel 4 event. The company said it would spend another $150 million on renewable energy projects, for instance, that will generate the same amount of electricity that is currently required to build Made by Google products. Ivy Ross, the head of Google's hardware design team, revealed that all of its 2019 Nest products will include some amount of recycled material, too. The new Nest Mini speaker, for example, has a fabric top made entirely from old plastic bottles.
Alphabet's cybersecurity company Chronicle will join Google Cloud
Alphabet's cybersecurity company Chronicle announced today that it's joining Google and will become part of Google Cloud. The cybersecurity company launched in January 2018, and it released its first commercial product, Backstory, in March. In a blog post, Chronicle CEO and co-founder Stephen Gillett said Google Cloud's cybersecurity tools and Chronicle's Backstory and VirusTotal are complementary and will be leveraged together.
Alphabet's Loon and Wing are now more than just 'projects'
Google parent company Alphabet's internet-delivering balloon service and its drone delivery project have graduated from X programs to full-fledged businesses at Alphabet. From here, Alphabet says that Loon will maintain its mission of working with carriers worldwide to deliver internet to underserved areas. Wing will similarly continue building out its network of delivery UAVs, not to mention its air-traffic control system for the unmanned aircraft.
Joe Biden implores SXSW crowd to use its talents to fight cancer
Like countless others, former Vice President Joe Biden has experienced the horrors of cancer up close. In 2015, his son Beau died at the age of 46 after a battle with brain cancer, a tragedy that inspired the vice president to spend much of his last year in office working on a "cancer moonshot" -- an initiative that helped pass a $6.3 billion research bill at the end of last year. At SXSW 2017 yesterday, Biden told a packed audience how his son's death kept him from running for president but spurred him into intense action that will continue in his private life. And he also implored the audience to use their talents to help make "gigantic progress" in the ongoing battle to detect, treat and prevent cancer.
Obama's legacy: The most tech-savvy president
When Barack Obama moved into the White House on January 20th, 2009, the federal government was in the digital dark ages. Even as late as 2011, he was complaining that the White House was 30 years behind. Among other things, Obama was the first president to carry a BlackBerry, and even so, it wasn't until 2016 that the leader of the free world was finally able to trade in his aging RIM device for a modern smartphone. And, as the president was quick to point out in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, the unnamed phone is so locked down, it's like one of those "play phones" you'd give to a 3-year-old. Despite these hurdles, Obama made it one of his priorities to modernize the federal government on everything from telecommunications policy to White House IT. He tackled infrastructure, STEM education, net neutrality and climate change in serious and substantive ways. Of course, the president's efforts weren't always a rousing success, and on issues involving privacy, spying and drone usage, he faces lingering criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. But, love him or hate him, for better or worse, when it comes to science and technology, Barack Obama has had a bigger impact than almost any president in history.
Obama signs bill to fund 'Moonshot' research to cure cancer
Several months after President Obama laid out his plans to cure cancer in his last State of the Union address, he is signing legislation to do just that. Known as the 21st Century Cures Act, the bill will invest $1.8 billion in a Cancer Moonshot Task Force led by Vice President Joe Biden that aims to achieve a decade's worth of research in just five years. In so doing, the team hopes to ramp up science and technological progress to the point where a cure for cancer can be found. "We are bringing to reality the possibility of new breakthroughs to some of the biggest health challenges of our time," said Obama in a ceremony today. "We're tackling cancer, brain disease, substance abuse disorders and more, and none of this would have been possible without bipartisan cooperation from both houses of Congress." The overall bill plans $6.3 billion to not just tackle cancer research but also brain research, substance abuse prevention and to streamline drug and medical device approval.
Google's 'Moon Shot' web series profiles Lunar Xprize hopefuls
Out of the 29 teams that joined Google's Lunar Xprize, 16 are still in the running, working on rovers that they believe can land and operate on the moon. We'll get the chance to know these ambitious space lovers more closely in the coming days through Google's new web series aptly entitled Moon Shot. Mountain View has teamed up with a group of filmmakers, including J.J. Abrams and his production company Bad Robot, to create the nine-part documentary. The character-driven short films will be following some of the teams' progress as they work on finishing their landers, less than two years before the deadline on December 31st, 2017.
NYT: Alphabet's reorganized 'X' division now includes robots
Last year Google shipped off some of its wilder projects for administration under new parent company Alphabet, which included its efforts with robots and the lab formerly known as Google X. A New York Times report says that the latter, now just known as the X research division, is in control of the disparate robotics projects acquired by Andy Rubin. To help manage the team, a former Nokia exec (with some interesting ideas about how Android can beat iPhone) named Hans Peter Brøndmo also joined up this month.
Google's 'balloon-powered internet for all' is almost ready
In case you wanted another behind-the-scenes look at how Google's internet-by-balloon service is doing, now is your chance. The Project Loon team posted a new video showing everything from how it manages its balloon fleet, the balloon creation process, their partnership with local LTE network providers abroad and a few other aspects of the initiative as well. For example, the team is keeping the airborne-internet vessels afloat for up to 100 days at a time now, can build balloons in hours instead of days, and can launch many dozens of balloon every day instead of just a single one. Nearly two years after the project's launch, it's gone from "will it work?" to being presented as something that will work. With thousands of balloons aloft, it can push signal into areas that can't easily get internet service in other ways. As is typical with these status updates, it's slickly produced and has a handful of whimsical animations and music to boot -- check it out after the break.
Google shows off 'Project Wing' delivery drones
Amazon is selling a phone and reportedly even getting into the online ad business, so of course Google is ready to compete with its still-in-testing Prime Air drone delivery service. The Atlantic has a report on what is being called "Project Wing," a part of the Google X labs that have worked on Project Loon, Glass, driverless cars and so much more. As shown above, the idea is for a tail sitter unmanned aircraft (shown above, described as a hybrid between a plane and a helicopter that takes off and lands vertically), where the drone flies in like a plane, then hovers and lowers a package to the ground by wire before releasing it. The "egg" at the end of the wire hits the ground and drops the package before being pulled back up into the drone. So can you expect to receive a Google Shopping Express order this way anytime soon? Probably not right away, as the test shown took place in Australia, and there's plenty of testing and regulatory hurdles to get over before anyone is dropping off packages this way. If you're an interested partner (hey Netflix, maybe drones aren't a joke?) there's a sign-up sheet available. Update: Check after the break for a video of the project.
Jazzy noir stealth game, Third Eye Crime, lands on Steam
Third Eye Crime has jumped from mobile devices to Steam, available on PC for $5. Third Eye Crime is a jazzy, telepathic stealth game where you play as a criminal who is able to predict where enemies will move as they attempt to capture or stop your ne'er-do-welling. Players are able to lay traps and plant false leads in a top-down world. Third Eye Crime has three acts, eight environments and more than 120 levels. The game comes from Moonshot Games, a team of former AAA and Bungie developers, and it launched on iOS earlier this year. Moonshot started work on Third Eye Crime last year, after funding for a download-only console shooter, Fallen Frontier, fell through. [Image: Moonshot Games]
HP Moonshot server class leaves concept, to power commercial-grade internet of the future
We're all about the future of the internet here at Engadget, so you can imagine our excitement when HP today announced that it's shooting for the moon with its latest server system, the HP Moonshot. Promising significantly reduced energy consumption and space requirements, the Moonshot is HP's "second generation" server tech, and it's intended for use with "social, cloud, mobile, and big data," according to the company. In so many words, this is HP's attempt to get out ahead of where it sees internet use going -- it was first unveiled in concept form last summer, but now it's apparently ready for primetime. A video of the new tech getting introduced is just beyond the break. Said servers are rolling out in 2013's latter half, and can be tailored to a clients' needs with specs from a variety of internals providers (AMD, AppliedMicro, Calxeda, Intel, and Texas Instruments are all specifically named by HP). All of this amounts to one thing: the information superhighway of tomorrow is being paved today, and we can't wait to take a spin. Here's hoping there'll still be plenty of stupid gifs.
Third Eye Crime combines a stealth game with a psychic twist
I saw quite a few really terrific indie games at GDC last week, but Third Eye Crime was one of my favorites on iOS. It's being put together by a studio called Moonshot Games, made up of game industry veterans working on mobile games together after having some bad experiences with console publishing. Third Eye Crime is a stealth game, where you need to sneak around a series of levels while trying to avoid armed guards. But the twist here is that you've got some psychic ability, so not only can you see where the guards are looking (always important in games like this), but you can see where they're planning to look next, and lay out your escape route accordingly. It's very interesting just how much this changes the game. In Third Eye Crime, guards never really give up, so once you've attracted their attention, it's a game of diving in and out of various hidey-holes, constantly trying to dodge your pursuers. And you literally have to stay one step ahead of them, keeping an eye on where they are and where they're going, so you can duck out safely. Fortunately, you get access to a few other tools, like a "patsy" spell that will create a fake clone of you, or other various abilities. But your enemies have some extra moves as well: I saw sniper enemies that can take you out with one shot right away. Unfortunately, Third Eye Crime isn't quite done -- the graphics looked good, but there were definitely a few optimization issues and rough areas that still could use some smoothing out. The idea is quite well-done, however, and it should have enough juice to keep the game rolling for the expected 80 to 100 levels. Third Eye Crime is set to arrive on iOS sometime around early June.
Pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong dies at 82
It's a story that we hoped we'd never have to report. Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on Earth's Moon, has died at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery three weeks earlier. His greatest accomplishment very nearly speaks for itself -- along with help from fellow NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, he changed the landscape of space exploration through a set of footprints. It's still important to stress his accomplishments both before and after the historic Apollo 11 flight, though. He was instrumental to the Gemini and X-series test programs in the years before Apollo, and followed his moonshot with roles in teaching aerospace engineering as well as investigating the Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle Challenger incidents. What more can we say? Although he only spent a very small portion of his life beyond Earth's atmosphere, he's still widely considered the greatest space hero in the US, if not the world, and inspired a whole generation of astronauts. We'll miss him. [Image credit: NASA Apollo Archive]
