A nonprofit team led by Starcloud co-founders Philip Johnston, Adi Oltean and Ezra Feilden is developing the Fermi Explorer, a 1-kilogram, 10-centimeter cube meant to be the first human-made object aimed at another star system. The probe would spend 12 years spiraling closer to the sun to build speed before exiting the solar system in the early 2040s, then travel roughly 79,800 years before reaching Alpha Centauri.
A small nonprofit founded by Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean has detailed plans for a low-cost interstellar probe called Fermi Explorer, aiming to launch within three years for a journey to Alpha Centauri that would take roughly 80,000 years to complete. The team, which released an 81-page plan document, is funding the effort through crowdfunding donations and branded merchandise sales rather than government or corporate backing.
An analysis of application security infrastructure finds that CDNs, WAFs, bot management, and identity systems each examine only isolated aspects of a session, leaving gaps that attackers exploit. By routing traffic through residential IPs or commercial VPNs and pairing valid credentials with convincing device fingerprints, malicious actors can pass through multiple defensive layers undetected.
Philip Johnston, co-founder of the orbital data center company Starcloud, has joined other entrepreneurs to announce the 'Fermi Explorer' project, aiming to raise $15 million to build and launch a small spacecraft carrying a 1-kg payload toward Alpha Centauri. The stated goal is to have the probe reach that star system in under 80,000 years, testing assumptions behind the Fermi paradox about why humanity hasn't detected extraterrestrial civilizations.
Tim Cook has ended his 15-year tenure as Apple's chief executive, handing the role to hardware chief John Ternus. Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011 and oversaw major shifts including the expansion of Apple's services division and the move from Intel processors to Apple's own custom silicon in Macs.
A retrospective look back at Nintendo's GameCube console highlights how it became the company's second worst-selling system ever, moving just 21.74 million units. The analysis points to a limited game library, heavy dependence on first-party titles, and the omission of DVD playback as key factors behind its poor commercial performance.
A major flash flood struck Bright Angel Creek in the Grand Canyon on Saturday, killing a 46-year-old man whose body was found near Crystal Rapids, and leaving about 15 people missing or unaccounted for. The surge pushed boulders into the Colorado River, prompted the airlift evacuation of more than 60 people, and destroyed the park's only pipeline supplying potable water to residents and tourists.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched Sunday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, about eight months earlier than planned. The spacecraft separated successfully and is now heading toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, roughly 1 million miles away, where it will settle into a stable orbit alongside Earth over the next three months.
NASA's $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, bound for a location four times farther than the Moon. The observatory carries a 300-megapixel camera built with a repurposed spy satellite mirror and offers a field of view 100 times wider than Hubble's. It is only the second NASA-led astrophysics flagship mission launched this century, after Webb in 2021, and notably arrived at the pad ahead of its own deadline.
YouTuber Mark 'Markiplier' Fischbach has purchased an 8.5 percent stake in GoPro, making him the camera maker's biggest shareholder, according to Bloomberg. He told the outlet he views GoPro as undervalued and frames the investment as supporting his broader goal of making filmmaking more accessible, following his debut feature film Iron Lung.
Google has dropped the infrared temperature sensor first introduced on the Pixel 8 Pro, leaving it out of the newly launched Pixel 11 series. In its place, the company added a new notification light feature called HiLight, shifting the phone's differentiating hardware trick from a thermometer to a lighting cue.
Google introduced HiLight, a colored light built into the camera visor of the Pixel 11 Pro series that currently activates only for calls from favorite contacts and to indicate when Gemini is processing or speaking. An Android Authority writer who tested the feature says it feels underdeveloped, functioning more as a modern take on old notification LEDs than a fully realized system.