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Walter Cunningham, an astronaut who was the last surviving member of the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, died on Tuesday at 90. The Iowa-born Cunningham served in the US Navy and Marine Corps before joining NASA in 1963 and eventually taking part in the Apollo program’s first crewed (and first televised) flight.

NASA confirmed Cunningham’s death and added that he was “instrumental to our Moon landing’s program success.” According to the Houston Chronicle, Cunningham died in a local hospital of complications from a fall.

Apollo 7 was NASA’s first spaceflight after the 1967 Apollo 1 tragedy, where a fire killed three astronauts during a rehearsal test. This led to a longer-than-usual training period, as NASA shelved human-crewed spaceflight for 21 months following Apollo 1. The crew spent many long hours studying the spacecraft’s design and construction of the Apollo command and service modules (CSM) to help avoid a repeat tragedy, which could have been perilous for the astronauts and the program. Finally, the crew splashed down on Earth on October 22, 1968, after nearly 11 days in space. Apollo 7 further tested NASA’s equipment and helped pave the way for Apollo 11, where the first humans walked on the moon.

Left to right: Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham, Dr. Donald E. Stullken

Cunningham retired from NASA in 1971 and tried his hand at public speaking, radio hosting, offshore engineering, commercial real estate and venture capital investing. Unfortunately, he also became an outspoken climate change denier. Speaking to Forbes in 2013, Cunningham went through a laundry list of fossil-fuel industry talking points, framing modern NASA as an organization controlled by the media while claiming climate-change science was closer to demagoguery than fact. (For the record, climate change is real, and we’re running out of time to avoid catastrophe.)

“I definitely believe that we lived in the good old days,” Cunningham said in a 1999 NASA interview. “We lived in the golden age of manned spaceflight. We’ve been in space now for over 40 years. The first 40 years of aviation, we went from just barely flying to jet transport, you know. And now, we haven’t moved that far since we went into space. The days through Apollo will be remembered; there’ll never be another time like that again. Even when we go to Mars, it will be different. And I feel just fortunate that I was a small part of this particular time in spaceflight.”

 

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has agreed a $100 million settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), which accused it of violating regulations related to virtual currency, money transmitting, transaction monitoring and cybersecurity. “These failures made the Coinbase platform vulnerable to serious criminal conduct, including, among other things, examples of fraud, possible money laundering, suspected child sexual abuse material-related activity and potential narcotics trafficking,” the agency said. The company will pay the state a $50 million fine and invest $50 million to address the issues flagged by the regulator and comply with a DFS-approved plan.

The agency claimed that Coinbase’s practices concerning due diligence, transaction monitoring and sanctions compliance (among others) were “inadequate for a financial services provider of Coinbase’s size and complexity.” It accused the company of failing to carry out sufficient background checks on customers before they opened accounts and being unable to keep up with transaction monitoring system (TMS) alerts. The DFS added that Coinbase had a months-long TMS backlog that meant the company “routinely failed to timely investigate and report suspicious activity as required by law.”

By late 2021, the DFS said, Coinbase had a backlog of more than 100,000 transaction monitoring alerts it had not reviewed. It also noted that by that time, the backlog of customers who required “enhanced due diligence exceeded 14,000.” Coinbase’s approach to background checks amounted to a “simple check-the-box exercise,” regulators claimed. 

The DFS granted Coinbase a license to operate in New York in 2017. Compliance issues first emerged during a safety and soundness examination that the agency conducted in 2020. Following that probe, the DFS ordered Coinbase to hire an independent consultant to review the compliance program and offer recommendations on how to improve in areas in which the agency felt the company was falling short. As a result, Coinbase adopted a plan to bolster its compliance program. However, following an investigation it began in 2021, the DFS determined that the program could not “keep up with the dramatic and unexpected growth of Coinbase’s business.” Coinbase now has more than 100 million users worldwide.

The agency brought in an independent monitor in early 2022 to evaluate the state of the compliance program and work with Coinbase to address the issues — all while the investigation was ongoing. As part of the settlement, the monitor will work with Coinbase for another year. The DFS can extend that timeframe at its discretion. The agency pointed out that Coinbase has started to address many of the issues and develop “a more effective and robust compliance program” under the eyes of the DFS and the monitor, though it noted that the company still isn’t moving quickly enough to review older suspicious accounts.

Other crypto firms have faced penalties in recent months for allegedly violating financial regulations. The DFS fined Robinhood $30 million in August, while the Treasury Department reached a settlement with Kraken over claims that the exchange provided services to customers in Iran in violation of US sanctions. According to The New York Times, regulators are investigating Binance over possible money laundering violations. Before its collapse in November, FTX was said to have been under investigation too — the company’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, pled not guilty to federal fraud charges this week. It was also reported last summer that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating Coinbase over possible securities violations.

 

LG isn’t quite done revealing its 2023 OLED TV lineup. The company has unveiled the 97-inch Signature OLED M3, a TV LG says is the first to support Zero Connect wireless video and audio transmissions. Plug your devices into a large external box and you can send a 4K 120Hz picture to the TV from up to 30 feet away without running ugly cables directly into the set. While the approach isn’t completely wireless, it does let you tuck your media players and game consoles out of sight.

The tech should hold up under real world use. LG claims its algorithm minimizes disruptions by people and pets moving through the room, and that appeared to hold up in our brief experience at CES. People were walking between the M3 and the Zero Connect box with no apparent impact on the signal quality. You can rotate the antenna to face the TV and use voice commands to manage it, so you shouldn’t have to worry much about placement.

As for other details? LG didn’t share much else, but the M3 has an integrated bracket that lets the TV sit virtually flush against the wall. As a 4K set, it won’t offer the same bragging rights as the 8K-ready Z3 line. However, that’s not entirely the point — this is more about creating an elegant living room setup than having the best specs.

Like LG’s other CES TV announcements, there’s no word on price or availability for the M3. Given the size and wireless video tech, though, we’d expect it to be a significant expense. This is supposed to be the centerpiece of a luxurious home theater, and it will likely be priced accordingly.

 

Drop might be best known for its mechanical keyboards, but the company has also built out an impressive portfolio of audio gear as well. Usually those take the form of headphones and headsets made in partnership with other brands like Sennheiser and HiFiMAN. But the new BMR1s are an entirely in-house designed set of desktop near field monitors. 

The BMR1s rely on balanced mode radiators (hence the BMR tag) instead of traditional conical drivers. This means that they can deliver a wider frequency response from a single driver and are less prone to breakup. The trade off is that bass response suffers a little bit. Though, Drop is quick to point out that you can connect a subwoofer for increased low end. Force cancelling radiators built in also help further limit distortions. 

Flexibility is a key part of the pitch here. They can be arranged vertically or horizontally, depending on your needs with minimal change to the acoustic response. And Drop is also offering customize magnetic grills for users to personalize their audio setup. The target audience here is clearly gamers and those looking to step up their PC audio setup. 

They’re reasonably small and so ideal for someone that wants to upgrade from the builtin speakers on their laptop, but they’re probably not ideal as your primary music listening device or as studio monitors. The frequency range of 80Hz to 24kHz leaves an obvious hole at the bottom end, even if the mids and highs are natural and balanced sounding. The total harmonic distortion rating of 0.40% at 1kHz seems to back up the claims of limiting distortion as well.

Still, at only $129 they’re pretty reasonably priced, especially considering that, in addition to the 3.5mm audio jack they can be connected via Bluetooth, and there’s a headphone out jack for when you need to keep things quiet. The Drop BMR1s are available now for preorder, with an expected delivery of late February or early March. 

 

Meta is facing yet another European Union fine. As hinted last month, EU authorities are fining Meta €390 million (about $414 million) after determining that the company illegally required that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users accept personalized ads. The social media giant allegedly violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by asking for permission to collect ad targeting data in its terms of service — you have to either allow personalized ads or stop using the platforms altogether, according to regulators.

The EU didn’t say how it expected Meta to obey the decision. However, the wording suggests Meta will have to let users choose whether or not they accept personalized ads. In a statement, Meta said it was “disappointed” by the ruling and felt its existing approach “respects” the GDPR. The firm plans to appeal the findings.

The resistance isn’t surprising. Meta has historically opposed attempts to decline personalized ads, and predicted that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (which lets you ask apps not to track you) could cost it $10 billion in lost ad revenue last year. Users behind proposed class action lawsuits have even accused Meta of trying to dodge Apple’s privacy feature by inserting tracking code through the in-app web browser. If Meta loses its appeal, it risks losing a significant amount of revenue as people see fewer ads they’re likely to click.

It’s doubtful the EU will back down, however. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which regulates Meta’s EU activity, has repeatedly fined the company in the past year and a half. The DPC slapped Meta with a €405 million ($402 million) fine over Instagram’s child privacy settings in September, and in November issued a €265 million ($277 million) penalty for reportedly failing to protect users against data scraping. Officials want Meta to change its ways, and this latest ruling only adds to the pressure.

 

For an event that was once the venue where Samsung announced its latest Galaxy S phones, CES isn’t much of a mobile show these days. But you do still see the occasional phone unveiling, including the newly announced Samsung Galaxy A14 5G. It’s a more affordable version of last year’s Galaxy A13 5G that features a new 13-megapixel front-facing camera the company claims offers a “huge leap in selfie quality.”

New camera aside, the A14 5G is more or less the same phone Samsung shipped last year. It features a slightly larger 6.6-inch screen that boasts a 90Hz refresh rate and FHD+ resolution. As with its predecessor, the A14 comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset. At over two years old, it’s a chip that’s starting to show its age, but with an integrated sub-6GHz 5G modem built-in, the Dimensity 700 should make efficient use of the A14’s 5,000mAh battery and offer about two days of uptime. For photos and videos, Samsung has once again gone with a triple camera array that consists of a 50MP main camera and two 2MP macro and depth cameras.

In the US, Samsung will offer a single variant of the A14 5G equipped with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. A microSD card slot allows you to add up to 1TB of additional space for apps, media and more. The Galaxy A14 5G will ship with Android 13 out of the box. Samsung says you can expect up to two major Android updates and four years of security support if you buy its latest phone. While it’s a boring update to the A13 5G, the Galaxy A14 5G should still find fans since Samsung plans to sell the phone for $200, or $50 less than it did its predecessor. That should allow the A14 5G to better compete against devices like the $240 Nord N200 5G.

 

Last CES, Goodyear dazzled the assembled crowds with a protype tire that derived some 70 percent of its recipe from sustainable sources. This CES, Goodyear is back with an impressive iterative improvement — 90 percent sustainable materials will go into this one! A full 20 percent more sustainment, huzzah! 

Goodyear reports that the 90-percent blend has already undergone — and passed — DoT testing, making it approved for road use. The company is still working with its supply chain partners to secure sufficient precursor materials to produce them at commercial scale and hopes to devise a fully sustainable blend by 2030. 

In addition to their diminished carbon footprint, the 90 percent tires reportedly offer a lower rolling resistance than the company’s test reference tires, which translates into better gas mileage and longer EV ranges. The new materials include four different types of carbon black produced from both organic and inorganic sources, soybean oil and rice husk silica, post-consumer polyester and bio-renewable pine tar resins.

“Last January, we announced a 70% sustainable-material tire, and while we celebrated this accomplishment, we knew it set the foundation for us to continue to push forward,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president, global operations and chief technology officer. “Over the past year, we researched new technologies, identified opportunities for further collaboration and utilized our team’s ingenuity and tenacity to achieve this tremendous accomplishment, increasing the sustainable-material content used in a tire by 20 percentage points.”

Thanks to a partnership with Gatik, the Goodyear tires of tomorrow will be a bit intelligent as well. The tiremaker announced its coordination with the B2B logistics company to develop a proof-of-concept technology, dubbed SightLine, that “can accurately estimate tire-road friction potential and provide real-time information to Gatik’s automated driving system (ADS),” according to a company release Wednesday.

The two companies recently, successfully trialed the grip-sensing system in Toronto. Data from the tire sensors is combined with that from other vehicle systems — such as tire wear state, load, inflation pressure and temperature — and fed into “Goodyear’s cloud-based proprietary algorithms” where they jiggle and cajole the information into friction estimates that help the onboard systems detect “low grip” conditions. Those estimates can then be shared with the rest of the local Gatik autonomous vehicle fleet. Whether this technology, either the sensing system or sustainable tires, moves forward remains to be seen.

 

Though popular with videographers, Panasonic’s mirrorless cameras have always been at a disadvantage to Sony, Canon and other rivals due to the inferior contrast-detect-only autofocus. Now, the company has finally introduced its first cameras with hybrid phase-detect AF (PDAF), the full-frame L-Mount S5II and S5IIx. They’re designed to make focus “wobble” and other issues a thing of the past, while also introducing improved video and photography features.

Both cameras have an all-new 24.2-megapixel sensor with 315 contrast and 779 phase-detect AF points. The new chip features Dual Native ISO with a range of ISO100-51200 (50-204800 expanded), and Panasonic has also introduced the new L2 Engine that processes twice as fast as before. That allows for additional performance and less rolling shutter distortion. 

I’ve yet to test the cameras, but Panasonic seems confident that its new PDAF system can keep up with rivals, speed- and reliability-wise. It said that the AF can now works in conditions that had previously been a challenge, including tracking, multiple people, products, backlit conditions and low light. 

The company also introduced a new in-body stabilization system called Active IS, designed to shoot video while walking. It said the system can compensate for “even significant camera shake, approximately 200 percent more than conventional systems” with select lenses. If the claims are accurate, Active IS could make the new models ideal for vlogging. 

As before, they can record 6K “open gate” 3:2 video (4:2:0 10-bit internally), 4K 30p supersampled video using the full sensor width (4:2:2 10-bit), 4K 60p with an APS-C crop and FHD at up to 120p with a 1.5x crop. 

However, they’re significantly improved over the original S5 when it comes to record times. Where the S5 was limited to 30 minutes at 4K 60p or 4K 10-bit 30p due to heating, the new models have no recording time limitations at any resolution. Panasonic achieved this by adding a small cooling fan in the enlarged EVF hump. 

Panasonic didn’t improve the S5’s 200 Mbps data rates for the internal MOV and LongGOP formats on the S5II and S5IIx. However, the S5IIx does support internal SD card recording up to 600 Mbps in All-Intra (All-I) mode, so it appears to be limiting the capabilities of the S5II.

Both cameras offer Panasonic’s V-Log as well as V-Gamut recording options that deliver up to 14+ stops of dynamic range, according to the company. It has a LUT view assist for easier monitoring, as well as the ability to apply your own LUTs in real time — an industry first, Panasonic says. 

Other than the fully blacked-out body, the S5IIx has some interesting features not found on the S5II. You can record to the USB-C port, much as you can on the GH6 via a recent firmware update. Formats supported include All-I, ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes 422, all in 10-bit. That includes 5.8K (17:9) at up to 25p (1.6Gbps) and C4K (4,096 x 2,160) at 60p with an APS-C crop (1.9Gbps). That will require some kind of rig to mount a USB SSD, but those already exist and aren’t tremendously expensive.

In addition, the S5IIx will output full-frame 12-bit 5.9K 30p (16:9) ProRes RAW video, along with cropped 12-bit 4K (actually 4,128 x 2,176) and 3.5K (3,536 x 2,656) video at up to 50p externally to an Atomos Ninja V+ HDR monitor-recorder. Both cameras also offer S&Q and HFR recording, letting you capture at high frame rates and either output at the same speed for HFR or get slow-mo in the S&Q modes. 

There are a number of other improvements over the S5. The EVF resolution has been boosted to 3,680K dots compared to 2,360K on the last model, removing one of my biggest complaints. It now offers a full-sized HDMI rather than a fragile microHDMI port plus a USB 3.2 Gen2 (not Gen1) slot, and has two UHS-II SD slots instead of just one. The EVF’s eye-detect sensor has been moved up to reduce accidental activations, and the joystick now supports 8- instead of 4-direction operation.

Otherwise, it has much the same layout as the last model (including the fully-articulating display) and is about the same size and weight. It supports 4-channel audio via the same XLR microphone adapter, offers a variety video assist functions (wave form, vector scope, zebra, anti-flicker), Lumix Tether for remote USB shooting and wireless streaming via USB tethering (S5IIx only). 

Finally, photography clearly isn’t this camera’s raison d’etre, but it does offer 7fps RAW shooting speeds in mechanical mode and 30fps in electronic mode with AFC enabled — up over four times compared to the previous model. And with the phase-detect AF, focus should be more accurate when shooting bursts, meaning fewer blurry photos.

That takes us to the most interesting part of these cameras, the pricing. The Panasonic S5II is going on sale this month $2,000, making it cheaper than rival full-frame models like the Sony A7 IV and Canon EOS R6 II — and it’s no longer deficient in the autofocus department. While the S5II doesn’t come with external RAW video, you’ll be able to update to that feature in the future via a $200 firmware update. Panasonic also upped its native lens count to 14 with the launch of the Lumix S 14-28mm F4-5.6 Macro lens arriving in March for $800.

Meanwhile, the S5IIx will arrive in May 2023 for $2,200. It not only has has the RAW video, but also supports USB-C capture and live streaming, features the S5II will never have — for just $200 more. Panasonic says that’s because the former is designed for vloggers and the latter for video pros. Frankly though, if I was a vlogger and interested in the S5II, I’d try to find the extra $200. 

 

There are plenty of reasons why we’re not yet in a mass-production revolution enabled by 3D printing. One of them is the technology is time-consuming and often forces you to leave a print running overnight without supervision. It means there’s likely plenty of dead time, when a finished print is sat in the hopper, and there’s nobody around to pull it out and get the next one going. It’s a problem that Formlabs is hoping to address with its “Automation Ecosystem,” a family of products you can bolt on to some of its printers to help automate the fiddly bits.

This includes Form Auto, which can remove a printed part from a machine, freeing it up to start on the next one. You can also add a High Volume Resin system which will increase the printers’ raw material capacity up to five liters. And there’s Fleet Control — new software that’ll help manage a fleet of printers, letting you balance the workload across all of your units. The systems are all, naturally, designed for small and medium enterprises who rely upon manufacturing but can’t spare the warm bodies to worry at each printer in turn. (It’ll also come in handy for companies like Hasbro, which is 3D printing people’s heads for its custom action figure line.) 

Formlabs says that the benefits — beyond being able to leave work running unsupervised for longer — include less material wastage and cheaper prints. The company says it expects to see users’ per-print costs fall by anything up to 40 percent, as well as reducing packaging waste. As for pricing, Form Auto will set you back $3,400 (with a year’s free Fleet Control thrown in), with shipping expected to begin in the second half of the year. 

 

Never mind asking DoorDash to deliver meals or groceries — it can now take items off your hands, too. The service has introduced a Package Pickup option that has a courier grab your prepaid packages from various carriers (including FedEx, UPS and USPS) and drop them off at the appropriate mailing location. You can use a prepaid shipping label if you have one, but you can also send shipping QR codes directly to the courier and skip the printer or box.

Package Pickup is available for up to five items at a time and costs a flat $5, or $3 if you’re a DashPass subscriber. DoorDash hopes to entice early adopters by offering the first pickup for free in January. Conveniently, it’s arriving in time to return unwanted or broken holiday gifts.

This is far from a new concept. Shyp was offering similar shipping options in 2015, right down to the $5 fee. And if you’re only interested in shuttling items across town, Uber Connect has been available since 2020. However, DoorDash is obviously counting on convenience as a selling point. You can use a familiar app to ship packages when you’d rather not make the trek to the local depot.

The new feature is also part of a larger trend of expanding delivery apps beyond food. It’s now relatively easy to use DoorDash, Uber and similar services to get convenience store essentials, prescriptions and even your Facebook Marketplace purchases. The expansion is ultimately a hedge against uncertainty in the pandemic recovery period (services can make money even if food deliveries tank), but you might not mind if it saves you from lengthy trips.