Charlotte Henry

Boeing’s Starliner passenger spacecraft launched smoothly on Friday. However, as The Verge reported, things went wrong after that. It is now unable to dock with the International Space Station.

NASA and Boeing are working together to figure out what to do next with the spacecraft. Since the Starliner cannot reach the ISS, Boeing is going to try to bring it safely home, demonstrating how it will land on future missions. It’s possible that Starliner will return to Earth and land at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the next 48 hours. However, that’s not official yet, and Boeing says it will provide updates on what the team decides. Today’s botched launch is a big blow for both NASA and Boeing, which have been working for years to get to this flight. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is a critical part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, an initiative to develop private US vehicles to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. During today’s test flight, Boeing planned to demonstrate Starliner’s ability to travel to space and dock with the station.

In many ways, Apple without Steve Jobs is unthinkable. Yet, of course, for a period of time, it happened. CultofMac reflected on the day he returned home.

The Apple co-founder didn’t just come as part of the NeXT package. He was a major part of the deal. “I’m not just buying software, I’m buying Steve,” Apple CEO Gil Amelio said at the time. As part of the deal, Jobs got 1.5 million shares of Apple stock. Jobs wasn’t initially intended to be Apple’s new CEO. Bizarrely, Amelio apparently thought Jobs could be contained as a creative force. Amelio figured he could continue running the company, and simply wheel out Jobs whenever Apple needed him.

2019 was a big year for Today at Apple sessions. 9to5Mac had a look back at the year that was.

Apple refocused its session offerings around three categories: Skills, Walks, and Labs. Skills sessions introduce essential knowledge in an approachable way for anyone. Walks extend beyond the store and invite customers to explore their surroundings. Labs are deep dives into a specific creative technique. Emphasis moved from rudimentary tutorials to more immersive content. Apple said that Walks were its most popular type of session because they offer experiences you can’t get online. To celebrate the session launches, Apple commissioned artwork for its stores around the world and updated the Apple Store app’s Sessions tab. Sessions were made more accessible to everyone, with iPhones and iPads readily available for customers without their own devices. In summer, the need to have an Apple ID to sign up for a session was dropped, and session passes in the Wallet app arrived in fall. For the iPhone 11 launch, Quick Tips sessions began offering brief, easy to understand skills without the need to sign up at all.

Netflix released a total of 371 new TV shows and movies in the U.S. during 2019, Variety reported. That averages one new one every day.

The streaming giant released 371 new TV shows and movies on the service in the U.S. this year, according to data from Variety Insight. This is an increase of 54.6% over the 240 shows and movies Netflix released in 2018. For context, this figure is greater than the number of original series that the entire U.S. TV industry released in 2005 (the last year Netflix managed to exceed the TV industry’s total). That includes broadcast networks, cable networks and premium cable networks.

Security firm CheckPoint revealed a flaw in WhatsApp. It could repeatedly crash the messaging service and permanently delete group chats and associated media, ZDNET reported.

In order to launch the application-crashing attack, the attacker first of all needs to gain entry to the WhatsApp group they intend to target – although given that the chat app allows up to 256 users per group, this might not prove too difficult. An attacker would need to have some hacking skills in order to carry out the attack, with the ability to browse WhatsApp Web and open Chrome’s DevTools, as well as gaining access to the secret parameters used by the application as part of how group chats operate.