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We know the sun belches out solar winds, but the origin of these streams of charged particles remain a mystery and has been the subject of numerous studies over the past decades. The images captured last year by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument aboard ESA's and NASA's Solar Orbiter, however, may have finally given us the knowledge needed to explain what powers these winds. In a paper published in Science, a team of researchers described observing large numbers of jets coming out of a dark region of the sun called a "coronal hole" in the images taken by the spacecraft. 

The team called them "picoflare jets," because they contain around one-trillionth the energy of what the largest solar flares can generate. These picoflare jets measure a few hundred kilometers in length, reach speeds of around 100 kilometers per second and only last between 20 and 100 seconds. Still, the researchers believe they have the power to emit enough high-temperature plasma to be considered a substantial source of our system's solar winds. While Coronal holes have long been known as source regions for the phenomenon, scientists are still trying to figure out the mechanism of how plasma streams emerge from them exactly. This discovery could finally be the answer they'd been seeking for years. 

Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, the study's primary author from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, told Space: "The picoflare jets that we observed are the smallest, and energetically the weakest, type of jets in the solar corona that were not observed before...Still, the energy content of a single picoflare jet that lives for about 1 minute is equal to the average power consumed by about 10,000 households in the UK over an entire year."

Chitta's team will continue monitoring coronal holes and other potential sources of solar winds using the Solar Orbiter going forward. In addition to gathering data that may finally give us answers about the plasma flows responsible for producing auroras here on our planet, their observations could also shed light on why the sun's corona or atmosphere is much, much hotter than its surface. 

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More than two years after former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter (now X) in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot, he’s returned to tweet (sorry, post) his county jail mugshot. It’s not a great image for horizontal placement, but at least it’s embeddable.

X, then known as Twitter, banned Trump in early 2021 after he broke the company’s rules against inciting violence. The initial suspension saw Trump lose access to his account for 12 hours, but the company made the decision permanent. Following his de-platforming from Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, Trump went on to help create Truth Social.

– Mat Smith

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PlayStation is buying premium headphone brand Audeze

Audeze will continue to make audio products for multiple platforms.

Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony's PlayStation division, has struck a deal to buy premium headphone maker Audeze to help it "continue innovating when it comes to the audio experience of PlayStation games." Audeze will apparently continue to operate independently and develop products for multiple platforms. Audeze's headphones are best known for using planar magnetic drivers. Sony revealed more details about new earbuds and a headset for the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation Portal handheld, both of which have custom planar magnetic drivers.

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The web version of Threads is finally here

If you've been impatiently refreshing, it's time to check again.

The long-awaited web version of Threads has finally arrived. After announcing its Twitter competitor would be accessible from browsers earlier this week, Meta’s rollout is finally underway. Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed Thursday the update is now live for all users. The app has seen a significant drop-off in engagement following its initial launch – many have viewed the lack of a web version as a significant barrier to the app.

Which of the many “missing” features will Threads get next? Users have also complained about the lack of content search — right now, people can only search for users, not for specific posts — and hashtags. Fortunately, X/Twitter continues to curtail existing features, ensuring Threads appears a tempting alternative.

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Tomb Raider joins Call of Duty's war effort

Finally, Lara Croft can team-up with Nicki Minaj.

Activision

The Call of Duty franchise continues its Fortnite-inspired character roster by announcing the latest playable character will be Tomb Raider star Lara Croft. She’ll appear in Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare II, joining recent real-life playable characters, like Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Durant and various characters from the Prime Video show The Boys. If you’re waiting on a new Tomb Raider game, developer Crystal Dynamics, along with Amazon, announced in December a new game is on the way and it'll be a “single-player, narrative-driven adventure” built using Unreal Engine 5.

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The release of Dune: Part Two has been pushed back to March 15th amid ongoing writer and actor strikes, according to Variety. The hotly anticipated film was originally scheduled for November 3rd, but Warner Bros. and producer Legendary Entertainment agreed to delay it over four months — likely because the film wouldn't meet its full box office potential without publicity from the star-studded cast. 

The studio and production company held out on delaying the film as long as possible, according The Hollywood Reporter, but would have needed to start advertising the film by early September. It reportedly hoped the extra time would allow the cast, which includes Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken, to participate in a full marketing push.

Along with Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim have been pushed back to April 12th, 2024 and December 13th, 2024, respectively. Those dates were shuffled largely to accommodate Dune: Part Two. 

The ongoing labor actions by writers and actors in Hollywood are a result of long-simmering tensions over a number of issues, but particularly due to residual payments from Netflix and other streaming platforms. Warner Bros. Discovery was at the center of these in the recent past, as it elected to release some films either directly to its HBO Max (now MAX) streaming platform with zero or limited theatrical releases. However, CEO David Zaslav said last year that the company "will fully embrace theatrical" going forward. 

Dune: Part One performed well enough at the box office with a $402 million gross, but hype for the sequel is much higher. "Part One is more of a contemplative movie. Part Two is an action-packed, epic war movie. It is much more dense. We went to all new locations," said director Denis Villeneuve. 

During its I/O annual developer conference earlier this year, Google said it was giving users the ability to transition their first-generation Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor devices from the old Nest app to its new Home application. Well, the time has come — for the indoor camera, at least. Google has just started rolling out the ability to manage the camera model through the public preview version of its Home app, and it will take a few weeks before it's done making its way to all users. 

Nest cameras used to have their own application before the company was acquired by Google. Over time, Google added support for all its smart home products to its Home app, but users of the the oldest Nest cameras had to stick to the original application to be able to manage their devices. With this update, and as long as the user is on public preview, people will be able to access their first-gen Nest Cam Indoor device through the Home app and enjoy its updated camera history experience. They'll also be able to add the camera to their Favorites tab, so that its feed shows up as soon as they open the app. 

When Google first announced the ability to add the old Nest cam models to the Home app, it said the transfer would take users around 10 minutes. After that, they'll no longer need the old application to see the camera's data and footage, enabling a single app experience for a lot of users. 

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Former President Donald Trump is back on Twitter (now X) more than two years after he was banned from the platform in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot. On August 24th, 2023, Trump tweeted for the first time since the website reinstated his account on November 19th, 2022. His first post? An image with the mug shot taken when he was booked at the Fulton County jail in Georgia on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of 2020 Presidential elections. 

The image also says "Election Interference" and "Never Surrender!," along with a URL of his website. Trump linked to his website in the tweet, as well, where his mug shot is also prominently featured with a lengthy note that starts with: "Today, at the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia, I was ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME."

In November last year, Musk appeared to make the decision to reinstate Trump’s account based on the results of a Twitter poll. He asked people to vote on whether Trump should have access to his account returned. At the end of 24 hours, the option to reinstate the former president won with 51.8 percent of a decision that saw more than 15 million votes. Musk admitted at the time that some of the action on the poll came from “bot and troll armies.” Prior to the poll, Musk also said the decision on whether to reinstate Trump would come from a newly formed moderation council, but he never followed through on that pledge.

The website then known as Twitter banned Trump in early 2021 after he broke the company’s rules against inciting violence. The initial suspension saw Trump lose access to his account for 12 hours, but days later, the company made the decision permanent. At first, Trump tried to skirt the ban, even going so far as to file a lawsuit against Twitter that ultimately failed. Following his de-platforming from Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, Trump went on to create Truth Social. Following his reinstatement, Trump said he didn’t “see any reason” to return to the platform. That said, the promise of reaching a huge audience with something as dramatic as a mug shot was obviously too good for Trump to pass up, particularly with what is likely to be a messy Republican primary on the horizon.

Wing, Alphabet’s aviation subsidiary, is partnering with Walmart to kick off drone deliveries from the retail chain in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metro area. The flights will begin taking off “in the coming weeks” from a Walmart Supercenter in Frisco, TX, and the companies plan to expand to a second DFW location before the end of the year. The companies say the coverage area from both stores will cover 60,000 homes.

The service will be available to homes within about six miles of the supported stores. Residents in those areas can order things like quick meals, groceries, essentials and over-the-counter medicines. The drones can fly up to 65 mph, and Wing says you’ll get your items in under 30 minutes. They use a retractable tether to “gently deliver even delicate items” — including challenging products like eggs and frozen treats.

Wing’s drones are largely automated and monitored remotely. “Wing’s technology allows operators to oversee the system from a remote location, which means pilots won’t need to be stationed at stores or customer homes,” Alphabet’s company wrote in an announcement blog post. “The aircraft essentially fly themselves, so each operator is approved to safely oversee many drones at the same time.”

Wing has already partnered with Walgreens for drone deliveries in the DFW region. Meanwhile, Walmart said in 2022 that its own DroneUp delivery service had covered around four million households in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia. However, the retailer reportedly laid off 418 DroneUp employees earlier this year.

If you live in the DFW metroplex, you can check eligibility by installing the Wing Drone Delivery app from the App Store or Google Play. You’ll need to create an account and enter your address to view the results. A “coming soon” message means you’ll be covered as soon as deliveries begin. If the app tells you you’re not eligible, Wing says it will add new DFW neighborhoods soon.

Dropbox is killing off unlimited storage in its business-focused Advanced plan following a surge in shady activity. It wrote in a blog post that as other services made similar changes to limit storage capacity, it has seen an increase in people using Advanced plans "not to run a business or organization, but instead for purposes like crypto and Chia mining, unrelated individuals pooling storage for personal use cases or even instances of reselling storage."

While there will of course be legitimate outliers when it comes to unlimited storage plans, Dropbox says bad actors "frequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers.” It already has policies that prohibit abusive behavior, but the company says that creating a set of acceptable-use restrictions is unworkable. To that end, Dropbox is moving to a metered model.

The company will gradually move current users over to the modified Advanced plan starting on November 1st. Customers will get at least a 30-day heads up before Dropbox migrates them to the new policy.

Over 99 percent of customers on the Advanced plan each use less than 35TB of storage per license. Dropbox says those teams can continue to use however much storage they're taking up at the time they get migration notification, plus an extra 5TB of pooled storage for five years with no price increase to their current plans.

The minority of users taking up over 35TB of storage per license will receive a similar offer but for one year. Dropbox will work with them in the aim of finding a plan that works for everyone involved in the long run. All versions of the Advanced plan will max out at 1,000TB of storage.

From today onward those who buy an Advanced plan with three licenses will get a total of 15TB of pooled storage. Every additional license will add 5TB of storage. Beyond that, starting on September 18th for newcomers (November 1st for current users), Dropbox will start offering storage add-ons. These cost $10 per month for 1TB on a month-to-month payment plan, and $8 per month if purchased annually.

If that all seems necessarily complicated compared with the previous version of the Advanced plan, there's only one thing for it: blame crypto bros.

NASA has published the first maps from its new space-based pollution instrument, TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution). Although you won’t be shocked to learn it reveals higher pollution rates in metropolitan areas, the tool can help scientists better study North American air quality on an hourly basis. “Neighborhoods and communities across the country will benefit from TEMPO’s game-changing data for decades to come,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a press release today.

The instrument, which launched in April and orbits at 22,000 miles above the equator, can help scientists better study the health impacts of pollutants “at the neighborhood scale.” It can take hourly measurements, providing insights into the effects of rush-hour traffic, smoke and ash from forest fires and how fertilizer affects farm country. The tool measures sunlight bounced off the Earth’s surface, atmosphere and clouds. “Gases in the atmosphere absorb the sunlight, and the resulting spectra are then used to determine the concentrations of several gases in the air, including nitrogen dioxide,” NASA explained.

NASA says it will share its data with partner agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Since taking the first measurements earlier this month, teams have been busy checking and calibrating the satellite’s systems ahead of regular hourly operations kicking off in October. NASA views the data as a boon in its quest to reach the Biden administration’s climate goals.

NASA

The instrument beamed back its first images on August 2nd, showing the I-95 corridor in the Northeast (New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC areas), a slice of the South (central and eastern Texas stretching to New Orleans) and a section of the Southwest (Los Angeles to Las Vegas). As expected, the maps reveal heavy nitrogen dioxide density over cities and their suburban sprawl.

“Detailed views of three regions show high levels of nitrogen dioxide over cities in the morning, and enhanced levels of nitrogen dioxide over major highways,” NASA wrote today. “As the day progresses, the morning pollution often dissipates. Later in the afternoon, it will rise again as the cities enter their second rush hour of the day.”

“This summer, millions of Americans felt firsthand the effect of smoke from forest fires on our health,” said Nelson. “NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration are committed to making it easier for everyday Americans and decisionmakers to access and use TEMPO data to monitor and improve the quality of the air we breathe, benefitting life here on Earth.”