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There's been a resurgence of interest in the moon, now that we're getting closer to re-establishing a foothold on the celestial body. Space agencies and private companies around the world have been scheduling their own lunar missions to take place over the coming years, and it will be quite complicated having to coordinate with each other when they use different time zones. During a meeting at the European Space Agency's ESTEC technology center in the Netherlands last year, space organizations talked about the "importance and urgency of defining a common lunar reference time." In a new announcement, ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said a "joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this."

At the moment, different space organizations still use their own time zones for their onboard chronometers and their two-way communications systems. The ESA said doing so "will not be sustainable" in the new era of lunar exploration. Missions from different countries will be doing joint observations, and they may have to communicate with each other even if they're not directly working together if they're on the moon at the same time. 

Deciding on and keeping lunar time won't be easy, though, and they will come with a unique set of challenges. As the ESA notes, "accurate navigation demands rigorous timekeeping," which is why one of the topics the international group of space organizations will have to discuss is if there should be a single organization responsible for maintaining the moon's time zone. Further, they'll have to decide whether to keep lunar time synchronized with Earth's or not, because clocks on the moon run faster based on the satellite's position. While they have a lot of factors to consider, whatever they come up with will have to practical for astronauts orbiting or stepping on the lunar surface in the end. 

Bernhard Hufenbach, a member of the ESA's Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration's Moonlight Management Team, said: "This will be quite a challenge on a planetary surface where in the equatorial region each day is 29.5 days long, including freezing fortnight-long lunar nights, with the whole of Earth just a small blue circle in the dark sky. But having established a working time system for the moon, we can go on to do the same for other planetary destinations."

TikTok is introducing new settings that are meant to reduce how much time teens are spending in the app. In an update, the company says it will automatically default teens under the age of 18 to a daily screen time limit of 60 minutes.

With the change, teens will still be able to bypass the daily limit, but they’ll be required to enter a passcode, “requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time,” the company says. Additionally, if teens opt to turn off the screen time limit altogether, TikTok will further prompt them to set a limit if they spend more than 100 minutes in the app.

The company is also adding new parental control features via the app’s “Family Pairing” feature, which allows parents to monitor their children’s activity on TikTok. Parents will be able to set their own custom screen time limits, and view a dashboard that details stats about their child’s time in the app, like how often they open it and what times of the day they use it most. Parents can also set a schedule for when their children can receive notifications, and choose to filter topics they don’t want to appear in their For You feeds.

The update comes as lawmakers in the United States have renewed their efforts to ban TikTok entirely. In addition to national security concerns, Congress has also criticized the company for not doing enough to protect its youngest users.

The threat actors who infiltrated News Corp., the company that owns The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets, apparently had access to its network for two full years. In February last year, News Corp. admitted that it had discovered a security breach a month earlier and that hackers broke into a third-party cloud service that contained employees' information. Now, according to Ars Technica, the company has sent a breach notification letter (PDF) to at least one affected personnel. In it, the company has admitted that "an unauthorized party" gained access to business documents and emails in some employees' accounts between February 2020 and January 2022.

When News Corp. announced the breach, the security firm (Mandiant) that investigated the intrusion said it believes the threat actor was connected to the Chinese government. Further, it said the company was most likely attacked to gather intelligence for the country. In an email to Ars, a representative said News Corp. continues to believe "that this was an intelligence collection," but didn't respond to a question asking if investigators still think the hackers were linked to China. 

The company has revealed in the letter, though, that the bad actors may have gotten a hold of employees' names, birth dates, Social Security number, driver's license and passport numbers, as well as their financial, medical and heath insurance information. "Not all of this information was impacted for each affected individual," it added. News Corp. said that it hasn't heard any incidents of identity theft or fraud resulting from the security breach so far, but it's offering affected employees two years of identity protection and credit monitoring. 

"Our investigation indicates that this activity does not appear to be focused on exploiting personal information," News Corp. wrote in its letter. However, it didn't reveal that details of the documents and emails the threat actors were able to access, and it didn't say if they were specifically looking for information connected to the company's reporting. 

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Meta has shared its latest augmented and virtual reality hardware roadmap with employees, and according to The Verge, it's planning to launch its first full-fledged AR glasses in 2027. While the company intends to release other AR glasses before then, the device it's launching in four years' time is the same one Mark Zuckerberg believes could become Meta's "iPhone moment." That is, he thinks it could shake up the industry and could become as popular as the iPhone. 

The glasses will reportedly have the capability to project avatars as high-quality holograms superimposed on top of the real world — they're also expected to be quite expensive. Employees will get the chance to take first crack at testing the device in 2024 before it makes its way to the public as Meta's "Innovation" line of advanced smart glasses for the earliest adopters. 

The company also discussed the other AR and VR devices it's launching before its full-fledged AR glasses are ready, The Verge says. This fall, it's apparently releasing a follow-up to Ray-Ban Stories, which it developed in partnership with Luxottica. The Quest 3 headset, which is expected to be twice as thin and as powerful as the Quest 2, will also be available later this year. In 2024, Meta also plans to launch a VR headset codenamed "Ventura," which it intends to sell "at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market." 

A year after that, in 2025, Meta plans to launch the third-generation Ray-Ban Stories. It will feature a display called the "viewfinder" designed to view incoming texts, scan QR codes and translate messages to other languages in real time. Users will reportedly be able to control the glasses with hand movements and will eventually be able to type messages using a virtual keyboard. In addition, Meta is developing a smartwatch to go with these particular glasses.

Meta isn't the only big technology company with plans to launch AR and VR glasses and headsets over the next few years. Apple is believed to be debuting its long-awaited mixed reality headset at WWDC in June. It's expected to have advanced features, such as dual 4K displays and controller-free input, and to cost as much as $3,000. However, reports suggest that Apple is working on a cheaper version that more people will be able to afford.

Twitter is once again tightening its rules around what users are permitted to say on the platform. The company introduced an updated “violent speech” policy, which contains some notable additions compared with previous versions of the rules.

Interestingly, the new policy prohibits users from expressing “wishes of harm” and similar sentiments. “This includes (but is not limited to) hoping for others to die, suffer illnesses, tragic incidents, or experience other physically harmful consequences,” the rules state. That’s a reversal from Twitter’s previous policy, which explicitly said that “statements that express a wish or hope that someone experiences physical harm" were not against the company’s rules.

“Statements that express a wish or hope that someone experiences physical harm, making vague or indirect threats, or threatening actions that are unlikely to cause serious or lasting injury are not actionable under this policy,” Twitter’s previous policy stated, according to the Wayback Machine.

That change isn't the only addition to the policy. Twitter’s rules now also explicitly protects “infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities” from threats of damage. From the rules:

You may not threaten to inflict physical harm on others, which includes (but is not limited to) threatening to kill, torture, sexually assault, or otherwise hurt someone. This also includes threatening to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.

These may not seem like particularly eyebrow-raising changes, but they are notable given Elon Musk’s previous statements about how speech should be handled on Twitter. Prior to taking over the company, the Tesla CEO stated that his preference would be to allow all speech that is legal. “I think we would want to err on the side of, if in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said at the time.

It’s also not the first time Twitter’s rules have become more restrictive since Musk’s takeover. The company’s rules around doxxing changed following his dustup with the (now suspended) @elonjet account, which shared the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet.

Twitter didn’t explain its rationale for the changes, but noted in a series of tweets that it may suspend accounts breaking the rules or force them to delete the tweets in question. The company no longer has a communications team to respond to requests for comment.

When President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in 2022, it put $52 billion in tax credits and funding on the table to help bolster the semiconductor industry in the US, with $39 billion specifically earmarked for semiconductor manufacturing incentives. Now, we're starting to see how that initiative is going to play out: The Biden Administration has officially launched the first CHIPS for America funding opportunity, laying out the application process for "projects to construct, expand or modernize commercial facilities for the production of leading-edge, current-generation and mature-node semiconductors."

The "first" in first funding opportunity is the key word here: At the start, CHIPS for America is specifically looking to fund projects that align with the program's "vision for success" that seeks to have a number of leading-edge logic fabrication facilities and DRAM chip manufacturers by the end of the decade, as well as hitting specific production capacity goals for "current-generation and mature-node" semiconductors. The program plans to offer more funding opportunities for R&D and manufacturing equipment facilities at a later date. Applications for those programs won't launch until late Spring and Fall of 2023, but the CHIPS Program Office is open to receiving statements of interest from hopeful applicants.

The program also includes strict guardrails for how funding is used. Applicants who are awarded CHIPS funding will be prohibited from using the payments for stock buybacks or to pay out dividends, and payments will be tied to meeting specific milestones. It'll be awhile before the first recipients of CHIPS funding are announced, but hopeful projects can begin submitting applications on March 31, 2023. Want all the details? Check out the full CHIPS for America announcement right here.

Google announced that it’s rolling out Pixel Watch fall detection starting today. Like the Apple Watch feature of the same name launched in 2018, Google’s version also uses motion sensors and algorithms to determine if you’ve fallen and need help. However, Google says it won’t accidentally call emergency services for winter sports accidents, as the Apple Watch’s crash detection has done.

If the Pixel Watch detects a possible fall and a lack of movement for about 30 seconds, it will vibrate, emit an alarm and display an onscreen message checking on you. If it wasn’t a bad fall, tap the “I’m OK” button to dismiss the alert; tap “I fell & need help” if you want it to call 911. Otherwise, the sound will continue for about a minute and grow louder in its final seconds. If you still haven’t responded to the alert by then, it will contact emergency services automatically, playing them an automated message requesting help at your location. (You’ll also have the option of speaking to the 911 operator from the watch.)

You can activate the feature on the “Updates” page in the Watch Companion app on your paired phone or in the Pixel Watch’s Personal Safety app.

Google says its fall detection should avoid false positives. “Worried that doing burpees or hitting the ski slopes will trigger an accidental emergency call?” Google wrote in its announcement post. “Your Pixel Watch knows the difference between taking a hard fall and performing a vigorous physical activity or even quickly recovering from a small stumble — thanks to our machine learning algorithms and rigorous testing. The motion sensors and algorithms can monitor for a sudden impact and your body’s responses and instinctive reactions to falling. We trained this process using a broad variety of human and simulated fall data and other motion patterns to accurately detect real falls and minimize potential false alarms.”

Google adds that you can supply data to help it improve the feature by toggling the “Help improve fall detection” option. This will send the company motion-sensor data of any events detected as falls.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is bumping up its release date. The animated adventure will now open on April 5th in over 60 markets (it was previously slated for April 7th). Giving the movie a five-day opening over Easter weekend is an old Hollywood trick that could help pad its initial earnings and lead to marketing-friendly headlines touting its early success.

The film stars the voices of Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Chris Day as Luigi, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong and Jack Black as Bowser. It was initially scheduled to release in December, but Illumination and Nintendo announced early last year they were pushing it back to this April. Throughout April and May, the movie will release in ten additional Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European markets; Japan’s release is timed to coincide with the Golden Week Holidays on April 28th.

The movie will mark Mario’s first big-screen starring role since 1993's ill-fated Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi, which bombed at the box office but became something of a “so bad it’s good” cult classic in later years. Before that, children of the late 80s and early 90s enjoyed The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, a live-action / animated series starring Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells.

The upcoming Mario film could be a barometer for audiences’ appetites for video game movies. Hollywood adaptations of gaming IPs have a long track record of (rightfully) bombing with box offices and critics. Still, HBO’s excellent The Last of Us series has been a notable exception that Nintendo and Illumination would love to continue on the big screen.

Nishad Singh, a co-founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has pleaded guilty to US federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Singh, who was FTX's director of engineering, is the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. Former executives Caroline Ellison and Zixiao "Gary" Wang previously pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Singh pleaded guilty to six criminal counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the US by violating campaign finance laws. He agreed to forfeit the proceeds of his actions, as Reuters reports. Bankruptcy filings showed that Singh received a $543 million loan from Alameda.

Singh admitted to making illegal donations to political candidates and PACs under his name using funds from Alameda Research (FTX's sibling hedge fund and crypto trading firm). He claimed the donations were intended to bolster the political influence of FTX and Bankman-Fried (aka SBF), according to The Wall Street Journal. Singh added that he agreed with the stances of those he donated to but didn't pick the candidates. Per OpenSecrets, he contributed $8 million to Democratic PACs and campaigns during the 2022 election cycle.

Moreover, Singh said he found out in mid-2022 that Alameda was borrowing billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX. It emerged by September that Alameda wasn't able to repay those funds. Singh additionally claimed that he falsified FTX’s revenues at SBF's behest to make the company more palatable to investors.

SBF now faces 12 criminal charges after an indictment detailing four additional ones was unsealed last week. Among other things, he has been accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds and misleading investors and lenders. Notably, in light of Singh's plea, the charges include alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws by donating to a super PAC under the names of two executives. SBF, who was arrested and extradited from the Bahamas in December, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is set for October.

On the same day Singh made his guilty plea, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed civil complaints against him. The agencies said Singh is cooperating with the SEC's ongoing investigation and that he agreed to settle with the CFTC.