The Department of Defense is canceling its $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract. The Pentagon said it “initiated contract termination procedures” in a press release it shared on Tuesday, noting “the Department has determined that, due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.”

With JEDI, the Defense Department had planned to modernize its IT infrastructure, but the contract hadn’t moved forward since the Pentagon awarded it to Microsoft in 2019 on account of a legal challenge from Amazon. One month after JEDI went to Redmond, Amazon filed a formal challenge with the US Court of Federal Claims, alleging the Pentagon showed “unmistakable bias” when it evaluated the two companies.

When the lawsuit was eventually unsealed later that same year, it came out that Amazon believed it lost the contract due to interference from former President Donald Trump. According to the company, Trump "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS to harm his perceived political enemy — Jeffrey P. Bezos."

Shortly after the Defense Department announced it wasn’t moving forward with JEDI, Microsoft published a blog post on the decision. “We understand the DOD’s rationale, and we support them and every military member who needs the mission-critical 21st century technology JEDI would have provided. The DOD faced a difficult choice: continue with what could be a years-long litigation battle or find another path forward,” the company said. “The security of the United States is more important than any single contract, and we know that Microsoft will do well when the nation does well.”

Microsoft went on to say the episode highlights the need for lawmakers to look at the contract challenge process. "The 20 months since DOD selected Microsoft as its JEDI partner highlights issues that warrant the attention of policymakers: when one company can delay, for years, critical technology upgrades for those who defend our nation, the protest process needs reform," it said.  

We’ve reached out to Amazon for its response to the situation, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the company.

Alongside the cancelation, the Pentagon announced a new multi-vendor contract called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC). The agency plans to collect proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft. It contends they're the two vendors best suited to meet its needs, though it also plans to see if other companies can help it modernize its IT infrastructure.  

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Just when you think Sony doesn’t have any more weird and fanciful designs left in it, the company surprises you. Building on devices like the SRS-WS1, it announced the SRS-NB10 on Tuesday. It's a neckband speaker the company says it designed with remote workers in mind. Set to cost $150 when it goes on sale later this year, the NB10 promises up to 20 hours of audio playback “optimized for your ears alone” with drivers that are angled upward.

Sony

As long as you’re listening to something at a relatively low volume, Sony says you “don’t need to worry about distracting colleagues, roommates or family.” But let’s be real here, you’re wearing a speaker on your shoulders. That’s the kind of energy that’s matched only by the co-worker who insists on bringing their mechanical keyboard to work.

The SRS-NB10 isn't only a speaker, however. You can also use it for voice and video calls. Thanks to two beamforming microphones and its built-in voice processing technology, Sony claims the NB10 will make it easy for people on the other end of a call to hear you. What’s more, the “open-ear” design makes it so that you can hear what’s going on around you.

Sony

The NB10 can connect to two Bluetooth-capable devices simultaneously, allowing you to switch between them as needed. Should you have the courage to wear the NB10 to say the gym, they’re also IPX4-certified water-resistant. And thanks to USB-C charging, you can get an additional hour of playback after 10 minutes at the outlet.

The SRS-NB10 will be available in two colors — charcoal grey and white — when it goes on sale in September.

No stranger to trying new things, audio brand is introducing its first-ever pair of gaming-focused Bluetooth earbuds. The highlight feature of the company's new Seoul earbuds is a mode toggle that Urbanista claims reduces Bluetooth latency to about 70ms. A dedicated latency toggle isn’t something we’ve seen on a lot of true wireless headphones. Most gaming-oriented earbuds use Qualcomm’s aptX Bluetooth codec to get latency as low as possible.

Urbanista

With the codec’s low-latency variant, Qualcomm claims you get that number down to about 40ms. The downside of aptX is both your earbuds and phone need to support the codec. That’s not a problem with most Snapdragon devices since Qualcomm makes those too, but you won’t find the codec supported on Apple devices. That’s what makes the Seoul earbuds interesting. They give you a device agnostic way to get a low-latency mode.

Aside from that feature, the Seoul earbuds are about what you expect from a pair of mid-range true wireless earbuds in 2021. At $89.90, they feature a claimed eight hours of battery life on a single charge, with the included case allowing you to get another 32 hours of playtime before the entire unit needs to recharge. At that point, you can charge them using either a USB-C cable or Qi charging pad. They’re also IPX4-certified, come with Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity and feature both Google Assistant and Siri integration. Urbanista will sell the Seoul earbuds in four colors: black, blue, purple and white.

Urbanista

For those looking for something more affordable, Urbanista also announced its new Lisbon earbuds. At $49.90, they’re the company’s cheapest true wireless earbuds to date. Looking at the spec sheet Urbanista sent over, they look decent too. Battery life comes in at a claimed nine hours on a single charge. With the included charging case, you can get a total of 27 hours of playtime from them. They don’t feature waterproofing, but you do get Bluetooth 5.2 support and USB-C charging, as well as Google Assistant and Siri integration. They’ll come in five colors: pastel red, beige, pink, green and black.

On early Sunday morning, two Chinese astronauts completed work outside of their country’s Tiangong space station. The event was the second-ever spacewalk in China’s history. As The Guardian points out, it’s also the first time its astronauts have completed a tandem extravehicular activity (EVA).

Shenzhou-12 astronaut Boming Liu left the station at 8:11 PM ET on July 3rd and was later joined by crewmate Hongbo Tang. Meanwhile, Haisheng Nie, the mission’s commander, stayed inside the Tianhe “Harmony of the Heavens” crew module to support them.

The two astronauts went out to do work on the module’s robotic arm while wearing China’s next-generation Feitian EVA suits. The entire time they were about 380 kilometers (236 miles) above the surface of Earth. The components they installed will assist future missions as China looks to complete its new space station sometime in 2022. Liu and Tang went back into Tianhe at approximately 2:57 AM ET, making the entire spacewalk around seven hours.

“The safe return of astronauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo to the Tianhe core module marks the complete success of the first spacewalk in our country’s space station construction,” China’s Manned Space Agency said in a statement.

The last time a Chinese astronaut left their craft was back in 2008 when Zhigang Zhai put China in the history books as the third-ever country to complete a spacewalk. In the past year, the country successfuly landed its first-ever rover on Mars and retrieved rock and soil samples from the Moon. The country’s space agency plans a second spacewalk before the Shenzhou-12 crew returns to Earth later this year.

The start menu may not end up the only element of Microsoft’s desktop operating system that gets a visual overhaul in Windows 11. According to The Verge, Windows 11 will feature a Black Screen of Death, instead of the current blue one we all know and dread. It will be the first major tweak to that part of the Windows interface since Microsoft added QR codes to it in 2016.

Microsoft hasn’t enabled the new BSOD in Windows 11 yet, primarily because the OS is in preview and Insider builds have featured a Green Screen of Death since 2016. As Gizmodo notes, there’s a way to enable the new BSOD in the current preview build, but it involves editing your Windows registry and definitely not worth doing for something you don’t want to see anyway.

It’s unclear why Microsoft is changing the color of the Blue Screen of Death. However, The Verge suggests it could be because the company is already tweaking other parts of the Windows interface to make the OS feel more modern. At the very least, there’s no new acronym to learn. We'll also point out a lot could change between now and when Microsoft ships Windows 11 in the fall.  

Owners of Western Digital network attached storage (NAS) devices may have yet another security headache on the horizon. Following the two flaws hackers exploited to wipe My Book Live devices remotely, security journalist Brian Krebs has published a report on another zero-day vulnerability that affects Western Digital products running the company’s My Cloud OS3 software. What’s more, it doesn’t appear there will be an official fix for those who don’t upgrade to a newer storage solution.

Earlier in the year, security researchers Radek Domanski and Pedro Ribeiro discovered a series of weaknesses that allow a malicious actor to remotely update a My Cloud OS3 device to add a backdoor. The two say they never heard back from the company when they tried to contact it about the vulnerability. Western Digital attributes its response (or lack thereof) to one of its previous policies.

“The communication that came our way confirmed the research team involved planned to release details of the vulnerability and asked us to contact them with any questions,” a spokesperson for the company told Krebs. “We didn’t have any questions so we didn’t respond. Since then, we have updated our process and respond to every report in order to avoid any miscommunication like this again.”

While the flaw isn’t present in Western Digital's new My Cloud OS 5, it’s unclear if the company ever went back to address it in My Cloud OS3. What’s more, it no longer plans to support the older software. “We will not provide any further security updates to the My Cloud OS3 firmware,” Western Digital says in a support page dated to March 12th, 2021. “We strongly encourage moving to the My Cloud OS 5 firmware. If your device is not eligible for upgrade to My Cloud OS 5, we recommend that you upgrade to one of our other My Cloud offerings that support My Cloud OS 5.”

We’ve reached out to the company for more information. In the meantime, you can protect your My Cloud device by downloading a patch Domanski and Ribiro developed. One thing to note is you’ll need to reapply it each time you reboot your device. You can also protect your My Cloud NAS drive by limiting its access to the internet.

While Bird is best known for its electric scooters, it recently expanded into the bikeshare market and is now also moving into the accessibility space. With help from Scootaround, a company that specializes in wheelchair and mobility scooter rentals, the startup is piloting a new program. It’s adding a dedicated interface within its app that allows those with mobility issues to reserve and rent one of three different electric vehicles.

Rentals can vary between one and 14 days in length, and you can decide where you want to pick up your ride and drop it off. With each rental, Bird will provide an in-person tutorial to answer any questions you might have about the EV you’re about to rent. The company will also have a toll-free number customers can call to ask about the entire process.

One of the vehicles Bird will allow people to drive is the Whill Model Ci2 (pictured above). We got a chance to test the first Ci variant back at CES 2018, driving it across the Vegas show floor at a brisk five miles per hour. The program will come first to New York City, with other cities to follow throughout 2021 depending on how the pilot pans out.

The Justice Department is investigating Lordstown Motors, according to The Wall Street Journal. It’s unclear what the DOJ is examining, but the US Attorney’s office leading the investigation often handles fraud allegations. At the moment, Lordstown is also the subject of an SEC inquiry into claims the company made about pre-orders for its upcoming Endurance electric pickup truck. In both instances, the startup says it’s working with investigators.

“Lordstown Motors is committed to cooperating with any regulatory or governmental investigations and inquiries,” a spokesperson for the company told The Verge. “We look forward to closing this chapter so that our new leadership – and entire dedicated team – can focus solely on producing the first and best full-size all-electric pickup truck, the Lordstown Endurance.”

Lordstown was one of several EV startups that went public last year through what’s known as a special acquisitions company or SPAC. The maneuver helped the company raise $675 million, but it has been embattled ever since. Its problems started in March when Hindenburg Research published a report accusing the company of misleading investors about the demand for its Endurance truck. In a later SEC filing, the company warned it didn’t have enough money to start manufacturing its first EV. With today’s news, it also becomes the second high-profile electric vehicle startup to come under scrutiny from both the DOJ and SEC.

Riot Games is no stranger to making music. With K/DA, the studio has one of the world’s most popular virtual bands, but it’s latest musical project is different. On Friday, Riot released Sessions: Vi, a 37-track album of instrumental beats with contributions from artists like Chromonicci and Junior State. What makes the release special is that streamers and content creators can use all the songs from Sessions: Vi for free.

Riot hopes the album and future ones like it will help ease some of the copyright headaches Twitch streamers have had to deal with for much of the past year. At the start of last June, Twitch got a “sudden influx” of DMCA takedown notices. The majority of those targeted archived broadcasts that had been up on the platform for years. The company has tried in a variety of ways to prevent more takedown notifications from coming in, but those efforts don’t seem to have addressed the problem. That's because in May Twitch said it received another batch of approximately 1,000 individual DMCA notifications. For some streamers, those notices represent a potential ban from the service.

You can stream Sessions: Vi on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube. 

When The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD comes out on July 16th, it will address many of the more annoying design choices found in the original game. As you can see from the trailer Nintendo shared today, the remaster will feature several “quality of life improvements,” including the ability to skip cutscenes, tutorials and dialogue. What’s more, Skyward Sword HD will render at a smoother 60 frames per second, and include optional button controls.

But the biggest change is more of an addition by subtraction. Players can choose to ask Fi for advice, instead of the spirit offering it incessantly on their own. Nintendo explains Fi will only appear in cutscenes and when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, Link’s sword will glow when Fi has something to say, and you can choose to hear them out or not.

In much the same way, Nintendo has also streamlined how players interact with items. The first time you pick a new one up, the game will explain what it does, but won’t subject you to that same explanation every subsequent time you find that same item.

Skyward Sword HD also includes a new fast travel system, but you’ll need to pick up a $25 Loftwing amiibo Nintendo will release on the same day as the remaster to get access to that feature.