Virgin Orbit has announced plans to go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange through a special purpose acquisitions company (SPAC) merger. The deal with NextGen Acquisition Corp. II values Virgin Orbit at $3.2 billion.

The combined company is expected to pull in up to $483 million in cash when the deal closes, which Virgin Orbit believes will happen by the end of this year. Around $383 million of that is expected to come from funds NextGen holds in trust, and the other $100 million from a common stock PIPE (private investment in public equity) offering at $10 per share. Virgin Orbit's existing stakeholders will own around 85 percent of the combined company, with NextGen shareholders owning about 10 percent, PIPE investors (which will include Boeing) holding roughly three percent and the SPAC sponsor owning the remaining two percent or so.

Virgin Orbit will use the funds to scale up its rocket manufacturing endeavors and bolster the company's space solutions business and Virgin Orbit’s ongoing product development initiatives. An SPAC merger with a company (usually a shell corporation) that's already listed on a stock exchange allows a business to go public without going through the usual initial public offering process.

The first spaceflight company to go public through an SPAC, and the company that really kicked off the SPAC trend, was Virgin Galactic back in 2019, which sought to fund its tourist trips to space. Virgin Galactic spun out Virgin Orbit as a separate company in 2017 so they could respectively focus on space tourism and small satellite launches. Virgin Galactic held its first fully crewed flight in July (with founder Richard Branson on board), while Virgin Orbit had its first successful satellite deployment in January.

Virgin Orbit launches its satellites from a custom Boeing 747, with the LauncherOne rocket taking payloads into space. The company says this approach offers a "significant performance advantage" over traditional ground launches (an approach adopted by the likes of SpaceX) while lowering "local carbon emissions and acoustic impacts" at launch sites.

It's not exactly a secret that OnePlus has been working on new earbuds. In July, it sought fans to test an upcoming model without disclosing too many details. Fast forward a few weeks, and the company has formally revealed the OnePlus Buds Pro.

OnePlus has adopted a different design from the original Buds, which it released last year. The Buds Pro boast adaptive noise cancellation (ANC), which filters out background sound levels of up to 40dB. You can lower that to a maximum of 25dB to keep closer tabs on your surroundings. There's a scene detection feature too.

Each earbud has a trio of microphones. OnePlus says the mics work in concert with its noise reduction algorithms and a mechanical design intended to tamp down wind noise. All of those features are included with the aim of delivering clearer audio. 

There's also a feature called OnePlus Audio ID, a sound profile that customizes each song based on the wearer's sensitivity to different sounds, as established by a listening test. You can expect Dolby Atmos support too.

OnePlus

You'll get up to seven hours of use on a single charge, and five hours if ANC is enabled, OnePlus says. The charging case can add up to 31 hours of playback time, and an extra 23 hours if you use ANC. Fast charging adds 10 hours of playback after 10 minutes of charging time via a USB-C cable. The case is also Qi-certified for wireless charging.

The earbuds are IP55-rated for water and sweat resistance, while the charging case is IPX4-rated. Other features include low latency for gaming on certain OnePlus phones (around 94ms), fast pairing, voice assistant support, automatic pausing when you take the buds out of your ears and a Zen mode that can play white noise.

The original $79 OnePlus Buds didn't exactly blow us away. Engadget Senior News Editor Billy Steele found the AirPods-style earbuds delivered muddy audio and were uncomfortable to wear. Here's hoping OnePlus has upped its game this time around.

The OnePlus Buds Pro will go on sale in the US and Canada on September 1st in two colors: Matte Black and Glossy White. They cost $150.

At its annual Duocon conference on Friday, Duolingo announced several updates for the language-learning app. Among them is a family plan, which gives up to six people access to Duolingo Plus with a single subscription.

The plan includes benefits like unlimited hearts (so you can keep learning for longer after making mistakes) and an option to keep your lesson streak going if you happen to miss a day. Subscribers won't see any ads in the app either. New features include a hub where you can review all of your mistakes and a more advanced Legendary Level to put your language skills to the test.

The family plan costs around $120 per year, but there's no monthly payment option. The standard plan is $80 per year or $13/month. You can add accounts on shared devices with ease and follow your family members to see their progress. 

In addition, Duolingo is hoping to make it easier for users to learn languages with non-Latin based alphabets, such as Japanese, Korean, Russian, Greek, Arabic and Hindi. The company says it has built new kinds of exercises to help folks get to grips with the character-based languages.

Meanwhile, five more languages are coming to the app soon: Haitian Creole, Zulu, Xhosa, Tagalog and Maori. Duolingo worked with South African organization Nal'ibali on the Zulu and Xhosa courses. 

“For years, we’ve been working to elevate the status of South African languages by creating and distributing high-quality stories for children," Nal’ibali COO Katie Huston said in a statement. "Partnering with Duolingo to create these courses is another step towards elevating and protecting our local languages, and sharing them with new audiences around the world."

Duolingo is also working on an app that teaches elementary-level math. The app will harness the same tech the company uses for language learning and it should emerge next year. On top of that, Duolingo is upgrading the BirdBrain AI learning system. It says the AI will create personalized lessons at the correct difficulty level.

Halo Infinite is on track to hit Xbox consoles, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming sometime this holiday season, but some key modes will be missing at the outset. In a development update, 343 Industries said campaign co-op and Forge won't be available at launch, as the studio is focusing on the single-player campaign and multiplayer modes.

"Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shutdown and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch," Halo Infinite head of creative Joseph Staten said in the video. "We also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well."

343 Industries will roll out the modes next year as part of its seasonal roadmap. Right now, the plan is to release campaign co-op in season two (around three months after the game debuts) and Forge in season three (approximately six months after launch). Those plans may change though.

"Our number one priority is making sure that whatever we ship, whenever we ship it, it meets the right quality bar across all platforms," Staten said. "When we looked at these two experiences, campaign co-op and Forge, we made the determination they're just not ready." 

Campaign co-op has long been a staple of the Halo series, with up to four people being able to tackle the main campaign together. In Forge, players can create custom game modes with modified maps and unique rules. 

The delays will likely come as a disappointment to fans, who've already had to wait longer than expected for the next game in the flagship Xbox franchise. Halo Infinite wasn't ready in time for the Xbox Series X/S launch last November. As such, Microsoft delayed the game until a year after it was initially supposed to arrive.

As for the specific Halo Infinite release date, Staten said 343 Industries plans to announce that soon. Along with the single-player campaign, there's a free-to-play multiplayer mode. You'll just have to remain patient a bit longer if you want to play through the campaign with your buddies.

It's a big weekend in the world of pro wrestling. WWE has two major shows lined up, including one of its marquee events, SummerSlam, which takes place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday. The company is making some strides elsewhere, thanks to a new audio content partnership with Spotify.

WWE and The Ringer (which Spotify bought last year for around $200 million to bolster its sports lineup) are building a podcast network together. The Ringer podcast The Masked Man Show has been rebranded as The Ringer Wrestling Show. More podcasts are on the way, including a narrative series produced by Bill Simmons (a self-professed lifelong WWE fan) and additional shows from WWE talent. WWE's current podcasts, including The New Day: Feel the Power and WWE After the Bell with Corey Graves, are becoming Spotify exclusives too.

Along with the podcasts, there'll be live audio discussions on Spotify Greenroom after every big WWE pay-per-view event. The Ringer is recording some podcast episodes and hosting Greenroom conversations live in Las Vegas this weekend.

WWE is a solid get for Spotify, given the brand's popularity and global reach. Although SummerSlam might become overshadowed by events elsewhere in the pro wrestling sphere this weekend, it seems as good a time as any to kick off the partnership.

Earlier this year, the WWE Network moved to Peacock. So, if you're a Peacock Premium member, you can watch SummerSlam and Sunday's NXT TakeOver 36 at no extra cost.

T-Mobile says millions more people have been impacted by its recent data breach than initially believed. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the company said an additional 6 million or so accounts were affected, taking the total to more than 54 million.

On Wednesday, T-Mobile disclosed that data from around 40 million former or potential customers had been compromised in a cyberattack. The data included names, birth dates, social security numbers, driver’s licenses and information from other types of identification. The company now says another 667,000 accounts of former customers were accessed, with attackers obtaining some personal data from those, but no SSNs or ID details.

In the previous disclosure, T-Mobile said approximately 7.8 million current holders of T-Mobile postpaid accounts were impacted, with attackers gaining at least some customers' personal data. The company now says phone numbers and IMEI and IMSI details (identifiers for mobile devices and SIM cards respectively) were compromised as well.

On top of that, T-Mobile has identified another 5.3 million affected postpaid accounts. No SSNs or driver’s license/identification details were compromised from those, the company said, but the attackers accessed other identifiable information.

Around 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customers have been impacted as well. The attackers may have garnered up to 52,000 names connected to current Metro by T-Mobile accounts too. Accounts of former Sprint prepaid and Boost Mobile customers are unaffected.

Other data was stolen in the cyberattack, including additional phone numbers and IMEI and IMSI numbers, but the company claims there was no personally identifiable information in those files. Meanwhile, T-Mobile still has "no indication" that customer financial details, such as credit card data, were affected.

A member of an underground forum claimed over the weekend to have data for more than 100 million T-Mobile customers. They reportedly attempted to sell information of around 30 million of those for about $270,000 worth of Bitcoin.

T-Mobile's investigation into the breach is ongoing and it will provide more details if it finds more affected accounts. The company says it's "confident that we have closed off the access and egress points the bad actor used in the attack" and that it has taken steps to mitigate the impact on customers. For instance, it has offered two years of identity protection service to anyone who thinks they might have been affected.

A year after it wowed many with its first gameplay video, Chinese developer Game Science Studio is back with an even more impressive look at Black Myth: Wukong. The studio has switched from Unreal Engine 4 to UE5 for the action RPG. According to NVIDIA, it's the first peek at a UE5 game that uses Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), the company's AI-powered upscaling tech.

The 12-minute preview, which you can watch in 4K at 60 frames per second, shows off much more action from the game. It features a couple of stunning boss fights, including one with an electric dragon on a frozen lake. The visuals here are eye-popping: expect buttery-smooth animations, gorgeous environments and dazzling snow and ice effects.

Black Myth: Wukong is based on the story of the Monkey King and the Journey to the West. Game Science Studio seems to have taken inspiration from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice here, but that's hardly a bad thing. The gameplay and creature design certainly draw from the Souls-like approach popularized by From Software — for instance, you see the protagonist evading the terrible beasts' attacks while looking for an opportunity to leap in with their staff. 

The studio was formed by a group of former Tencent Games employees, according to prominent games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad. There's no confirmed release window as yet for Black Myth: Wukong. Game Science Studio said last year it was aiming to bring the game to PC (which is a sure bet given the DLSS support) and consoles by 2023.

Although other companies that are working on autonomous driving might get more attention, Waymo is still hard at work on the technology. The Alphabet subsidiary just provided an update on its Waymo Driver AI as well as more details about its self-driving tests.

An array of LiDAR, radar and cameras can track what's going on all around the vehicle in a variety of weather conditions, Waymo says. The system generates a 3D view of the vehicle's surroundings that humans would be able to understand. Along with other cars, the system can render pedestrians in addition to cyclists who narrowly pass by the vehicle.

The company says Waymo Driver can detect small objects and movements at a distance, such as a truck door in the middle of traffic and someone jumping out to deliver a package. It claims the AI can recognize steam emanating from utility holes and drive the vehicle through it, and understand the difference between a stop sign and its reflection.

Waymo has been testing its vehicles in San Francisco since 2009 and it ramped up its efforts in the city earlier this year. Its vehicles now clock north of 100,000 miles on SF's roads every week. Between narrow streets, drastic changes in elevation and intersections right at the top of hills, San Francisco isn't an easy city to drive in, which makes it an effective testing ground for AVs.

The company's vehicles have autonomously driven more than 20 million miles on public roads as well as 20 billion miles in simulations. That's a significant bank of data to draw from. Waymo says the AI can recognize and adapt to local driving behaviors, such as what lane to turn in at each intersection. According to the company, Waymo Driver can also mimic other vehicles' behavior, such as in SF, where people tend to drive a little slower while going up steep slopes.

Fully autonomous driving is likely several years away from going mainstream, but it seems Waymo is making significant strides toward that goal. Hopefully, Waymo Driver is getting more comfortable around safety cones.

Elsewhere, Waymo is beefing up its autonomous truck ambitions. On Wednesday, the company announced that it's building a trucking hub in Dallas-Fort Worth and partnering with Ryder to manage its fleet.

Meanwhile, Tesla's AI Day event takes place today. According to an invitation, the company will provide attendees with "an inside look at what’s next for AI at Tesla beyond our vehicle fleet." CEO Elon Musk said there'll be a live stream of the event.

OnlyFans will ban users from uploading photos and videos "sexually explicit conduct" as of October 1st. Although the company will block depictions of sex acts, nudity is still allowed as long as creators stick by OnlyFans' Acceptable Use Policy. The changes follow pressure from payment providers and banking providers, as Bloomberg reports.

“In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” the company said in a statement. OnlyFans will share more details about the move in the coming days and it promised to "actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines." 

Enforcing the new policy will likely be difficult, though all uploads to OnlyFans are checked by human moderators, according to the company. Engadget has contacted OnlyFans for comment.

OnlyFans allows its more than 2 million creators to share exclusive content with their paid subscribers. Many of the top creators on the platform, which has 130 million users, sell nude or sexually explicit photos and videos. Many sex workers have relied on revenue from the site over the last few years, especially as the pandemic took hold and it was more difficult for them to earn a living elsewhere.

Patreon similarly allows creators to share explicit nude images with their paid subscribers. However, it doesn't allow "pornographic material or sexual services."

Earlier this year, OnlyFans quietly released a mobile and TV app that features fitness, cooking, comedy, music and other types of content from its creators, but zero nudity. This week, the company started a promotional push for OFTV, underscoring its move to a more sanitized future.

EA Sports' NHL series is finally making the switch to Frostbite, several years after FIFA and Madden NFL moved to the engine. As such, NHL 22 marks the "biggest leap forward" for the franchise in terms of gameplay and graphics, according to EA.

Developer EA Vancouver has seemingly made every stitch of player uniforms visible via high-res graphics. Player models have been overhauled as well. EA says Frostbite enables enhanced spatial awareness, with players having upgraded eye animations and the ability to track and react to what's going on around them. The publisher is promising "new physically accurate stick interactions" as well.

A system called Superstar X-Factors brings unique moves to some of the more high-profile hockey pros with abilities based on their real-world traits. For instance, cover star and Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews' Shock and Awe move allows you to let fly with "exciting shots," while Andrei Vasilevskiy’s Contortionist ability plays into the Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender's body-twisting flair to let him pull off impressive saves. Superstar X-Factors will feature in the Franchise Mode, as well as the Be A Pro, Hockey Ultimate Team and World of Chel modes.

NHL 22 is the first game in the series to have dedicated PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. It's also coming to PS4 and Xbox One, but the standard edition doesn't include a free upgrade to the PS5/Series X/S versions through EA's Dual Entitlement system.

For that, you'll need to opt for the X-Factor edition, which includes extra Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) packs and other bonuses, as well as three days of early access. If you buy the NHL 22 X-Factor edition for PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, you'll also have access to the respective previous-gen versions. However, the only game progress you can move from previous-gen consoles to PS5 or Xbox Series X/S is your HUT team, and it's a one-time content migration. 

The FIFA and Madden NFL games moved to Frostbite in 2016 and 2017 respectively, so NHL is lagging behind a bit. That said, Frostbite was primarily designed for Battlefield and other first-person shooters. Some EA studios, such as BioWare, have found the engine difficult to work with and had to build some of the tools they needed from scratch. That might go some way toward explaining why it took so long to move the NHL franchise over to Frostbite.

NHL 22 will be released on October 15th.