Apparently, the introduction of Windows Copilot signaled the end of Cortana on Microsoft's desktop OS. In a new support document first spotted by Windows Central, the tech giant has announced that it will stop supporting the standalone Cortana app for Windows in late 2023. Microsoft launched Cortana as a voice assistant for Windows mobile devices back in 2014. It was supposed to be the company's answer to Apple's Siri, and it even predates Amazon's Alexa, but it never quite achieved their level of recognition and popularity. 

Over the year, Microsoft scaled back its plans for the voice assistant until it discontinued its Android and iOS apps back in 2021. The company even removed it from partner manufacturers' devices, such as smart speakers. For Windows, in particular, Microsoft changed its status as a baked-in digital assistant and spun it out into its own app for computers. That's the app we're bidding farewell to by the end of the year. 

In its announcement, Microsoft pointed out that users will still have access to "powerful productivity features in Windows and Edge, which have increased AI capabilities." It specifically mentioned the new Bing that's now powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 technology. Microsoft introduced the Microsoft 365 Copilot tool that can create content within Office apps with text-based prompts in March. 

And then in late May, the company revealed at its Build developer conference that it's making AI a deeply integrated part of Windows 11 by putting a Copilot tool in the platform's sidebar. Users can ask it to perform tasks within the OS, such as changing the computer background, or even editing photos and summarizing documents, without having to launch apps or to search for particular settings. Most likely, very few people will be missing Cortana. Those that do use the assistant can transition to using Copilot, which will be available as a preview version for Windows 11 starting this month. 

If you're buying a Tesla Model 3 in the US, you can now get the maximum possible tax credit of $7,500 no matter what make you're getting. Tesla has updated its website to show that the rear-wheel drive Model 3, along with its long range and performance counterparts, now qualify for the full federal tax credit for EVs. You'll also get to the enjoy the same amount of savings if you're buying the all-wheel, long-range or performance Model Y. 

The US government issued a revised set of guidelines for which electric vehicles qualify for the federal $7,500 EV tax credit in March to comply with the Inflation Reduction Act rules the president signed last year. Under the new guidelines, which went into effect on April 18th, vehicles using battery components that are 50 percent made or assembled in the US qualify for a tax credit of $3,750. They can only get the full $7,500 credit if their manufacturer sources at least 40 percent of their critical minerals from the US or its free trade partners, which don't include China. 

A lot of EVs were kicked off the list of vehicles qualified for credits when the change was implemented, but some were re-added in the days that followed. You could only subtract $3,750 from your taxes for Tesla's rear-wheel drive and long range Model 3 due to the new guidelines, but that's no longer the case. It's not quite clear if Tesla altered the cars' batteries or found new suppliers to ensure that its new Model 3 deliveries meet the requirements for the new guidelines. But this means in some locations, you could get the standard version of the vehicle for just a bit more than $30,000 — or maybe even less than that if the state has its own perks for EVs.

Boeing's Starliner was supposed to fly its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 21st, but a couple of technical issues has kept the company from pushing through with its plan. Together with NASA, the aerospace corporation has announced that it's delaying the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft's Crew Flight Test date yet again to address the risks presented by two new problems Boeing engineers have detected. 

The first issue lies with the spacecraft's parachute system. Boeing designed the Starliner capsule to float back down to Earth with the help of three parachutes. According to The New York Times, the company discovered that parts of the lines connecting the system to the capsule don't have the ability to tolerate the spacecraft's load in case only two of the three parachutes are deployed correctly. Since the capsule will be carrying human passengers back to our planet, the company has to look at every aspect of its spacecraft to ensure their safety as much as possible. Boeing expects to do another parachute testing before it schedules another launch attempt.

In addition to its parachute problem, Boeing is also reassessing the use of a certain tape adhesive to wrap hundreds of feet of wiring. Apparently, the tape could be flammable, so engineers are looking to use another kind of wrapping for areas of the spacecraft with the greatest fire risk. 

The Crew Flight Test is the last hurdle the company has to overcome to regularly start ferrying astronauts to the ISS. NASA chose Boeing as one of its commercial crew partners along with SpaceX, but it has fallen behind its peer over the years. The Starliner has completed uncrewed flights in the past as part of the tests it has to go through for crewed missions. But SpaceX already has 10 crewed flights under its belt, with the first one taking place way back in 2020. In addition to taking astronauts to the ISS and bringing human spaceflight back to American soil since the last space shuttle launch in 2011, SpaceX has also flown civilians to space.

That said, NASA and Boeing remain optimistic about Starliner's future. In a statement, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said:

"Crew safety remains the highest priority for NASA and its industry providers, and emerging issues are not uncommon in human spaceflight especially during development. If you look back two months ago at the work we had ahead of us, it’s almost all complete. The combined team is resilient and resolute in their goal of flying crew on Starliner as soon as it is safe to do so. If a schedule adjustment needs to be made in the future, then we will certainly do that as we have done before. We will only fly when we are ready."

Twitter has lost another head of trust and safety after Elon Musk purchased the company last year. According to Reuters, Ella Irwin, the website's top executive for content moderation has resigned. Fortune has also reported earlier that her company Slack account has already been deactivated. While Irwin has confirmed her resignation to both organizations, she didn't elaborate on the reason for her departure. The executive took over the role as head of trust and safety after Yoel Roth left the same position in November 2022, publicly walking back on his previous statement that Twitter would be safer under Musk. 

Like Roth, Irwin seemed to be supportive of the Twitter owner — who sees himself as a "free speech absolutist" — and defended him from critics of his approach to content moderation. She said in the past that Musk gave her team the go-ahead to prioritize safety and not to worry about affecting user numbers. The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently reported that Twitter has been failing to properly and quickly address 99 percent of hate speech, including neo-Nazi, racist, homophobic and transphobic content, posted on the website by Twitter Blue users. 

Although Irwin hasn't revealed why she left the company, her departure seemed to have taken place right after conservative publication The Daily Wire said Twitter canceled their deal to premiere its What is a Woman? film on the website. The outlet's co-founder said Twitter offered it the opportunity to "buy a package to host the movie on a dedicated event page and to promote the event to every Twitter user over the first 10 hours." However, the website reportedly withdrew its offer after reviewing a screener and told the outlet that it could no longer purchase the package. Twitter also apparently told the outlet that it will limit the reach of the film, as well as label it with "hateful conduct" due to "misgendering."

To note, Twitter's hateful conduct policy states that it considers "hateful imagery to be logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or ethnicity/national origin." Anything "depicting hateful imagery is not permitted within live video, account bio, profile or header images."

As a response to The Daily Wire co-founder's post, Musk tweeted that the decision was a "mistake by many people at Twitter" and that the film was "definitely allowed." He added that not using someone's pronouns is "at most rude and certainly breaks no laws" and that he objects "to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used."

In follow-up tweets, Musk said Twitter is updating its system so that The Daily Wire's followers will see the film in their feed. However, it will not be recommended or advertised to non-followers.

Google has listed a bunch of features rolling out to the Android ecosystem starting today, June 1st, and one of them can help new readers improve their diction and vocabulary. The new reading practice tool for phones and tablets is available with thousands of compatible children's books on Play Books. It challenges kids or people who've only started to learn English to read sentences with the mic on. The buttons that show up when they tap help allow them to quickly look up the definition of words or to hear the sentence be read out loud for guidance. It's now available in the English language for users in the US, as long as they have a device running Android 8 and above. 

The tech giant is also rolling out new widgets that show entertainment suggestions for Google TV, stock trading information from Google Finance and curated stories from Google News. These widgets will be available for everyone with devices running Android 6 and later in all supported languages. Meanwhile, for those tired of the usual emoji options, there's a new tool called "Emoji Kitchen." It lets users fuse and remix emoji available on Gboard — so long as they have a compatible combination — and then turn them into stickers they can send. 

Users with devices running WearOS 2 now have new Spotify tiles and watchface complications to choose from. Spotify DJ, available in US, Canada, UK and Ireland for premium subscribers, can play a personalized selection of tracks or stream episodes from the user's favorite podcasts the moment they press play on the new smartwatch tile. WearOS 3.0 users can now also add a tile for a single to-do list from Google Notes. Those living in Washington, DC and the San Francisco Bay Area are getting something extra: They now have the option to load their SmartTrip and Clipper cards to their Google Wallet, so they can tap and pay to ride local transportation using their smartwatches. 

Aside from all these features, which have only started rolling out, Google has also announced that its One subscription service's dark web report is fully available in the US. Subscribers will be able to run scans to check if their Gmail addresses have been exposed in the dark web. They can also check if any sensitive information, such as their social security numbers, have been compromised. Plus, they can choose to start automatically monitoring the dark web for their personal information, so they'd get notified as soon as any of their details get posted. Dark web monitoring is only available to Google One customers in the US at the moment, but Google plans to expand its availability to more than 20 countries in the coming months. 

NVIDIA has introduced a new AI model called Neuralangelo that can create 3D replicas of objects from 2D videos, whether they're classic sculptures or run-of-the-mill trucks and buildings. Neuralangelo works by selecting several frames showing the subject from different angles in a 2D video, so it can a get a clear picture of its depth, size and shape. It then creates a rough 3D representation of the object before optimizing it to mimic the details of the real thing. 

According to the company, the new model has adopted the technology from its old one, the Instant NeRF, to be able to accurately capture the finer details of whatever the user wants to recreate in 3D. Those include its texture, patterns and color variations. NVIDIA says Neuralangelo's ability to capture tricky textures, such as the roughness of roof shingles and the smoothness of marble, "significantly surpasses prior methods." It's apparently even good enough to create usable virtual objects from videos taken by smartphones, which could give creators an easy way to generate 3D recreations for their projects. It's a quick solution, too: NVIDIA Research told us the tool can create 3D scenes within two hours. 

Ming-Yu Liu, co-author of the paper on Neuralangelo, said it will "eventually enable developers to import detailed objects — whether small statues or massive buildings — into virtual environments for video games or industrial digital twins." In the video below showing what the technology can do, NVIDIA said it can create large-scale vistas from drone footage, making it easier for developers to recreate real locations in their games. It has a lot of other potential applications, as well, including in robotics, virtual reality experiences, architecture and, of course, art.

The company's research arm will present Neuralangelo at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition event that's taking place on June 18th through the 22nd in Vancouver. 

Apple is expected to launch a collection of new products at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in a few days, and two of them might be new Mac desktop computers. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the tech giant has been testing a couple of high-end Macs powered by its new M2 Max processor and the M2 Ultra chip that the company has yet to announce.

If you'll recall, Apple debuted the M2 Max on its 14- and 16 MacBook Pro laptops, as well as its Mac mini computer earlier this year. The desktop PC with the chip will reportedly have 8 high-performance cores, 4 efficiency cores and 30 graphics cores. It will also have 96 GB of RAM and will run macOS 13.4, the company's latest software for computers, out of the box. 

Meanwhile, the unannounced M2 Ultra chip is supposed to be the more powerful option between the two, with twice as many processing cores. Specifically, the chip is expected to have 16 high-performance, 8 efficiency and 60 graphics cores, though Bloomberg says the company will offer a more powerful version with 76 graphics cores. Apple is even reportedly testing the computer with M2 Ultra in configurations with 64GB, 128GB and 192GB of memory. 

Gurman also says that the M2 Ultra was originally designed for future versions of the Mac Pro, which still uses Intel processors. But the Mac Pros are testing at the momentare codenamed Mac 14,8, while the new high-end desktops with the M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips are codenamed Mac 14,13 and Mac 14,14. Presumably, that means they're a different desktop PCs altogether, perhaps new models of the Mac Studio that's currently powered by the M1 Max or the M1 Ultra. 

In addition to high-end desktop computers, Apple might also launch new laptops at WWDC. Some possibilities include a 15-inch MacBook Air that could be powered by a processor "on par" with the tech giant's current-gen M2 chip, as well as a more affordable version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Faraday Future has officially launched its long delayedFF 91 electric vehicles, including a limited edition called the Futurist Alliance that carries a pretty hefty price tag of $309,000. As Autoblog notes, that's even more expensive than the $249,000 Lucid Air Sapphire, a "ultra-high-performance" EV with similar specs. The company's FF 91 2.0 Futurist model will sell for the same price as the Air Sapphire at $249,000, while the base FF 91 2.0, which is expected to be the most affordable of the three, doesn't have pricing yet. 

Both the FF91 2.0 Futurist Alliance and Futurist models are powered by three electric motors and can go from 0 to 60mph in 2.27 seconds. The 1050 horsepower vehicles can go as fast as 155 mph, and their 142kWh battery can sustain a range of approximately 381 miles — shorter than the range of a Tesla Model S but longer than a Model Y's. They both have the same "zero gravity" seats that have a large recline angle for comfort, as well as 27-inch rear passenger displays. 

However, the automaker will only produce 300 Futurist Alliance EVs, which will feature an exclusive wheel design and will be available in bright silver, matte silver and matte black. Futurist Alliance owners will also receive exclusive professional track-time training and an Apple Watch loaded with the automaker's vehicle control features. Plus, the first 91 owners will get a high-speed internet satellite communications suite included with their purchase. 

In addition to announcing the two models' prices, Faraday Future has also launched the FF aiHypercar+, a "mobility ecosystem product" with a rather vague description at the moment. According to Autoblog, the subscription service will give customers access to some kind of AI assistant personalization and vehicle maintenance. It will cost the first 2,000 users in US and China an eye-watering $14,900 a year, so everyone else will have to be prepared to pay more than that. 

Preorders for the FF91 2.0 Futurist Alliance and Futurist models are now open to interested buyers in the US and China for a deposit of $5,000 and $1,500, respectively. They don't have a delivery date yet, but Faraday Future says its three-phase delivery plan started on May 31st. The company will hold an event for a group of customers it's calling "Industry Expert FPO(s)" on June 6th, after which they'll get the chance to pay for and get the first delivery units. 

Microsoft has deployed a critical troubleshooter update for Surface Pro X devices that will give users access to their camera again. On May 23rd, plenty of Surface Pro X owners reported that their cameras had stopped working entirely. Based on stories posted on Reddit, Twitter and the company's own support forums, reinstalling the camera's driver didn't work. Tweaking the device's date and rolling it back to May 22nd did, but it came with its own set of potential issues, such as authentication and scheduling problems. 

In its new patch notes, the tech giant said the affected devices are powered by Qualcomm 8cx Gen 1, Qualcomm 8cx Gen 2, Microsoft SQ1 and Microsoft SQ2 processors. The troubleshooter update will be automatically applied to affected devices, and owners can check if it has been installed by going to their "hardware and devices troubleshooter" history and then looking for an entry that says "[a]utomatically change system settings to fix a problem on your device."

As Ars Technica notes, users are reporting on the Microsoft support forum that the troubleshooter worked sufficiently, save for some posters saying that their cameras were working in slow motion outside of Teams or Zoom. Microsoft admitted in its announcement this workaround isn't perfect — it is, after all, only meant to be a temporary fix. It might "disable some features of the camera or lower the image quality," but it will make the camera functional until Microsoft comes up with a permanent fix. The tech giant is currently working with device manufacturers to release updated camera drivers expected to restore full camera functionality. It doesn't have an ETA for the driver rollout yet, but it promised to share more information when it becomes available. 

ispace is done analyzing data from its failed Hakuto-R lunar landing, and it sounds like tricky terrain and a late change in the landing site are to blame. Apparently, Hakuto-R was able to complete the whole deceleration process in preparation of touching down on lunar soil. The spacecraft activated its descent sequence when it reached an altitude of around 100 kilometers (62 miles) and was able to slow down until it was only moving at a speed of less than 1 m/s. 

However, its software had mistakenly estimated its altitude to be zero when it was still hovering around 5 kilometers (3 miles) above the ground. In other words, it thought it had already landed when it hasn't yet, and it continued descending at a very slow speed near the surface until its propulsion system ran out of fuel. ispace wasn't able to establish contact with the spacecraft again, but it believes it went on a free fall and ultimately crashed on the moon.

That's the how, but what about the why? Well, the company thinks the most likely reason why Hakuto-R's software suffered from an altitude estimation issue was because it got confused. While it was flying to its landing site, it passed over a large cliff that was determined to be the rim of a crater. The spacecraft's onboard sensor got an altitude reading of 3 kilometers when it passed by the elevated terrain, and that was apparently larger than the estimated altitude value the Hakuto-R team set in advance. 

The spacecraft's software erroneously thought that the sensor reported an abnormal value, and it kept filtering out its altitude measurements afterward. ispace built the ability to reject abnormal altitude measurements into the lander as a safety measure in the event of a hardware issue with the sensor. However, it backfired for Mission 1 because simulations of the landing sequence failed to incorporate the lunar environment on the spacecraft's route. ispace made the decision to change Hakuto-R's landing site after its critical design review was already completed in 2021. 

The Hakuto-R Mission 1 was poised to become the first successful moon landing by a private company and the first Japanese lunar landing overall. While it didn't get to land on the moon, ispace will use the data from the mission to design preparatory landing sequences for Mission 2 and 3, which are scheduled for launch in 2024 and 2025, respectively.