Canada is banning 4G and 5G telecom equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, joining its "Five Eyes" allies in doing so. The decision follows a three-year review that was delayed by political tensions with China after Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on a US warrant. 

"Our government will always protect the safety and security of Canadians and will take any actions necessary to safeguard our critical telecommunications infrastructure," said Canada's innovation minister, François-Philippe Champagne, in a press release.

"We’re disappointed but not surprised. We’re surprised it took the government so long to make a decision," Huawei spokesperson Alykhan Velshi told The Guardian. "We see this as a political decision, one born of political pressure primarily from the United States."

Two of Canada's largest wireless providers, Bell and Telus, switched to Ericsson and Nokia equipment in 2020 to build their next-generation 5G networks. However, both operators have some Huawei 5G equipment in place as part of so-called non-standalone 5G networks integrated with previous 4G networks. Those 4G networks were also built using Huawei equipment. Huawei has sold over $700 million in equipment to Canadian operators since 2018, mostly to Bell and Telus. 

Both operators reportedly approached the federal government in the past to ask about compensation from taxpayers for potential removal Huawei or ZTE gear. The CEO of a smaller Northern operator, Iristel, previously said that a requirement to remove existing equipment would be "catastrophic." 

However, Champagne said that operators will be required to remove any Huawei or ZTE gear at their own expense. Existing 5G equipment must be removed or terminated by June 28, 2024 and any 4G equipment by December 31, 2027, according to the policy statement.

Canada's Five Eyes intelligence allies, the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, have already banned Huawei and ZTE wireless equipment. Canada has faced growing pressure to do the same, over fears it could compromise the security of all five nations, given that China's laws require state companies to cooperate with intelligence services. 

You may find it hard to search for people considered politically sensitive in China if you're using Bing — even if you're in the United States. The Citizen Lab, a research lab based at the University of Toronton's Munk School, has analyzed Bing's autosuggestion system and found that names of Chinese party leaders and dissidents don't automatically show up like they usually would when you start typing. They're apparently the second largest category of names censored by autosuggest, next to names related to pornography and eroticism.

The lab found that the censorship applies to names typed in Chinese characters and in English letters. Plus, it affects not just Bing, but also the Windows Start menu search and DuckDuckGo, which uses Bing's autosuggestion system. Perhaps more importantly, it applies to various regions in the world, including China, the US and Canada. Some of the most prominent examples of names Microsoft won't autocomplete are President Xi Jinping, human rights activist Liu Xiaobo and the Tank Man, which is the nickname for the unidentified Chinese man who famously stood in front of the tanks leaving Tiananmen Square.

Last year, Microsoft caught flak after reports came out that it blocked searches for Tank Man in countries that include the US, France and Singapore. Microsoft attributed it to an "accidental human error" when it addressed the issue. Citizen Lab's senior research associate Jeffrey Knockel called censorship rules bleeding from one part of the world into another a "danger" when internet platforms have users around the world, The Wall Street Journal reports. He added: "If Microsoft had never engaged in Chinese censorship operations in the first place, there would be no way for them to spill into other regions."

Daredevil fans who were disappointed when Netflix axed the popular show after three seasons now have something to look forward to. Disney+ is moving forward with its own series about the blind lawyer-turned-superhero Matt Murdock, reportedVariety. The streaming service has signed co-writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord to write and executive produce the series. Corman and Ord served as co-showrunners for the NBC military drama The Brave, and the duo also created the spy drama Covert Affairs.

Daredevil is only the latest of a large number of MCU titles that have been revived on Disney+ as shows, starting with last year’s WandaVision. The streamer has since released six other Marvel shows, including Hawkeye, Moonknight and Loki, with many more to follow this year. Meanwhile, the raft of Netflix shows based on Marvel characters all left the streaming platform's library for good earlier this year.

The Daredevil Disney+ show is still in the very early stages — Variety notes that Marvel has yet to announce anything formally. Charlie Cox, who played the lead character in the Netflix series, returned to his old role in this year’s Spider-Man:No Way Home and Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his Daredevil role of Kingpin in Disney’s Hawkeye. Both actors seemed optimistic about a Disney+ revival of the series, but there's no telling if they'll return to the new series.

In an interview with Marvel News Desk, D'Onofrio shed some light on the Netflix show’s sudden cancellation, which shocked its many fans. The actor said the show’s departure in 2018 likely had to do with Marvel paving the way for Disney’s nascent streaming service. “You know, at the same time the group #SaveDaredevil started to rise, we started to learn the reasons why that happened and so we understood what Marvel was doing because Disney+ coming out.”

Facebook is still struggling to contain the video of last weekend’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Now, not only are clips of the shooting accessible on the platform, reposted clips of the attack are sometimes appearing alongside Facebook ads, The New York Timesreports.

The Times notes that it’s not clear how often ads are appearing alongside clips of the shooting, but the paper said that “searches for terms associated with footage of the shooting have been accompanied by ads for a horror film, clothing companies and video streaming services,” in their own tests and tests conducted by the Tech Transparency Project.

While this isn’t a new problem for Facebook — the platform has made similar missteps in the wake of a 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand — the company is apparently in some cases actually recommending search terms associated with videos of the shooting, according to The New York Times, which said Facebook suggested some searches as being “popular now.”

As with previous mass shootings and violent events, footage originally streamed to Twitch by the gunman in Buffalo has proved difficult for social media platforms to contain. Facebook previously told Engadget that it had designated the event a terrorist attack, and that it was working to automatically detect new copies that are shared to its service.

But videos are still falling through the cracks. And the fact that Facebook is surfacing ads near those videos is likely to raise further questions about whether the company prioritizes profits over safety as a whistleblower has alleged.

In a statement, a company spokesperson told The Times it was trying to “to protect people using our services from seeing this horrific content even as bad actors are dead-set on calling attention to it.”

Voyager 1 — one of two space probes NASA launched in 1977 to study Jupiter, Saturn and their respective moons — is sending confusing data back to Earth, according to the space agency. The spacecraft’s control system regularly sends telemetry data back to NASA that indicates its location. But Voyager 1’s engineering team has recently been puzzled by readouts from the spacecraft that contain jumbled or inaccurate data. Even more perplexingly, the nearly 45-year-old probe is otherwise in good shape — its signal is still strong and the glitch hasn’t triggered its safe mode. Voyager 2 (Voyager 1’s sister probe) appears to be perfectly fine.

“A mystery like this is sort of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission,” said Suzanne Dodd, the project manager for the Voyager program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The spacecraft are both almost 45 years old, which is far beyond what the mission planners anticipated. We’re also in interstellar space – a high-radiation environment that no spacecraft have flown in before. So there are some big challenges for the engineering team."

Communicating with Voyager 1 is easier said than done. Both probes are now farther away from Earth than Pluto — Voyager 1 is an estimated 14.5 billion miles away from our planet. It takes roughly two days to receive a response from the spacecraft after sending a message, according to NASA.

Dodd said that NASA may be able to solve the issue through software changes or potentially one of the spacecraft’s redundant hardware systems. If not, the agency will “have to adapt” to the glitch.

Either way, NASA will lose touch with both drones in the next few years when they run out of their energy supply. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 run on plutonium-238, which decays with time. Scientists estimate that by 2025, neither probe will have enough plutonium-238 to still operate properly. There’s a finite supply of plutonium left on Earth, and producing it is time-consuming and challenging. For many years, Russia provided NASA with plutonium-238, until it severed this agreement in 2015. Luckily for NASA, the US Department of Energy re-started domestic plutonium-238 production at Oak Ridge Laboratory, making a number of current and future NASA missions possible —including NASA’s Perseverance Rover.

SpaceX paid $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Elon Musk after a flight attendant on the company’s corporate jet accused the CEO of exposing himself to her mid-flight, Insider reports.

According to Insider, the incident happened in 2016 and the company settled with the unnamed flight attendant in 2018, according to a friend of the flight attendant who was told contemporaneously about the incident but is not bound by any non-disclosure agreements with the company. Musk allegedly asked for a “full body massage” and offered to buy the flight attendant a horse if she would “do more.” Insider also notes that the flight attendant was “encouraged by her superiors to purchase her own professional massage training” so that she could better massage Musk during flights.

It was during a massage amid a flight to London when Musk allegedly exposed himself and "propositioned" her. "He touched her thigh and told her he would buy her a horse," the friend said in describing the incident. And he basically tried to bribe her to perform some sort of sexual favor."

The flight attendant reportedly refused Musk's advances, and later felt like she was being "punished" with fewer shifts at SpaceX. She settled with Musk in 2018 "after a session with a mediator that Musk personally attended."

According to Insider, Musk said there was “a lot more to this story,” but didn’t elaborate. "If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light," he told the publication.

We've reached out to SpaceX for comment.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will once against make an attempt to reach the International Space Station in a critical test flight that will determine whether it's finally ready for manned missions. NASA and the private space company have scheduled the launch for today, May 19th, with an instantaneous launch window at 6:54PM Eastern Time. The Starliner will launch on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, and you can watch the coverage for the event in the video below or through the NASA Live website starting at 6PM ET.

During its first test flight back in December 2019, Starliner made it into orbit but failed to reach the ISS. An automation system incorrectly assessed the timing of the flight and prevented the spacecraft's thrusters from firing when needed. NASA and the company investigated what had happened, and reports came out a few months later that Boeing didn't conduct launch-to-docking simulations on the spacecraft before its failed launch. 

Boeing made its first Orbital Flight Test-2 launch attempt in August 2021, but it had to scrap its plans while the capsule was already on top of a rocket due to an issue with its propulsion system valves. Engineers managed to repair nine valves while the spacecraft was still ready for takeoff, but Boeing ultimately decided to conduct a "deeper-level troubleshooting" at its facility at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA had to give SpaceX more crewed flights in order to cover for Boeing's delays.

Now that its valve issues have been resolved — apparently, the interaction between oxidizer and water formed nitric acid and other corrosive agents that made the valves sticky — Starliner's launch is a go. The capsule must achieve its goal this time if Boeing wants to catch up with SpaceX, which has been ferrying astronauts to the ISS since 2020. If no further issues arise, Starliner will reach the ISS with over 800 pounds of cargo in 24 hours. It will remain docked with the orbiting lab for five to 10 days before making its return journey back to Earth and landing in the western United States.

The music world just lost one of its more influential figures. Deadlinereports Vangelis, the composer behind the scores for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died in France at the age of 79. He broke ground in music by blending synthesizers with jazz, orchestral work and other styles normally seen at odds with each other. He helped the movie business break away from its dependence on classical or pop soundtracks, and joined artists like Brian Eno and Jean-Michel Jarre in defining both electronic music as a whole as well as sub-genres such as ambient and new-age.

Vangelis is synonymous with sci-fi thanks to his iconic Blade Runner soundtrack, but he was also a proponent of space exploration who produced multiple albums in tribute to major missions. He helped score Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos TV series, wrote Mythodea to celebrate NASA's Mars Odyssey mission in 2001 and produced a tribute to the Rosetta comet probe in 2016. His last full album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, honored its namesake spacecraft right as it was shedding more light on the gas giant. He received NASA's Public Service Medal in 2003.

The musician was born in Greece in 1943 as Evangelos Odessey Papathanassiou. He started his music career in pop and soundtracks in the mid-1960s, but it was his 1970s forays into electronic music that helped develop his signature style. Cosmos, Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner cemented his reputation, while high-profile projects like 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander drew further attention.

Vangelis leaves a strong legacy. On top of his role in Hollywood, you can hear his influence in electronic artists like Robert Rich and Steve Roach. Even modern performers outside of his core genre, such as Armin van Buuren and Run the Jewels' El-P, cite him as a hero. He'll be missed, but you may hear echoes of his sound for decades to come.

Mercedes-Benz offered a glimpse today into what its all-electric future will look like. The Germany automaker released a concept for the Vision AMG, a sports EV that will be launched under its high-performance brand AMG. The low-lying, four-door coupe has a long wheelbase, silver paint and teal accents, bearing an intentional resemblance to the Formula 1 cars driven by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team. Most strikingly, the side windows and rear glass of the Vision AMG are painted the same silver as the body of the car. Due to the hexagonal pattern of the design, drivers will still be able to see the road.

The Vision will be AMG’s first sports EV, joining the subsidiary’s other all-electric efforts, the EQE and the EQS. Other than that, there’s still very little we know about what the Vision AMG will offer — the automaker didn’t reveal any performance details for the car in the press release. It did say the Vision AMG would be equipped with an Axial Flux Motor by YASA, which has partnered with Mercedes to develop electric motors for their EV lineup that are more compact and lightweight than traditional electric motors.

The automaker also didn’t reveal any details on pricing, but the goal is for the production version to be out in 2025. Last December, Mercedes-Benz upped its initial EV investment to a staggering $63.6 billion, which it's planning to spend between 2022 and 2026. Just this week, the automaker announced it was partnering with battery materials company Sila Nanotechnologies to create a more energy-dense, silicon-anode battery for EVS. The company estimates that silicon-anode batteries offer 20 to 40 percent more capacity than the traditional lithium-ion found in most of today's electric cars. 

The Vision AMG will be one of the three dedicated EV platforms that Mercedes plans on launching in 2025, in addition to the MB.EA platform for medium and large vehicles and the Van.EA for light commercial vehicles. The automaker has stated its goal is to switch to an all-electric lineup by 2030. Mercedes-AMG also released a promotional video (also with virtually no technical details) for the Vision AMG, which you can watch below.

A bill that would break up Google's advertising business if it becomes law has been introduced in the Senate. The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, which has support on both sides of the aisle, would prevent companies that process more than $20 billion in annual digital ad transactions "from participating in more than one part of the digital advertising ecosystem," as The Wall Street Journal reports.

Google easily falls under that distinction. It generated $54.7 billion in ad revenue last quarter alone. While other companies meet the dollar-figure threshold of the proposed rules, Google has a hand in many aspects of the advertising process. It runs an exchange where ad networks bid on inventory. It also offers tools to help companies buy and sell ads.

A House of Representatives version of the legislation is also expected to be introduced imminently. If the bill becomes law, Google would have to exit some of those businesses. It would have a year to comply with the rules after the law is enacted. Meta may also be impacted by the legislation.

“When you have Google simultaneously serving as a seller and a buyer and running an exchange, that gives them an unfair, undue advantage in the marketplace, one that doesn’t necessarily reflect the value they are providing,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told the Journal. “When a company can wear all these hats simultaneously, it can engage in conduct that harms everyone.”

Lee is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. Committee chair Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) is a cosponsor of the bill, as are Sens.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Richard Blumenthal (D- Connecticut).

“Advertising tools from Google and many competitors help American websites and apps fund their content, help businesses grow and help protect users from privacy risks and misleading ads," a Google spokesperson told Engadget. "Breaking those tools would hurt publishers and advertisers, lower ad quality and create new privacy risks. And, at a time of heightened inflation, it would handicap small businesses looking for easy and effective ways to grow online. The real issue is low-quality data brokers who threaten Americans’ privacy and flood them with spammy ads. In short, this is the wrong bill, at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong target.”

Other provisions of the bill include rules for companies that process at least $5 billion of ad transactions per year. They'd be required to provide transparent pricing and act in their customers' best interest. Customers would have the option to sue over breaches of those.

There are other pieces of antitrust legislation in the works that target tech giants. Klobuchar's American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which advanced out of committee in January, would ban companies from giving preference to their own products over those from rivals on their own platforms. For instance, Apple wouldn't be able to position its own apps above competing ones in App Store search results.