Following reports of a data breach over the weekend, T-Mobile has confirmed it’s investigating a cybersecurity incident. In an update published on Monday, the company said someone gained unauthorized access to its computer systems, but that it has yet to determine if any customer data was stolen.

“We are confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed, and we are continuing our deep technical review of the situation across our systems to identify the nature of any data that was illegally accessed,” the carrier said.

When Motherboard first broke the news of the data breach on Sunday, the information of about 30 million T-Mobile customers was on sale on the dark web for about $270,000 in Bitcoin. A hacker told the outlet they had obtained social security and IMEI numbers connected to more than 100 million people. As of the second quarter of 2021, T-Mobile had 104.7 million subscribers. The carrier said it could not “confirm the reported number of records affected or the validity of statements made by others” until it completes its investigation. Once it knows more about the situation, T-Mobile promises to proactively contact customers.

Starting today, Google Maps users will be able to find the closest available Spin electric bike or scooter in real-time. The app will also show how long it will take to walk to the vehicle in question, its battery range and when you can expect to arrive at your destination when riding it.

The scooters will appear in both the bicycle and the public transportation tab when looking up directions. Though users will be able to find the nearest Spin e-vehicle with Google Maps, they’ll be directed to the Spin app in order to pay for the vehicle and unlock it.

“With this integration, Spin is making it easier for millions of Google Maps users to easily incorporate shared bikes and scooters into their daily trips,” said Spin CEO Ben Bear in a press release.

Spin is not the only e-scooter company to collaborate with Google. Back in 2019, Google Maps integrated with Lime, the other big brand in this space. Google has worked with ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to include those transportation options in its app too. Spin, for its part, is already integrated on other platforms like Citymapper and Moovit. 

Ford, which owns Spin, says this feature will be available in 84 towns, cities and campuses in the US, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Robots that can swim underwater are nothing new. For instance, Carnegie Mellon fitted its famous snakebot with turbines and thrusters earlier this year to give it aquatic capabilities. But few can do so with the grace, speed and effortlessness of a real-life fish. And it’s not that scientists have avoided trying to create a robot that can do just that, but the exact way fish swim faster or slower is something that has proved elusive.

Marine biologists have known for a while that the secret lies somewhere in the way they can alter the rigidity of their tails. The problem is that it’s difficult to measure that while a fish swims. However, using a combination of fluid dynamics and biomechanics, researchers from the University of Virginia say they’ve derived a formula that not only provides an answer to that question but also allows a robot with a specially designed tail to be nearly as good as its natural counterpart at speeding up and slowing down in water.

When they applied the formula to a tuna-like robot they built, they found it could swim at a greater variety of speeds using almost half as much energy as one with a fixed-stiffness tail. If you’re a cyclist, you’ll love this analogy. "Having one tail stiffness is like having one gear ratio on a bike," Dan Quinn, one of the co-authors of the study, told Big Think. "You'd only be efficient at one speed. It would be like biking through San Francisco with a fixed-gear bike; you'd be exhausted after just a few blocks."

With a tuna-sized machine under their belt, the University of Virginia team plans to scale their tail technology for use on both bigger and smaller robots. They’re also developing one that undulates like a stingray. Their work could one day lead to a class of drones that can quickly travel to a remote location and then slow down to investigate the area. Like an aquatic snakebot, that's something the Navy could use to inspect their ships for damage. 

Wikipedia vandalism is hardly a new phenomenon, but one user was able to add swastikas to tens of thousands of articles. Among the pages that were defaced included ones for leaders such as President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister. Articles for celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck and Madonna were also affected.

The person responsible edited a template that's used on around 53,000 pages, Gizmodo reported. As such, the vandal defaced pages that are locked and supposed to have greater protection from such attacks. Wikipedia administrators fixed the problem soon after it emerged on Monday morning. The user has been banned indefinitely.

One admin noted that most widely used templates are locked, but it seems that some of them remain editable by anyone, or as in this case, a newish user who makes some good-faith edits first. Admins protected some more common templates in the wake of the vandalism.

The "unacceptable" attack "violates a number of Wikipedia’s policies," a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told Gizmodo. "Most vandalism on Wikipedia is corrected within five minutes, as we saw today." Even though the site is enormous and ever-evolving, it's encouraging that administrators are able to detect and resolve major defacement incidents swiftly.

Anonymous messaging apps were all the rage back in the mid-2010s. Yik Yak, one of the most popular of those back in the day, shut down in 2017, but now it's back from the dead. A new version has hit the iOS App Store.

Yik Yak is only available in the US and on iPhone for now, as Mashable notes, but it will expand to other regions and devices soon. As before, it's a message board app that connects you to other people in a five-mile radius. However, that localized aspect, plus the fact that users can post anonymously, led to reports of widespread bullying and harassment (and even bomb threats) on Yik Yak at colleges, high schools and elsewhere.

The developers of the revived Yik Yak seem aware of the problem. Along with mental health resources and guidance on staying safe, the app's website lays out extensive "community guardrails."

Yik Yak doesn't allow users to post personal information or engage in any kind of bullying, harassment, bigotry or threats. Nor are users allowed to promote or encourage suicide or self-harm. "Overly graphic violent depictions," spam, fake news, dissuading others from voting in elections and trolling are also off-limits. Although community management is a tough nut to crack and anonymity adds an extra hurdle to enforcing rules, outlawing a broad range of harmful content at the outset is a positive move.

After Yik Yak shut down in 2017, partly because many of its users moved to other apps like Snapchat, Square bought some of the app's intellectual property and hired several engineers. It's not yet clear who's behind the new version.

Although Yik Yak and fellow anonymous messaging app Secret closed shop, image-based Whisper has stuck around since 2012. That's despite Whisper having its own troubles to deal with, such as exposing user info (including identifiable location data) in a database that was open to all for years.

The field of neuroprosthetics has advanced significantly in recent years, but the technology is still nowhere near accessible enough to make a difference in the lives of most amputees. However, a new development from MIT could change that. In a joint project with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the school designed a neuroprosthetic that costs about $500 in components. It's an inflatable hand made from an elastomer called EcoFlex and looks a bit like Baymax from Big Hero 6.

The device foregoes electric motors in favor of a pneumatic system that inflates and bends its balloon-like digits. The hand can assume various grasps that allow an amputee to subsequently do things like pet a cat, pour a carton of milk or even pick up a cupcake. The device translates how its wearer wants to use it through a software program that "decodes" the EMG signals the brain sends to an injured limb.

The prosthetic weighs about half a pound and can even restore some sense of feeling for its user. It does this with a series of pressure sensors. When the wearer touches or squeezes an object, they send an electric signal to a specific position on their amputated arm. Another advantage of the arm is it doesn't take long to learn how to use it. After about 15 minutes, two volunteers found they could write with a pen and stack checkers.

"This is not a product yet, but the performance is already similar or superior to existing neuroprosthetics, which we're excited about," said Professor Xuanhe Zhao, one of the engineers who worked on the project. "There's huge potential to make this soft prosthetic very low cost, for low-income families who have suffered from amputation."

While we're a while away from seeing this tech in the real world, the team behind the project is already working on improving the design. They want to make it better at decoding electrical inputs and more customizable when it comes time for mass production.

Following a $2 billion Hail Mary, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has filed a complaint with the US Court of Federal Claims over NASA's handling of the Human Landing System program. The court challenge comes less than a month after the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) dismissed a protest the company filed in response to NASA's decision to award a single contract for the Artemis lunar lander. The agency went with a $2.9 billion bid from Elon Musk's SpaceX, opting not to fund a $5.9 billion proposal from Blue Origin. 

NASA's original intention was to sign two separate contracts, but limited funding from Congress made that difficult to do so. Blue Origin alleged the decision was "fundamentally unfair" because NASA allowed SpaceX to modify its bid, something the company says it didn't get the opportunity to do as well. However, the GAO concluded NASA's "evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement's terms."

At the time, Blue Origin hinted it would escalate the situation. "We stand firm in our belief that there were fundamental issues with NASA's decision, but the GAO wasn't able to address them due to their limited jurisdiction," the company said following the announcement.

"Blue Origin filed suit in the US Court of Federal Claims in an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA's Human Landing System," a spokesperson for Blue Origin told Engadget. "We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America."

What this means for the Human Landing System program and Project Artemis more broadly is likely another delay. Following Blue Origin's GAO protest, NASA ordered SpaceX to stop work on the lunar lander contract while the watchdog investigated the matter. While this latest complaint is sealed, a source told The Verge Blue Origin asked a judge to order a temporary pause on SpaceX's contract while the case is resolved in court. NASA and SpaceX lost about three months waiting for the GAO to investigate Blue Origin's protest. If a judge approves the company's request, this latest pause could be even longer. Ultimately, any further delays will make NASA's goal of returning to the Moon by 2024 difficult.

While nothing can replicate holding a new hardcover book in your hands, you can't beat the convenience of an e-reader. Devices like Amazon's Kindles let you take your whole library with you, so you're never without options when picking your next read. They also make good student devices if you have a lot of digital textbooks available to you. Those looking to pick up a new e-reader for work or play can get a Kindle for less right now — Amazon just knocked the price of its Kindle Paperwhite down to $80 and its standard Kindle down to $65. While not a record low for the Kindle, the $50 discount on the Paperwhite brings it back down to its Prime Day price.

Buy Kindle Paperwhite at Amazon - $80Buy Kindle at Amazon - $65

The Paperwhite may be three years old at this point, but it remains one of the best e-readers you can buy. Not only is it compact, but it has a waterproof design that will protect it against accidental splashes. Amazon updated it a few years ago with a higher-contrast display plus Audible support, which means you can listen to audiobooks when you have a pair of Bluetooth headphones connected to the device.

While we recommend the Paperwhite to those that can afford it, Amazon's standard Kindle is a much better buy now than it was a couple of years ago. When last updated, the Kindle received a higher-contrast display, a new front light that makes reading in dark places much easier and a smaller, sleeker design. It may not have the bells and whistles that the Paperwhite has, but it does its one and only job of displaying ebooks well.

That said, if you're still happy with your old yet trusty e-reader, it's probably not necessary to upgrade. Kindles have received some convenient new features over the past few years, but none fundamentally change the experience of reading an ebook. But for those that haven't yet taken the plunge, Amazon's latest sale is a great one to consider if you want to bring an e-reader into your life. The biggest caveat to keep in mind is that these discounts are on the ad-supported Kindles, so you'll have to deal with Amazon's "special offers" and lock screen ads on your e-reader.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Intel has chosen a name for its high-performance consumer graphics products: Intel Arc. The branding will cover the hardware and software sides of its high-end graphics cards, as well as services.

The first Arc GPUs, code-named Alchemist, will arrive in the first quarter of 2022 for desktops and laptops as Intel looks to take on NVIDIA and AMD. Intel also revealed the codenames for later generations of the hardware: Battlemage, Celestial and Druid.

Alchemist GPUs will support hardware-based ray tracing, mesh shading, variable rate shading and Direct12 X Ultimate. Intel claims they'll be capable of "artificial intelligence-driven super sampling" as well. That certainly seems to be the company's spin on NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling upscaling tech, which boosts resolution while lessening strain on GPUs.

The Alchemist cards are based on the Xe-HPG microarchitecture, a blend of Xe LP, HP and HPC microarchitectures. Intel says Xe-HPG will "deliver scalability and compute efficiency with advanced graphics features." Intel's Iris Xe dedicated graphics cards, which were primarily geared toward laptops and pre-built desktops, are based on Xe LP architecture. Intel says it will share more details about the first Arc products later this year.

Intel also gave a quick peek at Arc graphics in action. In a video, it showed games including Forza Horizon 4, Psychonauts 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (or PUBG: Battlegrounds, to be precise) and Metro Exodus running on the tech. And yes, it looks like the GPUs can run the Crysis Remastered Trilogy.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated an investigation of Tesla's Autopilot system. The probe follows 11 crashes with parked first responder vehicles since 2018, which resulted in 17 injuries and one death.

“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) wrote in a document detailing the investigation. “The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes.”

The ODI's preliminary evaluation centers on Autopilot in Models Y, X, S and 3 from model years 2014 to 2021. That covers around 765,000 Tesla electric vehicles, as Bloomberg notes. The incidents in question took place between January 2018 and July of this year, including in Massachusetts, Michigan and Arizona. The ODI also cited three crashes in California.

The Autopilot system keeps the vehicle centered in the lane and maintains speed when it's active in its Operational Design Domain (ODD). It's not yet a full self-driving system, however. Drivers still have principal responsibility for Object and Event Detection and Response (OEDR) — identifying and responding to obstacles, vehicles and "adverse maneuvers" by other drivers.

"The investigation will additionally assess the OEDR by vehicles when engaged in Autopilot mode, and ODD in which the Autopilot mode is functional. The investigation will also include examination of the contributing circumstances for the confirmed crashes" mentioned in the document as well as similar crashes, the ODI wrote.

The NHTSA investigated and cleared Tesla over the first Autopilot-related death in 2016. Since then, the agency has opened dozens of other probes into incidents in which it believes Autopilot was involved. In June, the NHTSA ordered automakers to report incidents involving semi- and fully autonomous driving systems within 24 hours of learning about them.

Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) urged the NHTSA to issue stricter regulations for autonomous driving, citing Tesla in its letter. "Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability," NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt wrote. "By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements.”