A 13-tonne Tesla Megapack caught fire on Friday morning at a battery storage facility in south-east Australia. The blaze occurred during testing at 10 -10.15am local time, according to Victorian Big Battery. The regional fire service said a specialist fire crew had been dispatched to the site in Geelong, Victoria. Firefighters were using a hazmat appliance designed for hazardous chemical spills and specialist drones to conduct atmospheric monitoring, according to Fire Rescue Victoria.

The site was evacuated and there were no injuries, Victorian Big Battery said in a statement. It added that the site had been disconnected from the power grid and that there will be no impact to the electric supply. French energy company Neoen, which operates the facility, and contractor Tesla are working with emergency services to manage the situation. 

As a result of the fire, a warning for toxic smoke has been issued in the nearby Batesford, Bell Post Hill, Lovely Banks and Moorabool areas, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. Residents were warned to move indoors, close windows, vents and fireplace flues and bring their pets inside.

The Victorian Big Battery site, a 300 MW/450 MWh battery storage facility, is viewed as key to the Victorian government's 50 percent renewable energy target by 2030. It follows the success of Neoen and Tesla's 100 MW/129 MWh battery farm in Hornsdale in South Australia, which was completed ahead of schedule in just 100 days and has resulted in multi-million dollar savings for market players and consumers. Both sites essentially provide a regional power backup for when renewable energy is not available, effectively filling the gap when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

In February, Neoen announced that the Victorian Big Battery would utliize Tesla's megapacks — utility-sized batteries produced at the company's Gigafactory — and Autobidder software to sell power to the grid. Victorian Big Battery has a contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). As part of the pact, the site will provide energy stability by unlocking an additional 250 MW of peak capacity on the existing Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector over the next decade of Australian summers.

The Boeing Starliner's trip to the International Space Station has hit another hurdle. The craft was scheduled for a second uncrewed test flight to the ISS today, July 30th, after its first attempt went awry back in late 2019. But, it will have to wait a bit longer for take off. NASA and Boeing have decided to push back the launch to the tentative date of Tuesday, August 3rd. 

The delay comes after the thrusters on the ISS' new Russian module Nauka accidentally activated causing the station to move out of orientation. Though ground teams managed to regain control and motion of the ISS, NASA is proceeding with caution.

"The International Space Station team will use the time to continue working checkouts of the newly arrived Roscosmos Nauka multipurpose laboratory module and to ensure the station will be ready for Starliner’s arrival," the agency said in a statement.

The completion of the second test flight is a critical part of the Starliner's development phase that will be followed by the first of six crew rotation missions. NASA added that launch preparations would resume pending a final decision from the ISS and Commercial Crew Program teams. 

In the meantime, staff are assessing whether to move the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket — atop which the Starliner is placed — from the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station back to the Vehicle Integration Facility. While both are mission-ready, the move is seen as a mitigation measure to protect them from weather damage.

The delay is the latest in a series of setbacks that have thus far prevented the Starliner from reaching the ISS. In December 2019, the Boeing craft suffered an automation issue during its first test flight that caused it to miss its planned orbit. While the second test flight has been held up since late last year due to ongoing software checks.

Back in 2019, Tesla pushed an over-the-air update to its Model S sedans following an incident wherein the vehicle caught fire in a Hong Kong parking lot. As CNBC notes, it said at the time that the update will revise "charge and thermal management settings" on Model S and Model X vehicles to "help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity." Some Model S owners claimed, however, that the update reduced their maximum battery voltage, prompting them to take Tesla to court. Now, the automaker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle the class action lawsuit filed against it.

According to Reuters, the court documents show that the software update affected 1,743 Model S sedans in the US. The voltage limitation was temporary, but the plaintiffs experienced a 10 percent battery reduction for three months and a seven percent reduction lasting for another seven months, the plaintiffs' lawyers said. Tesla rolled out the final update that fully corrected the issue in March 2020. Among the affected vehicles, 1,552 had their max battery voltage restored, while 57 vehicles had battery replacements. The settlement documents said that any vehicle still experiencing battery throttling problems would have their maximum voltage restored over time.

While the company has agreed to pay $1.5 billion, a huge chunk of that would be used to cover lawyers' fees: Owners are expected to get only $625 each from the settlement. Affected owners in Norway could get a much bigger payday after a court in the country ordered the company to pay them $16,000 each to settle a lawsuit over the same issue. In the US, aside from agreeing to pay up, Tesla has also agreed to provide battery-related diagnostics and notifications for cars under warranty whenever battery repairs may be needed.

Dish Network is finally offering HBO, Cinemax and HBO Max to its subscribers after kicking HBO off its network nearly three years ago. It's the first time Dish subscribers will be able to watch HBO shows like Mare of Easttown and Euphoria since the carriage dispute began on October 31st, 2018. However, the new agreement doesn't cover Dish subsidiary Sling TV's distribution of HBO or HBO Max. 

When Dish removed HBO and Cinemax channels, it accused then-parent AT&T of using HBO as an "economic weapon." At that time, HBO was only a straight cable station, but AT&T launched HBO Max as a Netflix-like streaming service in July of 2019. With the situation now resolved, Dish becomes the last major pay TV distributor to add HBO Max to its lineup. 

The resolution follows a major shakeup with HBO's parent, WarnerMedia. In May 2021, AT&T announced that it was spinning off that division and merging it with Discovery in a $43 billion deal. That effectively removed a conflict of interest as AT&T is a direct competitor to Dish in the satellite video service provider space. The parties haven't disclosed the terms of the new agreement. 

With an accord now in pace, Dish customers get a free 10-day free of HBO and Cinemax from Aug. 6-15. Dish users can subscribe to the HBO Max ad-free plan for $12 rather than the regular price of $15 per month for up to 12 months if they act before Oct. 27, 2021. They'll get HBO Max access on supported devices like iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV and Fire TV, along with live channels including HBO, HBO Family and HBO Signature. Dish TV customers can also get Cinemax for $10 per month.

Amazon's first-gen Echo Show 5 dropped down to $45 from its original price of $80 ahead of Prime Day back in June. If you missed the chance to get the Alexa-powered smart display at a discount, though, now's your chance to get one: It's available for $45 again on Best Buy. That's the lowest price we've seen for the device, even on Amazon, where it's been selling for around $50 these past months. It's also $40 cheaper than the second-gen Echo Show 5, which isn't that much different from the first-generation device anyway.

Buy Amazon first-gen Echo Show 5 at Best Buy - $45

As we mentioned in our review for the newer smart display, the changes are pretty minor. The second-gen Echo Show 5 has a 2-megapixel camera instead of a one-megapixel, and it comes in a light blue color in addition to black and white. However, it still has a much lower resolution than the Echo Show 8, and it doesn't support a lot of the bigger smart display's capabilities. 

If you're not bothered with the one-megapixel camera difference and the lack of an extra color option, you can just get the first-gen Echo Show 5. Its 5.5-inch screen has the same 960 x 480 resolution as its newer counterpart, it has a fabric-wrapped speaker and it has several clock faces to choose from. The device supports Amazon Prime, NBC and Hulu, so you can use it to watch shows, as well as to display images and videos. 

If you find its screen too small for serious bingeing, though, you can also use it as an alarm clock with several clock faces to choose from. It even comes with a sunrise feature, which slowly brightens the screen fifteen minutes prior to your alarm time to mimic the effects of daylight's arrival. While the device isn't available in blue like its newer sibling, you can get either the "Charcoal" (black) or the "Sandstone" (white) color options for $45 on Best Buy.

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

After making a return to the mid-range with its RX 6700 XT GPU, AMD has launched its 1080p flagship, the RX 6600 XT. A successor to the excellent and popular RX 5600 XT card, the new model has considerably more power on tap with 9.6 teraflops of RDNA 2 performance, compared to 7.19 teraflops for the last model. Not only that, but it offers 8GB of GDDR6 RAM, compared to 6GB for its predecessor. 

In fact, the RX 6600 XT seems to deliver about the same amount of performance as the RX 5700 XT (9.75 teraflops) and just slightly less than the GPU in the PS5, at least on paper. Since the RX 5700 XT was offered as a 1440p-capable card (and the PS5 can handle 4K), it doesn't seem a stretch to say that the new model will at least be decent at 1440p gaming. 

However, AMD is marketing this card as a "new standard for 1080p," saying that it has up to a 1.7 times uplift over the last generation for games like Doom Eternal for 1080p gaming. AMD noted that around two-third of monitors shipped are still 1080p, so that's still the norm for PC gaming. 

Other specs include 32 compute units (compared to 40 on the RX 6700 XT), a 2359 MHz game clock and 160W power consumption with a single 8 pin power connector. AMD also touts custom features like Radeon Boost for higher frame rates and Radeon Anti-Lag for improved latency.

The main new feature with the 6000-series GPUs, however, is ray-tracing. That feature allows for higher resolutions (1440p and 4K) while still maintaining decent frame rates and allowing for more realistic images. Don't expect too much from the RX 6600 XT, however, as the RX 6700 XT struggled in ray-tracing tests compared to NVIDIA rivals in our review — and the RX 6600 XT has lower specs all around. 

Still, it looks pretty impressive otherwise for a budget-level 1080p card. We'll soon see a raft of models from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, Sapphire and others, though we still don't know the prices, or release date. The RX 5600 XT had a suggested retail of $300, but as we all know, street prices were much, much higher than that thanks to the current global GPU shortage. 

In the past, we’ve seen doctors use AI software to detect brain tumors, kidney illness and various cancers. Now, researchers from IBM and Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) say they’ve developed a program that can predict how the symptoms of a Parkinson’s disease patient will progress in terms of both timing and severity. In The Lancet Digital Health journal, they claim the software could transform how doctors help patients manage their symptoms by allowing them to better predict how the disease will progress.

“Our aim is to use AI to help with patient management and clinical trial design. These goals are important because, despite Parkinson’s prevalence, patients experience a unique variety of motor and non-motor symptoms,” IBM said.

The breakthrough wouldn’t have been possible without the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, a study the Michael J. Fox Foundation sponsored. IBM describes the dataset, which includes information on more than 1,400 individuals, as the “largest and most robust volume of longitudinal Parkinson’s patient data to date” and says it allowed its AI model to map out complex symptom and progression patterns.

It’s estimated Parkinson’s disease affects more than 6 million people globally, and there’s currently no known cure for it. IBM Research and MJFF plan to continue work on the AI model. In the future, they hope to make it better at providing more granular characterizations of the various stages of the disease.

Starting today, you can use a second-generation Fire TV Cube to take part in two-way Zoom calls. For the best experience, Amazon recommends a webcam with a 60- to 90-degree field of view that can capture video at 1080p. The company also suggests mounting the device on the top of your TV set, and that you sit about six to 10 feet away. At the very least, you’ll want a 720p camera that supports USB Video Class (UVC). You’ll also need a Micro USB-to-USB adapter since the second-generation Fire TV Cube doesn’t have a full-sized USB-A port. One thing to note is Amazon recommends against using a 4K-capable camera. Outside of those requirements, you’ll need to download the latest Fire TV Cube update and the Zoom app from the Fire TV Appstore.

Once you have everything ready to go, you can tell Alexa to join a video call for you, at which point the voice assistant will ask you to provide a meeting ID and passcode. It’s also possible to link your calendar to Alexa, which will allow you to more seamlessly join any Zoom meetings you have on your schedule.

Amazon isn’t the first company to allow you to use your TV for video calls. Since last August, you’ve been able to stream Google Meet calls to Chromecast and other Cast-enabled devices. Over that same time frame, Amazon has offered two-way video calling between Fire TV Cube and camera-enabled Alexa devices. It might seem like a late offering, but with the return-to-office plans of most companies constantly shifting due to new developments in the pandemic, it’s a feature that’s likely to get plenty of use.

In one of the most significant changes to come to the platform since it was acquired by Adobe in 2012, Behance is introducing Patreon-like subscriptions. Starting today with a small group of about two dozen artists, Adobe is allowing creators to offer access to premium projects, live streams and source files in exchange for a monthly fee. The company says creators can set their own subscription price, and it’s up to them to decide what people get in return for their financial support. You’ll see prompts to support creators throughout the platform, including when you watch live streams.

For Adobe, obviously this is another way for the company to monetize one of its products beyond its Creative Cloud subscriptions and standalone software offerings. However, just as important here is the fact the company is giving creators, many of whom depend on Behance to showcase their work, a way to make money.

Twitter’s Spaces is getting another update that makes the audio feature easier to share and discover. Now, users will be able to compose a new tweet directly from the Space, which will link to the audio chat and any accompanying hashtags. While it was previously possible to compose new tweets while listening to a Space, having the composer directly in the space will allow participants to more easily tweet about the conversation as it’s happening.

On iOS, Twitter is also adding new “guest management” controls, that allows hosts to more easily view who is in a Space and who has requested to speak. Finally, the company is adding a new search feature to the Spaces tab it started testing in June. Now, instead of just a curated list of active Spaces, users with access to the tab will also be able to search for Spaces by title or the name or handle of a host. (No update on when more people will have access to the Spaces section of the app, though.)

Twitter has been steadily updating Spaces since introducing the Clubhouse competitor late last year. The company has recently added support for a web version of the feature and has started experimenting with allowing hosts to sell tickets to the conversations.