|
NASA's Artemis II crew just set a new distance record in miles traveled away from Earth. The team of four astronauts are in the process of circling the Moon, reaching 5,000 miles beyond the natural satellite. That brings the total distance traveled away from our home to over 250,000 miles. Gene Roddenberry would be proud.
This broke the previous 1970 record set by Apollo 13's crew by around 4,000 miles. The four astronauts - Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency - are the first humans to cross the lunar threshold since 1972's Apollo 17 mission.
"We challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Commander Reid Wiseman said upon crossing the distance threshold. He also suggested that NASA name a lunar crater after the craft itself.
The astronauts aren't landing on the lunar surface, but are conducting a lengthy flyby that should provide clear images of the Moon's far side "that have never been seen" by humans. These areas were too difficult to clearly see by the various Apollo crew members. They'll also get a peek at a solar eclipse, though the crew will be out of contact with mission control for around 40 minutes.
"We'll get eyes on the moon, kind of map it out and then continue to go back in force," NASA flight director, Judd Frieling, said. Astronaut Christina Koch
|
|
Three YouTube channels have banded together and filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, as first spotted by MacRumors. According to the lawsuit, the creators behind h3h3 Productions, MrShortGameGolf and Golfholics have accused Apple of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by scraping copyrighted videos on YouTube to train its AI models.
While the YouTubers' videos are available to watch on the platform, the lawsuit alleged that Apple illegally circumvented the "controlled streaming architecture" that regular users are limited to. The creators claimed that Apple's video scraping was used to train its generative AI products, adding that the tech giant's "massive financial success would not have been possible without the video content created" by the YouTubers. MacRumors noted that these YouTube channels have also filed similar lawsuits against other tech companies, including Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance and Snap.
It's not the first time a company's alleged AI training methods have gotten them in legal trouble. OpenAI and Microsoft were both accused of using copyrighted articles from the NYTimes to train its AI chatbots. Similarly,
|
|
 Apple's software engineers are testing iOS 26.4.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions.
|
|
 Earlier this week, Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 26.5 to developers. The software update is relatively minor so far, which is not too surprising given that Apple is likely shifting its focus towards iOS 27. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 27 during its WWDC 2026 keynote on June 8, and the update should be released in September.
|
|
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is once more turning its lens on Microsoft. The tech company will be the focus of an investigation by the regulator to see if it can be assigned strategic market status (SMS). The CMA already has "a major concern" with Microsoft's alleged limiting of competition in the cloud space via productivity software like Word and Excel, chat app Teams, AI companion Copilot and even Windows itself. The SMS designation "would allow the CMA to act" against the company. The investigation will begin in May.
In addition, the UK regulator is also following up on an inquiry into Microsoft and Amazon from 2025, where it sought to exert more control over the domestic cloud services market. As a result of that action, the CMA said Amazon and Microsoft have agreed to a plan involving egress fees and interoperability around cloud services. "These changes will reduce expense and effort for UK customers when using more than one cloud provider," the CMA bulletin states.
The CMA has frequently had Microsoft in its sights. The company sparked an investigation in 2023 for its relationship with OpenAI and in 2024 for its actions hiring staff from Inflection AI.
This article originall
|
|
