A problem with the main engine on Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL spacecraft will keep it from delivering 11,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station as scheduled on Wednesday.

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, NASA said ground teams are evaluating backup plans that might still allow the Cygnus spacecraft to reach the space station, just not on schedule. The problem arose early Tuesday when the spacecraft’s main engine shut down earlier than expected during two burns to boost the ship’s orbit for its rendezvous with the ISS, according to NASA.

Officials didn’t release any other details about the engine problem, but all other systems on the Cygnus XL spacecraft are performing as designed, NASA said. The agency said a new arrival date and time at the space station is “under review.”

Read full article

Comments

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: The Fedora Project has announced Fedora Linux 43 Beta, giving users and developers the opportunity to test the distribution ahead of its final release. This beta introduces improvements across installation, system tools, and programming languages while continuing Fedora’s pattern of cleaning out older components. The beta can be downloaded in Workstation, KDE Plasma, Server, IoT, and Cloud editions. Spins and Labs are also available, though Mate and i3 are not provided in some builds. Existing systems can be upgraded with DNF system-upgrade. Fedora CoreOS will follow one week later through its “next” stream. The beta brings enhancements to its Anaconda WebUI, moves to Python 3.14, and supports Wayland-only GNOME, among many other changes. A full list of improvements and system enhancements can be found here.

The official release should be available in late October or early November.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Taliban leader banned fibre optic internet in an Afghan province to “prevent immorality,” a spokesman for the administration said Tuesday. It’s the first time a ban of this kind has been imposed since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, and leaves government offices, the private sector, public institutions, and homes in northern Balkh province without Wi-Fi internet. Mobile internet remains functional, however.

Haji Attaullah Zaid, a provincial government spokesman, said there was no longer cable internet access in Balkh by order of a “complete ban” from the leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. “This measure was taken to prevent immorality, and an alternative will be built within the country for necessities,” Zaid told The Associated Press. He gave no further information, including why Balkh was chosen for the ban or if the shutdown would spread to other provinces.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gig economy platform Fiverr is laying off 250 employees as it pivots to being an “AI-first company,” CEO Micha Kaufman shared in an essay on X. The move affects around 30 percent of the company’s staff, The Register writes, and it’s not uncommon among tech companies in 2025. Duolingo announced similar plans to become “AI-first” in April.

Kaufman describes this process as returning to “startup mode” and writes that his ultimate goal is to turn Fiverr into “an AI-first company that’s leaner, faster, with a modern AI-focused tech infrastructure, a smaller team, each with substantially greater productivity, and far fewer management layers.” Part of the justification Kaufman offers for why Fiverr doesn’t “need as many people to operate the existing business” is that the company has already integrated AI into its customer support and fraud detection programs.

The first sign that Fiverr might justify layoffs with AI came when Kaufman was interviewed by CBS News in May 2025 about the danger the technology posed to employees. Kaufman specifically advised employees to “automate 100 percent” of what they do with AI, while also claiming that wouldn’t make them replaceable because they were still capable of “non-linear thinking” and “judgement calls.” That advice doesn’t seem like it was ultimately helpful for Fiverr’s own employees.

The company’s cuts affect fewer people than a larger firm like Workday, who announced plans to eliminate 1,750 roles in February 2025. Regardless of the size of the company or its level of investment in AI, though, layoffs have the same effect: More work has to be done by fewer people.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/fiverr-is-laying-off-250-employees-to-become-an-ai-first-company-215730063.html?src=rss

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news.

iOS 26 is here, and with it, Apple’s “Liquid Glass” design revamp. Yesterday, I covered how to quickly undo most of the harshest changes that come with Liquid Glass, but a complaint users are making today requires an entirely separate fix. Luckily, there is an option that could help you, although it’s not for everyone.

Dark Mode icons look a little tilted right now

As users are posting over on Reddit, it turns out that Dark Mode app icons don’t play nicely with iOS 26’s new Liquid Glass aesthetic. How much this will bother you will vary from person to person, but essentially, some folks online (and on the Lifehacker team) are now complaining that their Dark Mode icons look tilted, as if they’re not perfectly dead center.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing this when looking at my home screen as a whole, but after a colleague sent me a more zoomed-in shot, I can see how it would bother him. It’s an optical illusion, as the icon positioning is the same, but it’s there.

Credit: Joel Cunningham

The problem, it seems, is in new highlights added to certain, but not all, app icon corners while using Dark Mode. The uneven lighting produces an effect that, as reported by Lifehacker sister site Mashable, has some users complaining of dizziness. Worse yet, how prominent the highlights are depends on your background—I can see them more easily over dark parts of my background, but they tend to bleed into lighter parts. 

Technically, those highlights are also there when using app icons with lighter backgrounds, but they’re less noticeable, since they don’t contrast with them as much.

Again, you may not be susceptible to the effect. If I’m not concentrating on it, I do tend to forget about it. But if it is bothering you, what can you do?

Reducing transparency does nothing

Unfortunately, the one-toggle fix that undoes most of the issues with Liquid Glass, “Reduce Transparency,” doesn’t seem to do anything for your app icons. Here’s my iPhone Home Screen with Reduce Transparency on, and the same screen with it off (please don’t judge my unread mail and unchecked reminders).

iPhone Home Screen with Dark Mode app icons and Reduce Transparency off (left) vs. on (right)
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

That’s a shame, since Reduce Transparency is easy to implement: You just turn it on under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, and it’ll get rid of most of the see-through elements in Liquid Glass for you. But because the icons are solid anyway, it won’t do anything here. Instead, you’ll need to get creative.

Try tinting your app icons

Right now, I unfortunately don’t have a fix for Apple’s Dark Mode app icons. Even custom icons that use Apple’s Dark Mode background color will still have the new highlights. But I do have one piece of advice that will get you close to the same experience.

It turns out, setting your app icons to Dark Mode isn’t the only way to get them to use more subdued colors. If Dark Mode looks ugly to you right now, you could try tinting your app icons instead.

This gives your app icons a monochrome appearance with white or gray text, and while that does unfortunately mean losing out on app icons with more than two colors, it also means you can swap over to other dark colored backgrounds that might look a bit less tilted to you. The offending highlights will still be there, but with the right tinted background, you might be able to make them less noticeable.

To try it out, head to your home screen, then long press until your apps start jiggling. Click Edit in the top left corner, then Customize. In the menu that pops up on the bottom of your screen, pick Tinted.

You’ll get two color picker bars, as well as the option to choose Light or Dark icons (this is separate from the general Light and Dark mode app icons, which aren’t monochrome). Think of the top color picker bar as the app’s general color, and the bottom as a way to get more specific within that color zone. Meanwhile, Light will make the app’s text and graphical elements white, while Dark will use a more grayish tone.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

You can play around here to get an app tint you like best, although Apple does have a few shortcut buttons to help you find the color for you. Personally, I like the leftmost button, under the color picker bars, that takes you to a standard black and white if you’ve selected Light or a more subdued black and dark gray if you’ve selected Dark. If neither of those work for you, there’s also an Apple Intelligence button that will try to pick a tint that goes well with your wallpaper, or an eyedropper that will let you pick a color from your wallpaper.

None of this is quite the same as just using Dark Mode icons, but if you’re like me, it might be close enough.

Or, wait for an update

If tinting your app icons doesn’t work for you, though, don’t despair. It’s likely Apple is seeing these complaints and will adjust Liquid Glass accordingly. It already toned it down twice over iOS 26’s beta, so maybe the real solution here is time.

TikTok will not shut down on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump inches nearer to closing a deal with China that will most likely see the app’s majority ownership shift to US owners and US-based users shift to a new app.

On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he has extended the deadline to December 16 for TikTok owner ByteDance to divest ownership to comply with a law designed to block China from spying on US users or manipulating TikTok’s algorithm to influence Americans.

The president claimed that the extension allows time to finalize a deal that sources told The Wall Street Journal would shift 80 percent ownership to “an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz.” Existing ByteDance investors will also join the consortium, including Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic, the WSJ reported.

Read full article

Comments

Consumer Reports has urged Microsoft to keep supporting Windows 10 beyond its October 2025 cutoff, saying the move will “strand millions of consumers” who have machines incompatible with Windows 11. The Verge reports: As noted by Consumer Reports, data suggests that around 46.2 percent of people around the world still use Windows 10 as of August 2025, while around 200 to 400 million PCs can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 due to missing hardware requirements.

In the letter, Consumer Reports calls Microsoft “hypocritical” for urging customers to upgrade to Windows 11 to bolster cybersecurity, but then leaving Windows 10 devices susceptible to cyberattacks. It also calls out the $30 fee Microsoft charges customers for “a mere one-year extension to preserve their machine’s security,” as well as the free support options that force people to use Microsoft products, allowing the company to “eke out a bit of market share over competitors.”

Consumer Reports asks that Microsoft continue providing support for Windows 10 computers for free until more people have upgraded to Windows 11.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Congressional lawmakers are skeptical that the Boar’s Head deli meat plant at the center of a deadly Listeria outbreak last year will be fit to reopen after recent inspections at three other Boar’s Head facilities turned up similarly alarming sanitation problems—including mold, condensation on ceilings, overflowing trash, meat residue caked onto equipment and walls, and employees failing to wash their hands.

In a letter dated September 15, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and nine other Congress members noted reports that Boar’s Head plans to reopen the Jarratt, Virginia, facility in the coming months. The plant—and particularly the liverwurst product made there—was determined to be the source of a Listeria outbreak that spanned May to September of last year, sickening at least 61 people across 19 states. Of those 61 people, 60 were hospitalized and 10 died. The company recalled more than 7 million pounds of meat.

Amid the outbreak, it came to light that inspectors with the US Department of Agriculture had found dozens of stomach-turning sanitation violations at the plant, including mold, condensation dripping on meats, insects, and puddles of blood.

Read full article

Comments

Although cars are much safer—for their occupants at least—than they used to be, that has come at a cost: added weight. The problem is exacerbated in electric vehicles and their heavy battery packs; rare is the EV we’ve driven that weighs less than 5,000 lbs (2,267 kg).

Hence my interest in the Altair Enlighten award, an annual prize for advances in lightweighting and sustainability given out by the AI company together with the Center for Automotive Research, which offers a look at some of the avenues automakers and suppliers are exploring to take some of the weight and carbon footprint out of tomorrow’s new cars.

Lucid Motors has won in two separate categories. It takes the Sustainable Computing prize for speeding up new car development with a way for engineers to test iterated designs within their existing CAD environment rather than having to switch to a different tool. Lucid also won the Responsible AI prize for using AI to help predict crash testing well before the physical prototype stage—this let Lucid reduce the number of iterations it went through and the test waste and materials it used.

Read full article

Comments

Amazon will host a press event at the end of the month with some new hardware developments. It’s scheduled for September 30 at 10AM ET in New York City. Here’s what we think will be discussed at the fall event.

In February, Amazon introduced some improvements to its voice assistant, promising that Alexa+ would be more conversational and more helpful thanks to generative AI. It seems likely that the fall event will put hardware for interacting with Alexa+ front and center, so expect to hear about new models or new software updates for the Echo line of smart speakers. It’s been a couple years since the Echo Show got an update, and it’s been even longer for the standard Echo. Those two products are the most likely to star in the upcoming announcements.

Amazon

The invite also includes a photo of a Kindle that depicts a color illustration, so there may be more in store for the ereaders. The Kindle Scribe 2 just came out earlier this year, as did the Kindle Colorsoft, so maybe there’s a new option in the works that combines the best features of both. As with the Echo, there also hasn’t been much new for the basic model Kindle, so that may also be getting some updates.

There’s also what appears to be the corner of a television in the invitation, so news about the Fire TV also seems promising. This event is also where Amazon-owned Ring and Eero brands may unveil new products. Any announced items may not be available right away, but the timing does set the stage for some substantial discounts on older generations of Amazon gear when the next Prime Day rolls around on October 7 and 8.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/what-to-expect-from-amazons-event-on-september-30-210035671.html?src=rss

Under new rules rolling out over the coming months, a small number of users will be required to leave some of their moderator posts so that they aren’t moderating more than five subreddits with 100,000 monthly visitors.

Reddit said the change only affects “0.1 percent of our active mods” and will help enable “diverse perspectives and experiences.” But mods whom Ars Technica spoke with have different views.

New limits on how many subreddits users can moderate

A recent post on the r/modnews subreddit announced plans for new restrictions on how many subreddits users can moderate. Those who currently don’t meet those restrictions will be asked to leave their post(s) or seek an exemption(s). Reddit hasn’t finalized the requirements for exemptions but says it’s working on them with moderators.

Read full article

Comments

Who says journalism is dead? Less than a week after Bloomberg published a damning report about Tesla’s “dangerous doors,” the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now looking into it. On Tuesday, the regulator said it opened an investigation into the automaker’s electrically powered doors. The problem: They stop working if the vehicle’s low-voltage battery fails.

The NHTSA’s probe will cover the 2021 Model Y, which covers an estimated 174,290 vehicles. But the agency suggested in a document that it could expand its investigation. That makes sense: Every Tesla ever made uses electrically powered door handles. So, this could potentially get very expensive for the otherwise perfectly lovable company.

Tesla uses a flush door handle design for its vehicles. A 12-volt battery powers the door’s ability to pop the handle and release the latch. It’s one of the Apple-like design details that helped the automaker become a household name. But cars aren’t iPhones, and sleekness can’t take a backseat to safety in the auto space.

Tesla vehicles have a mechanical backup system in the cabin that enables the doors to be opened manually in case of a power loss. But the manual release location varies by model and is often hard to find. And even if you do know where it is, that won’t help if a small child or pet is trapped inside.

“Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicle’s driver is aware of them,” the NHTSA wrote in its public summary document.

Mylo Kaye / Unsplash

Bloomberg‘s original report recounted some heinous stories of Tesla owners dealing with electronic door failures. There was an off-duty firefighter who struggled to break into a burning Model Y in 2023. The occupant was trapped in the passenger seat by airbags and couldn’t reach the manual release. Losing precious seconds due to the door design, she suffered third-degree facial burns and had lasting lung damage from smoke inhalation.

There are reportedly more. Last November in California, three college students died trapped inside a Cybertruck after it caught fire. The same month, five people in Wisconsin died inside a Model S. The cluster of bodies in the front seat suggested to the detective they may have struggled to escape.

Then, this spring in LA, a star college basketball recruit managed to escape only after kicking out a Cybertruck window when it caught fire. “I try to open the door, and the door’s not opening,” Alijah Arenas said. He was placed in a medically induced coma due to extensive smoke inhalation.

Bloomberg discovered that the NHTSA has received over 140 complaints about stuck Tesla doors since 2018. The regulator cited nine “failure reports” that led it to probe the company. In four cases, the people resorted to breaking the window. “Entrapment in a vehicle is particularly concerning in emergency situations, such as when children are entrapped in a hot vehicle,” NHTSA said.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/nhtsa-is-investigating-tesla-over-its-electronic-door-handles-203605393.html?src=rss

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

The Eufy Video Smart Lock E330 is a multitasking three-in-one smart home device that combines a fingerprint-scanning smart lock,  a 2K HD camera, and a video doorbell. Right now, it’s 37% off at Amazon, marking its lowest price in the past few months.

If you want a multipurpose smart lock with a clean, minimalist aesthetic, this gadget has been vetted by PCMag, which dubbed the best smart lock of 2023.

Eufy Video Smart Lock E330

$189.97
at Amazon

$299.99
Save $110.02

$189.97
at Amazon

$299.99
Save $110.02

You can unlock this thing in multiple ways: via fingerprint, by inserting a pin into the keypad, or by using an app or even voice control via Alexa and Google Assistant. (Of course, you can also stick a manual key into the keyhole, which is hidden behind the doorbell button.) The E330 has built-in WiFi and 8GB of local storage (no ongoing fees or subscription required). When paired with the Eufy HomeBase 3, you can expand storage up to 17TB.

The 2K HD camera offers sharper image quality than 1080p video doorbells, and four infrared LEDs enable night vision. Intelligent motion detection and dual motion sensors help the device distinguish humans from vehicles, according to PCMag’s review. It also has an IP65 weather resistance. Because the camera is housed in a lock located in the center of the door, the field of view may be more limited than a doorbell camera mounted above or to the side, and door jambs may also restrict the view. 

While the Eufy Video Smart Lock E330 is normally on the pricey side at $300, its current discount takes it down to $220. It even comes with all the tools you need to replace your old lock.

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced plans to develop an automated age-prediction system that will determine whether ChatGPT users are over or under 18, automatically directing younger users to a restricted version of the AI chatbot. The company also confirmed that parental controls will launch by the end of September.

In a companion blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the company is explicitly “prioritizing safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens,” even though it means that adults may eventually need to verify their age to use a more unrestricted version of the service.

“In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID,” Altman wrote. “We know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff.” Altman admitted that “not everyone will agree with how we are resolving that conflict” between user privacy and teen safety.

Read full article

Comments