Trump's space transportation policy calls for new spaceport on federal land

Trump's space transportation policy calls for new spaceport on federal land

fivenewscrypto    août 24, 2026   

A new national space transportation policy signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday calls for the development of more spaceports to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries per year by 2030.

The presidential memorandum replaces a 2013 policy signed by former President Barack Obama. Both policies share an emphasis on supporting the commercial space industry and underscore the importance of assured access to space. But the launch sector has changed immensely since then. There were 176 orbital launch attempts from US soil last year, nearly 10 times the number in 2013. SpaceX led the pack last year with 165 orbital launches of its Falcon 9 rocket, plus five suborbital test flights of the much larger Starship.

"By 2030, our space transportation ranges must grow to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries every year," the policy says. "The policies set forth in this memorandum will secure America's continued superiority in space."

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Thunder + fiber-optic cabling used for seismic imaging

Thunder + fiber-optic cabling used for seismic imaging

fivenewscrypto    août 24, 2026   

Most of what we know about the Earth's interior comes from observing seismic waves. These travel at somewhat different speeds depending on the details of the rock they're moving through—whether it's solid or semi-molten, how much water is present, whether it's fractured or solid material, and so on. Get enough data from enough seismic events, and you can start piecing together a picture of what's present at different depths below the surface.

In many cases, we can get this data from naturally occurring events like earthquakes. In others, we intentionally create waves using things like explosives, providing the opportunity to do imaging in specific areas without needing to wait for an earthquake. Now, a team of scientists at Penn State suggests there's a potential option that sits between waiting for an earthquake and triggering your own seismic event: thunderstorms.

Some of the energy carried by thunder enters the Earth's upper crust, triggering what are termed "thunderquakes." But, for various physical reasons, the seismic signals are extremely complex, making it difficult to extract clear signals from them. The Penn State team says it has finally constructed a model that can help make sense of this complexity and used it to reconstruct the terrain under the local campus.

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Hidden Zillow listings created fake supply shock, raising NYC rents, lawsuit says

Hidden Zillow listings created fake supply shock, raising NYC rents, lawsuit says

fivenewscrypto    août 24, 2026   

This week, two New York City renters filed a class action complaint alleging that a brokerage business called Compass—which has been boycotting posting listings on free digital platforms like Zillow—has now delisted so many rental units that it has created a fake supply shock that is artificially raising rents.

According to plaintiffs, Peter Castaneda and Haley Gelfand, Compass has bought so many brokerage firms over the past decade-plus that it maintains a monopoly, controlling “over 80 percent of the rental unit listings available for renters in Manhattan based on 2025 data.”

With that monopoly, Compass can “literally dictate pricing for as much as 80 percent of Manhattan’s rental units,” renters argued. And now, Compass is allegedly trying to manipulate prices on other platforms, as well.

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Motorola's GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels

Motorola's GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels

fivenewscrypto    août 23, 2026   

Several months ago, Motorola and the makers of GrapheneOS announced a team-up that would expand support for the privacy-centric OS to beyond Google's Pixel phones. The announcement, however, was bereft of details. Now, the creators of the OS have taken to Mastodon (naturally) to provide an update. Moto's GrapheneOS phones are on track to launch in 2027, but they'll cost a pretty penny.

The upcoming Moto devices won't ship with GrapheneOS, but they will be fully supported by the project with help from Moto itself. So far, only Pixel phones have met GrapheneOS's strict hardware requirements to ensure the highest level of security and privacy. The software, which is based on Android, includes features like enhanced memory protection, granular network permissions, customizable app sandboxing, and a duress code that can be used to wipe your phone. (That last one got an activist charged with a felony earlier this year after he used it to delete his data during a customs interrogation.)

According to the GrapheneOS team, the upcoming Moto phones will be premium flagship devices. The team expects pricing to be even higher than Pixel phones, which is saying something. The current Pixel lineup starts at $900 for the base model Pixel 11, a $100 increase from last year. The Pixel 11 Pro XL price has gone up to a whopping $1,300 this year.

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Lawsuit demands Logitech hand tariff refunds over to customers

Lawsuit demands Logitech hand tariff refunds over to customers

fivenewscrypto    août 23, 2026   

Logitech is facing a proposed class action lawsuit for not giving customers tariff refunds.

In April 2025, Logitech raised the prices on 51 percent of its portfolio, with some prices increasing by as much as 25 percent.

The complaint seeks to “recover monies that Logitech extracted from American consumers as offset for import tariffs that the United States Supreme Court has since declared unlawful, tariffs for which Logitech now stands to be reimbursed by the federal government. This is all while Logitech retained every dollar of the corresponding price increases it charged its customers due to the illegal tariffs.”

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Chinese regulators tell Tesla to fix nearly 3 million cars

Chinese regulators tell Tesla to fix nearly 3 million cars

fivenewscrypto    août 23, 2026   

Tesla is facing a massive recall in China today. Chinese regulators are taking a stricter approach to safety, and the automaker now has to add warning labels to 2.98 million Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles in China that make it clearer how to open the rear doors in the case of an emergency that causes the car to lose power.

As we learned earlier this year, Chinese regulators are getting more serious about the recent trend of electronically controlled car doors; a growing number of crashes have had fatal consequences when the occupants have been trapped in burning cars. Starting next year, new rules give specific dimensions for handles that must be followed by all newly approved vehicles. But cars that have already been on sale for some time, like the Models 3 and Y, are grandfathered in, at least until the end of 2028.

But China wants Tesla to do something about the nearly 3 million cars already on its roads. It is requiring the automaker to add warning labels to the car interiors—something that will require physical access to the car. Additionally, Tesla will push out a software update that automatically lowers all the cars' windows in the event of a collision.

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Fighter jets help destroy Russian drone boat near European offshore gas platform

Fighter jets help destroy Russian drone boat near European offshore gas platform

fivenewscrypto    août 23, 2026   

This week, Romania accused Russia of sending a drone boat loaded with explosives to a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea. A Romanian F-16 fighter jet used its cannons to disable the surface drone so that explosive ordnance experts could blow it up safely.

On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard first spotted the maritime drone a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep project’s main drilling platform, where several hundred workers were busy with the platform’s ongoing installation, Defense Minister Radu Miruță said in a Facebook post. The offshore gas project would make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union once it starts full production in 2027.

To protect the lives of the workers and the offshore gas infrastructure, the Romanian military scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to stop the drone with cannon fire, Miruță said. Army specialists later carried out a controlled detonation, as seen in a Facebook video shared by the defense minister.

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