Amazon is reportedly developing an AI-centric smartphone

Amazon is reportedly developing an AI-centric smartphone

fivenewscrypto    mars 22, 2026   

Amazon is developing a new smartphone over a decade after discontinuing the Fire Phone, Reuters reported today, citing four anonymous “people familiar with the matter.”

Reuters said the phone is codenamed Transformer but couldn’t confirm what it might cost, how much Amazon has invested into development thus far, or how much Amazon expects to make off the device. Like any product reportedly under development, it’s possible that Amazon will never release the phone. Reuters’ sources noted that Transformer could be cancelled over finances or a change in strategy.

When reached for comment by Ars Technica, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on Reuters’ report.

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Major SteamOS update adds support for Steam Machine, even more third-party hardware

Major SteamOS update adds support for Steam Machine, even more third-party hardware

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

Valve's Steam Machine desktop is currently in a state of involuntary limbo, driven by historically awful pricing and availability for memory and storage chips. AI data centers are absorbing much of what memory manufacturers can produce, leaving much less for enthusiast and hobbyist hardware like the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame VR headset. Even the years-old Steam Deck is currently out of stock thanks to component shortages.

But that hardware uncertainty hasn't stopped Valve from working on the software, and the company released a major update this week. The SteamOS 3.8.0 preview release comes with a long list of changes for the Steam Deck as well as third-party gaming handhelds and other PC hardware, and it also adds "initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware."

Many of the update's improvements come from various upstream Linux components. Valve says the update includes a new Arch Linux base, an updated graphics driver, version 6.16 of the Linux kernel, and a new version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment for Desktop Mode (which now uses Wayland rather than X11).

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Monte Verde site gets a new date, but the big picture doesn't change

Monte Verde site gets a new date, but the big picture doesn't change

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

A landmark site in the peopling of the Americas is several thousand years younger than we thought. While that means very different things about the site itself, it doesn’t change the big picture as much as the researchers who generated the new date are claiming.

University of Wyoming archaeologist Todd Surovell and his colleagues recently took a second look at the age of a site called Monte Verde in southern Chile, and it turns out that people lived there 8,000 years ago—not 14,500, as the archaeologists who first described it claimed.

Monte Verde is about as far from the Bering Land Bridge as you can get without leaving the continents, so its age was the first piece of evidence that people were well-established in the Americas before the end of the last Ice Age. But it hasn't been the last, so Surovell and his colleagues’ findings don’t actually change what we now know about the peopling of the Americas—and they definitely don’t put the “Clovis First” hypothesis back on the table.

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Jeff Bezos just announced plans for a third megaconstellation—this one for data centers

Jeff Bezos just announced plans for a third megaconstellation—this one for data centers

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

A little more than a month ago, SpaceX founder Elon Musk put down a marker of his intent to saturate low-Earth orbit with up to 1 million satellites. Its purpose? Provide always-on data center services around the planet.

Now, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has done something similar with a filing to the Federal Communications Commission of his own, proposing a constellation of up to 51,600 satellites operating in Sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes ranging from 500 to 1,800 km. Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, sought the authority to do this and is calling the constellation "Project Sunrise."

In its filing, Blue Origin argues that terrestrial AI-based data centers will face difficulties scaling up to meet computing demand.

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The US is looking at a year of chaotic weather

The US is looking at a year of chaotic weather

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

Despite being declared the third-hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year for climate disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year—a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season—fell below the 10-year average.

But starting this week, the West is experiencing what looks to be a record-breaking heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong El Niño event is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding the effects of a climate that’s getting hotter and hotter thanks to human activity.

First, there’s the heat. Beginning this week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high-pressure air will bring record-breaking temperatures to the American West. The National Weather Service predicts that temperature records across multiple states are set to be broken in dozens of locations, stretching as far east as Missouri and Tennessee. The NWS has issued heat warnings for parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as fire warnings for parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Colorado.

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Feds say no need to recall Tesla's one-pedal driving despite petition

Feds say no need to recall Tesla's one-pedal driving despite petition

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

One-pedal driving is not causing Tesla electric vehicles to suddenly accelerate when parked, according to federal regulators. For almost as long as Tesla has been selling cars, it has been hit with sporadic accusations of parked cars accelerating when they shouldn't. Known to the industry as "sudden unintended acceleration," the question for regulators is whether the problem is a human one or an engineering one, and over the years, engineers who think they've found the culprit have petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to force a recall. These efforts usually fail, as was the case today, when NHTSA said it would not tell Tesla to recall every EV it built since 2013.

Because electric motors are also generators, EVs use regenerative braking to recover energy when they slow down rather than wasting that kinetic energy as heat (and maybe a bit of sound) via the friction brakes. In many battery EVs and just about any hybrid I can think of, a brake-by-wire system blends the two together—the driver uses the left pedal as normal, and the car slows down. Some automakers (I'm looking at you, Porsche) think this is the only way a driver should slow their EV. But an electric motor can also be programmed to regeneratively brake when the driver lifts their foot from the throttle, and in Tesla's EVs (as well as Rivian's and Lucid's), this is the only way to regen, as there is no brake-by-wire system, only traditional hydraulic friction brakes.

Technically, I just described lift-off regen, but if the car has been programmed to come to a complete stop when you take your foot from the accelerator, that's one-pedal driving. Some EV drivers absolutely love one-pedal driving; others don't. I like one-pedal for low-speed driving or when I want something similar to engine braking. But according to the petition sent to NHTSA in 2023 by a Greek engineer, this causes a "short-circuit" in Tesla drivers' brains.

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Rocket Report: Canada makes a major move, US Space Force says actually, let's be hasty

Rocket Report: Canada makes a major move, US Space Force says actually, let's be hasty

fivenewscrypto    mars 21, 2026   

Welcome to Edition 8.34 of the Rocket Report! The most important significant news this week, I believe, is the decision by Canada to make a serious investment in launch infrastructure at a spaceport in Nova Scotia. Tensions have risen between the United States and Canada of late (for reasons which are baffling to this author, who has always had an affinity for the nation to our north), and as a result Canada is seeking launch independence. This is an important start, but it will require a sustained, long-term commitment to really develop a flourishing launch industry.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Canada makes major commitment to space launch. The country's leading minister of national defense, David J. McGuinty, announced on Monday a $200 million investment in "core infrastructure" for a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The investment is a 10‑year, $200 million agreement to lease a dedicated space‑launch pad that will serve as the central foundation for a multi-user spaceport near Canso, Nova Scotia. The facility is operated by Maritime Launch Services.

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