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Rocket Report: Surprise Israeli launch, Britain decides to bail out OneWeb

Is SARS-CoV-2 airborne? Questions abound—but here’s what we know

Mazda adds 250 horsepower turbo engine to the 2021 Mazda 3

The rise and fall of Adobe Flash

New Mac ransomware is even more sinister than it appears

NASA’s most iconic building is 55 years old and just getting started

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How to stop Facebook’s iOS bug from crashing Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder, and other apps

Samsung reportedly won’t include chargers with some phones starting next year

iOS 14 might let you scan QR codes to use Apple Pay

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra appears to leak in first real-world images

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How to stop Facebook’s iOS bug from crashing Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder, and other apps

Patrick July 10, 2020

Facebook’s iOS SDK is causing a number of popular iPhone apps to crash today, including Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder. You don’t even need to have the Facebook app installed for other apps to crash, as developers have implemented the Facebook login through their own apps. This is the second time the issue has occurred in recent months, but there is a workaround available to get the apps back up and running before Facebook fixes the problems.

Lockdown Apps, a firewall and privacy protection app on iOS, uses a VPN to block trackers and things like Facebook’s iOS SDK from

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Rocket Report: Surprise Israeli launch, Britain decides to bail out OneWeb

Patrick July 10, 2020
Enlarge / An Atlas V payload fairing with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover secured inside arrives at the Vertical Integration Facility this week.

Welcome to Edition 3.07 of the Rocket Report! This week, we’re getting close to the opening of the Mars launch window, which occurs about every two years when Earth and the Red Planet align. It looks like United Arab Emirates’ Mars Hope mission will the first of three probes to launch this summer, possibly as early as July 14.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe

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How to print in Python – Plus advanced tricks

Patrick July 10, 2020

How to print in Python

Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority

When it comes to learning to code in a new language, it makes sense to start at the beginning. Learning how to print in Python is most certainly the beginning.

The “print” command, as in BASIC, is what you will use in Python to display text on the screen. This is what we use to write “Hello World!” which is the first thing a programmer will traditionally do when working with a new language.

In this post, we will learn how to print in Python, and how to do a couple of (slightly) more

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Sony Xperia 1 II review: Sony finally made a phone I’d love to keep in my pocket

Patrick July 9, 2020
Sony Xperia 1 II back hero shot 2

Credit: David Imel / Android Authority

Sony is a huge electronics company. It makes TVs, cameras, headphones, game consoles, and pretty much anything else you could imagine with a circuit board. It’s also a market leader in many of these categories. Its Bravia OLED TVs are best-in-class, its headphones are some of the most popular on the market, and you can’t walk down the street in 2020 without seeing a Sony digital camera.

With all this as background, it only seems natural that Sony would be one of the most well-positioned companies to make a killer

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Is SARS-CoV-2 airborne? Questions abound—but here’s what we know

Patrick July 9, 2020
Enlarge / A doctor wears a hood as he tests the seal of an N95 respiratory mask during a training at the La Clinica San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center in California.

A debate has erupted among researchers over the potential for the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, to spread through the air and—if it does so often enough—what to do about it.

Though talk of airborne transmission has been simmering since the beginning of the pandemic, it reached a boiling point this week following a letter penned by two researchers and addressed to “national and international bodies.” The letter, eventually signed by

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Poco M2 Pro review: A better Redmi Note 9 Pro

Patrick July 9, 2020

Poco established itself on the premise of tremendous value. The OG, the first Pocophone F1, delivered cutting-edge specs, while making the right compromises to hit an incredible price point. Since then, the market has changed quite a bit and Poco has followed the trends. Following the spin-off into an entity of its own, Poco introduced the long-awaited successor to the F1, the Poco X2 Pro. An affordable option, the phone delivered on the Poco ethos through a 120Hz high-refresh-rate panel and a powerful Snapdragon 730G chipset in the mid-range segment.

The Poco X2 isn’t the Pocophone you’ve been

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Samsung reportedly won’t include chargers with some phones starting next year

Patrick July 8, 2020

Samsung may not include chargers in the boxes of some of its smartphones starting in 2021, according to a report from Korean news site ETNews. The company is taking them out because many people already have chargers and to help reduce costs, the report says.

While not including a charger in the box might seem like a big move, Samsung reportedly isn’t the only major phone maker considering it. Apple may do something similar by not including a charger with this year’s iPhone lineup, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Apple may also phase out the 5W and

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Mazda adds 250 horsepower turbo engine to the 2021 Mazda 3

Patrick July 8, 2020
Enlarge / Black wheels and a black grille are a few small clues to the fact that this Mazda 3 has a turbo.

On Wednesday morning, Mazda confirmed something enthusiasts had long hoped for: for model year 2021, the carmaker will offer a turbocharged engine as an option for the Mazda 3 hatchback and sedan. The engine is the company’s 2.5L Skyactiv-G power plant, and when installed in a Mazda 3, it bumps the 3 squarely into hot-hatch territory (or hot-sedan territory, as appropriate) with 250hp (186kW) and 320lb-ft (434Nm). (If you have to feed it 87 gasoline instead

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