Toggle light / dark theme

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Cash, Plastic or Hand? Amazon Envisions Paying With a Wave

Amazon.com Inc. wants to make your hand your credit card.

The tech giant is creating checkout terminals that could be placed in bricks-and-mortar stores and allow shoppers to link their card information to their hands, according to people familiar with the matter. They could then pay for purchases with their palms, without having to pull out a card or phone.

The Times

  • Unruly
  • ESA opens plant that turns moondust into oxygen

    If humans are going to have a long-term presence on the Moon, they’re going to need breathable air and rocket fuel — and the ESA might just have a way to create both using the Moon itself. The agency is running a prototype plant that converts moondust (currently simulated, of course) into oxygen that could be used for air and fuel. The technique unlocks the high amounts of oxygen in regolith using molten salt electrolysis that superheats the dust and migrates the oxygen along the salt until it’s collected at an anode. The basic process has already been used for metal and alloy production, but the ESA tweaked it to ensure oxygen was available to measure.

    Fiery SpaceX test of Crew Dragon capsule was ‘picture perfect,’ Elon Musk says

    SpaceX completed its last major test before flying astronauts to space on Sunday, in a critical high-speed mission that lasted mere minutes.

    Launched on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the company conducted a test of its Crew Dragon capsule called in-flight abort.

    “Overall, as far as I can tell thus far, this was a picture perfect mission,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press conference after the test. “I’m super fired up; this is great.”