(Reuters) -Image-sharing platform Pinterest beat second-quarter revenue estimates on Tuesday as monthly active users surged and digital advertising rebounded from

Sam Altman is officially back as OpenAI CEO, but it’s not a return to the status quo. His comeback marks a new era, and one that will be closely watched over by Microsoft.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 16, 2023--

SpaceX has successfully launched Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, for the first ever time. The spacecraft took off from Texas early on Saturday local time. It marked SpaceX’s second attempt to launch the spacecraft, after a previous test in April saw the rocket exploded soon after launch. The booster that carried the spacecraft up towards orbit exploded after it detached from the main spacecraft. SpaceX said that it had known there was a chance that the booster would be destroyed in the launch. But the main part of the ship successfully carried on towards the edge of space. Eventually, SpaceX hopes that Starship will fly to the Moon and help with missions to Mars. But first it must undergo a series of uncrewed tests to ensure it is safe. Elon Musk - SpaceX‘s founder, chief executive and chief engineer - also sees Starship as eventually replacing the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other commercial payloads into space. NASA, SpaceX‘s primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the US space agency is counting on to play a central role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions of more than a half century ago that put astronauts on the moon for the first time. Starship’s towering first-stage booster, propelled by 33 Raptor engines, puts the rocket system’s full height at some 400 feet (122 meters) and produces thrust twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. SpaceX is aiming to at least exceed Starship-Super Heavy’s performance during its April 20 test flight, when the two-stage spacecraft blew itself to bits less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight. That flight went awry from the start. SpaceX has acknowledged that some of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and that the lower-stage booster rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship before the flight was terminated. The company’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition. A failure at any point in the test flight would be a major concern for NASA, which is counting on SpaceX‘s rapid rocket development ethos to swiftly get humans to the moon in the U.S. competition with China’s lunar ambitions. Judging the success or failure of the outcome may be less than clear-cut, depending on how far the spacecraft gets this time. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who has made the China rivalry a key need for speed, compared Starship’s test campaign with the success of SpaceX‘s past rocket development efforts. “How did they develop the Falcon 9? They went through many tests, sometimes it blew up,” Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday. “They’d find out what went wrong, they’d correct it then go back.” The combined spacecraft in April reached a peak altitude of roughly 25 miles (40 km), only about halfway to space at its target altitude of 90 miles (150 km), before bursting into flames. Musk has said that an internal fire during Starship’s ascent damaged its engines and computers, causing it to stray off course, and that an automatic-destruct command was activated some 40 seconds later than it should have to blow up the rocket. The launch pad itself was shattered by the force of the blastoff, which also sparked a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire. No one was injured. SpaceX has since reinforced the launch pad with a massive water-cooled steel plate, one of dozens of corrective actions that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration required before granting a launch license on Wednesday for the second test flight. Additional reporting by agencies Read More SpaceX launches ‘zero fuel’ engine into space SpaceX is launching the world’s biggest rocket – follow live SpaceX to launch world’s biggest rocket again after first attempt ended in explosion The world’s most powerful rocket should launch imminently, Elon Musk says Why Apple is working hard to break into its own iPhones OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman ousted as CEO

After Epic Games enforced cosmetic age restrictions in Fortnite, many players want refunds for skins, like Black Widow, that can no longer be worn in Creative.

Britain will fall further behind the US on green technologies without a national investment fund to help turn

A woman has sparked a debate across social media after finding an abandoned couch on the street and taking it back to her apartment. Creator Amanda Joy posted a TikTok of the ‘dream couch’ she had found on the street in New York showing the process of getting it into her apartment. Joy believed the couch to be the $8,000 ‘Bubble’ couch from French brand Roche Bobois. Posted on Saturday, the TikTok now has over 40 million views, and over 4 million likes. The rest of the TikTok showed Joy’s dad picking up the couch in his van and the process of cleaning the couch, before moving it into her apartment. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter However, the now viral TikTok has led to some saying the couch is a fake, and others being concerned about bed bugs. User @boymolish shared the TikTok to Twitter with the caption ‘WHY TF AM I NEVER THIS LUCKY’, and the Tweet had many saying that Joy had not cleaned it enough: Some argued that if you throw an 8k coach on the street there has to be an reason, implying that there was something wrong with it. But some disagreed, saying if you’re rich enough, it’s not a big deal to give away such expensive items for free. Others did some digging and argued that it wasn’t an authentic ‘Bubble’ couch, with one Twitter user comparing the material of the couch Joy now had in her apartment, to the one on the website. As a result of the growing debate around her TikTok, Joy posted an update video, specifically responding to a comment that said ‘it looks so good but I’m SO SCARED about it being BED BUG CENTRAL.’ Joy shared with users that the couch was outside on the street for less than 24 hours. She added that they let the couch sit in her dad’s workshop for over two weeks to ensure they couldn’t see any bed bugs. Joy also told viewers that the reason she thought it had been thrown out is because it has ‘a lot of rips,’ which she has covered with pillows, and ‘has some stains.’ At the end of the video, Joy also showed the tag, ‘for anyone who wants to tell me it’s fake.’ Some viewers were still convinced it wasn’t clean enough, suggesting she should get it professionally cleaned and reupholstered. Whilst others said as long as Joy was happy with it, they didn’t care. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 6, 2023--

A certified cat trainer suggests reasons why a cat won’t use its litter box—and offers some possible solutions.

The Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. agreed to buy three utilities from Dominion Energy Inc. in a $9.4

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 25, 2023--

Photoshop software maker Adobe forecast current-quarter profit above Wall Street estimates on Thursday, after beating revenue estimates for