March 2021
- One Year of Remote-Work Software: How Dev Tools Held Up
A year into the pandemic shift to remote work, looking at how collaboration and dev tooling scaled - and what habits might outlast the office return.
- Why 2021's Chip Shortage Is Hitting Gamers and PC Builders Hardest
A global semiconductor crunch is colliding with crypto demand to make GPUs and next-gen consoles nearly impossible to buy at MSRP.
- Why Jezero Crater Is Mars' Most Interesting Address Right Now
A look at why NASA picked Jezero Crater for Perseverance, and what makes its ancient river delta such a promising place to hunt for past life.
- HAFNIUM Is Tearing Through Exchange Servers, and You Need to Patch Right Now
Microsoft disclosed active exploitation of multiple Exchange Server zero-days by the HAFNIUM group, and admins everywhere are scrambling to patch.
- Nvidia's RTX 3060 Mining Limiter Cracked Within Days of Launch
A driver update briefly unlocked the RTX 3060's full hash rate, forcing Nvidia to ship a patch just over a week after the card launched.
- Perseverance Takes Its First Drive on Mars
NASA's Perseverance rover rolled about 6.5 meters across Jezero Crater on March 4, and its landing site now bears a new name.
- Epic Games Buys Fall Guys Studio Tonic Games
Epic Games acquired Tonic Games Group, maker of breakout hit Fall Guys, folding four studios into its growing portfolio.
- Chrome OS 89 Lands with Phone Hub and Built-In Screen Recording
Chrome OS 89 rolls out with Phone Hub, native screen recording, and a Tote shelf as Chromebook sales keep climbing.
- A Year Into mRNA: What the Fastest Vaccine Platform in History Just Taught Us
Real-world data on Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna's mRNA shots is validating a platform that could reshape vaccines for flu, cancer, and rare disease.
- Old Edge Is Gone, and So Is Flash
Microsoft's March Patch Tuesday quietly retired legacy Edge and expanded the rollout that strips Flash Player out of Windows for good.
- Fire Destroys OVH's Strasbourg Data Center, Takes Millions of Sites Offline
A fire at OVHcloud's SBG2 facility in Strasbourg destroyed the data center and forced a shutdown of SBG1, knocking millions of sites offline.
- One Year of Adaptation: What Software and Science Teams Learned
A year after WHO declared a pandemic, reflecting on which remote-work and rapid-research habits in tech and science are likely to outlast the crisis.
- GPT-3, One Year On: What Businesses Are Actually Building
A look at the copywriting tools, code assistants, and chatbots built on GPT-3's API a year after wider access opened, plus DALL-E's tantalizing preview.
- Xbox Live Is Dead, Long Live 'Xbox Network'
Microsoft quietly renames Xbox Live to 'Xbox network' this month, folding a two-decade-old brand into the wider Xbox ecosystem.
- SpaceX Sends Up 60 More Starlink Satellites, Nails Another Booster Landing
A Falcon 9 launched 60 Starlink satellites from pad 39A and landed its booster on a drone ship as the constellation races past a thousand spacecraft.
- WebAssembly Is Quietly Changing What Browsers Can Do
Wasm has moved past its gaming and CAD roots and is now running production tools like Photoshop and Figma at near-native speed.
- Intel's Rocket Lake Is Here, and It's Racing Against Itself
Intel unveiled 11th Gen Core desktop CPUs led by the Core i9-11900K, bringing PCIe 4.0 and better graphics to the aging LGA1200 socket.
- Starlink's Satellite Swarm Is Giving Astronomers a Headache
SpaceX keeps launching Starlink satellites weekly, and astronomers say the growing swarm is leaving bright trails across their telescope images.
- The No-Code Boom: Who's Actually Using Airtable and Bubble
A look at why no-code tools spread through pandemic-strained teams in 2020-2021, and where they genuinely replace custom software versus where they hit limits.
- Why ARM Chips Are Suddenly the Future of the PC
Apple's M1 has the whole industry rethinking x86, and Intel is not taking it quietly.
- Asteroid 2001 FO32 Just Made Its Closest Pass of Earth in Centuries
Near-Earth asteroid 2001 FO32 safely passed Earth today at about 2 million km, giving NASA a rare close-up chance to study it with radar and telescopes.
- Clubhouse Says Android Is Coming -- Eventually
Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davison says Android is still 'a couple of months' out, leaving the exploding app iOS-only for now.
- OnePlus Goes All In on Cameras with the 9 and 9 Pro
OnePlus unveiled the 9, 9 Pro, and 9R today, headlined by a Hasselblad-tuned camera system and Snapdragon 888 silicon.
- Astronomers reveal what a black hole's magnetic field looks like
The Event Horizon Telescope team released a polarized-light image of M87's black hole, showing magnetic field lines at its edge for the first time.
- Jack Dorsey's First Tweet Just Sold for $2.9 Million
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey auctioned his first-ever tweet as an NFT, closing at $2.9 million via the Valuables platform.
- PS5 Restocks Are Getting a Little Easier, But Don't Expect Relief Soon
Restocks at Best Buy and Walmart are more frequent, but the global chip shortage means PS5 and Xbox Series X supply will likely stay tight into 2022.
- Perseverance clears the way for Ingenuity's historic Mars flight
Perseverance dropped Ingenuity's protective debris shield this week, the next step toward the first powered flight attempt on another planet.
- Rust 1.51 Lands the Minimum Viable Const Generics
Rust 1.51 ships const generics, a new Cargo feature resolver, and faster macOS builds -- one of the language's biggest additions in years.
- Xiaomi's Mi 11 Ultra Packs the Biggest Camera Sensor Yet
Xiaomi's new Mi 11 Ultra flagship debuts a 1/1.12-inch main camera sensor and a secondary rear display, pricing it at 5,999-6,999 yuan.
- Starship SN11 Lost in the Fog
SpaceX's SN11 prototype was destroyed during descent today, the fourth Starship in a row to be lost, with thick fog hiding the failure from cameras.
- Cortana Quietly Exits Your Phone
Microsoft ended support for Cortana on Android, iOS, and standalone speakers today, retreating to a Windows-only productivity role.