Death of a Spacecraft: Bittersweet Mood as Rosetta Crash-Lands on Comet and other top stories.

• Death of a Spacecraft: Bittersweet Mood as Rosetta Crash-Lands on Comet

  

  People celebrated in the Rosetta spacecraft mission control room at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, after it touched down on Comet 67P, sending its final signal to Earth Sept. 30, 2016. Credit: ESA DARMSTADT, Germany — When Paolo Ferri went into the control room this morning, the atmosphere was a little gloomy. "I've experienced this with other missions," Ferri, who is head of mission operations here at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), told Spa..

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• The NES Classic has a CRT filter to make games look properly old school

  

  Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition is a fairly straightforward device: it’s a tiny version of the classic console, with 30 games built in so you can play them easily on a modern television. It doesn’t have much in the way of frills, but today Nintendo is revealing a few new features for the device. Most notably, it will offer three different display options. One, which Nintendo calls "pixel perfect" mode, cleans up the visuals so that they look crisp on your high-definition TV, while displaying the..

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• Facebook “Messenger Day” is the chat app's new Snapchat Stories clone

  

  Facebook is stealing the Stories format and invading countries where Snapchat isn’t popular yet. Today in Poland it launched “Messenger Day”, which lets people share illustrated filter-enhanced photos and videos that disappear in 24 hours, just like on Snapchat. By using the international popularity of Messenger to spread the Stories format, Facebook could boost retention and return visits to its chat app while becoming the primary place where people post off-the-cuff lifecasting content..

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• Yahoo hack may become test case for SEC data breach disclosure rules

  

  By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Yahoo's disclosure that hackers stole user data from at least 500 million accounts in 2014 has highlighted shortcomings in U.S. rules on when cyber attacks must be revealed and their enforcement.Democratic Senator Mark Warner this week asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Yahoo and its senior executives properly disclosed the attack, which Yahoo blamed on Sept. 22 on a "state-sponsored actor."The Yahoo hack could beco..

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• Twitch Starts Phasing Out Original Subscription Plan In Favor Of Amazon-Linked 'Twitch Prime'

  

  From a video announcing the new service. The game-streaming service Twitch will no longer offer $9/month Twitch Turbo subscriptions in the U.S. and other parts of the world where Amazon Prime is available, the company announced today. That’s because the Amazon-owned Twitch is now offering ad-free Twitch subscriptions as one of the many perks customers will get for $11/month Amazon Prime subscriptions. The change was announced today during the kick-off of Twitchcon in San Diego and is elabor..

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• Why A.I. assistants need to stay neutral

  

  With the release of Google Allo last week, we’ve officially entered the era of the assistant. Every company that owns a major tech platform is now betting that assistants will be an important interface in the post-mobile world.  You might think assistants today are trivial or stupid, and you wouldn’t be wrong. They often don’t understand what we say and can’t hold real conversations yet. Mostly they’re relegated to simple tasks like playing music, sending texts, or setting timers. The people bu..

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• iPhone 8 rumors: All glass everything with an OLED display

  

  People are still lining up to snag a brand new iPhone 7, but that won’t stop anyone from speculating about next year’s iPhone. Why so early? Well, 2017 marks the iPhone’s 10th birthday, so Apple is reportedly gearing up to make its anniversary edition extra special. We’ll keep track of the latest rumors and how plausible they are, and we’ll put them in one spot (this one!) so you can bookmark this link and just pop on over when you want to read the latest. If you passed on the iPhone 7 to..

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• The United Nations Is Launching A Space Mission

  

  Enlarge this image A model of the planned Dream Chaser mini-shuttle designed by Sierra Nevada Corp. is displayed in March 2014 for a news conference at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Janet McConnaughey/AP hide caption toggle caption Janet McConnaughey/AP A model of the planned Dream Chaser mini-shuttle de..

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• California opens pathway for cars that lack steering wheel

  

  By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press California regulators have changed course and opened a pathway for the public to get self-driving cars of the future that lack a steering wheel or pedals. It's not going to happen immediately — automakers and tech companies are still testing prototypes. But, in a shift, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles said in a revision of draft regulations released late Friday that the most advanced self-driving cars would no longer be required to have a li..

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Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey's Support For Pro-Trump Trolls Angers VR Game Developers .	Britain approves controversial Chinese-financed nuclear-reactor, with a catch .
Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo and Echo Dot arrive in the UK and Germany .	With millions of helpers (and $100M), SETI 'still hasn't found ET'— here's why .