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New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business. It launched and now operates a handful of electric vehicle charging stations across the five boroughs. And it started an all-Tesla, all-employee ride-hail service, in part so its charging infrastructure would see guaranteed utilization.  After dropping the moped sharing business in 2023, Revel is pivoting once again to abandon one of the main things that made its ride-hail service unique: The startup is laying off its over 1,000 drivers and embracing a gig worker model similar to that of rivals Lyft and Uber. The move comes after Revel successfully piloted the model in late February with 100 Revel drivers, and has since brought on 100 more. “The reason we ran this pilot in the first place was just increasing feedback from our driver pool, as well as in our recruitment efforts,” Haley Ru...

The moves have rattled fans. Hardcore Xbox customers are upset that exclusives are available on rival consoles, with many wondering why they should continue to invest in the Xbox ecosystem when Microsoft is shutting down studios and its games are appearing on rival platforms anyway. Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase is a chance for Microsoft to try and get fans excited about the future again. I’m expecting two big game reveals, a lot of release dates, and some surprises along the way. At the heart of all the turmoil leading up to this Xbox showcase are strategy shifts for both hardware and first-party games. Microsoft has promised a big technical leap for its next-gen Xbox, and the company is rumored to be working on an Xbox handheld. But there’s an ongoing project to bring more games to rival consoles like the PS5 and Nintendo Switch that could undermine both hardware efforts. The plan that’s proven so controversial with hardcore Xbox fans is known internally as “Project Latitude,” sources...

U.S. astronauts Barry «Butch» Wilmore and Sunita «Suni» Williams left Earth on Wednesday in a new Boeing spaceship, after a string of delays and engineering problems that spanned a decade.  Following two scuttled launch attempts over the past month, the third try appeared to be the charm with a seamless countdown. Starliner ‘s first crewed test flight blasted off at 10:52 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is the sixth time in history NASA astronauts had launched on a new spacecraft. The United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket hoisted the capsule into the sky, blowing out enormous plumes behind it. NASA confirmed the ship, named Calypso by Williams, reached space minutes later.  «Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,» Wilmore said right before liftoff. «Let’s put some fire in this rocket, let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americ...

Twitch has come up with a solution for the ongoing copyright issues that DJs encounter on the platform. The company announced Thursday a new program that enables DJs to stream millions of tracks in a new DJ Category, giving them more clarity on which songs are safe to use in their streams.  The only catch is DJs have to cough up a portion of their earnings. This move is part of a larger initiative to avoid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices. These notices have been a consistent problem for the many DJ streamers on Twitch who incorporate prerecorded music from artists into their own mixes. According to the company, the number of DJs streaming on the platform more than quadrupled, with 15,000 of them monetizing off streams. In May 2020, creators began receiving thousands of weekly music-related DMCA notifications from record labels. Participating DJs in the program must contribute a percentage of their earnings from streams to cover some of the music rights costs. T...

Texting with emergency services is about to get an upgrade. Starting this winter, Google Messages will support texting 911 through RCS. Using SMS to contact 911 is available at just over half of all emergency dispatch centers in the US, but in those areas, people using RCS will benefit from a handful of new features like location sharing and read receipts. The timing of the announcement — just days before Apple is expected to announce RCS support in iOS 18 — is probably no coincidence, either. Google is working with a company called RapidSOS, which can already relay certain medical information to emergency responders for both iPhone and Android users. Once enabled by an emergency dispatch center, people texting that center via Google Messages will see the usual indicators that they’re messaging over RCS. They’ll also see read receipts and typing indicators when the dispatcher is responding. RCS will also support higher-quality image and video sharing with first responders and will allo...

SAVE $70: As of June 5, get the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (Intel Core 5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) for $579. That’s a discount of 16%. Google’s newly-released Chromebook Plus line comes with new and improved specs and additional AI features for souped-up takes on the company’s classic computers. Just announced last week, the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE is essentially the same as one of our favorite gaming laptops, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, but with a newer processor and a few other tweaks that make it worth picking up as an update. Plus, you can get it on sale for the first time right now. As of June 5, you can get the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (Intel Core 5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) for $579. That’s $70 off its normal price of $649, and a 16% discount. This is the first time the newly-released computer has seen any sort of sale price, so it’s a big deal if you want to buy a new Chromebook. SEE ALSO: The best laptop deals for June 2024, including two Apple MacBo...