IntellectBeat

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on a NASA cargo run to the International Space Station on Friday, and its reusable main-stage booster landed on an ocean platform minutes later in a dramatic spaceflight first. The successful autonomous touchdown of the booster at sea marked another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies in the quest to develop a cheap, reusable rocket, expanding his edge in the burgeoning commercial space launch industry. The liftoff at 4:43 p.m. EDT (2043 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Station also marked the resumption of resupply flights by SpaceX for NASA following a launch accident in June 2015 that destroyed an earlier cargo payload for the space station. About 2-1/2 minutes after Friday's launch, the main part of the 23-story tall, two-stage SpaceX rocket separated, turned around and headed towards a landing platform floating in the Atlantic about 185 miles (300 km) northeast...

Microblogging platform Twitter has acquired employee and manager feedback startup Peer founded by former Salesforce chief operating officer George Hu, a media report said. Peer appears to have already shut down following the deal -- the company's site no longer promotes or describes its service, VentureBeat reported on Saturday, adding the announcement was made by Peer on Friday. Peer sought to reinvent performance reviews and create an environment where employees could monitor their performance continuously -- similar to how Uber drivers keep tabs on their rating from ride to ride.

A US magistrate judge in Boston ordered Apple Inc to assist law enforcement officers in examining the iPhone of an alleged gang member, according to a Feb. 1 court filing unsealed on Friday that is no longer binding. "Reasonable technical assistance consists of, to the extent possible, extracting data from the device, copying the data from the device onto an external hard drive or other storage medium and returning the aforementioned storage medium to law enforcement," US Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler wrote before a similar case in San Bernardino drew worldwide attention to law enforcement efforts to get around iPhone encryption. As in the San Bernardino case, where the US Justice Department sought access to a phone used by a gunman who fatally shot 14 people in December, Apple objected to the Boston order, an employee briefed on the matter said. The FBI has since said it has figured out a secret method for unlocking the model of iPhone in California. The Justice Depar...

Yahoo has given prospective buyers an added week to make preliminary bids for the company's core assets, tech news website Re/Code reported on Friday. The struggling Internet pioneer has been briefing prospective buyers, according to US media reports that indicated the list of suitors included telecommunications titan Verizon, Google-parent Alphabet, and Time. The deadline for initial offers was reportedly extended from Monday to April 18, a day before California-based Yahoo releases earnings figures for the first three months of this year. Re/Code attributed the information to unnamed sources close to the situation and "blabby bankers they talk to." Yahoo declined to comment on the report. In letters to potential suitors, the troubled Internet company asked them what assets they were interested in, how they would finance such acquisitions and what terms would have to be met on their end, the Wall Street Journal reported last month, quoting people familiar with the ...