Boeing strike ‘hard to predict’ but ‘not a matter of days’: Rep. Adam Smith

TechCrunch Intuitive Machines lands $4.8B NASA contract to build Earth-moon communications infrastructure NASA wants to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, but right now, astronauts have to be in direct line of sight with Earth to phone home. The space agency is looking to change that with its developing Near Space Network, and it's willing to pay potentially huge sums to private companies to help make continuous lunar communications a reality. The Houston-based company is best known for pulling off the first-ever private moon landing in February.

Why United chose SpaceX's Starlink to power its free Wi-Fi Late last week, United Airlines announced that it signed an agreement with Elon Musk's SpaceX to bring its Starlink internet service to its entire fleet and — for the first time — offer free Wi-Fi to all passengers. To dig a bit deeper into why United went with Starlink, what that rollout will look like and what it means for passengers and crew, we talked to United's Chief Customer Officer Linda Jojo. "If I could have done this change earlier, I certainly would have, because we're proud of a lot of things, but we do think that our customers deserve a better Wi-Fi experience than the one they have today," Jojo told me when I asked why the company is changing providers now.

Patreon launches features to automate away creators' administrative workload and help them make more money Patreon is rolling out new automated features for creators to convert free members to paid ones. Last year, Patreon introduced e-commerce features and free memberships, which allow fans to subscribe to a creator's public posts without having to pay for paywalled content. Now that creators have become more accustomed to these tools, Patreon is adding the Autopilot feature, which predicts which free members are most likely to upgrade, then offers them discounts via email.

Cisco's second layoff of 2024 affects thousands of employees U.S. tech giant Cisco has let go of thousands of employees following its second layoff of 2024. The technology and networking company announced in August that it would reduce its headcount by 7%, or around 5,600 employees, following an earlier layoff in February, in which the company let go of about 4,000 employees. As TechCrunch previously reported, Cisco employees said that the company refused to say who was affected by the layoffs until September 16.

UK's privacy watchdog takes credit for rise of 'consent or pay' The U.K.'s data protection watchdog claims a crackdown on websites that don't ask for consent from visitors to track and profile their activity for ad targeting is bearing fruit. On Tuesday local time, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced it's issued a reprimand to Bonne Terre, the company behind Sky Betting and Gaming, for unlawfully processing people's information without their consent. Research has highlighted the myriad harms that data-driven tracking can pose to vulnerable individuals with addiction problems which may explain why the ICO's public reprimand has focused on a company in the gambling sector.