CNET writes:
In just a few decades, we’ve gone from knowing of no planets beyond the solar system to thousands. Here’s how it happened.
The now retired spacecraft, Kepler, has been instrumental in the discovery of over 4,000 planets beyond our solar system. Referenced here: CNET article and NASA video.
We have a deal on a beast of portable battery, the 27,000mAh SuperTank. This device can charge up to four devices at a time with 2 USB-C and 2 USB-A ports—plus one of those USB-C ports can put out 100 watts of power. It’s TSA-compliant and is crush-proof, too. The SuperTank is $134.99 through our deal.
eero, one of our favorite consumer mesh Wi-Fi systems, is available for up-to-50% off Monday and Tuesday as part of Amazon Prime day. Deals include:
All of these deals are only available for Amazon Prime members, and only while supplies last, of course. Go now!
Darren Beyer is a former NASA Space Shuttle engineer at Kennedy Space Center who worked on launching and recovering more than a dozen missions. He also conducted astronaut training and had the honor of working onboard every Space Shuttle orbiter except Challenger. In late 1998, he left NASA to become an author.
The result was the Anghazi series of novels, Casimir Bridge, released in 2016 to rave reviews thanks largely to his commitment to putting the science back in science fiction. The second installment, Pathogen Protocol was released in October, 2018. In this second show with Darren, we continue our previous discussion: Back to the Moon first or off to Mars first? With robot companions? Industrializing the Moon. Plus: Darren’s approach to the third novel in the Anghazi series and an explanation of how his characters achieve interstellar travel.
A Twitter web redesign is rolling out for all users, simplifying navigation, a sidebar, profile switching, and more.
The update is designed to make it easier to move around Twitter. Before, you’d have to click on your Profile icon to access features like Lists, Themes, Settings, and other options. Meanwhile, getting to Moments was available both in this Profile dropdown menu and in the main Twitter navigation at the top of the screen, next to Notifications and Messages.
Over the weekend a Facebook event page to raid Area 51 has had over 400,000 people signing up. This is because of the belief that aliens or alien technology are held there. But the Air Force is prepared.
“[Area 51] is an open training range for the US Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces,” McAndrews said. “The US Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”
John Martellaro and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to talk about Apple’s balance of security and user freedom, and a new iCloud VPN idea.
Although Tim Cook vocally supports privacy laws in the United States, Apple doesn’t actually support many of them.
A number of privacy advocates and U.S. lawmakers — who did not attend the meeting — say Apple has not put enough muscle behind any federal effort to tighten privacy laws. And state lawmakers, who are closest to passing rules to limit data sharing, say Apple is an ally in name only — and in fact has contributed to lobbying efforts that might undermine some new data-protection legislation.
This is something I’ve noticed as well. I think Tim and co should do more to support privacy legislation.
To mark Amazon Prime Day, Recode looked at the origins of the next-day delivery service. It outlined the dramatic effect it had on how people perceived online shopping.
The service, which launched in February of 2005, was a first of its kind: For an upfront payment of $79, customers were rewarded with all-you-can-eat two-day delivery on their orders. At the time, Amazon charged customers $9.48 for two-day delivery, meaning if you placed just nine of these orders in a year, Prime would pay for itself. “[E]ven for people who can afford second-day shipping, this feels sort of like an indulgent luxury,” Bezos said of Prime, on a call with Wall Street analysts when he introduced the service in February 2005. Jeff Bezos’s letters to customers on the Amazon.com homepage announcing the Amazon Prime and Prime Video launches. With it, Amazon single-handedly — and permanently — raised the bar for convenience in online shopping. That, in turn, forever changed the types of products shoppers were willing to buy online.
Michael Grothaus argues that an Apple VPN should be the company’s next privacy service.
The obvious existing bundle this VPN could slip into would be iCloud. Apple could offer an “iCloud VPN” service to all paid iCloud subscribers. And because Apple controls all the hardware and operating systems of the devices it makes, its VPN setup could be dead simple: if you’re signed into iCloud on your device, iCloud VPN is set up, running, and protecting your browsing activity from outsiders without you having to click a single button.
I’m not so sure I want an Apple VPN. Remember, this would mean that Apple could potentially know all of your network traffic unless they had a no logging policy.
