Next step in Space Tourism

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned about the race between SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. Last time, Bezos' Blue Origin supposed to be the first civilian company to sent the civilian into space, but last Sunday, Richard Branson stole the show. His Virgin Galactic successfully sent him, and five other crewmates to the edge of the Space and back. Although, the crew experienced the Space for brief moment, Branson called it "an experience of a lifetime".

Branson plans to open the Space for masses next year. The ticket costs around $250k, and Virgin Galactic already sold 600 of them. If you don't have such money, you can try to win 2 tickets with Omaze.

The remaining competitors still plan to launch later this year. Blue Origin on July 20th, and SpaceX, with their Inspiration4 Mission, on September 15th.

Windows in the cloud

Microsoft announced the Windows 365 service, which puts Windows in the cloud. Windows 365 will let users access Windows 10 or Windows 11 from a web browser.

There will be two editions of Windows 365: Business and Enterprise. Both are powered by virtual machines in 12 configurations. Business will be able to choose from a single CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, up to eight CPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.

The service will be available on August 2nd. Unfortunately, the pricing is still unknown.

Steam Deck

Valve announced SteamDeck - a handheld gaming console.  

It will be powered by AMD's quad-core Zen 2 CPU with eight threads and eight compute units. It will have 16GB of RAM and three storage options: 64GB eMMC, 256GB NVMe SSD, and 512GB of high-speed NVME SSD. The storage is also expendable thanks to the high-speed microSD card slot.

On the front there is a 7-inch 1280 x 800 touchscreen for 720p gameplay.

In term of controls, there are two thumbsticks, two small trackpads, ABXY buttons, and a D-pad. The device also has a gyroscope for motion controls.

According to Valve, the device should allow to 7-8 hours of gameplay on a single charge.

Device will be available in December, starting at $399.

Image credits: Virgin Glactic

Another Space Race?

The SpaceX has won the races for launch of the first reusable rocket and first manned mission on privately built rocket. But apparently the space race continues. SpaceX,  Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic try to fly a civilian into space.

At the moment, it looks like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has the high ground. They plan to launch on the July 20th. Bezos will be joined by his brother, as well as Wally Funk - one of the “Mercury 13” veterans. There is one other passenger but we still don't know who that is.

While the Blue Origin is preparing for launch, Richard Branson apparently will try to fly into space before the Bezos. On July 11th, he will be on board of the fourth crew test flight of the Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane.

If they succeed they will be first, so it's either super clever or crazy. But, who knows maybe you need to be a little bit crazy to achieve something.

SpaceX tries to keep away from this scramble, and stick to their original plan. The "Inspiration4" mission will launch  4 civilians to orbit on September 15th.

Although SpaceX might be last in this race, their mission will provide the best Space experience. The mission will last for a couple of days and will be in low Earth's orbit. Where Blue Origin and Virgin's mission are only to the edge of the space, to give passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.

Image credits: Marek Piwnicki

Twitter Blue

Twitter is considering to introduce a subscription service called Blue. It will cost $2.99 per month. The subscription will include an "Undo Tweets", which will give users a short time to undo a tweet. Another feature is called "Collections" and will allow users to organize their favorite tweets.

At the moment, there is no information whether and when Twitter will rollout this service.

Doge to the moon

SpaceX will launch a satellite to the a moon in 2022. The satellite will be named Doge-1 and will be funded by Dogecoin as the company Geometric Energy Corp. bought the flight in meme cryptocurrency. Ellon Musk tweeted that this mission will have many firsts: the first crypto in space, and the first meme in space.

So, it look like Doge will be literally taken to the moon.

Starship has landed

SpaceX successfully landed a Starship prototype for the first time. Well, technically it's not the first one, but it's the first that survive the test. The Starship SN15 did the same test as previous prototypes. It launched itself achieving high altitude, and started free-falling. Then, just above the ground, prototype reoriented itself and softly landed on the landing pad.

This is a huge success for the SpaceX. If everything goes as planned, NASA might use Starships for the first two missions to the Moon by around 2024.

Apple vs Epic Games

This week we had the first round of hearings. Here are the takeaways:

• Apple consider changing the 70/30 split back in 2011. They considered to change it to 75/25 or even 80/20 when the pressure from competitors would be high enough,
• Apple tried to stop Netflix from abandoning in-app purchases,
• Tim Sweeney contacted Tim Cook about opening the AppStore in 2015,
• Epic would have taken a special deal from Apple,
• Epic is losing hundreds of millions on Epic Store,
• Fortnite made $9 billion in two years,
• Epic wanted Fortnite's multiplayer to be free on Xbox.

Image credits: SpaceX

Basecamp's controversy

Earlier this week, the Basecamp CEO posted a blog post announcing big changes inside the company. The new philosophy prohibited, among other things,  the “ No more societal and political discussions” on internal forums.  

After public backlash, CEO offered generous severance packages to any employee who disagreed with the changes.

On Friday,  about a third of 58 Basecamp employees took his offer and accepted buyouts. Later that day, 18 people had confirmed they left the company.  

While the CEOs argued that they were trying to get employees focused on work, the way it was done raises many questions. The most popular theory right now is that CEOs just wanted to easily get rid of employees that might disagree with their specific vision. Well, probably we will never know the truth. But what we know is that this will be difficult time for Basecamp.

Apple accused of antitrust violations

The European Commission issued antitrust charges against Apple over concerns about the company’s App Store practices. The Commission found that Apple has broken EU competition rules with its App Store policies. The Commission sent Apple a list of violated competition rules. Now, Apple has 12 weeks to respond.  

This specific case is only about Apple’s practices for music streaming. If Apple is found guilty, they will have to pay $27 billion fine for this case alone.

The EU is also investigating  other cases of  competition rules violation within App Store, so the total fine might be much bigger.

SpaceX's Crew-1 is back

The SpaceX and NASA finally completed the their first operational crew mission. It all started in November last year, with launch of 4 astronauts into the International Space Station. The crew spent 166 days onboard the station. On the 167th day, the capsule brought astronauts back to the Earth, splashing down in Gulf of Mexico. What's interesting, this was the first night splashdown for NASA since Apollo 8 in 1968.

So far, the Crew Program is a huge success for SpaceX. Both Demo and Crew-1 missions finished without any issues, and the third mission - Crew-2 - has successfully docked to the ISS.