Ingenuity, NASA's little helicopter on Mars, successfully flew up and down last night! It's the "first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet". It rose 3 meters from the surface and hovered for 30 seconds, all according to plan. Here's a video of Ingenuity doing its thing. Absolutely amazing. The area in Mars' Jezero Crater that Ingenuity took off and landed in is now officially named "Wright Brothers Field" and was given the ICAO designator JZRO. Also, "underneath Ingenuity's solar panels is a small, postage-stamp-sized piece of muslin from Flyer I". Very nice touch. God speed to all involved for the 5 additional tests they'll carry out over the next 31 days.
Apple has relented and let Parler back on the App Store according to a letter it sent to two US politicians. Apple say in the letter that they "engaged in substantial conversations with Parler in an effort to bring the Parler app into compliance with the guidelines and reinstate it in the App Store", such as "a way for users to report offensive content, offer the ability to block 'abusive users' and list contact information so users can reach the developer". Parler's statement said that "the iPhone version of the Parler app will exclude posts that will otherwise remain available on Parler’s web and Android versions".
A few weeks ago Sony announced they're gonna shut down the online store for the PS3, PSP and PS Vita. This upset many people so Sony apologised in a blog post and will not be shutting down the PS3 or PS Vita stores. The PSP store however will be shut down on July 2nd after 16 years of operation. Unfortunately Sony will shut down the PS3 & Vita stores eventually, leaving over 2,000 digital-only titles effectively abandoned with piracy the only way to preserve them. The same thing will happen to the PS4 one day, then the PS5 and so on. That's a bit shit. All those games lost to time because of some DRM, yet games on carts and CDs are still with us.
Just when you think Bitcoin couldn't get any more intolerable, a group of cashed up wankers purchased a decommissioned coal power plant in upstate New York and turned it into a 106-megawatt natural gas powered plant dedicated to supplying power to a Bitcoin mining farm. The private equity firm responsible, Atlas Holdings, plans to expand this power plant, and buy others, to a total of 500MW just for mining Bitcoin. I like money as much as the next red blooded capitalist, but for fucks sake, have some respect. Once that CO2 is put into the atmosphere there's no going back.
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.