Richard Branson went up into "space" last night on Virgin Galactic spaceplane VSS Unity, jiggled around in zero gravity for 4 minutes then returned to Earth safely. Elon Musk attended the launch, as was the governor of New Mexico (who built a spaceport with the plan it'll be used to shuttle tourists into space) and 60 others who plonked down huge reservations for a ride on future Virgin Galactic joyrides - something that might actually happen in 2022. Blue Origin put out a salty tweet explaining how Branson's "high altitude airplane" is weak and pathetic compared to their extremely phallus rocket. If you donate enough money to "Space for Humanity", you might get to go on a trip to space too.
The White House has given a heads up for the "Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy" coming soon, which specifically calls out tech companies. Biden wants various government agencies to step up and introduce right to repair laws (so Apple can't keep on gouging for repairs and selling un-reparable products), greater scrutiny of tech company mergers that remove competition from the market (so Facebook can't buy the hot new social media startup and snuff it out), rules on surveillance and the accumulation of data (so Amazon can't use information it gets from selling competitor products to improve its own) and much, much more. Executive orders are not exactly laws the departments have to follow, so in this case, the order is essentially the boss telling the underlings what he expects from them.
Reddit is opening an Australian office, joining recently opened Reddit outposts in Canada and the UK. It'll be located in the fancy Barangaroo area of Sydney and its main purpose is to hawk Reddit as an ad platform for local brands, but will also have community staff (aka moderators) here too - I assume so people aren't banned for flinging around the word cunt when used in the proper context. Apparently Australia is the 4th largest "user base" for Reddit and grew 40% the past year. Reddit reckon that Australian users spend about 31 minutes a day on Reddit - more than Instagram, Snap, Twitter and Pinterest. r/Australia is the most popular subreddit, but r/ausfinance and r/asx_bets are 2nd and 3rd. I had no idea Reddit was so popular in Australia.
Can you believe 25 years has passed since your eyes gazed upon the glory that was Quake? It was the first 3D first person shooter, "introducing a fully 3D polygonal universe populated with 3D objects and monsters, giving players six degrees of freedom in an immersive virtual world" and "unlike 1993's Doom, you could look around freely (and even jump) in Quake". It was also one of the first games to "incorporate TCP/IP networking directly into the game itself, allowing people to type in an IP address and connect directly with a friend over the internet for co-op or competitive deathmatch play". A deadset classic of the genre.
📻 Malaguena Salerosa - Chingon
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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.