Month: March 2020

• 

  Astra will launch from a spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska. [credit: Astra ]

Time is running out for rocket company Astra to successfully launch its first orbital rocket and claim the first part of a prize offered by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. A three-hour launch window opens today at 3:30pm ET (20:30 UTC) for liftoff of Astra's "One of Three" rocket from a spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska.

Astra, which is based in Alameda, California, has been trying to launch the rocket for several days. On Friday, the company completed a successful wet dress rehearsal and on Saturday morning conducted a Launch Readiness Review with the Federal Aviation Administration. However, due to poor weather conditions, Saturday's launch attempt had to be scrubbed. Conditions were forecast to be worse on Sunday, so the Astra launch team pushed the attempt to Monday.

Weather has improved considerably for Monday's attempt. But certainly some technical issues are still possible. To try to set expectations for the launch attempt, the company says it has a "reasonable" chance to launch Monday, but with a new rocket, with a new launch system, and a new spaceport, there remains "some probability" of an issue that prevents launch today.

Server issues led to two professional players in an EA-sponsored FIFA 2020 qualifying event to settle their match via a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors this weekend.

"I cannot believe it," FIFA pro Shaun "Brandsha56" Galea tweeted. "We literally had to play a rock paper scissors becauce [sic] we couldn’t find each other to invite in an EA LICENSED QUALIFIER. WTF!! I am done."

"All that hardwork [sic] from Phase 1 for absolutely nothing," Galea added in a follow-up tweet (since deleted, archived here). "Phase II comes and I lose a rock paper scissors game to decide my swiss record. What else can I say? My head's completely gone."

Enlarge / Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), on November 12, 2018 in New Delhi, India. (credit: Amal KS | Hindustan Times | Getty Images)

A massive private equity firm has taken on a large stake in Twitter with a clear goal reportedly in mind: kicking company CEO Jack Dorsey to the curb.

Bloomberg late on Friday was the first to report that Elliott Management Corp. acquired a "sizable" amount of Twitter shares in order to push for changes in the firm.

Elliott is known far and wide in the money world as an activist investor firm. Basically, that means it buys large stakes in businesses with the intent of pushing changes through rather than just acquiring shares and sitting on them. (Carl Icahn is likely the best-known activist investor.) Unlike many other firms, Twitter only issues one class of stock, which allows an investment firm like Elliott to more easily build up a significant volume of voting shares. That structure is significantly different from, for example, Facebook, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg retains an enormous amount of voting power, as compared to the specific number of company shares he holds.