Month: April 2020

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on December 14, 2017 in Washington, DC, the day of the FCC's vote to repeal net neutrality rules. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong )

The Federal Communications Commission is in another dispute with the fire department that fought for net neutrality rules after being throttled by Verizon during a wildfire response.

The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, along with the cities of Los Angeles and New York, last week asked the FCC to extend a deadline for filing comments on the last remaining piece of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal. Pai had to seek another round of public comments on the net neutrality repeal and related deregulation of the broadband industry because federal judges who upheld the overall repeal ruled that Pai "failed to examine the implications of its decisions for public safety."

The fire department and cities said they couldn't meet the FCC's comments deadline because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the FCC refused to grant more time for filing comments in an order issued yesterday, resulting in condemnation from the Santa Clara County Fire Department, Democrats, and consumer advocates.

Enlarge / This first-stage booster previously landed three times. Can it make four on Wednesday's launch attempt? (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has targeted Wednesday afternoon for the next launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from a pad at Kennedy Space Center. This mission will launch the sixth batch of operational Starlink satellites, bringing the company closer to offering initial broadband Internet access to North America.

However, the Starlink-6 launch—set for 3:37pm ET (19:37 UTC)—is notable for reasons beyond the simple extension of the company's Starlink network.

Can they land it?

SpaceX has gotten pretty darn good at landing first stages back on Earth, as they have now done it 50 times. However, the company failed to successfully land the first stage on an autonomous drone ship the last two times it attempted to do so.

Enlarge / The iPhone 11. (credit: Samuel Axon)

The App Store, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and iCloud are now available in the following countries and regions:

• Africa: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Libya, Morocco, Rwanda, and Zambia
• Asia-Pacific: Maldives and Myanmar
• Europe: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia
• Middle East: Afghanistan (excluding Apple Music) and Iraq
• Oceania: Nauru (excluding Apple Music), Tonga, and Vanuatu

Apple Music is also expanding to the following countries and regions:

• Africa: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Chad, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Tunisia
• Asia-Pacific: Bhutan
• Europe: Croatia, Iceland, and North Macedonia
• Latin America and the Caribbean: the Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Turks and Caicos, and Uruguay
• Middle East: Kuwait, Qatar, and Yemen
• Oceania: Solomon Islands

You guys have been very vocal in your feedback (thanks to everyone who's taken the time to e-mail!), and we've heard you: you want more War Stories extended interviews, and we're gonna give them to you. So we're happy to present our extended multi-hour chat with Relic's (and now Blackbird Interactive's) Rob Cunningham, co-designer of Homeworld, the great granddaddy of space-based RTS games.

Even if you're not a huge Homeworld fan, Rob's interview contains some wonderful hidden gems—there are lessons here for contemporary game designers, but also for historical observers interested in how game design worked in the late 1990s. Like so many genre-defining titles, it's a game that nearly didn't happen because it was almost too hard to create; the challenge of 3D navigation almost sunk the entire project.

We have several more of these extended interviews in various stages of production—including the long version of our chat with Dead Space's Glen Schofield and Star Control creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche. Stay tuned!