Month: August 2020

Enlarge / Facebook wanted the event purchase screen on iOS to look like the screenshot on the left. But Facebook says Apple nixed the idea. (credit: Facebook)

Apple nixed a message in the Facebook app for iOS warning users that Apple would take 30 percent of event payments, Facebook says.

Facebook announced a new feature for paid online events earlier this month. It allows small businesses to host virtual cooking classes, workout sessions, happy hours, and other events and charge people to participate.

In its announcement, Facebook said it was not taking a cut of customers' payments. That means that on Android, "small businesses will keep 100% of the revenue they generate," Facebook says. But the story was different on iOS thanks to Apple's 30-percent cut of in-app purchases.

Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket core stage is shown installed on the top-left side of the B-2 Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. (credit: NASA)

In a fairly anodyne update on NASA's "Artemis" blog published Wednesday, the space agency's new chief of human spaceflight laid out progress made on key hardware programs.

"Already within my short time on the job, NASA is checking-off key milestones and marching swiftly toward Artemis I," wrote Kathy Lueders, who moved into the job after leading the Commercial Crew program. "That mission, the first uncrewed flight test of our powerful Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, is just a little more than a year away from launch."

Lueders next discussed preparations for a "Green Run" test of the SLS rocket's core stage this fall, possibly by the end of October. This test will take place at Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, during which engineers for NASA and the core state contractor, Boeing, will ignite the clamped-down rocket's four main engines and fire them for eight minutes to simulate a launch and ascent into space.

Enlarge / Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reprise their iconic roles in Bill and Ted Face the Music. (credit: Orion Pictures)

Time travel becomes a family affair in Bill and Ted Face the Music, the long-awaited third film in the popular Bill and Ted comedy franchise. Fans won't be disappointed: the film is most excellent, capturing that same breezy, chaotic, let's-just-have-fun-with-this madcap magic of its predecessors. That's due to a winning script by co-creators Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson and the skillful direction of Dean Parisot of Galaxy Quest fame.

“We were trying to pay some homage to the original two [films] while making it feel like it was contemporary," Parisot told Ars about how he approached bringing the Bill and Ted franchise into the 21st century. "The sense of humor might be a little drier and more absurd, but that’s about it.”

(Some spoilers below.)