Month: December 2022

Enlarge / Proton Calendar's iOS app aims to offer most of the same niceties as other calendar apps, but with more peace of mind about your data. (credit: Proton)

Proton Calendar, which claims to be the "world's only" calendar using end-to-end encryption and cryptographic verification, has arrived on iOS, giving those seeking a more secure work suite an alternative to Google, Apple, and the like.

Proton Calendar is pitched as offering encryption for all event details, as well as "high-performance elliptic curve cryptography (ECC Curve25519)" to lock it. The web app version of Proton Calendar is open source, with the code for mobile apps to come next, Proton says. Proton also notes that it never finds out who you've invited to an event, and it allows for inviting people outside the Proton ecosystem, letting people "cryptographically verify that it was you who invited them."

Andy Yen, CEO of Proton, said in an interview with Wired in May that calendars are an "extremely sensitive" record of your life and that protecting them is essential. Encryption protects your calendar data from government requests, data leaks, or "a change in business model of your cloud provider."

Enlarge / OneWeb satellites launch on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome earlier in 2022. (credit: OneWeb)

There's one thing that can be definitively said about broadband communications company OneWeb: It's a survivor.

The company has persisted through several different owners, a bankruptcy, having its satellites taken as hostages amid a regional war, and nearly completing a satellite Internet constellation in low-Earth orbit. Now, the London-based company is set to take the next step in its meandering but persistent journey toward success.

As early as Tuesday, December 6, a batch of 40 satellites is due to launch on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. SpaceX, of course, is a competitor in satellite broadband Internet.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto via Getty)

Elon Musk’s Twitter is offering brands generous incentives to advertise on the social media platform, in a bid to boost business after the billionaire’s approach to content moderation prompted many major marketers to curb spending.

In one email sent to advertising agencies, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times, Twitter said that it was launching its “largest advertiser incentive ever” in December, offering additional impressions if brands spent a certain amount.

According to the email, Twitter will match the spending of those who pay at least $500,000 with a cap of $1 million per advertiser. Those spending $350,000 will receive “50 percent value add”—meaning they receive additional impressions worth half of what they spend. A $200,000 investment grants advertisers a “25 percent value add,” or extra impressions worth a quarter of what they spend.

Enlarge / The Terran 1 rocket is shown in Relativity Space's hangar in Florida. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

Welcome to Edition 5.19 of the Rocket Report! Back from the Thanksgiving holiday, there is a lot of news to get to this week, including a report card on the SLS rocket's performance (excellent) and some wild and woolly news from north of the US border. Read on for more.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin Orbit ends security offering. The US-based launch company announced on the evening before Thanksgiving a "cessation" of a securities offering. "Due to current market conditions, the company has elected not to proceed with an offering," Virgin Orbit said in a statement. "Any future capital raising transactions will depend upon future market conditions." Previously, in October, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the company was seeking to raise additional capital after going public as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.