posts

DC Agle, writing on the JPL blog:

NASA has selected five science investigations for refinement during the next year as a first step in choosing one or two missions for flight opportunities as early as 2020. Three of those chosen have ties to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The submitted proposals would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids.

One or two of these will be funded for future missions. I think I’m partial to the VERITAS and NEOCam missions myself.

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I haven’t seen this video before, but it’s pretty interesting:

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This week on Ungeniused:

There’s more to the Newby-McMahon Building in Wichita Falls, Texas than meets the eye.

This is a fun one, despite dozens of people being conned out of a pile of cash.

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Did you know there’s a limit to what iCloud can hold?

Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Bookmarks might have issues keeping changes up to date across your devices if you exceed one or more of the limits listed below.

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This writer is using a PowerBook G4 to blog. I’ve always liked the idea of a “minimal writing machine,” a computer set up for writing and not much else. When I’ve tried similar things in the past, I always end up frustrated that I’m using a computer without all my stuff on it.

In many ways, the iPad has taken over this roll for me. I can write without a lot of on-screen distractions, but the rest of my data is just a few taps away. Still, this experiment is tempting, and I do have many PowerBooks I could choose from.

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This week on Connected: new iPad keyboards, old ways of listening to music and a lot of emoji talk.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Enter offer code WORLD at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
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• Pingdom: Start monitoring your websites and servers today. Use offer CONNECTED for 20% off.

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On this fortnight’s Liftoff:

NASA’s “Journey to Mars” plan is wide-reaching but a little light on details in places. We dive into it and consider what it would mean if Elon Musk beats NASA to the Red Planet.

My thanks to our sponsor:

• MartianCraft: Training crafted just for you.

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Bret Taylor and Kevin Gibbs:

We’re committed to growing and expanding Quip’s productivity platform as part of Salesforce. If you’re a Quip customer, please know that we’ll continue to provide you with the exceptional service and extraordinary products you’ve come to expect from us, and once the transaction closes, we’ll do so as part of the world’s #1 CRM company. If you’re not yet a customer, sign your team up today!

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This is some good stuff:

More than one hundred new and redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users this Fall with iOS 10. This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds beautiful redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options.

Some of these rolled out in iOS 10 Developer Beta 4 earlier today.

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Kagi, long-time payment processor used by many Mac developers has closed:

For the past ten years Kagi has been struggling to recover from financial losses due to a supplier fraud situation. We have reduced the debt but the recovery has failed and forced us to close.

We are sorry we failed you.

Damn.

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I’ve always had a strong sense that places are important. I’m not a particular sentimental person about some things, but my strongest memories are very often associated with specific locations.

I wrote about this five years ago on this very blog, when I trespassed in a hospital due for demolition visited an important part of my family’s history.

(Just a little warning: that post is intense. I couldn’t re-read all of it.)

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Alina Selyukh at NPR:

What happened to all those other big brands that dominated the early Internet experience? Here’s a nerdy remembrance of a few of them. (A TL;DR preview: Yahoo and AOL bought a bunch of them, though many survived far longer than you might think.)

Good times.

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