How to watch NASA’s Spacewalk on Tuesday
We normally wouldn’t consider a stream of someone doing manual labour a worthwhile use of your time. But when that stream is from NASA and the manual labour is fitting new solar panel arrays to the ISS, we’re willing to reconsider.
That’s exactly what’s happening on Tuesday, 15 March 2022. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari will be conducting the EVA (ExtraVehicular Activity) as part of an ongoing upgrade to the ISS’s power system. They’re just installing struts and brackets for future solar panels, but again, it’s in space. This won’t be Barron’s first space rodeo. She completed her first untethered free-fall around the planet a few months ago, in December 2021, to replace a failed antenna system. That one lasted six hours and 32 minutes.
If you want to learn more about the EVA, you can tune in to the live-streamed briefing tonight at 20:00 SAST on NASA’s website. Coverage for the EVA starts at 12:30 SAST tomorrow, so if you don’t have plans for lunch you can tune in then. The spacewalk is set to commence at 14:05 SAST.
Source: Digital Trends
RIP YouTube Vanced
If you consider your time valuable at all, you probably feel the same way we do about YouTube ads. This is why it’s a sad time as we say farewell and thank you to Vanced.
Vanced is the latest target of Google-owned YouTube after it took two Discord music bots offline last year. The Groovy and Rythm music bots allowed Discord users to listen to ad-free music in their Discord channels. YouTube obviously didn’t like that because it interfered with its plans. It started testing ad-supported Discord integration within a week or two.
As far as these kinds of apps go, Vanced was one of the best. It offered the ability to block ads without a YouTube Premium subscription as well as greater customisation options over the default YouTube app. The download links are still live but will be taken down in the not-so-distant future. If you’ve already got the app installed it should still work until YouTube renders it obsolete. No one knows when that’ll be.
Source: The Verge
Elden Ring speedrunners go brrrrr
Elden Ring has only been out for about two weeks and one particular speedrunner has already pared their run down to the 30-minute mark. Experienced Dark Souls speedrunner Distortion2 has regularly been improving upon his “Any%” runs. As of the morning of Monday 14 March 2022, he has completed the game five times, each with an improved time.
Of course, those are just the runs they’re posting. Many hours of trial and error are needed for speed runs to find the optimal path. “Any%” refers, in this case, to the lack of requirements for beating the game. He just needs to get the end of the game and have the credits rolling as fast as possible. The latest video has a best time of just under 29 minutes. For games as unforgiving as Dark Souls or Elden Ring, this is a mighty impressive feat.
Source: Kotaku
New COVID-19 lockdowns in China could mean more delays
All the die-hard Apple stans keen on pre-ordering the newly unveiled iPhone SE or the M1 Ultra-toting Mac Studio might end up waiting longer than expected for their products. That’s thanks to a new COVID-19 related lockdown in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. This could force the city’s suppliers and manufacturers to shut down for at least a week.
Apple supplier Foxconn already announced a temporary closure of several manufacturing sites, one of which is responsible for iPhone production. This kind of response isn’t anything new. The country’s zero-COVID approach means that any detection of the virus results in most things grinding to a halt. Mass-testing and hard lockdowns are implemented until infection rates drop. The shipping times for the new Apple products were already being pushed back. This… definitely isn’t helping.
Source: Digital Trends
