South Korea has launched its first satellite to the Moon, thanks to SpaceX
This whole Artemis thing seems to be catching on. Even countries without rocket programs are travelling to the moon. South Korea is the latest country to send an object to our planet’s largest satellite. Last week, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter was sent into space on a SpaceX rocket that launched from Florida.
Assuming everything goes to plan, the orbiter, called Danuri, will make it to the moon in about four and a half months. Then it will circle the moon for about eleven months. It’ll collect geological and other ground-based data, as well as test out a communications system. This will, of course, mean blasting out a song by K-pop band BTS to make sure that the Disruption Tolerant Network experiment payload is working correctly.
South Korea isn’t the only country to launch a lunar mission with SpaceX. Israel used a SpaceX Falcon 9 to launch its Beresheet lander. The first attempt… didn’t go as well as they might have hoped. Since Danuri doesn’t have to actually land anywhere, it’ll probably be fine. Probably.
Source: Digital Trends
Fitbit to drop the ability to sync via PC soon
If you’re old enough to remember the first edition Fitbit, we’re glad you’re still with us. One of the features of that device, and a substantial collection of its successors, was the ability to sync the data it collected via a supplied dongle. You might remember that little USB connector turning up in your box. Perhaps you haven’t seen it in a while. Turns out, very few people have.
And even fewer will see it going forward. Fitbit, according to documents from the company, is removing the ability to sync data via its Connect app. Don’t panic if you don’t recall that either. It’s the program that PC and Mac users used to perform certain functions — like syncing and transferring music. That second one’s going away too. The date? 13 October 2022. Instead, users must confine their transfer and synchronisation to either the Android or iOS Fitbit apps. Which work perfectly fine, but that’s not wholly comforting if you’re the sort who resists change. Welcome to the future?
Source: 9to5Google
Recent Capitec outage was the result of database issues
If you bank with Capitec, you probably saw that nothing was working the way it should have last week. For most of last Thursday and Friday, online services were a little bit stuffed. Particularly affected were online banking, USSD services, and Capitec’s app. The bank made efforts to ensure that ATM and point-of-sale functions continued as they were supposed to.
As for the reason behind it, the bank issued a statement after everything was returned to working order.
“For about 40 hours, Capitec paused its digital channels to ensure a sustainable recovery after one of its banking system databases slowed down sporadically. “
“We know we’ve let our clients down and we sincerely apologise. This was an internal infrastructure issue, and we want to assure our clients that their money and data are safe with us, as always. We have never experienced an issue of this magnitude and will continue to do our best to ensure that this does not happen again. We have system upgrades and tests in place to support this,” the bank added.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 beta kicks off in September
It’s getting to that time of year when trigger fingers get a little itchier than usual. There’s yet another Call of Duty on the horizon. But before we get a relaunch (of sorts) of Modern Warfare II, there’s still a beta to get through. Because how else is Activision going to stress-test, quality-assure, and market its game almost entirely free of charge without a bunch of fans diving in for a beta test?
This time around, there are a bunch of tests going. PlayStation 4 and 5 owners who have pre-ordered the game get to play from 16 to 17 September. Then, anyone on the PlayStation platform can play from 18 to 20 September. Crossplay testing for those who pre-ordered runs from 22 to 23 September, for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC players. Finally, an open crossplay beta runs from 24 to 26 September. If you want to get a jump-start on your twitch-fuelled opponents, you’d best jump in on at least one of these dates.
Source: The Verge
