Starlink’s got company — and orbital overcrowding is a disaster waiting to happen

On the evening of April 28th, Amazon embarked on its latest venture to rival SpaceX Starlink: the first launch of its Project Kuiper satellites. With 27 satellites now in orbit around the Earth, Amazon joins a growing number of companies working to put more than 1,000 satellites each into space to create a mega constellation. With all of these objects in orbit, the dangers of overcrowding are increasing, and if any of these objects were to collide, the results could be disastrous.

Aside from Amazon and SpaceX, UK-based OneWeb, which merged with French satellite operator Eutelsat in 2023, has its own constellation, and there are several planned by Chinese companies, too. There is the Chinese government-backed Guowang mega constellation, which began its launches last year but remains veiled in secrecy, as well as the commercial Qianfan or Thousand Sails project, which began launches in 2023 and plans to place a total of up to 15,000 satellites in orbit.

A recent report from the European Space Agency (ESA) found that over 2,500 objects were launched into low-Earth orbit in 2024, more than five times the number of objects launched in any year prior to 2020. The major chunk of these …

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Pandora Stories lets artists add commentary to their own playlists

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The FIDO Alliance hammered another nail into the passwords coffin with the announcement that devices running Android 7.0 or higher will be compatible with FIDO2. Certification of Android 7.0+ means devices running those versions of Google's mobile operating system will support FIDO2 out of the box or through a software update. FIDO2, introduced last year, provides a FIDO Web authentication standard that combines the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Authentication specification with FIDO's Client-to-Authenticator protocol. from TechNewsWorld https://ift.tt/2GQVG4f

Nintendo Switch Online reaches more than 100 retro games

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo has hit a milestone with the ever-growing library of retro games included in its Nintendo Switch Online service. The next batch will take the number of available games past 100, with five new titles resulting in a total of 104. In keeping with recent form , the latest additions are, well, not necessarily blockbuster releases. Here’s the list: Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac , a prehistoric action game released in arcades and ported to the SNES by Data East in 1991 Magical Drop 2 , a 1996 Data East puzzle game for the SNES that was originally on the Neo Geo but never previously got a Western release Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 , a SNES baseball game released by Culture Brain in 1991 Spanky’s Quest , a 1991 SNES action game by Natsume... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3eXBE7D

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