The FCC issued SpaceX a “Special Temporary Authorization” so the company can test “direct-to-cellular communications payloads” to unmodified cell phones, as reported by PCMag.
SpaceX and T-Mobile are planning to launch texting through the “Starlink Direct to Cell” service in 2024, with more functionality coming in 2025.
The experience, called Beat Galaxy, was made in part by Universal Music Group (UMG), and features a runner / music game you can play with music from UMG artists. It’s not nearly as polished as Epic’s newly-launched Fortnite Festival, but if you’ve been looking for something like that in Roblox, Beat Galaxy is in the ballpark.
Here’s how Amazon describes it:
[Optical inter-satellite links] use infrared lasers to send data between spacecraft as they orbit the planet. Instead of being limited to sending data between an individual satellite and antennas on the ground, OISLs allow satellites to send data directly to other satellites in a constellation.
Every Project Kuiper satellite will have “multiple optical terminals” so that they can connect to a bunch of satellites all at once. The first production satellites are scheduled to launch in the first half of 2024.
You can no longer make new live chat posts, existing ones will work until early 2024, Reddit says. You’ll still be able to have live chats on Reddit, just through its Discord-like chat channels — though the chat channels are still in beta and mods have to fill out a form to request access to them for their communities.
I’m seeing Adam Mosseri’s new Threads video when I look at his Threads account via mastodon.social on the web. It even showed up in my regular Mastodon feed! I can’t believe this actually works. Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko is pretty excited, too.
A Threads user, Kevin Beaumont, shared screenshots of Adam Mosseri’s account on the Mastodon client Ivory, and on Mastodon, Beaumont shared screenshots of following Mosseri’s Threads account from his Mastodon account. It’s happening!
If you don’t like GM’s choice to drop Apple and Google’s infotainment systems — a choice that has been in the news lately — Jim Farley would like you to know that Ford is “committed to keeping” them.
