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SpaceX Successfully Completes its First Falcon Heavy Commercial Mission

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SapceX falcon heavy
Image Source: orlandosentinel.com

SpaceX has finally launched its first commercial mission with the Falcon heavy carrying the Arabsat-6A, a high-capacity telecommunications satellite in its payload, on Thursday. The satellite is built by Lockheed Martin, for Saudi Arabian corporation Arabsat. The launch took place from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT, after a delay due to the bad weather.

Falcon is the most powerful rocket in the world. The launch on April 11 was its second flight attempt following a successful test launch in February 2018. After 9 minutes of launching Falcon, the three booster rockets, too, landed back on Earth, safe. The three core rockets will be ready for reuse in a few days. These core engines are capable of generating 5.1 million pounds of thrust together. In the previous launch, two of the three boosters had landed safe, but the third one had crashed into the ocean as ran out of fuel at 300 miles per hour.

Despite the delay due to the wind, the events took place as were planned. The two boosters landed at the LZ-1 and LZ-2, and the third, the core booster, landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone-ship.

After the 34 minutes of the takeoff, the Arabsat-6A payload detached itself from Falcon and went into the orbit making the mission a success.

The satellite launched by Falcon is a communication satellite, which will provide the television, radio, Internet and mobile communications services to the people of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe.

Last year, the SpaceX had 21 successful launches for its customers. This year the company intends to take humans to space and has partnered with Boeing Co. signing a contract with NASA for its Commercial Crew program, to board American astronauts to the International Space Station.

UK Users will Now Get to Spend Their Cryptos with the New Coinbase Visa Debit Card

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In recent years, people have become more inclined towards investing in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, but still most of the times, they are not sure of how to spend their cryptos. But now, Coinbase has announced that it is going to launch a debit card that will allow people to spend their cryptocurrencies on daily expenses.

coinbase visa debit card
Image Source: clark.com

Although Coinbase had support for the Shift card, a similar card that allowed the users to liquidate their cryptos, and use them to withdraw cash at various stores. But almost two months ago, Shift discontinued its services with Coinbase, and now Coinbase itself has come with a more feature-rich debit card for its users.

The company is launching a debit card along with a Coinbase Card app, that will help the users to manage all their cryptocurrencies and choose among those cryptocurrencies as to which one they want to spend. The app will generate instant receipts, notifications on every transaction and will help the user to manage their crypto balance. The card can also be used for ATM withdrawals with a free withdrawal limit of £200 per month, and also does not have any maintenance cost.

The card is a Visa debit card issued by PaySafe and will cost a 2.49% interest on every purchase made through it. Issuing the card alone will charge the user a £4.95 ($6.48). The card will come with a spending limit of £10,000 ($13,092) per day and every reverse transaction will cost the user a £20 ($26.19).

Earlier in 2017, the London Block Exchange was working on a similar Visa card but failed to launch one. Also, many other companies have developed such cards in the past, but to use those cards the users had to pre-load a specified amount on them.

Coinbase will be responsible for every conversion of the crypto into fiat, and the amount will be deducted on the basis of the current rate of the cryptocurrency. With the Coinbase debit card, the users will be able to spend on movie tickets, food and other similar purchases. For now, the company has only announced the debit card for its UK and EU users.

Slack Working with Microsoft to Integrate Office 365 Enterprise Tools to it

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Slack has been working really hard to gain more client base for its workplace messenger, and currently is serving more than 10 million daily active users. For that same matter, despite the rivalry between the two companies, Slack has joined its hands with Microsoft, to bring more enterprise productivity tools to it.

The company is working with Microsoft OneDrive and Outlook to get integrations to it, which it has been doing with other services too. Previously, it integrated the Azure Active Directory to it, and also, bought Astro to its messaging platform.

Slack
Image Source: thetechnews

Now with Microsoft 365, Slack will have integrations like Outlook Calendar Slack app, a new option in Outlook that enables the users to directly send messages to Slack, a new option in Slack for attaching files from Microsoft’s OneDrive storage, and the ability to preview Office files including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, directly in Slack.

“We want to break down walls that might otherwise exist between apps that should work together.” said Andy Pflaum, Slack’s director of product management for interoperability.

The calendar app integration in Slack will help the Outlook users to see and schedule events, directly on Slack without leaving it. Also, the users will get the events notifications and invite to new events, directly on Slack, and the users can respond to those notifications and invites from there only. The calendar will also update the user status depending upon the availability. This integration will also provide reminders to its users to join the WebEx, Skype for Business, or Zoom video calls.

For the Outlook users, the mail integration will allow them to send emails to the Slack Channel, attach files and send direct message alongside adding a note. The platform already has the options to attach files from Google Drive and Dropbox, and now, the users will have the option to get the attachments from Microsoft’s One Drive. The option will reflect under the import files menu in Slack.

Though the two companies are in the same race of competition, and even Microsoft had mentioned Slack’s name in the list of its rivals, in its annual 10-K report, the two companies know how to gain profits even from competitions.

Whatsapp Testing a Standalone App for iPad and Working on a New Feature to Restrict Fake News

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According to a report from WABetaInfo, Whatsapp is testing its latest version for the iPad users. Noticeably, Whatsapp has been the most favourite messaging app for both iPhone and Android users, but it has always lagged behind for its iPad users, who could only use the web version of Whatsapp by connecting it with their iPhones.

Whats App for iPad
Image Source: iphonehacks.com

The company is about to update its Whats App version to v2.19.40, which now may also be available for the iPad as a standalone App. The users now will be able to use Whatsapp directly on their iPads by signing in to the app through their registered phone number. This is great news for the iPad users as now they will have access to their WhatsApp account on a bigger screen, and even by splitting the screen, it will provide better visibility.

Also, amid the elections, the company has also revealed a few new features, among which there is a new option for Android users, where the group admins will be able to stop the frequently forwarded messages such that to help stop the spread of fake news. The feature will only be available for the group admins and will appear on the sub-section of the group settings. It will be enabled by default, and the group admin can disable it from the settings.

Though the company has mentioned that the feature is still in its development phase, this is one of the most desired features for every Whats App user, especially in India.

On one hand, the iPad is about to get its own standalone Whatsapp ‘app’, which will include all the features like chatting, video calls, etc., and all the bug fixes. On the other hand, people will be able to ignore the fake news and stop them from further spreading.

The company has not revealed any launch dates for the both as both are still under the development and testing phase.

Photon by Rocket Lab will Save Millions of Dollars of its Customers on Satellite Manufacturing

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The small satellite launcher Rocket Lab has unveiled ‘Photon’, a circular satellite platform, at the 35th Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs on Monday, which according to the company will help people reach to the orbit faster and save millions of money.

Rocket Lab is one of the private leaders in the launch and satellite services, and now the company is trying to get its hold on the complete satellite manufacturing solutions for its customers.

rocket lab photon
Image Source: climate.nasa.gov

With Photon, the company has brought a fully customizable satellite that can be modified according to the need of the client, and they do not have to build whole satellite hardware for their Low Earth Orbit missions, like technology demonstration or hosted payload. Photon will help create satellites that will be launched to the orbit on Rocket Lab’s upper stage of the Electron rocket.

In general, even if the satellite companies want to test or launch a satellite, or send delicate sensors or cameras to space, they have to create their own hardware spending millions of dollars, but now with Photon, the companies will get new option to cut the cost as well as reduce the risk.

Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, said in a statement, “Launch was the first bit that we needed to solve, but it always seemed crazy to me that the rocket builder did not also build the hardware for a satellite. Photon means satellite companies don’t need to invest millions of dollars in bringing together a team and manufacturing complex space hardware.”

Photon’s design is based on the successfully-flown kick stage, that was used in four out of five Electron launches. Photon has got the GPS support, a flight computer, a 3D-printed Curie engine and more. It has been equipped with propulsion, providing it with the capability of staying in the orbit for five years by adjusting with outer conditions like the altitude. The satellite can weigh up to 374 pounds (170 kilograms).

According to Beck, Photon is a complete satellite solution, that will help the customers to drop the coordination phase between different companies during the manufacturing of satellite, and Rocket Lab will be responsible for most of the work.

Ecobee Secretly Trying its Hands on the Indoor Smart Security Cameras

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The famous smart thermostats manufacturing company Ecobee, reportedly, is enhancing its expertise, and the next product from the company may be a home security camera. According to a few leaked camera pictures, first obtained by ZatzNotFunny, the company has been working on an indoor camera for quite some time now.

ecobee home security camera
Image Source: iclarified.com

Looking at the leaked images, there is a black colour camera which is mounted over a silver colour cone-shaped stand. On the top, it has four lights, that flashes yellow or blue light. Reportedly, the camera from Ecobee might be the next home smart device.

Purportedly, the camera may have support for Amazon’s Alexa or perhaps it will be a standalone Alexa speaker. Noticeably, in 2018, Amazon invested a huge amount of money into Ecobee, that too from the Alexa funds and some of the older Ecobee products, including ecobee4 and Ecobee Switch+, also have got the support for a few Alexa features. So there are higher chances that this device will have some good Alexa features, too.

It is also expected that the camera may act as a sensor for the Ecobee thermostats as well as may include the room temp and humidity capabilities. Also like the other Ecobee products, including the ecobee3 lite and ecobee4 thermostat, may have the support for the HomeKit, depending upon if the new camera is wired or is powered by a battery. Since due to the more power drain, all the devices that support the HomeKit are wired. Many of the security camera manufacturers have already enabled the Homekit for its advanced features.

The company has been providing thermostat products enabled with Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana support. And, by building an indoor camera, the company is trying to grow itself into other fields of home products, too. The company has not commented on the matter, and also, the launch date or the price of the product has not been revealed as yet.