SpaceX has begun launching Starlink satellites with laser links that will help provide broadband coverage in polar regions. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday, these satellites "have laser links between the satellites, so no ground stations are needed over the poles." From a report: The laser links are included in 10 Starlink satellites just launched into polar orbits. The launch came two weeks after SpaceX received Federal Communications Commission approval to launch the 10 satellites into polar orbits at an altitude of 560km. "All sats launched next year will have laser links," Musk wrote in another tweet yesterday, indicating that the laser systems will become standard on Starlink satellites in 2022. For now, SpaceX is only including laser links on polar satellites. "Only our polar sats have lasers this year & are v0.9," Musk wrote. Alaskan residents will benefit from the polar satellites, SpaceX told the FCC in an application to change the orbit of some of its satellites in April 2020.

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Microsoft has a habit of reigniting the Mac vs. PC conflict for its Surface ads, and this time it's going after Apple's Touch Bar. In a new TV commercial, aired during Sunday night's NFL championship games, Microsoft pits Apple's MacBook Pro against the company's Surface Pro 7. It's a chance for Microsoft to mock Apple's Touch Bar in a TV commercial for the first time. From a report: "Mac gave me this little bar, but why can't they just give me a whole touchscreen?" asks a boy comparing the two laptops. That's something that some MacBook Pro users have been calling for, or just the removal of the Touch Bar altogether. Apple is now reportedly planning a redesign for the MacBook Pro later this year, with the Touch Bar rumored to be replaced by physical function keys. Elsewhere in the ad, Microsoft tries to position the Surface Pro 7 as a gaming device. "It is a much better gaming device," claims the ad, which is an unusual way to frame Microsoft's popular Surface device.

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Google Play's crazy automated app review process strikes again. From a report: This time, the puritan robot overlords that run the Play Store briefly decided that listing support for common subtitle files is enough to get your app banned. The developer for Just (Video) Player wrote in the app's bug tracker, "After a tiny unrelated description update, Just Player got suspended from the Google Play Store for "Sexual Content and Profanity policy". Google finds issues with following: Full description (en_US): "* Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, TTML, VTT."" Yes, just listing standard video player features like support for the "ASS" subtitle format was apparently enough to temporarily earn a suspension. The developer says they "immediately filed an appeal" and today, the app is back up with the ASS subtitle listing still in the description.

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Brian Fagioli, writing at BetaNews: Today, Plex launches a retro video game streaming service that should make playing older titles even easier. Called "Plex Arcade," it currently only offers games licensed from Atari, so we are talking really old-school stuff here, folks (think Centipede and Combat). At $4.99 month ($2.99 for those with Plex Pass) it is rather affordable. Unfortunately, there is one big catch -- Linux users are being left out.

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Google said today that a North Korean government hacking group has targeted members of the cyber-security community engaging in vulnerability research. From a report: The attacks have been spotted by the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG), a Google security team specialized in hunting advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. In a report published earlier today, Google said North Korean hackers used multiple profiles on various social networks, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, Discord, and Keybase, to reach out to security researchers using fake personas. Email was also used in some instances, Google said. "After establishing initial communications, the actors would ask the targeted researcher if they wanted to collaborate on vulnerability research together, and then provide the researcher with a Visual Studio Project," said Adam Weidemann, a security researcher with Google TAG.

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It took 20 years, but the Grateful Dead have acknowledged that their music played a vital role in the bootstrap of podcasting.

The government gives its support to a project to use oral contraceptives to control grey squirrels.

In Apple and Epic's ongoing court battle over App Store fees, one of the key sticking points has been Apple's insistence on maintaining a 30 percent cut as a cornerstone of the storefront. But newly revealed Apple executive emails from the case show that the App Store rules that Apple flouts as essential to the fairness of the app economy were carefully negotiated into existence over time in a way that ensured Apple wasn't "leaving money on the table." From a report: The emails date back to a 2011 discussion, which included Apple software and services leader Eddy Cue, around how Apple would handle subscription video applications on the Apple TV -- an important conversation, given the rise in popularity of streaming services. And while the discussion doesn't offer much insight on Apple's existing 30 percent fee for the App Store, it does reveal how malleable those rules were when it came to maximizing profit. The company examined a variety of options, including a 40 percent one-time cut, a 30 percent one-time cut, a 30 percent ongoing fee, or more individualized deals with services like the NBA and MLB.

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A wide-range of services including Gmail, Google, business collaboration service Slack, Amazon, Twitch, Hulu, and Spotify are suffering outages, several users and readers have reported. The reports started to come in half an hour ago, but the cause of the disruption is yet to be identified. Update: Verizon says there is a fiber cut in Brooklyn. Further reading: Verizon Fios is experiencing outages on the East Coast.

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Twitter acquired the newsletter publishing company Revue for an undisclosed sum, part of an effort to expand its business and give writers who distribute their work on Twitter more features. From a report: Revue's service, which lets people manage newsletter publishing and subscriptions, will continue operating as a "standalone service" within Twitter, the company said Tuesday in a blog announcing the deal. Twitter will eliminate some of the service's fees to encourage more people to create newsletters, and will take a 5% cut on subscription revenue collected through Revue. Part of Revue's appeal to Twitter is that it could help expand the business outside of advertising, which generates more than 85% of Twitter's annual revenue, and give some of the site's more popular users a way to make money from their followers. "You can expect audience-based monetization to be an area that we'll continue to develop new ways to support," Twitter executives wrote in the blog. Twitter has also confirmed that it's considering options for its own subscription service.

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With Mozilla's release of Firefox 85 on Tuesday, Adobe's once ubiquitous Flash technology is really gone for good. The software had been widely used to expand gaming, video and animation on the web, though Adobe stopped supporting it at the end of 2020. Firefox was the last major browser to support Flash. From a report: Apple, whose late boss Steve Jobs helped sink Flash by banning it from iPhones and iPads, ditched Flash with Safari 14 in September 2020. Google Chrome, the most widely used browser, completely excised it on Jan. 19 with version 88. Microsoft's Edge 88 followed suit on Jan. 21. The schedule of removals shows just how hard it is to advance technology foundations as widely used as the web. Browser makers for years wanted to remove Flash, replacing it with more advanced standards built directly into the web. Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" letter in 2010 solidified the opposition, and Adobe started recognizing the software's doom by scrapping the Android version of Flash in 2011. It's taken years of effort to drop Flash completely. Adobe took until 2017 to announce that Flash would be completely unsupported at the end of 2020, and still some are willing to jump through lots of hoops to keep Flash around a little longer.

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YouTube has paid out more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media organizations over the last three years, according to a new letter published by CEO Susan Wojcicki. From a report: In Wojcicki's first letter to creators of 2021, the CEO spent some time addressing YouTube's growth. The number of new channels that joined the company's Partner Program, which allows creators to earn advertising revenue, more than doubled in 2020. YouTube also "contributed approximately $16 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2019, supporting the equivalent of 345,000 full time jobs," according to an Oxford Economics report that Wojcicki highlights. The letter also focuses on the work YouTube's team still has in front of them. Mainly, transparency, especially where content strikes and advertising dollars are concerned. Wojcicki noted that at the "scale we operate, it's hard for creators to keep up with changing Community Guidelines." Wojcicki's letter states that YouTube wants to be better about communicating changes to avoid channel strikes. After three strikes within a 90-day period, a channel is terminated.

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Instead of buying an email newsletter company I wish Twitter would allow long form enclosures that are text, not just images and video. Twitter is a better delivery system potentially than email. Email is what it is, but because Twitter is controlled by one company, it can still move. They have a good API, it performs well, and it covers a lot of the functionality.

PepsiCo, the planetary purveyor of sugary drinks, greasy chips, and (weirdly) oatmeal, hummus, and gazpacho(?) is partnering with Beyond Meat, the publicly traded plant-based protein provider, on a poorly named joint venture to hawk new plant-based food and beverages to consumers. From a report: The PLANeT Partnership (which was clearly branded by the same genius behind the comic sans font), will combine Beyond Meat's skills with protein prestidigitation and PepsiCo's marketing and manufacturing savvy to flood the global market with new snacks and drinks, the two companies said. Neither company disclosed any financial terms and other pesky details around who, what, where, and when, except to say that the the joint venture operations will be managed through the newly created PLANeT Partnership. (If the companies put as much effort into running the business as they did with naming and branding it, Impossible Foods shouldn't have much to worry about... The capitalization and branding of this thing is an affront to the English language is all I'm saying.)

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Today I am in agreement with NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang about the Knicks and Jeremy Lin. He says: "When the Knicks dumped Jeremy Lin that was the last straw for me. This is the franchise that gave Jerome James $30 million. You let the most beloved Knicks figure in years who lit the Garden and City up walk over money? Come on." Amen. Under his note are a mix of comments including the usual that Lin wasn't that good, but who knows. If the Knicks had loved him maybe he would have continued to be an inspiration to the team and to New Yorkers. Instead, the Knicks stuck with Melo, who clearly was jealous of the attention Lin was getting. Lin might have done great if they had kept coach Mike D'Antoni, but they let him go too. Who knows. But nothing was known at the moment the Knicks said goodbye to Linsanity. And for all the Asian-Americans who live in the city, a cause of celebration disappeared. I think I may have loved the whole thing mostly because of the way it made them light up in civic pride. And I couldn't help but feel that the NBA was being a bit racist in their treatment of Lin. My suggestion to the mayoral candidate, Mr Yang, is that he campaign on giving James Dolan the boot. Find a new owner for the Knicks. I also agree with commenters who said you can't decide to leave a team. Once a Knick fan, sadly, always a Knicks fan.