Space agencies and private companies around the world are scheduling their own lunar missions over the next few years, and that can be complicated to coordinate if they all use different time zones. During a meeting at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC technology center in the Netherlands last year, space organizations discussed the “importance and urgency of defining a common lunar reference time.”
In a new announcement, ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said that a “joint international effort is now being launched to achieve this.” There were some challenges: They had to decide whether to keep lunar time on Earth or not because the clocks on the Moon run faster based on the satellite’s position. Each day of the Moon, in Earth terms, is 29.5 days long.
– Matt Smith
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The biggest stories you may have missed
It is now in closed beta.
Jack Dorsey’s new Twitter alternative, Bluesky, is in closed beta on the App Store. The invitation-only app joins the list of Twitter alternatives, including Mastodon, as Twitter struggles through staff attrition and poor stability. Bluesky started in 2019 as a project funded by Twitter. Dorsey, who founded Twitter and was CEO at the start of the initiative, sees it as a more open alternative to a more centralized Twitter. Subsequently, Bluesky returned as its own company in 2021.
You must enter your email address to join the waitlist. The Bluesky app reportedly borrows heavily from Twitter. However, it includes minor variations such as “What’s up?” instead of “What happened?” with a simplified process to create a post (which can also include photos) by selecting a plus button. So… yes. Everyone is great on Twitter.
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Bigger, brighter and better looking.
Engadget
One big company was missing from this year’s CES barrage of TVs: Sony. Now it is ready to display the latest sets of the main tree. The 2023 line of Bravia XR TVs are all powered by the company’s Cognitive Processor XR, so they all include support for things like Sony’s XR Clear Image tech, which allows for adaptive noise reduction, auto HDR tone mapping and many more. Sony also tries to take as much guesswork out of setup as possible by making its TVs in standard video or cinematic mode look great out of the box. Read on for a full round-up of the LED and OLED families.
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The company has reportedly shared its AR/VR roadmap with employees.
Meta shared its latest augmented and virtual reality hardware roadmap with employees, and according to The Verge, it plans to launch the first full-fledged AR glasses in 2027. While the company intends to release other AR glasses before then, the device it launched in four years is just what Mark Zuckerberg believes will be Meta’s “iPhone moment”. The glasses, which will reportedly project avatars as high-quality holograms superimposed on the real world, are expected to be very expensive.
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The company’s policies lean heavily on the homeowners’ side.
Airbnb bans users who may associate with people the company considers a safety risk. Although short-term rental companies face an impossible balancing act of making owners feel safe without unfairly discriminating against renters, the Its appeals process — a critical step in catching overreaches — appears to have erred on the side of perceived homeowner security.
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