Hasta La Gadget!

Foldable smartphones will be all the rage at the Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona next week. Earlier reports had suggested that perhaps LG might announce one of its own alongside its new flagship smartphones. However, the Korean company has now revealed that it does not have plans to unveil a foldable smartphone at MWC 2019.

Samsung is expected to lead the pack of foldable smartphone announcements this year by unveiling its device on February 20th. Others like Huawei and Xiaomi are set to follow suit at MWC 2019. LG was previously expected to throw its hat in the ring as well.

It was a fair assumption given that the company has brought massive rollable TVs to market, so clearly it has the technological expertise to develop flexible OLED panels. However, it appears that LG feels it’s “too early” to launch a foldable smartphone.

LG Electronics mobile and TV chief Brian Kwon said that “We have reviewed releasing the foldable smartphone when launching 5G smartphone but decided not to produce it.” He added that LG’s focus right now is to regain its position in the smartphone market so given this situation, “it is too early for LG to launch a foldable smartphone.”

He doesn’t rule out the possibility completely but the comments make it seem like LG first wants the foldable smartphone market to mature a bit before deciding to compete in it.

LG Says It Won’t Launch A Foldable Smartphone At MWC 2019

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He isn’t the only member of the Dem Senate caucus who is reluctant about the idea of doing away with the filibuster.

Fallout 4 was the high point for the franchise, and it put some very cool weapons at your disposal. One of the stranger instruments of destruction in the game was the Super Sledge. This was a big sledgehammer with a rocket motor on the back.

The sole purpose of that Super Sledge was to smash the shite out of enemies in the game. This officially-licensed reproduction is a 1:1 version of the weapon from the game. Measuring in at 41″ long, it’s perfect for cosplayers.

Construction is from injection molded plastic. That means no actual super smashing things, or you will break it more likely than the object of your destruction. ThinkGeek will sell you a Super Sledge for $79.99, but the display stand shown is not included.

For the first time later this week, a privately developed moon lander will launch aboard a privately built rocket, organized by a private launch coordinator. It’s an historic moment in space and the Israeli mission stands to make history again if it touches down on the Moon’s surface as planned on April 11.

The Beresheet (“Genesis”) program was originally conceived as an entry into the ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful Google Lunar Xprize in 2010, which challenged people to accomplish a lunar landing, with $30 million in prizes as the incentive. The prize closed last year with no winner but as these Xprize competitions aim to do, it had already spurred great interest and investment in a private moon mission.

SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries worked together on the mission, which will bring cameras, a magnetometer, and a capsule filled with items from the country to, hopefully, a safe rest on the lunar surface.

The Beresheet lander ahead of packaging for launch.

The launch plan as of now (these things do change with weather, technical delays, and so on) is for takeoff at 5:45 Pacific time on Thursday — 8:45 PM in Cape Canaveral — aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. A live stream should be available shortly before, which I’ll add here later or in a new post.

30 minutes after takeoff the payload will detach and make contact with mission control, then begin the process of closing the distance to the Moon, during which time it will circle the Earth six times.

Russia, China, and of course the U.S. are the only ones ever to successfully land on the Moon; China’s Chang’e 4 lander was the first to soft-land (as opposed to impact) the “dark” (though really only far — it’s often light) side and is currently functional.

But although there has been one successful private lunar flyby mission (the Manfred Memorial probe) no one but a major country has ever touched down. If Beresheet is a success it would be both the first Israeli moon mission and the first private mission to do so. It would also be the first lunar landing to be accomplished with a privately built rocket, and the lightest spacecraft on the Moon, and at around $100M in costs, the cheapest as well.

Landing on the Moon is, of course, terribly difficult. Just as geosynchronous orbit is far more difficult than low Earth orbit, a lunar insertion orbit is even harder, a stable such orbit even harder, and accomplishing a controlled landing on target even harder than that. The only thing more difficult would be to take off again and return to Earth, as Apollo 11 did in 1969 and other missions several times after. Kind of amazing when you think about it.

Seattle’s Spaceflight coordinated the launch, and technically Beresheet is the secondary payload; the primary is the Air Force Research Labs’ S5 experimental satellite, which the launch vehicle will take to geosynchronous orbit after the lunar module detaches.

Although Beresheet may very well be the first, it will likely be the first of many: other contenders in the Lunar Xprize, as well as companies funded or partnering with NASA and other space agencies, will soon be making their own attempts at making tracks in the regolith.

Making bullshit copyright claims to get content removed from YouTube remains a tried-and-true way to screw with creators, which is why the company’s plan to overhaul its “three-strikes” policy sounds like the much-needed improvement users have been asking for. But confusingly, YouTube’s new policy update has…

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