Bob's Byes - 12 August

This was supposed to be a "Triple-Play" of my usual News and Comment, Sunil Agrawal's VR Balance study of Seniors and Ian Bass' Photoshopping Astrophotography.  But Ian didn't have the Zoom link and didn't realize that we use the same one every week which was my fault.  So we coped.

Topics:

• SpaceX took the NASA "Europe Clipper" launch contract away from Boeing, saving the US taxpayers up to $1.5B.
• Meanwhile Boeing failed to launch the NASA-required do over of the Starliner demo mission.  (this is the competitor to the SpaceX Dragon.)  And now they may lose their launch window entirely.
• SpaceX assembled the largest rocket ever, 400' tall, the Saturn 5 was 360'.  It is not quite ready to fly, but we should see it do so in a month or two.
• Netflix is doing a documentary on the "Inspiration4" all-civilian private orbital mission lasting 3-days.  In five parts leading to the 15 September launch.
• Talked about the DarkSide and REvil Ransomware attacks and Ransomware as a Service (RaaS.)  Unfortunately, that is a thing.  And they say, “We believe in our motherland, we love our families, and we earn money for our children."  Like listening to a Mafia Don, it's not personal it's just business.
  
• I explain Bitcoin in one slide: "It's numbers in a Ledger - just like your bank account."
• The PrintNightmare Windows problem is easy to understand; it's "vulnerable by design."  And that's a Microsoft quote.  By the news today, it's still not fixed.
• Prof Sunil Agrawal talked on his project, "Age-related differences in gait adaptations during overground walking with and without visual perturbations using a virtual reality headset."  Check your club email for details - all are invited to try this out!
• Finally, we talked on the details of my monthly computer maintenance tasks: PatchMyPC, Windows Update, Ccleaner, Disk Cleanup and Window Defrag.  Check out the slides, you didn't see these in the presentation.