Daily Archives: August 12, 2023

Virgin Galactic successfully flies tourists to space for first time

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Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, the reusable rocket-powered space plane carrying the company’s first crew of tourists to space, successfully launched and landed on Thursday.

The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11am ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Aboard the spacecraft were six individuals total – the space plane’s commander and former Nasa astronaut CJ Sturckow, the pilot Kelly Latimer, as well as Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor who trained the crew before to the flight.

The spacecraft also carryied three private passengers, including the health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mayers, both of whom are Antiguan.

According to Space.com, Schahaff won her seat aboard the Galactic 02 as part of a fundraising competition by Space for Humanity, a non-profit organization seeking to democratize space travel. Mayers is studying philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in Scotland. Together, Schahaff and Mayers are the first mother-daughter duo to venture to space together.

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Source: Virgin Galactic successfully flies tourists to space for first time | Virgin Galactic | The Guardian

Canon is getting away with printers that won’t scan without ink — but HP might pay

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Were you hoping Canon might be held accountable for its all-in-one printers that mysteriously can’t scan when they’re low on ink, forcing you to buy more? Tough: the lawsuit we told you about last year quietly ended in a private settlement rather than becoming a big class-action.

I just checked, and a judge already dismissed David Leacraft’s lawsuit in November, without Canon ever being forced to show what happens when you try to scan without a full ink cartridge. (Numerous Canon customer support reps wrote that it simply doesn’t work.)

Here’s the good news: HP, an even larger and more shameless manufacturer of printers, is still possibly facing down a class-action suit for the same practice.

As Reuters reports, a judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit by Gary Freund and Wayne McMath that alleges many HP printers won’t scan or fax documents when their ink cartridges report that they’ve run low.

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Interestingly, neither Canon nor HP spent any time trying to argue their printers do scan when they’re low on ink in the lawsuit responses I’ve read. Perhaps they can’t deny it? Epson, meanwhile, has an entire FAQ dedicated to reassuring customers that it hasn’t pulled that trick since 2008. (Don’t worry, Epson has other forms of printer enshittification.)

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Source: Canon is getting away with printers that won’t scan sans ink — but HP might pay