Kalakshar US

After 378 days inside a mock Mars habitat, the four volunteers for NASA’s yearlong simulation of a stay on the red planet are coming home. The crew — Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones — is scheduled to exit the 3D-printed habitat in Houston this evening. You can watch the livestream of their return on NASA TV (below) starting at 5PM ET.

This marks the end of NASA’s first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission. There are plans already for two more one-year missions, one of which NASA recently accepted applications for. 

The Mission 1 crew entered the 1700-square-foot habitat at the Johnson Space Center on June 25 of last year and has spent the months since conducting simulated Marswalks, growing vegetables and performing other tasks designed to support life and work in that environment, like habitat maintenance. No exact dates for the second CHAPEA mission have been set yet, but it’s expected to begin in spring 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/volunteers-who-lived-in-nasas-mars-simulation-for-over-a-year-will-finally-emerge-today-192522497.html?src=rss 

It pains me to say this, but it’s been 20 years since David Firth’s Salad Fingers made its debut and irrevocably altered the humor of the internet. The first episode of the web series hit Newgrounds on July 1, 2004. To mark this milestone birthday, Firth dropped a 20th anniversary special earlier this week that sees the titular Salad Fingers taking a walk down memory lane, bringing us all the way back to those early moments that seared the phrase “I like rusty spoons” into the collective consciousness of an entire generation of internet users.

Things won’t be exactly as you remember them, though. This is how it all went down according to Salad Fingers and, well, are we really expecting Salad Fingers to be a reliable narrator? The 7-minute video expands the lore a bit and revisits characters like the shrieking “young child” (who has some clarifications to make regarding their identity) and the disturbing finger puppet friends Hubert Cumberdale, Marjory Stewart-Baxter and Jeremy Fisher. If you’ve followed the series over the years and made it all the way to 2023’s “Harvest,” you’ll also recognize the absolutely horrifying Melvin Wishcake, who Salad Fingers refers to this time as “Manky Melvin, the stinky reject.”

I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for this deranged cartoon, as I’m sure many of you do, and this was a real treat. I might just have to dive back in and rewatch the whole series now, which is up to 13 episodes not counting this latest special. Thanks for the (cursed) memories, Salad Gregory Stuart Fingers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/salad-fingers-turned-20-this-week-and-theres-a-new-episode-out-to-commemorate-it-163230203.html?src=rss 

Epic says that Apple has once again rejected its submission for a third-party app store, according to a series of posts on X. The company says that Apple rejected the latest submission over the design and position of the “install” button on the app store, claiming that it too closely resembles Apple’s own “get” button. Apple also allegedly said that Epic’s “in-app purchases” label is too similar to its own label, used for the same reason. 

The maker of Fortnite suggests that this is just another salvo in the long-running dispute between the two companies. Epic says that it’s using the same “install” and “in-app purchases” naming conventions found “across popular app stores on multiple platforms.” As for the design language, the company states that it’s “following standard conventions for buttons in iOS apps” and that they’re “just trying to build a store that mobile users can easily understand.”

Epic has called the rejection “arbitrary, obstructive and in violation of the DMA.” To that end, it has shared concerns with the European Commission in charge of tracking potential Digital Markets Act (DMA) violations. The company still says it’s ready to launch both the Epic Games Store and Fortnite on iOS in the EU in “the next couple of months” so long as Apple doesn’t put up “further roadblocks.”

This is just the latest news from a rivalry that goes back years. The two companies have been sparring ever since Epic started using its own in-app payment option in the iOS version of Fortnite, keeping Apple away from its 30 percent cut.

This led to a lengthy legal battle in the US about Apple’s walled-garden approach to its app store. Epic sued Apple and Apple banned Epic. A judge issued a permanent injunction as a way to allow developers to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut of sales. This didn’t satisfy anyone. Apple wasn’t happy, for obvious reasons, and Epic contested the language of the injunction, which didn’t call out Apple for having a monopoly. Both companies appealed, eventually making its way to the Supreme Court. The court decided not to hear the case. The justices must have had other things to do.

As the two companies continued bickering in the US, the EU passed the aforementioned DMA. This forced Apple’s hand into allowing third-party storefronts on iOS devices in Europe. Since then, Epic has been trying to get its storefront going but has been met by resistance from Apple. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/epic-says-that-apple-rejected-its-third-party-app-store-for-the-second-time-183914413.html?src=rss