### Issue 2162 - Wednesday 28th August, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Zuck regrets complying with White House demands to remove some COVID related posts off Facebook
- Polaris Dawn is another private space mission from Jared Isaacman
- Snapchat gets iPad app & Instagram adds text to photos
- Middle Things APC-R Mini turns a DJI gimbal into a PTZ camera
- Cheap Denon turntable, Apple Magsafe 2 power supply, UniFI UDM Pro

## The News

### Zuck regrets complying with White House demands to remove some COVID related posts off Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to a US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that in 2021 "senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree". He went on to say "I regret that we were not more outspoken about it" and that Meta is "ready to push back if something like this happens again". The full letter is available here.

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### Polaris Dawn is another private space mission from Jared Isaacman

Remember Inspiration4? That time a rich bloke called Jared Isaacman went into space and orbited Earth without any "real" astronauts onboard? He's at it again with Polaris Dawn. The crew onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will "be propelled into a highly elliptical orbit that will take them up to 1,400 kilometers (870 mi) away from Earth, the farthest anyone has been since NASA's Apollo program". They'll also attempt the first ever commercial spacewalk, test laser interlink communications via Starlink and will try use environmental radiation to take an x-ray during their 5 day mission. Polaris Dawn was supposed to launch yesterday but was scrubbed, so they're trying again later today.

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### Snapchat gets iPad app & Instagram adds text to photos

Tweens around the world rejoice - Snapchat has a native iPad app now, which means "Snapchat will fill an iPad's full screen, providing you with a larger canvas when capturing Snaps and allowing you to see more friends on the 2nd and 4th tabs". Also in social media app news, Instagram added some fresh features: "new fonts, text animations and effects in reels and stories", "the ability to add text and stickers to photos and carousels", and "increasing carousel limit to be up to 20 photos and videos in a single post". It's an extremely slow news day.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Middle Things APC-R Mini turns a DJI gimbal into a PTZ camera

This is deep in video engineering nerd territory, but Middle Things has released the APC-R Mini - a way to turn any camera into a PTZ camera using a DJI gimbal. It's a box that plugs into the USB port on some DJI gimbals so you can slap any camera you like on it and control it like you would any other PTZ camera. If you pair it with a Blackmagic Camera, you can also get camera controls going remotely. DJI's Active Track feature is the best in the business too. Makes for an amazing bang for buck combo that costs less than a shitty PTZ camera but has the performance of one that's 10x the price.

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## Bargains

- Denon DP-29FA Fully-Automatic Turntable - $191 from Amazon
- Apple 60W Magsafe 2 Power Adapter - $79 + $9.90 delivery from Macfixit
- UniFi Dream Machine Pro - $664.19 from Wireless1's eBay store

## Image Of The Day

A manhole cover designed to look like a Nikon lens cap at their new Tokyo HQ (Digital Photography Review / tomyan112)

## The End

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