There are some really cool projects out there recreating the history of the Apollo missions.

Apollo 13 in Real Time is probably the most extensive, with live playbacks of actual mission control audio channels, as well as video and stills.

On Twitter, @apollo_50th is tweeting the mission as it happened 50 years ago.

First and foremost, I used to work on cruise ships, but I do not think that they should be bailed out.

That said I have a problem with the points raised in the column:

1) Most major cruise companies are headquarterd in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, and they do employ large numbers of US workers. The cruise industry (not just the Crusie Lines, but also supporting organisations) generate more than 330,000 US jobs. They follow US Coastguard and CDC requirements. But their ships operate in international waters, so they are more global businesses rather than solely US companies.

2) A vast number of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in places like Grand Cayman and Ireland for the specific purposes of avoiding tax. Cruise companies are no different from Apple, Amazon and Alphabet in this regard. That said this is the reason I do not believe they should be bailed out. If they will not contribute their actual income tax to the US, they should not be allowed to receive a US Government bailout.

3) For the individual ships they must comply with the flag state the ship is registered under. As I recall NCL did try ships registered under the US flag (they still have one: the Pride of America), but they were required to have 70% US crew and labour costs alone (especially once various unions got involved) made the project prohibitively expensive and restricted the ship to US waters. Other ships use foreign crews: there were around 50 different nationalities on the ships I worked on. International labour is cheaper. While I can't really speak for others, I was paid well. I never experienced horrible conditions, but it is a ship so space is at a premium and cabins can be rather small (especially when you've had a bad day). The ships I worked on had well funded crew welfare organisations to make sure staff were taken care of. Food and medical expenses are all taken care of. I did work long hours on occasion: the ship works 24/7 every single day, so there is always work to do. Also, you can't just pick up the phone and get more people in to help when things go wrong.

4) Cruise ships MUST comply with the environmental laws of the countries whose waters they are sailing in. Suggesting they get to hide behind corporate parents is rubbish.
Cruise ships are mostly fueled by fuel oil, which is a really dirty fuel compared to petrol and diesel. It is really high in sulfur and impurities (although EU requirements that came into effect 1 Jan 2020 force cruise ships to have much lower sulfur content in their fuels). Most modern ships have exhaust scrubbers to specifically remove SOx and NOx gasses from their exhausts. Do they "emit more sulfur dioxide than all of the passenger vehicles in Europe combined..."? While they do emit SOx, even with scrubbers, I highly doubt it is more than all passenger vehicles in the EU combined. The only source I can find for this (the OP citation is behind a paywall) is an 'in house analysis' done by the Transport & Environment NGO. A numerical extrapolation based on old data by an environmental lobby group is not the same as an actual scientific study by a independent and unbiased research organisation.
As for waste, most ships have treatment plants on board. They will hold Graywater (the term for shower and washing water), treat it until it is safe, and then release it once they are in deep water. Blackwater (the term for sewage and heavily contaminated water) is treated and held until the ship is in port when it is transferred to the local treatment plants. The only time Blackwater is released is when they are way out in open ocean (eg transatlantic crossing), and then it is only treated Blackwater that is released not raw sewage. There are trash handling facilities on board, and solid waste is held until it can be offloaded in port and is not dumped overboard.
Yes, cruise ships aren't environmentally friendly but they are not as bad as some make out. Cruise ships represent a tiny portion of the shipping industry, but are the most visible and probably the most regulated.

5) Cruise ships aren't essential, but what kind of tourism is? They do offer a way for many people to get out and travel without a lot of complication. Sure, cruise ships have their issues, but nothing out there is a perfect solution.

Many of the ships I worked on used 11kV for main feeds with a separate transformer substation down on Deck 0 for each vertical zone (these were the vertical firezones of the ship). The 230V (and 110V in pax areas) was all stepped down from this.

A 50Hz motor running at 60Hz, will require a higher voltage to perform the same duty. In this situation this won't happen, so it will draw more current. Core loss will increase, causing overheating of the core, and Power Factor will decrease. As you said, shaft speed will be higher, but this means that shaft load will increase and the motor will be overloaded at its rated load. It may work in the short term, but this is not a viable solution for a ship with thousands of systems, many of them safety critical.

Plugging a cruise ship into shore power isn't an easy thing to do. Ship power systems can differ massively from ship to ship, as there is no internationally standardised cruise ship design. Even sister ships in the same class can have significant differences.

Unfortunetly many older cruise ships simply have not been built to accept shore power, so retrofitting this capability is an expensive undertaking and would only be done for hotel areas and other non-critical systems. In these ships, generators will still be kept running (albeit at reduced load) for all critical systems. In most cases cruise lines will prefer to just not sail these older ships to ports that require shore power, rather than spend the money to retrofit them.

In newer ships, with the capability built in, switching to shore power is not a simple undertaking. Most ships are built in Europe, so the core mains power systems are 230Vac at 50Hz (with 400Vac three phase). Doing voltage and frequency conversion of shore power for several kiloamperes supply is complicated, but then you have to do frequency sychronisation to the ship to do a closed transition transfer switch (to ensure that there is no power outage). Doing an open transition transfer switch (ie. break before make) may be fine for a cargo ship, but it is absolutely not okay for a cruise ship (especially while pasengers are still on board).

Even if they have all the systems in place, transferring to shore power is risky. If things go wrong it can directly affect passenger safety: ventlation, lighting, communications, sewage handling, water systems and so on. Cruise companies will only switch to shore power if they absolutely have to.

(Yes, I have worked on cruise ships.)

Billy Mitchell's own investigator originally published findings to TG that stated that the recordings could not have been made on arcade hardware. He then signed a document retracting those findings and stating that Billy Mitchell 'did not cheat'. That is not the same as saying that the video was recorded on original hardware (ie an arcade machine not MAME). But the case gets even more interesting. This same investigator has since published a video where he effectively cancels his retraction, including the statement that Billy Mitchell 'did not cheat', and stands by his original findings. He states he only signed it as he was hoping to be kept out of the lawsuit, and that he signed it with the understanding the document would be revised before being made public.

Depending where in the world the core cast and crew are from, they will likely be flying anyway. New Zealand has already proven it has capable crew locally, and many of the minor roles and extras can be sourced locally as well (as has also been proven with previous films).

New Zealand has a diverse range of scenery within small area, from mountain ranges, to desert, to sub-tropical, and so on. It has proven it has the locations to mimic Middle Earth, from the Shire to Mordor. While Europe has similar locations, typical filming locations in Europe are much further apart and may even be in different countries (requiring far more administrative costs and more logistical coordination).

However one of the primary reasons for going with New Zealand is Brexit. With competition fast hitting the streaming market, with Disney+ and Apple TV+, Amazon's Producers will be wanting to green-light this ASAP. They cannot risk waiting around to the end of October (or longer) to find out the outcome of Brexit. If Producers commit to the UK, and Brexit goes the wrong way for them, it would force massive delays in filming not to mention massive extra costs that would make flying cast and crew to the other side of the planet tiny by comparison.

If that were the case, then why make it free for new Apple product owners? This very fact makes it clear it is a loss-leader. A loss-leader isn't very hard for shareholders to understand.

Do I expect them to bump pricing once the service becomes popular? Sure... but they have to hook users in first.

Actually, what I see happening before the price starts skyrocketing is restrictions on iOS, macOS and Airplay versions being able to access the best quality content. By degrading quality on older devices (or even preventing playback altogether) they can drive hardware sales. They can use their streaming service to reinforce their planned obsolescence tactics.

With this pricing it is clear Apple is not intending to make a profit on the Apple TV service. Instead it looks like it will be a loss-leader to entice people into the Apple ecosystem. iOS devices are the only mobile devices supported, and it looks the PC users are left in the dark too, with only Macs on the supported device list. Sure they list 'streaming sticks', 'smart TVs' and 'streaming boxes', but these will likely only be devices that have Airplay2 certification (ie. they already paid the Apple Tax).

Apple have more than enough funds in the bank to make this free for Apple users, and they are for new device owners, but they are likely only charging something to keep the antitrust watchdogs off their back. Deliberately pricing this below other offerings on the market is a ploy to make non-Apple owners feel like they are missing out on a 'good deal'. Sure, it may be cheap if you look at the service cost alone, but you have to pay the Apple Tax to join.

Undoubtedly, Apple would have their own chips already running in a lab somewhere. They can make all the chips they want in-house, as long as they are for internal use only in their labs, but the moment they incorporate those chips into a commercial device then they immediately become subject to patents and licensing issues. Even if Apple could somehow claim they have come up with a completely clean room implementation (which is rather impossible given their past technical collaboration with Qualcomm, and now with Intel) there are still standards essential patents that Apple will need to license. Some of these patents are at the heart of one of the many lawsuits between Apple and Qualcomm.

Apple is clearly trying to take advantage of the Federal Court ruling that Qualcomm must license its standards essential patents to competing chipmakers (previously Qualcomm only offered those licenses to smartphone manufacturers). The problem is that that case is likely to be under appeal, and the court didn't rule on how much Qualcomm can charge. It also doesn't force other chipmakers to license their patents. Of course, given the timing of this 'leak' this could be a ruse to put pressure on Qualcomm to settle.

This is not the same as Apple and its A-series SoCs. Apple purchased licenses from ARM Holdings to produce their own ARM-based CPUs. There is no one single company Apple can go to to license the technology to produce its own baseband chipsets. Additionally, Apple is in a very public battle with Qualcomm about the very patents and licenses that underpin 3G/4G/5G baseband technology.

The patent licensing aside, one of the other Qualcomm lawsuits involves the violation of NDAs and Apple violating Qualcomm's baseband technology trade secrets. In order to integrate Qualcomm's chipsets into the iPhone, Apple entered into NDAs with Qualcomm for detailed technical information. Qualcomm alleges that Apple shared these secrets with Intel after Apple dumped Qualcomm chipsets. Even if Qualcomm cannot prove that Apple did this, it is going to be impossible for Apple to prove that they somehow did not use this same information to produce their own baseband chipsets. I believe this is a much bigger issue for Apple than the patent licensing issue. Undoubtedly there will be direct non-compete clauses in these NDAs.

Short of actually purchasing Qualcomm, or some other baseband chipset manufacturer, it will be impossible for Apple to show that they have come up with their own cleanroom implementation of baseband chipsets that is unencumbered by some kind of patent or licensing issue or NDA contractual issue.

I find it impossible to believe that Sotheby's didn't know a thing about this. Any real art curator would have noticed something odd with the frame immediately. I also do not believe that the thing sat there for months/weeks standing by to be triggered (especially cellular trigger) and maintained enough charge to shred anything. This would mean the art curator would have to have been complicit in this too. This would be career ending for an art curator, so it is far more likely that Sotheby's knew about this the whole time.

I expect that the buyers will sue Sotheby's pretty quickly after this. Even if the remains are now worth double, the work that was sold has been irreparably damaged/destroyed. It can easily be shown that Sotheby's knew or should have known about this. If the buyers don't sue, either Sotheby's buried a clause in their buyer Terms & Conditions, or the buyer was in on this too.

Either way, this is an elaborate stunt that reveals Banksy as a sellout...

Indeed it does have a specific legal meaning. You have a point that, by definition, "fair use" is an unauthorized use. But not all unauthorized uses fall under the "fair use" defense. This is why there is even a four step test that judges use to determine if something is fair use:
The purpose and character of use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion taken; and the effect of the use upon the potential market.

The kid made the video to show off the unauthorized cheat mods, and show other how to use the cheat mods. The video was specifically of the game (a game he used in breach of EULA and TOS, and a game did not have permission to play, according to his mother). The content solely of the game, and was not incidental to something else (as in the Lenz vs Universal case). The effects of the kid's cheating, as well as showing other how to cheat, negatively impact other players gameplay (even though the game itself was free, causing players to leave is a negative impact).

Considering this, it is pretty hard to spin this in a way it could be fair use. For a start, to any judge, it would fail the first test.

They did do research, but that can only tell them so much. This is why they use the statement 'upon information and belief' when identifying the other party (take a look at the actual filing). They have since revised their claim to state that they will only be referring to the kid by his initials. This is legal. Interestingly, they also point out that the mother has provided far more identifying information in her letter to the Judge that was outlined in the original legal filing.

Violating the EULA and TOS means that he had no right to capture the game footage that he did. This is the whole point. This is exactly what Epic Games are now going to argue in court. His only defense to the copyright claims in this instance is Fair Use.

There are four things judges look at to see if it is Fair Use:
1) The purpose and character of the use. The kid was capturing the video to show off the cheat mods, and to show others how to cheat at the game as well.
2) The nature of the copyrighted work. The kid was capturing gameplay footage a Copyrighted game (of which the Copyright extends to imagery and soundtrack).
3) The amount and substantiality of the portion taken. The footage was solely of the game, and showing off his unauthorized mods to it.
4) The effect of the use upon the potential market. Even though the game was free, the unauthorized cheat mods had significant impacts on other players (causing many to leave the game).

The use of the DMCA to take down cheating howto videos is a novel concept that has yet to be tested. However, the only way to demonstrate that his actions do violate the DMCA is in Court. There is no other way. This does not automatically make it abuse. Abuse would be if a court found that concept invalid and Epic Games kept using it for DMCA takedowns anyway.

The only other reason that people seem to be claiming this as abuse is that the kid is 14 years old, but Epic Games had no way of knowing his age when filing the suit. When the kid filed the DMCA counter-notice with Youtube, Epic Games had 10 days to file a suit or drop the claims. It is highly likely if they knew he was 14 years old at that time, they would just have dropped the claim instead of risk bad publicity, but it is too late now.

As I stated in my previous post, I don't believe there is a Fair Use defense here at all. Even though the kid is a minor, there is an argument to be made that he (and/or his mother) has some kind of legal liability. I don't think Epic Games are out to crush the financial future of a 14 year old kid. That would be immoral, now they know his age. But they are making a point that they are serious about dealing with cheaters.

What I do think is going to happen here is a settlement, just like Epic Games just reached with another cheater. I guess it depends if the kid's mother is going to try and fight this.