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For the first time ever, two SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters – fresh off of two successful Starlink launches and landings – have met back at Port Canaveral, creating the first rocket ‘traffic jam’ of its kind.

On March 11th, Falcon 9 booster B1058 stuck its sixth launch and landing after supporting SpaceX’s sixth dedicated Starlink launch (Starlink-20) this year. 74 hours later, a separate Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s second East Coast launch pad, successfully sending another batch of 60 Starlink satellites (Starlink-21) on their way to orbit. For its role in the mission, booster B1051 became the first Falcon first stage to launch and land nine times – just one shy of a ten-flight rocket reusability goal SpaceX has been chasing for years.

Now, aside from setting the new standard for Falcon reusability, placing 120 satellites into orbit in three days, and breaking SpaceX’s record for the shortest turnaround between two East Coast launches, the back-to-back Starlink launches have left both Falcon 9 boosters in the right place and right time to cross paths as they prepare for future flights.

As SpaceX began to ramp up its orbital launch cadence – largely thanks to Starlink – throughout 2020, it become clear that the company would eventually start to find new pressure points as it pushed its fleet of reusable rockets and their recovery assets to new limits. In 2021, that intentional exertion of stress across the broader SpaceX launch ‘pipeline’ has become even clearer.

A mere 10 weeks into 2021, SpaceX has already completed eight orbital launches, averaging one mission every nine days or 40 launches per year if extrapolated through the end of 2021. Just two days prior to Falcon 9 booster B1058’s arrival back at Port Canaveral after its successful Starlink-20 launch, Falcon 9 booster B1049 – last tasked with launching Starlink-17 on March 4th – wrapped up its port processing and was transported by road back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) or Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to prepare for its ninth flight.

At that point, it became clear it was just a matter of time before two boosters would simultaneously occupy SpaceX’s Port Canaveral berths. Two days later, record-breaking Falcon 9 booster B1051 arrived back in port and was greeted by booster B1058 – legs retracted, standing vertical, and waiting to be ‘broken over’ (brought horizontal) for transport.

both boosters are also responsible for arguably the two most significant modern milestones in US human spaceflight history, Crew Dragon’s Demo-1 (uncrewed) and Demo-2 (crewed) launch debuts! couldn’t be a better pair for this first 🙂 https://t.co/myrWX5OjNO pic.twitter.com/ctnURdN8G4

— Eric Ralph (@13ericralph31) March 16, 2021

It’s hard to imagine a better or (pardon the buzzword) more synergistic pair of boosters to appear in port together. On their separate launch debuts, Falcon 9 B1051 supported Crew Dragon’s spectacularly flawless uncrewed launch debut, while Falcon 9 B1058 became the first private rocket in history to launch US astronauts 14 months later. Known as Demo-1 and Demo-2, those two missions collectively mark arguably the most significant milestone in the history of modern US spaceflight, ending a decade-long period where the US was unable to launch its own astronauts.

Just a week after the rocket’s 2019 Demo-1 launch debut, Falcon 9 B1051 is SpaceX’s new booster fleet ‘life leader’ (the most-flown rocket) after averaging one launch ever 11 weeks for the last two years. Aside from supporting Cargo Dragon 2’s launch debut last December, Falcon 9 B1058 has flown six times, averaging an even more impressive one launch every eight weeks. Together, the two boosters have aced 15 orbital-class launches roughly 190 metric tons of satellites and Dragon spacecraft into orbit in their two-year career, significantly more than the maximum payload of Saturn V – the largest rocket to successfully launch.

Falcon 9 B1051 could reportedly fly for the tenth time as early as April 2021.

Accessories made by Apple aren’t exactly cheap, but there are several third-party makers that offer great products for more affordable prices. However, there’s also a whole market of counterfeit accessories — and Apple is now doing everything it can to take these products down.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple is aware that there are several vendors using platforms like Facebook and Instagram to sell counterfeit Apple-branded accessories. The most popular are Chinese copies of products like AirPods, Lightning cables, iPhone batteries, and power adapters.

While these accessories may seem attractive to customers as they cost up to 10 times less than those sold by Apple, counterfeit products can put the user at risk. This is what happened recently to Andrea Stroppa, a cybersecurity researcher. Stroppa borrowed an iPhone charger from a friend, but then the unexpected happened: the charger exploded while connected to power. Of course, it was a counterfeit charger.

Stories like the one told by Stroppa are far from uncommon when it comes to accessories purchased online through unknown websites. The report points out that the counterfeit accessories business runs millions of dollars across the US and Europe. While Facebook says that selling counterfeit products on its social networks violates the company’s policies, researchers argue that Facebook fails to ban these sellers.

“Our study aims at exposing Instagram’s difficulties, or unwillingness, to properly address its long-standing counterfeit market and also to highlight the many dangers of such illicit business for Apple and consumers alike,” the researchers said. Facebook is “guilty of failing to adequately invest and protect American businesses and citizens around the world who use its platform.”

A research from Ghost Data Team obtained by Bloomberg monitored 163 sellers of counterfeit Apple accessories on Instagram over the past month. The top-selling product from these sellers were AirPods Pro replicas, followed by MagSafe Chargers. While these products cost $249 and $39 respectively at Apple, a store on Instagram was selling the counterfeit versions for $25 and $5.50.

The Instagram accounts in the study uploaded 50,000 sales posts in the last year, which garnered about 600,000 likes and comments. The report includes bills posted by vendors of the counterfeit merchandise, including one seller who grossed $140,000 in a single day of online sales through his HSBC personal banking account, Ghost Data reports.

Not everyone knows they’re buying a counterfeit product or understands the risks of doing so. An Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company is concerned about the risk these accessories could bring to users. The company confirmed that it has a team dedicated to identifying and taking down these sellers and e-commerce sites around the world that sell counterfeit Apple accessories.

“We have a dedicated team of experts constantly working with law enforcement, merchants, social media companies and e-commerce sites around the world to remove counterfeit products from the market. In the last year we have sought the removal of over 1 million listings for counterfeit and fake Apple products from online marketplaces, including Facebook and Instagram.”

The full report can be found on Bloomberg’s websit, and it’s definitely worth a read.

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Sony has announced that the PlayStation 5 will get DVR functionality in Japan by way of a new app that’ll work with its Nasne tuners. The app will be called Torne (pronounced to-ru-ne) and should be available later this year.

Torne was originally a TV tuner add-on for the PS3 that was released in 2010 and allowed you to save broadcast shows to your console’s hard drive and transfer them to a PSP or PS Vita. It was followed by Nasne, which added its own storage and worked more like a NAS drive, with the recordings available through a mobile app.

Sony stopped selling Nasne in 2019, but last year Japanese peripheral manufacturer Buffalo announced that it’d take over the product and release Buffalo-branded versions, with the first models set to ship this spring. The new Nasne still looks like a PS3, just with a Buffalo logo on it; Buffalo is doubling the internal storage to 2TB, however, and tripling external storage capability to 6TB. It’ll go on sale later this month for 29,800 yen (~$270).

Activision Blizzard Esports today will announce a restructuring that will result in the layoffs of about 50 people, moves that top executive Tony Petitti says are a result of how the group has had to re-invent itself amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In an interview this morning with SBJ/TEO, Petitti didn’t divulge specifics on what roles would be affected. But he noted that the division – which runs the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League — is planning for a future where its business will look different and less dependent on live events.

The company said it retained the vast majority of its staff during 2020 but is now having to implement change. Activision says it is informing those who are losing their jobs today and that they will receive proper severance packages.

Petitti made clear that ABE isn’t moving 100% away from live events and on the contrary, will look to get back to them to some extent when possible. However, OWL and CDL have changed the concepts of their leagues during the pandemic from live, in-person home/away events that compared to stick-and-ball leagues to now running entirely online. It’s possible that online-only play could make up a significant, although not entire, part of OWL and CDL schedules long into the future.

He acknowledged that the cuts are due to a mixture of needing to cut costs and also re-allocate certain resources to other areas.

“We learned a lot last year in terms of how the leagues can be structured for online play, and we’ll look to carry forward the best practices from that,” said Petitti, who joined Activision Blizzard as president of sports and entertainment last August after a longtime role at MLB. “In terms of timing, it’s a reaction to the realities of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to best serve the league, owners, teams and fans.”

Petitti indicated that CDL, which has already started its 2021 season, has seen some growth from last season in key performance indicators, and the company wants to spend more on areas where it feels it can drive higher engagement, viewership and returns for itself and its partners.

Petitti, who reports to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, noted that there were discussions about how to best structure the league even before he started. The decision took time in part because “you never take anything like this lightly; these are our colleagues and something you spend a lot of time on thinking about making the best decisions you can make.”

He indicated that he remains bullish on seeing growth for both CDL and OWL, the latter of which starts its 2021 season next month but has had a harder time gaining a foothold in North America than CDL. He pointed to 100 Thieves entering CDL this offseason, Optic Gaming newly re-branding the Chicago CDL franchise and OWL creating an “East” circuit for this season with teams based in Asia as among the positive developments during the offseason.

“The company and the team are really optimistic that we’ve got something here and can continue to grow both,” he said. “There’s nothing but optimism and a sense that growth is going to be achieved.”

Nvidia made a big deal about reducing the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new RTX 3060 graphics card last month. A special system was supposed to make the RTX 3060 undesirable for cryptominers, but Nvidia has now confirmed that it has accidentally unlocked those restrictions with a new driver.

“A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations,” says an Nvidia spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “The driver has been removed.”

While Nvidia has now removed the driver, the genie is out of the bottle. Nvidia’s latest 470.05 beta driver automatically unlocks performance for most RTX 3060 cards, boosting hashing rates for Ethereum mining. Mirrors of the driver can easily be found online, and Nvidia won’t be able to prevent RTX 3060 owners from continuing to use this driver in the future.

Nvidia originally restricted RTX 3060 mining performance in an attempt to steer cryptominers away from purchasing the cards. The GPU maker seemed confident that its restrictions couldn’t be defeated, even claiming it wasn’t just a driver holding back performance. “It’s not just a driver thing,” said Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia’s head of communications, last month. “There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.”

Nvidia clearly wasn’t expecting to release a driver that would accidentally unlock its own restrictions.