Google's drone delivery service launches in Canberra after being given green light to take to the skies (3 minute read)
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has launched the world’s first commercial air-delivery service in Canberra’s northern suburbs. The company is called ‘Wing’ and it has been trialing the delivery of burritos, coffee, and medication by drone to a suburb in Canberra for the last year. Approval has been granted by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to expand the area that Wing can service. More than 1,000 deliveries were completed in the trial without any safety incidents, even though some residents complained about the noise. Wing will now service five suburbs, delivering goods such as gelato, chocolate, bread, and golf gear.
China wants to ban bitcoin mining (4 minute read)
China’s state planner has released a draft list of industrial activities that it is planning to stop, and it shows that the government is seeking to put pressure onto the cryptocurrency sector. The draft stated that cryptocurrency mining did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, was unsafe, wasted resources, and polluted the environment. It called for cryptocurrency mining to be phased out immediately. A large portion of the bitcoin network is in China and a shutdown would raise the average cost to mine bitcoin. Chinese companies manufacture a large amount of the world’s blockchain hardware, accounting for 45% of global sales by value in 2017.