Drone deliveries have been the subject of many a flashy promo video over the years, but until now, they haven’t been available for everyone to use whenever they want. That’s still the case in most of the world, but one part of Australia just won the ability to get things delivered through the air.

Limited drone deliveries courtesy of Wing are now available in Australia’s capital city of Canberra, the drone service announced on Monday. Wing is part of Alphabet, making it one of Google’s corporate siblings.

SEE ALSO: The best drones you can get for under $200

At first, Wing drone deliveries will only be available in three suburbs: Palmerston, Franklin and Crace. It’ll gradually expand its offering over time, but for now, Wing’s deliveries sound somewhat limited.

They can deliver food, over-the-counter drugs and coffee, but only during daytime and without flying over major roads, according to The Guardian. Wing was able to win regulatory approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority after nearly five years of tests in the country.

Even though it’s only useful for a few things in a small corner of the world, Wing’s Australian launch is important for a couple of reasons. It’s one of the first high-profile drone delivery options to get approved for public use anywhere, which is significant on its own. 

However, it also gives Alphabet a leg up over tech rival Amazon. That company has made strides in the drone delivery market over the years with some highly visible trials, including a ground-based delivery robot operating in Washington state. 

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said his company could offer public drone deliveries by the end of 2018, but that still hasn’t happened. An Amazon spokesperson told the Associated Press late last year that the company was still committed to that goal. 

As for Wing, the Alphabet drone division has its sights set on making deliveries in Finland this year, too. Here’s to hoping people’s lunch and coffee orders can navigate the skies unharmed.

By Dr. Leana Wen, President of Planned Parenthood

As an ER doctor, I have seen firsthand how crucial it is to prevent, detect, and treat STIs early. STIs are spread through sexual contact and they can cause devastating disease when they are not diagnosed or treated. STIs — including chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis — can lead to life-changing consequences including infertility, miscarriages, and chronic pain.

There are many methods of prevention and treatment, but rates of STIs are skyrocketing in the United States. In 2017, the number of cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis reached an all-time high of more than two million cases. Rates of syphilis rose by nearly 75 percent between 2013 and 2017.

This is why policies like the Trump-Pence administration’s Title X gag rule are so dangerous. This Title X rule, which was released in February and is scheduled to take effect in May, would dismantle the Title X program that provides healthcare to 4 million low-income Americans. STI testing and treatment are included in that care.

If Title X is dismantled, crucial health services would become unattainable to millions of women, like Mary, a young woman who came to a Planned Parenthood health center for birth control after she recently lost her insurance. Mary talked with her doctor about her options, and she decided that the best choice for her was an implant, a form of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC). She expected to pay $50 a month for a birth control prescription but ended up paying $70 for birth control that would last her three years.

The same day, Mary’s sister, who did not have insurance coverage, either, visited a Planned Parenthood health center for a pap smear and a test for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). She also received the care she sought. Thanks to a federal program, Title X, that provides affordable birth control and reproductive health care to women with low incomes, she did not have to pay for her life-saving cervical cancer screen and STI tests.

As the president of Planned Parenthood, I have heard countless stories like Mary’s and her sister’s. Each time, I’m reminded of the importance of making sex education and reproductive health services available and easily accessible.

I firmly believe that no one should have to forego quality medical care because they can’t afford it or don’t know who to ask for help. Health care is a human right, and sexual and reproductive health is an important part of that care.

Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images

For Get Yourself Tested month, I want to share three actions you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones:

1. Get tested and treated for STIs.

Every single one of our Planned Parenthood health centers around the country offers STI and HIV testing. STIs do not discriminate — anyone who is sexually active could be at risk.

The best time to get tested is before you have sex, not afterward, so that you can ensure that you won’t pass on a possible STI to someone else. Appointments to get tested are quick and the results confidential.

There is no way of knowing definitively if you have an STI until you get tested. Many STIs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea, can leave you in silent discomfort for years, and can proceed to a dangerous infection, called pelvic inflammatory disease, that can lead to infertility. Do not wait until you have symptoms – get tested now.

2. Practice safe sex.

Condoms, female condoms, and dental dams are barriers that prevent you from both spreading and contracting an STI. But they’re only really effective when you use them every single time you have sex.

Condoms are easy to find in stores and your local Planned Parenthood health center, where you can find them for a reduced price or even free. Be safe, for you and your partners.

3. Get vaccinated against HPV.

HPV is the most common STI in the U.S. It’s so common that nearly every person who does not get the vaccine and is sexually active will get HPV at some point in their life. This infection is spread through sex, and the good news is that it’s highly preventable with available screening tests and a vaccine.

The HPV vaccine protects against cancers caused by HPV infection. Typically, the HPV vaccine is given to kids who are 11 or 12 years old, and it’s also recommended for young people up until age 26. This vaccine prevents you from getting certain types of HPV in the first place, so it’s best to receive it before you become sexually active.

The vaccine, which takes just a few minutes to get, can be life-saving – it could prevent over 30,000 cancers each year in men and women caused by the HPV infection. You can get the vaccine at many Planned Parenthood health centers, clinics, and local health departments.

STIs are common and can cause harm to your health, but they can easily be prevented, diagnosed, and treated. Start by knowing your options and asking questions when you have them. When it comes to your health, no question is insignificant.

Most importantly, you don’t have to go through it alone. Just like for Mary, the doors of Planned Parenthood are open for you. Each year, Planned Parenthood health centers provide more than 4.7 million STI tests and treatment. In 2017, our health centers diagnosed almost 250,000 STIs – these are cases of infection that, without proper screening, may have been diagnosed late or not at all, and possibly even progressed to devastating complications. We also offer antibiotic treatment of STIs.

April is Get Yourself Tested month. Now is the time to go out and Get Yourself Tested to take control of your own health!

Google and Facebook are back at Capitol Hill on Tuesday. While both companies are no stranger to Congressional hearings at this point, this time the tech giants are talking about the growing threat of white nationalism on its platforms in the wake of the mosque shooting in New Zealand.

Facebook’s public policy director Neil Potts and Google’s public policy and government relations counsel Alexandria Walden will speak before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism.

Online radicalization, specifically among white nationalists, is not exactly a new issue. However, since the New Zealand mosque shooting, which left 50 people dead, the rising concerns over the spread of white nationalism on the internet has been thrust to the forefront of the conversation.

SEE ALSO: Facebook bans white nationalism and white separatism

In response to public outcry following the terror attack, Facebook did take some meaningful action. The social networking company made important changes to its highly criticized policies involving hate speech on the site and banned white nationalism from its platform. The company’s policies once viewed white supremacy, which was already banned from the platform, distinctly from white nationalism, which was not banned at the time. 

Facebook also announced that it had banned more than one million video uploads of the New Zealand shooter’s livestreamed attack from its platform.

YouTube hasn’t committed to banning white nationalist videos from its site, but it has restricted certain white nationalists’ content.

Along with Google and Facebook’s representatives, witnesses from civil rights groups such as the Anti-Defamation League are scheduled to attend the hearing. 

One particularly amusing name listed as a witness is far right personality, Candace Owens. Owens, representing the conservative college organization Turning Point USA, is probably most well known for Kanye West tweeting out his support of her. She was most recently in the news for seemingly defending Hitler in a speech. With numerous right wing activists claiming conservative bias from tech companies, Owens take on the internet’s rising white nationalist problem should certainly be an interesting one.

Open up your phone and take a quick scan of the apps you have installed? Are any of them new?

Chances are most of the apps you have on your phone aren’t. Most people are “choosing to download more established, mature apps” as opposed to “upstart apps” observes Eric Feng, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and former CTO of Hulu and Flipboard.

SEE ALSO: How to enable ‘dark mode’ in 10 popular mobile apps

Compiling data from Apple’s iTunes App Charts and app analytics firm App Annie, Feng astutely concludes that the great app gold rush may be over.

With over 2 million apps available in Apple’s App Store, the likelihood of a young app breaking into its “top 30” and staying there is no longer as likely as it once was, says Feng.

Apps like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter dominate the top 30 list because they not only launched during the early days of the App Store, but have scaled up to provide platform experiences that no longer need to be addressed by new apps.

A perfect example of this is Facebook. The app was once a place for users to share photos and plan events. Now, it’s a marketplace to purchase goods, a forum that’s aided in the unwanted spread of fake news, a social gaming platform, and who-can-even-keep-track-of-anymore.

Who needs to download a separate app for buying and selling products when Facebook’s got the feature built right into its massive platform? 

Unlike new, young apps, mature apps don’t have the same kind of limitations that they once did.

“As the number of apps in the App Store exploded, those limitations became addressed by those very apps,” says Feng. “Instagram made crappy photos look good, WhatsApp made messaging free, Waze gave us time saving driving directions, Spotify made music affordable and on demand, Netflix and Hulu did the same with movies and TV, and so on.”

Most people are ‘choosing to download more established, mature apps’ as opposed to ‘upstart apps’ …

Based on the data he pulled, Feng says users are downloading mature apps “that have been around for over 5 years” and passing on younger apps “that have been around less than 2 years”.

This trend is true for most kinds of apps, ranging from social networking to shopping, but gaming seems to be an exception.

Eighty-five percent of the Top 30 games in the App Store each week are upstarts according to the numbers. Though there’s no one definitive reason why new games are more popular than old ones, Feng’s reasoning is “mobile games fail to satisfy customer wants and needs (or only satisfy them for a short period) so users are constantly hunting for upstart alternatives.” Makes sense — nobody wants to be playing the same old game forever.

This data isn’t the most encouraging for startups working on new apps, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Although most people are downloading old and more mature apps, not cracking the App Store’s top 30 doesn’t mean an app has no chance. As Feng notes, there are tons of apps such as the meditation app Calm and the real-estate app Opendoor that don’t rank highly in the App Store, but are still successful.

“Just because you can’t find a billion user audience doesn’t mean you can’t build a billion dollar company with a business model that works just fine with fewer customers,” says Feng.