Credit: https://twitter.com/tomwarne/status/617866054476259328

We continue our look back at 2015’s news and subsequent developments with July and August. Numerous subreddits were hidden from public view by administrators as a protest against both the firing of employee Victoria ‘chooter’ Taylor and the failure to fill her role as organizer and administrator of Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions. The protests led to the departure of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. Taylor responded to the controversy by going offline completely during a vacation, an approach she recommended to others.

The BBC announced plans to give the Micro Bit, a tiny PC of similar style to the Raspberry Pi, to a million British schoolchildren. The plan was to distribute the devices this fall and then put them on public sale. However, the device has been delayed until at least next year thanks to problems with the power supply.

A Calgary man trying to publicize a cleaning company tied 120 giant helium balloons to a lawn chair and successfully recreated the movie Up before ditching the chair and escaping in a parachute. He was arrested and initially charged with mischief causing danger to life. He’s since been hit with nine further charges related to aviation law including operating an “aircraft” without a licence or adequate insurance.

The Electronic Sports League announced plans to drug test competitive video gamers after a player admitted taking an ADHD medicine as a performance-enhancing drug. It later announced a list of banned substances and a maximum penalty of a two-year competition ban, deciding upon saliva rather than the originally-planned skin tests. While most of the substances on the list are banned outright, marijuana is only considered a failure if test levels suggest use on competition days themselves.

We’ll be back tomorrow to take a look at updates from September and October’s stories.