Technology Roundup #15
“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.” – Carl Sagan
- NASA’s Perseverance rover is on its way to the Red Planet as we speak. It’s less than 100 days out from its destination, and you can imagine the excitement of scientists that have been working on the project for almost a decade to finally see some of the fruits of their labor.
- Sure, we might not be “a long time ago in the galaxy far, far away,” but that does not mean that characters from the Star Wars universe cannot litteraly go into space! On Sunday, during SpaceX’s historic Crew-1 commercial flight, the crew brought a special guest inside the Dragon capsule: The
- All eyes are on NASA’s Mars 2020 mission which is bringing the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter to the Red Planet.
- Welcome to Edition 3.23 of the Rocket Report! After virtually no vacation during this year of years, the author of this report is going to try to take most of the next two weeks off (Starship hops permitting). Because of this, the Rocket Report will not return until December 3.
- I don’t know about you, but I’m all for learning more about the weather on other planets. NASA’s first foray into otherworldly weather reports came in the wake of the InSight lander setting up shop on the Red Planet.
- You might need to take your Chevy Bolt in for major service. Detroit News and The Verge report that GM is recalling 68,677 Bolt EVs (50,900 in the US) to help it identify the causes of five battery fires between 2017 and 2019.
- Linux finds a lot of uses in computers that aren’t desktops. But there is a problem. What happens if your mission-critical control computer or retail kiosk gets an update and then fails? Happens all the time with Windows and it can happen with Linux, too.
- When looking for the best deal, it pays to shop around. When it comes to chain stores, of course, one expects the price to be the same across their retail network. However, where international companies are concerned, occasionally a better deal is just a border crossing away.
- Apple introduced the first MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini with M1 Apple Silicon chips yesterday, and as of today, the first benchmark of the new chip appears to be showing up on the Geekbench site.
- Disappearing or ephemeral messaging has become a popular feature on social networks like Snapchat and privacy-focused communication apps like Signal, Telegram, and Wire.