Good morning, hope your week is going well so far. There are a few things happening in the tech world this morning, so let’s dive in.
1. Blue Origin booster suffers fiery anomaly during launch
An uncrewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket ended in failure shortly after lift-off on Monday morning from Launch Site One in West Texas. The capsule, packed with scientific and technological payloads, managed to survive an apparent booster malfunction, with the launch escape system successfully working as designed. The booster anomaly happened just over one minute after the rocket launched.
Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed. pic.twitter.com/xFDsUMONTh
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) September 12, 2022
2. Instagrammers aren’t using Reels
Instagram looks a lot more like TikTok as of late, but that radical metamorphosis and new focus on short-form video hasn’t translated into TikTok’s ludicrous viewership numbers. In news surprising no one, a leaked report apparently said that Instagram users are not spending much time watching these short-form videos, and even worse, “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever”.
3. Humans and cockatoos locked in an ‘arms race’ over rubbish
Man and bird are waging a fierce battle over the most precious of resources: garbage. Over the past several years, a team of scientists has studied sulphur-crested cockatoo parrots in the area that have learned — and even taught other parrots — how to rob garbage bins around Sydney. Humans have now started to devise their own methods to keep the birds out, to varying degrees of success. There’s science involved, we promise, read more about it here.
4. Climate Council’s 10 steps to beat emissions reduction target
The federal government’s climate target is now enshrined in law, meaning that by 2030, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions need to be 43 per cent lower than they were in 2005. A new ‘plug-and-play’ roadmap from the Climate Council has now asked the government to do 10 things in order to reach this target. As the ABC is reporting, this includes moving to 100 per cent renewable grid supply.
5. iOS 16 is here
Apple first announced iOS 16 back in June at its annual WWDC developer conference. Some features of the new software include the ability to unsend or edit texts sent via iMessage, (almost) complete Lock Screen customisation, Family sharing (think parental controls), the ability to share photo galleries with family and friends and makeovers to a few existing apps/features/settings. We’ve been using the Beta if you want to know what to try first. It’s available today.
BONUS ITEM: We love frogs at Gizmodo Australia, especially the clumsy ones.
Brazilian frogs which have evolved to be very tiny, have inner ear canals too small to help them balance well: this is why they are clumsy jumpers
[full paper: https://t.co/ECitkxgLu4] pic.twitter.com/QR4xIfVivB
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 10, 2022
Have a good one!