Good morning and welcome to another week without a public holiday. Hope you’re doing well – here are a few things going on in the tech world you may have missed.
1. NASA is smashing into an asteroid
On September 27 at 9:00 am AEST,NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in our Solar System. In other words, it will smash into an asteroid. Live coverage of event will feature audio from NASA’s mission control, live commentary, as well as images beamed down by the spacecraft’s onboard high-resolution camera, DRACO.
2. Artemis returns home
Still on NASA and after postponing previous attempts, NASA has called off its Artemis I launch, which was scheduled for September 27th (U.S. time) as Tropical Storm Ian continues to intensify, potentially strengthening into a major hurricane that strikes Florida next week. The agency will be rolling back the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
3. Optus facing $1 million extortion
While details around the Optus cyberattack are still unfolding, the latest seems to be centred on the extortion the telco is now facing. As reported by Jeremy Kirk, early Saturday, a person going by the nickname “Optusdata” published two samples of the purported stolen data on a well-known data leak forum. The attacker said that Optus can prevent the sale of the data to other cybercriminals if it pays $1 million in the monero cryptocurrency. The data breach, which ranks as one of the country’s largest ever, is under investigation by the Australian Federal Police and the OAIC.
4. Elon Musk is at it again
Tesla is hiring engineers to build a walking, talking robot called Optimus. Brought to our attention by CNET, Tesla is pressing forward with its plans to create humanoid robots and to move closer to actual self-driving cars. More information on the insanity is expected to be revealed on September 30 (October 1 for us) at the company’s AI Day.
5. USB-C charging for the iPhone 15?
We’ve only just started fully wrapping our heads around the iPhone 14 (TL;DR: iPhone 14 Pro Max is phenomenal, iPhone 14 failed to woo us as much as the Pro), and chatter has already started around the iPhone 15. Respected Apple analyst Mark Gurman is expecting a new naming scheme when for the iPhone 15 next year, replacing the current “Pro Max” branding with “Ultra.” He also reckons the iPhone 15 could boast USB-C charging. Finally.
BONUS ITEM: An annihilation. Congrats to all Cats fans.
They said we couldn’t do it 🏆 #Untameable pic.twitter.com/ytFfz3bbNS
— Geelong Cats (@GeelongCats) September 24, 2022
Have a good week.