Light Start – Return of SpaceX, Elago W3, DB11 exploded engine, Nintendo Switch for parents
Brett Venter
SpaceX returns to space, launches ten satellites and then nails the landing
You know what they say — if your rocket blows up, you need to get right back onto it again. Or is that horses? Wait, horses don’t blow up. The point stands though. SpaceX, which suffered a setback in 2016 when one of their rockets went boom on the launchpad (taking Facebook’s own satellite with it), has made its first launch of 2017 and the company nailed it. All of it. Last week’s launch, the distribution of ten (that’s 10) Iridium NEXT communications satellites to a point 625km above Earth’s surface, and then the landing, on a barge floating in the ocean. All of it, off without a hitch. This is the first of a hoped-for 20 space missions in 2017 by the company, with Elon Musk hoping to having his company fly 50 missions a year in quite short order.
Mac fans have got to have an Elago W3 for their Apple Watch
So you’re so deep inside the Apple ecosystem that you’re seriously considering Steve and Siri as baby names… Where do you go from there? Therapy, probably, but if you’re enjoying your mental illness then your next step is to combine the old and the new by getting your hands on the Elago W3. The W3 is a stand for your Apple Watch, for the rare occasions when it’s not adorning your wrist, and the reason you want one is because it makes your watch look pleasingly retro. Retro as in ‘looks just like a mini-Macintosh computer’. Which you can then admire on your desk as the device charges in time to let you take little Steve and Siri to school before traffic gets too crazy.
This exploded Aston Martin DB11 engine is worth staring at
We don’t know about you but we’d totally stare at an exploded Aston Martin DB11. Except this isn’t that kind of exploded. This is the to-be-assembled view of one of Aston’s 5.2 litre V12 twin-turbo engines, which consists of 1,667 individual bits. It’s not often that we get a look at a high-performance auto engine like this — clean, polished, and laid out with the precision of a set of tools in a surgery somewhere. The effect is most impressive when you think that all of these components, taken together, are capable of rocketing drivers to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds. Okay, we’re going back to staring for a while longer.
Bowser is an amazing parent in the Nintendo Switch parental controls video
When you think of good parents, you wouldn’t normally think of Super Mario’s Bowser… except, if you’re paying attention, he’s quite good at the whole ‘being a father’ thing. He’s just a crappy villain. If you had any doubts about Bowser’s parenting chops, Nintendo’s video for the Switch console’s parental control companion app will put those to rest. The cutesy video outlines which controls parents will have at their disposal through the upcoming Nintendo Switch Parental Controls app, including time limits and messages pointing out when time is up (as well as mandatory shutdown, if the little one isn’t listening), stat tracking so you know whether you need to get the next game in a series, and also limiting games according to ages restrictions. The features, by and large, are not new but it’s quite cool seeing them available in app form. Plus, Bowser… is a pretty good dad.
