Runaway rocket might belong to China
A few weeks ago, we reported that a runaway SpaceX rocket was on a collision course with the moon. Well, it still is, but it might actually belong to China and not SpaceX after all.
Bill Grey, author of the Project Pluto software that tracks near-Earth objects, was the first to bring the rocket to everyone’s attention. After the story was picked up around the world and gained more attention, others have had a squizz at Grey’s findings.
Grey explains in a message on his website that a NASA engineer contacted him to suggest the rocket booster is most likely from a 2014 Chinese lunar mission. To be specific, from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission from October 2014 and not SpaceX’s Deep Space Climate Observatory mission from 2015.
Grey said that he first misidentified the piece of space junk all the way back in 2015. “That was not at all unusual. Identifications of high-flying space junk often require a bit of detective work, and sometimes we never do figure out the ID for a bit of space junk,” wrote Grey.
Grey’s misidentification of the debris doesn’t make much of a difference to the outcome, however. It is still on course for a 4 March impact within a few kilometres of the predicted spot.
Source: Digital Trends
Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad crashed its app
The Super Bowl LVI came to an end this past weekend but we’re not here to talk about that. During the half-time show – which is something of a spectacle itself – Coinbase made its Super Bowl ad slot debut (which is apparently a thing in the US). The 60-second ad slot was mostly just a QR code bouncing around the screen like the DVD logos of the past. But it turned out to be very popular. Maybe even too popular.
When scanned the QR code would take people to a sign-up page that offered a limited-time promo of $15 worth of free bitcoin for new sign-ups. Apparently a lot of people like free money. So many people scanned the code that it crashed Coinbase’s app which couldn’t handle the influx of traffic. You can still get your free $15 in bitcoin if you sign up until 15 February.
Source: The Verge
Elon Musk blames ‘fun police’ for recent Tesla recall
Tesla faced yet another mass recall of 578,607 vehicles recently when a National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) report ruled a feature violated US safety laws. The feature that caused this allowed Tesla drivers to replace the hooter sound with a custom audio clip or pre-loaded noises including farts and goats.
Someone asked CEO Elon Musk on Twitter what the reason was behind the recall. “The fun police made us do it (sigh),” came the response. Tesla tried to argue that fart noises for a hooter could actually make its vehicles safer for pedestrians because it could “enhance the conspicuity of the vehicle to pedestrians.” But it still agreed to block the feature when in drive, neutral or reverse modes.
This marks Tesla’s eleventh recall in four months according to Bloomberg. Although reading the word ‘recall’ might make some shiver, in Tesla’s case it usually just means a software patch.
Source: Business Insider
OnePlus confirms its working on OxygenOS 13
When Oppo and OnePlus merged in June last year it was supposed to lead to a “unified and upgraded global operating system” across devices from both companies. A new development from OnePlus seems to contradict that. OnePlus’ advertising for its Open Ear Forum seems to tease development for OxygenOS 13, based on the still-in-development Android 13.
A few months after the announcement that the companies were merging, OnePlus integrated its OxygenOS codebase with Oppo’s ColorOS codebase. That led almost everyone to believe that OxygenOS 12 would be the last version of OnePlus’ Android skin and that the Oneplus 10 Pro would ship with the new unified OS. Well, the device is already available in China but it’s running ColorOS 12.1. Some people are a little confused.
The most likely scenario is that the unified OS has been delayed, as a previous rumour suggested. Not that it matters too much to us here in SA. If you really want a OnePlus device you’ll have to import them because Oneplus still hasn’t noticed us.
Source: Android Central