A new report by the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering argues that unless the government takes technology seriously, we risk turning into a country of technology "users" instead of "leaders". The world will shape our digital future and we just go along for the ride. The report found that Australia is falling behind in funding digital innovation - only 7.4% of Australia's GDP goes towards this kinda stuff compared to the 11.2% OECD average. A good place to start, the report reckons, is spending money on improving digital literacy and inclusion. The report is available to read in full if you'd like to know more.
As Tesla prepares to make the beta of its "full self driving" software available to the wider public, the NTSB has told the Wall Street Journal that Tesla's use of the phrase "full self driving", "has clearly misled numerous people to misuse and abuse technology" and that Tesla should take care of "basic safety issues" before opening the program wider. Meanwhile, the NTSB has sent investigators to Florida, where a Model 3 collided with a tree, caught fire and killed both people. It is "not immediately known if speed was a factor or if the car’s automated driving system was activated" but the NTSB are investigating anyways.
Installation of the southern hemisphere's fastest computer has wrapped up at Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth. The $48 million HPE Cray EX setup is called Setonix (the scientific name for the quokka!) and will spend most of its life processing data from the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope. This thing is a beast - "more than" 500 nodes, with each node containing 64 AMD EPYC cores (65,000 cores in total) and 256GB of RAM, all connected together over 100Gb/sec HPE Slingshot interconnects and backed by 14PB of storage. Setonix will come online early 2022 for testing and will fully operational in the 2nd half of 2022. Check out the paintjob on the cabinets - looks great.
iOS 15 is out and about for you mad lads that love chucking new software on your primary computing on day one. MacStories has a great overview of what's new as usual. It's 23 pages long with heaps of screenshots - no stone left un-turned! MacRumours has heaps of info on how to use these new features, including videos. That would have been a massive project, better documentation here than Apple's own attempts I reckon. Well worth plodding through both MacStories and MacRumours efforts and make the most out of your expensive and powerful pocket computer. A handy one might be learning how to put the address bar back at the top of the screen in Safari.
📻 Faster - Manic Street Preachers
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.