It’s Thursday, and my first post on the new .com is this week’s digestion of technology news. For more news stories and more listen to Mark Starling on First News 570, or download the iHeartRadio app.
UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START: A SALUTE
Yesterday, one of the video gaming world’s biggest luminaries passed away. Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the composer and sound designer for some of GenX’s most beloved games has died. The cheat code, made famous in Konami games, was created by Hashimoto while testing Gradius. He came up with the cheat after realizing the game was too hard to play. He forgot to remove the code, and programmers decided taking it out may break the software. The code eventually made its way into other Konami titles, including the famous cheat for Contra, a classic.
STARVING PETS SUFFER AFTER PET-NET GOES OFFLINE
US-based automated pet feeding firm, Pet-Net, experience a service disruption this week after a system outage caused automatic feeders to go offline. Petnet gives pet owners the ability to schedule and control feeding through a smartphone app. The system outage occurred between February 14 and the 21st, and all Generation 2 feeders went off line. Users complained via Twitter that their pets went unfed, some over the course of the full week. On the 21st, Petnet announced a system reset was underway and feeders returned to normal operation.
TESLA DRIVER WAS PLAYING GAMES DURING FATAL CRASH
The March 2018 crash in which Apple engineer, Walter Huang, was involved showed that the driver was playing video games during the crash. The Tesla Model X uses Autopilot which is a bit of a misnomer because it is a partially automated system, not a driverless system. The Model X veered onto the shoulder while it was engaged in Autopilot mode, and the system got confused at an onramp exit and thought it may have been the freeway. The car accelerated to 71 mph and crashed. After examining data from the vehicle, the driver didn’t attempt to use the break nor was the steering wheel direction changed by the driver. The main point here is to always pay attention, and that cars aren’t driverless yet.