Sony announced new PlayStation 5 models that will likely be unofficially called the "PS5 Slim." From a report: The new model has the same horsepower on the inside, but it has a smaller form factor with an attachable disc drive and a 1TB SSD. The new model's detachable drive means you can buy the Digital Edition and change your mind later, essentially adding the drive as an $80 modular accessory. [...] Sony says the new PS5 has 30 percent lower volume, and its weight is 18 percent and 24 percent lighter than the original. The model with the disc drive will cost $500.

Alongside the Pixel 8 and Android 14, Google today launched the new Pixel Watch 2 -- a $350 second-gen smartwatch featuring a faster processor, overhauled sensor array, and longer battery life. The Verge reports: At a glance, the main difference is that the screen sits flush with the digital crown, where the original had a slight cutout. Another change imperceptible to the naked eye: the body is now made of 100 percent recycled aluminum instead of stainless steel. The result is a slightly lighter watch, but not by much. The Pixel Watch weighed 36 grams, while the Pixel Watch 2 is 31g. That's a bit disappointing, considering the Watch 2's price remains the same as last year. We're looking at the same 41mm case size and OLED display on top. But flip the watch over, and you'll find a completely different sensor array. Instead of a single line of LEDs, there are now multiple LEDs and photodiodes to take measurements from several angles and positions. That then feeds into an algorithm that Fitbit CEO James Park says is 40 percent more accurate for vigorous activities.

This year, Google also added a skin temperature and continuous electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. Both help enable proactive stress tracking, which Fitbit introduced with its Sense 2. The EDA sensor detects minuscule amounts of sweat, which can help determine bodily stress when combined with metrics like heart rate variability, heart rate, and skin temperature. As with the Sense 2, you're supposed to get a slightly delayed notification when a stressful event has been detected. You're then encouraged to log how that event made you feel. Battery life was a major pain point when the Pixel Watch first launched. Park acknowledges that you couldn't use the always-on display on the first-gen watch if you wanted that 24-hour battery life. This time around, he says that the team has worked hard to make sure the Pixel Watch 2's 306mAh battery can get 24 hours with the always-on display enabled. Users should also be able to get a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes and a full day's worth in 75 minutes. Helping that should be Wear OS 4 -- which Google says ought to extend battery life -- and the new, more power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor. (Speaking of Wear OS 4, Google says that, at first, it'll be exclusive to Pixel Watch 2.) Other features include the ability to automatically record workouts and do heart rate zone training; a new Safety Check feature that will alert your loved ones of your location after a preset timer expires (e.g. taking an Uber across town or going on a late-night walk); and support for Google services like Gmail, Google Wallet, and Calendar.

You can learn more about the Pixel Watch 2 here.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Apple said on Saturday that it will issue a software update that would address customer complaints about the latest iPhone 15 models, released just over a week ago, running hot.

Apple said that the new iPhone models were running hot because of a combination of bugs in iOS 17, bugs in apps, and a temporary set-up period... After Apple released the new iPhone 15 models earlier this month, user complaints on Apple's forums, Reddit, and social media suggest that all four models can get hotter than expected during use. CNBC's review of the new iPhone Pros also noted the iPhone 15 Pro Max got hot. "I just got the iPhone 15 Pro today and it's so hot i can't even hold it for very long!" wrote one commenter on Apple's forums.

Apple's new high-end models, the $999 iPhone 15 Pro and $1,199 iPhone 15 Pro Max have a redesigned titanium enclosure with an aluminum frame to make them easier to repair. The problem with the new models overheating was not related to the titanium chassis design, Apple said. Instead, Apple points to bugs with specific apps and a bug in iOS that can be fixed with software updates.

"Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe. We believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet," said Nissan's chief executive Makoto Uchida. The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035. The BBC reports: In an interview with the BBC, Mr Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars. "It may take a bit of time, but we are looking at the next few years," he said. "We are looking at it from the point of view of the technology, from the point of view of cooperating with suppliers, and of course working with the government on how we can deliver that kind of cost competitiveness to the consumer," Mr Uchida added. Will that price parity happen by 2030? "That's what we're aiming for," confirmed Mr Uchida.

Mr Uchida also said that the company was fast-tracking a different kind of battery technology, known as all-solid-state batteries (ASSB), which are lighter, cheaper, and quicker to charge. "We are going to have a pilot plant for ASSB in Japan from next year, and we want to ensure they can be mass produced by 2028," he said. "There are a lot of challenges with this, but we do have a solution, and we are on track [to meet that target]", he added.

Lenovo launched the first foldable laptop in 2020, but the first real era of foldable PCs is only starting to unfold now. From a report: Today, LG became the latest OEM to announce a foldable-screen laptop, right after HP announced its first attempt, the Spectre Foldable PC, earlier this month. LG only announced the Gram Fold in South Korea thus far. A Google translation of LG's Korean announcement said the laptop is 9.4-mm (0.37-inches) thick when unfolded and used like a 17-inch tablet. Alternatively, the OLED PC can be folded in half to use like an approximately 12.2-inch laptop. In the latter form, a virtual keyboard can appear on the bottom screen, and you can dock a Bluetooth keyboard to the bottom screen or pair a keyboard with the system wirelessly. The screen has 1920Ã--2560 pixels for a pixel density of 188.2 pixels per inch.

One draw of foldable PCs is supposed to be portability. The Gram Fold weighs 2.76 pounds (1,250g), which is even lighter than LG's latest Gram clamshell laptop (2.9 pounds). According to Android Authority, LG's laptop will have an Intel Core i5-1335U, which has 8 Efficient cores (E-cores) at up to 3.4 GHz, two Performance cores (P-cores) at up to 4.6 GHz, 12 threads, and 12MB of cache. The PC is also supposed to have 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, a 72 Wh battery, Wi-Fi 6E, and two USB-C ports. LG is claiming 99.5 percent DCI-P3 color coverage with the laptop.

[...] It's also possible we'll see similar designs from other laptop brands, as panel supplier LG Display announced today that it will start mass production of 17-inch foldable OLED laptop panels. The foldable OLED is made with what LG Display calls a Tandem OLED structure, using two-stack OLED technology, "which adds an extra organic emitting layer to deliver brighter screens while effectively dispersing energy across OLED components for optimal stability and longer lifespans," LG Display's announcement said. LG Display first entered mass production of foldable (13.3-inch) laptop panels in 2020. However, foldable PCs didn't immediately take off then, despite the panel being used in Lenovo's 2020 ThinkPad X1 Fold. Foldable PCs lacked the software support that Windows 11 now affords with its Snap windows layouts that make organizing windows across dual or folded screens more intuitive.

An anonymous reader writes: Toyota, the world's largest automaker, has a problem. Although the company is famous for pioneering lean methods of manufacturing and being an early pioneer of hybrid electric powertrains, the switch to battery electric vehicles caught it somewhat unprepared. As rivals locked up contracts for critical minerals and formed joint ventures with battery makers (or built their own), Toyota has appeared to fall behind. Now, it has released a new roadmap showing how it will regain competitiveness and sell 3.5 million EVs by 2030. After some early experiments with electric-converted RAV4s (including a partnership with Tesla), Toyota has finally released a modern BEV, the bZ4x. The car had a difficult launch -- a recall for wheels falling off will lead to that -- but a week's test of a bZ4x exceeded our low expectations. A look at the car's specs makes clear Toyota's problem, though: There are different battery packs for the single-motor and dual-motor versions, made by Panasonic and CATL, respectively. [...] "We will need various options for batteries, just like we have different variations of engines. It is important to offer battery solutions compatible with a variety of models and customer needs," said Takero Kato, president of BEV Factory. To that end, Toyota is working on four different solutions. Three of these will use liquid electrolytes and are meant for different applications.

A performance-focused liquid electrolyte lithium-ion battery is slated to be the first to appear in 2026. Toyota says it's targeting a 20-minute fast-charging time and wants these cells to be 20 percent cheaper than the cells used in the bZ4x. The company plans to use this in a BEV that can travel almost 500 miles (800 km) on a single charge. For lower-cost vehicles, Toyota is looking at lithium iron phosphate cells, a chemistry that's already extremely popular in China and is being used by Tesla. Toyota plans to construct these as bipolar batteries, where the active materials for the anode and cathode are on either side of a common electrode carrier rather than having separate electrodes for each. (Toyota already uses this approach for the nickel metal hydride batteries it uses in many of its hybrid models.) LFP cells are targeting a 40 percent cost reduction compared to the bZ4x battery and 20 percent more range. LFP cells don't charge as fast, but Toyota wants a 10-80 percent DC fast-charging time of 30 minutes. If it pans out, the company expects these cells in 2026 or 2027.

There's also a high-performance lithium-ion chemistry in development, though it may not be ready until 2028. Toyota wants to combine its bipolar electrode structure with a high percentage of nickel in the cathode to create a pack with extremely long range -- up to 621 miles (1,000 km). But it's also targeting a 10 percent cost reduction compared to the performance-focused pack mentioned earlier. The fourth battery technology is one that Toyota has talked about a lot in the past -- solid state. Both electrodes and electrolytes in a solid state battery are solid, which means the battery can be smaller and lighter than a cell with liquid electrodes. The technology is tantalizing, but it's troubled by the formation of dendrites -- spikes of lithium crystals that can grow and puncture the cathode. Toyota says it has made a breakthrough in durability for lithium-ion solid state cells -- it's being coy as to exactly what -- that has allowed it to switch to putting these batteries into mass production, with commercial use scheduled for 2027 or 2028. Interestingly, Toyota was originally planning to use solid state cells in its hybrids only, but it appears to have revised that idea and will put them in BEVs, with a target range of more than 600 miles and a fast-charging time of just 10 minutes.

Intel has taken the wraps off its forthcoming next-gen Meteor Lake processors following its successful 12th (Alder Lake) and 13th Gen (Raptor Lake) processors with its new E- and P-core design. WindowsCentral: Its first chip built on the Intel 4 process node with Foveros 3D packaging, Intel calls Meteor Lake its "biggest architectural shift in 40 years" and that it will "lay the foundation for innovations for the PC," as noted by Tim Wilson, VP, Design and Engineering Group and GM, SoC Design at Intel. Meteor Lake is Intel's next-gen CPU and the first built on the Intel 4 process, which is part of Intel's long-term goal of "5 nodes in 4 years." Previous generation naming would suggest it would be called Intel 14th Gen, but Intel is moving away from its older naming schema. Some reports have suggested Meteor Lake may reflect a reboot in generation numbers. Current rumors suggest Intel 14th Gen is simply a refresh of Raptor Lake, although Meteor Lake may play a part in that for laptops.

Meteor Lake processors are expected to ship in late 2023 or early 2024 in new laptops with thinner and lighter designs, better cooling, and much better battery life. The significant change for Meteor Lake is what Intel calls disaggregation, which means the breaking down of core components into separate 'tiles' on the SoC. Meteor Lake features four Tiles, including:
Compute Tile: New E-core and P-core microarchitecture, built on Intel 4 process technology
SoC Tile: Low power island E-cores, NPU, Wi-Fi 6E/7, native HDMI 2.1 and 8K HDR AV1 support
Graphics Tile: Integrated Intel Arc architecture
IO Tile: Thunderbolt 4 (and presumably Thunderbolt 5) and PCIe Gen5

"Here is another radical replacement for the traditional combustion engine," writes long-time Slashdot reader Inzkeeper. "Check out the Astron Aerospace H2 Starfire Omega 1... an ICE engine with a turbine configuration."

The company "is claiming that it is a viable alternative to EVs," reports TopSpeed: Astron have showcased a 3D rendering of their engine which helps to understand this extremely complicated new powerplant in all of its glory. They also showed a functioning prototype which gives us a glimpse into how the engine could potentially function... The company claims that it weighs an absolutely mind-boggling 35 pounds yet produces horsepower in the region of 160 and about 170 pound-feet of torque. These are insane figures. The Omega 1 boasts an alleged 60 percent efficiency, which is absurd if true given that piston engines rarely ever top 40 percent efficiency. On top of this, Omega 1 can run on any kind of combustible fuel, meaning that hydrogen could easily be used to reduce emissions so close to zero that it's negligible.
HotCars adds that "According to Astron Aerospace, the engine idles at 1,000 rpm and redlines at an incredible 25,000 rpm — much higher than all the other rotaries we've seen. This is thanks to the circular movement, rather than the epitrochoidal movement used for Reuleaux triangle rotaries." The awesome thing about this engine is that it is stackable, meaning two of them will make 320 hp and 340 lb-ft, three will produce 480 hp and 510 lb-ft, etc... Astron Aerospace also stated that due to the design, the engine is easily scalable for other applications — for instance, marine engines. According to them and one of their renders, a larger version can easily reach 4,500 hp...

[I]t is not only more efficient than the equivalent piston engine — 80% compared to a mere 34% — but the engine is also much smaller and lighter. This translates to better fuel economy and a lighter overall vehicle. The engine is air-cooled as well, which means there aren't any additional radiators or other cooling systems needed to keep the engine working. Air-cooled may sound a bit old-fashioned, but in this case, it simplifies the whole package. The maintenance on such an engine would also be minimal, with Astron Aerospace claiming 60,000 miles further usage over a typical piston engine before maintenance is required.

The disadvantage of this engine is that it hasn't yet been thoroughly tested in real-world conditions. Astron Aerospace has patented the engine and has a working prototype but has found no investors to begin mass testing and production. The engine needs to be worked hard to flesh out any potential weak points and new materials need to be used to cope with the internal stresses and wear.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Imperial College is developing a rocket thruster called the Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) that is so small that it can only be fabricated using techniques originally designed for making silicon chips. The entire thruster chip is about the length of a fingernail, with the combustion chamber and nozzle only measuring 1 mm long. It also requires only 20 watts of electric current to operate and in a test campaign generated 1.25 millinewtons of thrust at a specific impulse of 185 seconds on a sustained basis. To put that into perspective, that's half a billion times less thrust than the engines used on the Space Shuttle.

However, the party trick of the ICE-Cube Thruster is that it uses ordinary water as its propellant, which is about as non-explosive and non-flammable as you can get. Onboard electric current creates electrolysis to break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is fed into the combustion chamber to ignite, generating thrust to maneuver the CubeSat. Using water is not only very green, it also reduces payload because no pressurization is needed to store it, so storage and handling systems can be lighter and simpler. However, fabricating the combustion chamber and nozzle for the thruster in what is essentially two dimensions required taking a page from microelectronics by using the Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technique normally employed for machining silicon wafers for processors to sub-micrometer tolerances.

SonicSpike shares a report from NASA: In 2023, NASA is sending a technology demonstration known as the Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) to the space station. Together, ILLUMA-T and the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), which launched in December 2021, will complete NASA's first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system. With ILLUMA-T, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program office will demonstrate the power of laser communications from the space station. Using invisible infrared light, laser communications systems send and receive information at higher data rates. With higher data rates, missions can send more images and videos back to Earth in a single transmission. Once installed on the space station, ILLUMA-T will showcase the benefits higher data rates could have for missions in low Earth orbit.

"Laser communications offer missions more flexibility and an expedited way to get data back from space," said Badri Younes, former deputy associate administrator for NASA's SCaN program. "We are integrating this technology on demonstrations near Earth, at the Moon, and in deep space." In addition to higher data rates, laser systems are lighter and use less power -- a key benefit when designing spacecraft. ILLUMA-T is approximately the size of a standard refrigerator and will be secured to an external module on the space station to conduct its demonstration with LCRD. Currently, LCRD is showcasing the benefits of a laser relay in geosynchronous orbit -- 22,000 miles from Earth -- by beaming data between two ground stations and conducting experiments to further refine NASA's laser capabilities. "Once ILLUMA-T is on the space station, the terminal will send high-resolution data, including pictures and videos to LCRD at a rate of 1.2 gigabits-per-second," said Matt Magsamen, deputy project manager for ILLUMA-T. "Then, the data will be sent from LCRD to ground stations in Hawaii and California. This demonstration will show how laser communications can benefit missions in low Earth orbit."

ILLUMA-T is launching as a payload on SpaceX's 29th Commercial Resupply Services mission for NASA. In the first two weeks after its launch, ILLUMA-T will be removed from the Dragon spacecraft's trunk for installation on the station's Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF), also known as "Kibo" -- meaning "hope" in Japanese. NASA's Laser Communications Roadmap. Following the payload's installation, the ILLUMA-T team will perform preliminary testing and in-orbit checkouts. Once completed, the team will make a pass for the payload's first light -- a critical milestone where the mission transmits its first beam of laser light through its optical telescope to LCRD. Once first light is achieved, data transmission and laser communications experiments will begin and continue throughout the duration of the planned mission.

What's old is hot again, and flip phones are so very hot right now. From a report: These phones are a far cry from the phone that you mastered T9 texting on in college. Today's flip phones are garden-variety 2023 smartphones that happen to fold in half -- plus a screen on the front cover. They've been making a kind of comeback over the past few years, but until now, they've existed in the shadows of their bigger, pricier fold-style counterparts. That's understandable, considering that their small cover screens haven't been good for much more than checking the weather and pressing pause on a podcast. But that's all changing this year: in a round of updates from Motorola, Oppo, and very likely Samsung next, cover screens are getting much larger and way more useful. And that's a big deal.

Samsung will likely announce its fifth-generation Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 this week at Unpacked, which has become its annual summer foldable-fest. They'll be thinner and lighter than last year's models -- that's what TM Roh told us, anyway -- and will both likely use new hinges that fold totally flat. The Z Flip 5 is heavily rumored to come with a much bigger cover screen than previous generations. The Z Fold 5? Well, rumors point to a very boring update, frankly. [...] The previous generation of flip-style phones felt like a regular phone with a smartwatch on the front -- good for checking quick information but not a lot more. The new flippable cover screens sit in a more comfortable place between a smartwatch and a full-size phone. They're big enough to provide a lot more information at a glance than a watch, but you can't comfortably do everything you'd do on a normal phone screen. As a result, you get a little bit of your attention back that you would have spent mindlessly scrolling Instagram when all you wanted to do was check the weather.

Meta has officially announced its Quest 3 VR headset in a post on Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram. The $499.99 headset is "coming this fall," and the post confirms that its design is 40 percent lighter than the Quest 2, with a new next-generation Snapdragon chip inside. From a report: This is coming just days before Apple is expected to announce its long-rumored mixed reality headset and hours ahead of a showcase for games on Meta's VR platform that begins later today at 1PM ET. We already had a pretty good idea of how the Quest 3 would shake out after Mark Gurman of Bloomberg detailed his hands-on experience with the then-unannounced device earlier this week, reporting on the lighter and more comfortable design that adds new sensors and redesigned controllers. The announced video clearly shows off the three new sensor areas across the front of the device. Gurman described that the pill-shaped zones hold four cameras split evenly between the left and right sides -- two of which are full-color cameras and two standard -- and a single depth sensor in the middle that could improve the headset's AR performance.

Dublin-based company Gazelle Wind Power has developed a modular floating offshore wind turbine design that it claims is more affordable than traditional designs. The Register reports: While it still has to be anchored to the seafloor, Gazelle's design places the anchor cables on a trio of articulated arms that help the platform move with the motion of the ocean. To ensure the turbine tower itself stays stationary, a counterweight hangs from the center of the platform; Gazelle claims this will reduce the turbine's pitch to less than five degrees, which the company said will greatly reduce wear and tear on the tower. Despite those design changes, the result is a turbine base that Gazelle reckons is smaller, lighter and 30 percent cheaper to deploy compared to traditional semi-submersible designs, it said. Speaking to IEEE Spectrum recently, Gazelle CTO Jason Wormald claimed the counterbalanced turbine was designed from the ground up, so to speak, for the offshore wind industry.

Gazelle's design has yet to be fielded - it's working on a pilot project in Portugal with renewable energy firm WAM Horizon, whose Chairman also serves as a non-executive director at Gazelle -- but if test results scale well it could mean every 1GW of third-generation Gazelle towers deployed would use 71kt less steel, preventing around 100kt of carbon dioxide emissions, the company claims. Gazelle also touts its modular design, which it said doesn't require any specialized equipment, like cranes or custom-built launch vessels, as another way in which it reduces environmental impacts.

A Norwegian company named ENRX "wants to inductively charge electric vehicles with 200 kW while driving on a section of highway in Florida," according to the "electric mobility industry" news site electrive.com.

"A one-mile section of a four-lane highway near Orlando is to be electrified." ENRX has teamed up with the Central Florida Expressway Authority and the Aspire Engineering Research Center for an initiative to build a one-mile (1.6-kilometre) section on a four-lane highway near Orlando that will inductively charge the batteries of moving electric vehicles at 200 kW.

The principle is clear: the electric vehicle batteries are fitted with a special receiver pad and charged as they drive over the coils embedded in the road. In the process, the energy is transferred from these coils to the receiver pad mounted on the vehicle floor, which according to ENRX should provide "a safe, wireless power supply" even at motorway speeds. Advantages of the 'Next Generation Electric Roadway system' mentioned include interoperability, different output power levels for different vehicle and battery types, or user-defined distance between the ground and the vehicle. In addition, the system (on the infrastructure side) is supposed to be maintenance-free after installation...

"When you can charge while driving, range anxiety and frequent charging stops will be a thing of the past," says ENRX CEO Bjørn Eldar Petersen... "Dynamic charging can reduce the need for large battery capacities, allowing cars to be equipped with lighter and more affordable battery packs."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader aduxorth for sharing the news.

A team of researchers in Florida have created a way to mimic nature's ability to reflect light and create beautifully vivid color without absorbing any heat like traditional pigments do. Debashis Chanda, a nanoscience researcher with the University of Central Florida, and his team published their findings in the journal Science Advances. NPR reports: Beyond just the beautiful arrays of color that structure can create, Chanda also found that unlike pigments, structural paint does not absorb any infrared light. Infrared light is the reason black cars get hot on sunny days and asphalt is hot to the touch in summer. Infrared light is absorbed as heat energy into these surfaces -- the darker the color, the more the surface colored with it can absorb. That's why people are advised to wear lighter colors in hotter climates and why many buildings are painted bright whites and beiges. Chanda found that structural color paint does not absorb any heat. It reflects all infrared light back out. This means that in a rapidly warming climate, this paint could help communities keep cool.

Chanda and his team tested the impact this paint had on the temperature of buildings covered in structural paint versus commercial paints and they found that structural paint kept surfaces 20 to 30 degrees cooler. This, Chanda said, is a massive new tool that could be used to fight rising temperatures caused by global warming while still allowing us to have a bright and colorful world. Unlike white and black cars, structural paint's ability to reflect heat isn't determined by how dark the color is. Blue, black or purple structural paints reflect just as much heat as bright whites or beige. This opens the door for more colorful, cooler architecture and design without having to worry about the heat.

It's not just cleaner, Chanda said. Structural paint weighs much less than pigmented paint and doesn't fade over time like traditional pigments. "A raisin's worth of structural paint is enough to cover the front and back of a door," he said. Unlike pigments which rely on layers of pigment to achieve depth of color, structural paint only requires one thin layer of particles to fully cover a surface in color. This means that structural paint could be a boon for aerospace engineers who rely on the lowest weight possible to achieve higher fuel efficiency. The possibilities for structural paint are endless and Chanda hopes that cans of structural paint will soon be available in hardware stores.

Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid shares a new report from the Economist: Thanks to innovations such as fractal colouration patterns, which mimic nature by repeating shapes at different scales, the distance from which naked eyes can quickly spot soldiers wearing the best camouflage has shrunk, by one reckoning, by a fifth over the past two decades. That is impressive. On today's battlefields, however, it is no longer enough to merely hide from human eyes.

People and kit are given away as well by signals beyond the visual spectrum, and devices that detect these wavelengths are getting better, lighter and cheaper. Thermal sensors are a case in point. Today, one that costs about $1,000 and weighs as little as five sachets of sugar can, in good weather, detect a warm vehicle as far off as 10km. As Hans Kariis, deputy head of signatures research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, notes, that is well beyond the range at which a small drone would be spotted. Two decades ago, he adds, a less sensitive thermal sensor weighing a kilogram cost ten times as much.
And then there's automatic target-detection software, the article points out, like the Kestrel software deployed in more than 3,500 aircraft around the world, which "scans feeds of visual, infrared and radar data, and places red boxes around people and other potential targets, even as their positions in the frame move." And the threat has only increased with the arrival of satellite-based synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) imagery.

But then the article lists examples of new camouflage that now tricks electronic sensors:

• Military vehicles affix hexagon-shaped sheets that can be cooled with electricity to blend into the temperature of their surroundings.
• Camouflage netting that absorbs (some) incoming radar beams with semi-conducting polymers while reducing heat signatures with insulation — and reflecting back the cooler temperature of the ground.
• Netherlands-based TNO makes "battery-powered sniper suits" embedded with 500 LEDs that match the luminosity and color of the surroundings using real-time data from a helmet camera.

"When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year," writes Engadget, "we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the trailer, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech."

Variety notes that the movie has already screened at both Berlin Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. "The film has received favorable reviews so far, with Variety's Peter Debruge calling it "frantic, irreverent and endearingly scrappy."

That review also calls the film "surprisingly charitable to the parties involved, acknowledging that these visionaries, while making it up as they go along, still managed to change the way the world communicates.... The film, at least, feels fresh, making geek history more entertaining than it has any right to be." But there's also a message in there somewhere. Mashable calls it "a cautionary tale jolted with humor and heart," while Vulture describes it as "a very funny geek tragedy." The stories of tech founders continue to entertain and frustrate us in equal measure, and continue to give us more content to watch on the platforms and devices they created. Clearly, something about power-tripping nerds really speaks to something in our collective psyche.
Actor Jay Baruchel plays BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis — and even tells Vulture he'd kept using his own BlackBerry "until about three or four years ago..."

"I think there's something inherently tragic about these guys that are really significantly responsible, in a really significant way, for the way we all relate to each other. There's a direct line from how we all communicate now, back to what these nerds did in Waterloo in 1996."

The movie will be released on May 12.

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times writes that it doesn't take a Chinese spy balloon to threaten ocean wildlife. "Even the child-size pink plastic 'Happy Birthday' balloon can be hazardous if left in the wrong hands. Or, more precisely, left from the wrong hands." There are several recent cases of sea turtles, seals and sea lions off the California coast discovered entangled in or choked by balloon strings, or in physical distress after ingesting balloons. Among the key findings of a 2020 Oceana report on ocean plastic was that balloons were one of the most common types of plastics entangling or consumed by marine life, along with bags, recreational fishing line, sheeting and food wrappers.

The threat to sea life is one of the main reasons a handful of coastal Southern California cities have slapped restrictions on the use of balloons, ranging from prohibiting the sale or release of lighter-than-air balloons (which generally means those filled with helium) to a ban on the sale, distribution or public use of all balloons passed by Laguna Beach on Tuesday.

If this trend sounds familiar, that's because a few years back it was single-use plastic straws that were targeted by local bans. Eventually, there were so many different rules about distribution of plastic disposable straws that a statewide law, beginning in 2019, made sense. Balloons may be heading for the same fate....

California will phase out mylar balloons by 2031 because their metallic nylon foil shells have a tendency to cause blackouts and spark wildfires when they float into power lines. That's good, but now California legislators should consider placing restrictions on the use and release of latex balloons. The balloon industry markets latex rubber balloons as biodegradable, but studies have found that they don't break down in the ocean. Furthermore, the strings attached to balloons are generally plastic. This makes them single-use trash in the same way that grocery bags and straws are, and releasing them into the environment is littering.
A Laguna Beach environmentalist tells the Times people need to rethink the way they look at plastic. "When people say they throw things away — there's really no away."

The Washington Post reports: A new spectacle is taking over the tented world of acrobats, clowns and juggling entertainers. And while it may have a trunk and tusks, it weighs absolutely nothing. Circuses, once known for showcasing elephants in all their heft are now presenting a much lighter creature — a 3D hologram.

The Circus-Theater Roncalli in Germany was the first to do it, and photographer Davide Bertuccio wanted to see for himself how the group pulled it off. When he attended a show at the end of 2022, he was immediately struck by the quiet atmosphere inside the tent. "Finding a circus without the din of animals, but the simple noise of people was a surprise" he said.

The holographic figures are custom-built for the circus using 3D animations, photography and virtual rendering. The system of 11 digital laser projectors positioned around the stage flash animations onto a circular net hoisted up for each performance. The entire light show is operated by one person, and it takes about 10 people to take down the metallic netting to make room for the other performers, including acrobats, clowns and dancers, Bertuccio said.
The circus introduced the holograms in 2019, the Post reports, and "other acts have followed suit, including the French circus L'Écocirque, which features holograms of a lion, an elephant and beluga whales, accompanied by a live orchestra blaring rock music."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cheap, light, flexible, yet robust circuit boards are critical for wearable electronics, among other applications. In the future, those electronics might be printed on flexible circuits made out of bacterial cultures used to make the popular fermented black tea drink called kombucha, according to a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server. "Nowadays kombucha is emerging as a promising candidate to produce sustainable textiles to be used as eco-friendly bio wearables," co-author Andrew Adamatzky, of the University of the West of England in Bristol, old New Scientist. "We will see that dried -- and hopefully living -- kombucha mats will be incorporated in smart wearables that extend the functionality of clothes and gadgets. We propose to develop smart eco-wearables which are a convergence of dead and alive biological matter."

Adamatzky previously co-authored a 2021 paper demonstrating that living kombucha mats showed dynamic electrical activity and stimulating responses, as well as a paper last year describing the development of a bacterial reactive glove to serve as a living electronic sensing device. Inspired by the potential of kombucha mats for wearable electronics, he and his latest co-authors have now demonstrated that it's possible to print electronic circuits onto dried SCOBY mats. The team used commercially sourced kombucha bacteria to grow their mats, then air-dried the cultures on plastic or paper at room temperature. The mats don't tear easily and are not easily destroyed, even when immersed in water for several days. One of the test mats even survived oven temperatures up to 200 C (392 F), although the mats will burn when exposed to an open flame. Adamatzky et al. were able to print conductive polymer circuits onto the dried kombucha mats with an aerosol jet printer and also successfully tested an alternative method of 3D printing a circuit out of a conductive polyester/copper mix. They could even attach small LEDs to the circuits with an epoxy adhesive spiked with silver, which were still functioning after repeatedly being bent and stretched.

According to Adamatzky et al., unlike the living kombucha mats he worked with previously, the dried SCOBY mats are non-conductive, confining the electrical current to the printed circuit. The mats are also lighter, cheaper, and more flexible than the ceramic or plastic alternatives. Potential applications include wearable heart rate monitors, for instance, and other kombucha-based devices. "Future research will be concerned with printing advanced functional circuits, capable for detecting -- and maybe recognizing -- mechanical, optical, and chemical stimuli," the authors concluded.