New NASA X-Plane Could Bring Supersonic Flight to the Masses
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If there’s a pantheon of great airplanes, the X-planes deserve an entire wing of the place. Since the Chuck Yeager-toting Bell X-1 broke the sound barrier in 1947, these experimental aircraft have pushed up against, and burst through, the boundaries of flight. The X-15 was the first plane to demonstrate hypersonic flight—over Mach 5—and set a manned speed record in 1967. In the early 2000s, the X-35 evolved into the F-35 fighter jet. The latest in the line, the X-57, is working to prove electric power can work as well in the air as on the ground.
NASA, which runs the X-plane program, has just announced the newest member of this vaunted club. The space and aeronautics agency is giving Lockheed Martin a $247.5 million contract to build a supersonic aircraft. Now, flying faster than sound is the easy part. The real trick is doing it without creating the eardrum-battering sonic boom, a key hurdle to reviving supersonic flight for civilians.
The goal is to clear the way for a successor to the supersonic Concorde, which started service in 1976. That plane created such a loud crack as it blasted overhead that regulators banned it from flying at supersonic speeds over people in the US and Europe. Effectively relegated to a few transatlantic routes, the Concorde struggled financially, and was retired in 2003. A quieter plane, the thinking goes, could ease those restrictions, and allow more profitable flights of rich, important, businesspeople from New York to LA and San Francisco, as well as across the ocean.
“This X-plane is a critical step closer to that exciting future,” says Jaiwon Shin, who runs NASA’s aeronautics research. “People enjoying affordable, quiet, supersonic flights in the future will say April 3rd, 2018 is the day it all began.”
Lockheed Martin’s task is to build a one-off, manned, flying example of a prototype it has been developing for a couple of years: the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. The aircraft doesn’t have an official X designation yet—NASA will apply to the US Air Force for that in the next few months—but the logical guess is X-58. It would be the first manned X-plane in a generation, after a series of remote controlled demonstrators.
The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator takes the Concorde’s long pointy nose and swept back wings to an extreme. The result looks like a missile with small wings, which should minimize the pressure waves that come off the plane in supersonic flight—they’re what make all the noise. The plane is designed to hit 940 mph and cruise at around 55,000 feet, far higher than the typical 35,000 for subsonic airliners. For people on the ground, Lockheed says, the shockwaves should sound more like a car door closing than the Concorde’s canon-like boom. The jet will be propelled by one General Electric F414 engine, the sort used in F/A-18 fighters. The cockpit design will be the same as the rear seat in the T-38 training jet.
“A supersonic manned X-plane—this is probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” said Jim Less, one of two NASA pilots lined up to fly the plane from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. “We’re all pretty excited.”
If you too are excited about the idea of Yeager-ing your way across the country, get ready to wait. Although NASA hopes the technology will eventually lead to civilian airliners, this plane will be just 96 feet long, with room for a solo pilot. “This airplane, like the Bell X1, or the X15, is a purpose built experimental research aircraft,” says Dave Richardson, the director for air vehicle designs and technologies at Lockheed Martin. He says he fields a lot of questions about where the passengers or missiles go, but that this isn’t a prototype business jet or weapons system. Its mission isn’t carrying CEOs or taking out enemies—it’s defeating the boom.
NASA hopes to start flying the plane in 2021, if Lockheed meets its production targets. To date, the contractor has tested scale models in a wind tunnel. (“I’ll lose a lot more hair in the time between now and then,” says Richardson.) It will operate over test ranges first, to make sure it’s safe, then start flying over select US cities in 2022, accompanied by surveys of the people on the ground. If all goes according to plane, those folks won’t be bothered—and eventually, they’ll be able to join in on the fun.
Google Revamps Searching for Movies, Theaters on Your Mobile Phone
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Google is all about making normal things we do more easy via our smartphones and Google Search. This week, the company is introducing slight changes to the way we go about looking up movies and showtimes inside of Google Search.
Moving forward, whenever you search for “showtimes” or “movies,” you’ll see a list of Movie Showtimes. From here, you can now filter your searches based on the date, genre, screen type (IMAX, 3D, etc.), ratings, critic scores, theater chains, language, and time.
Furthermore, you can look at specific theaters near you. When this tab is selected, you’ll be shown all of the theaters around you, plus how many movies they are showing. Once a theater is chosen, you can choose which movie and which showtime, then of course, are offered a link directly to Fandango for ticket purchasing.
It’s a pretty streamlined experience, and come to think of it, I should probably go see Ready Player One.
SpaceX reaches the promised land of launching every two weeks
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SpaceX has long talked a good game about increasing its launch cadence, but the company now appears to be delivering in a big way. After two launches in four days, the California-based company has now flown seven rockets in 2018—six Falcon 9 missions and one Falcon Heavy. That breaks down to one launch every 13 days this year.
This is a significant number because it brings the company within its longstanding goal of launching a rocket every two weeks. Indeed, at this pace, SpaceX will launch a total of 27 rockets in 2018, which is consistent with expectations set by the company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell.
At the end of 2017, when the company was in the midst of shattering all of its previous launch records by flying 18 missions, Shotwell said SpaceX would aim for more in the coming year. “We will increase our cadence next year about 50 percent,” Shotwell toldSpace News. “We’ll fly more next year than this year, knock on wood, and I think we will probably level out at about that rate, 30 to 40 per year.”
Cheap, but not reliable
About a decade ago, when SpaceX began publishing its launch prices online, it heavily undercut its rivals in the commercial launch market. With the low price of about $60 million per launch, SpaceX built up a lengthy manifest of customers—creating a backlog of nearly 100 missions by some accounts. In response to the upstart, competitors of SpaceX criticized the company for failing to deliver on ambitious promises of dozens of launches per year. Why buy from SpaceX, they said, if a satellite must wait years to get into space?
And for a time, this was true. From 2012 through 2016, SpaceX averaged fewer than five successful launches of its Falcon 9 rocket per year. (Catastrophic failures in 2015 shortly after launch and on the launch pad in 2016 did not help). But last year, with no failures, SpaceX finally began to master the art of supply lines, in-house production, engine-testing workflow, and more to reach 18 launches.
This increase does not appear to have been a fluke. With its early run of success this year, and now three launch pads at its disposal in Florida and California, the company is showing that it can make another sizable leap in cadence, laying to rest the doubts of rivals who said SpaceX could never fly out its manifest.
“SpaceX is proving what commercial space advocates have always believed, that more affordable, reliable, and plentiful access to space will change the level and nature of demand for space transportation,” said James Muncy, founder and president of PoliSpace, an independent space policy consultancy. “It’s not just that SpaceX can launch 30 or more times a year—and they will keep increasing their flight rate in 2019—it’s that demand is increasing, too. That’s great news for all emerging launch providers and for the government if they’re allowed to buy intelligently.”
Busy weeks ahead
After two launches in four days, SpaceX likely will launch two more rockets this month. On April 16, SpaceX is scheduled to launch NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite from its Space Launch Complex 40 pad in Florida, followed about a week later by the launch of a communications satellite for Bangladesh, at nearby Launch Complex 39A. Two more launches are tentatively set for May.
Even as it has upped its launch flight rate, SpaceX has also begun to make low-cost, reusable rocketry seem more real. In the last 12 months, it has flown 11 “used” Falcon 9 first stage rockets. All of these missions have been successful. In the coming months, it will transition to a newer version of this booster, Block 5, optimized for more rapid reuse.
Hunger And Homelessness Are Widespread Among College Students, Study Finds
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A new study from Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab found more than a third of college students can’t always afford to eat or have stable housing.
Matt Rourke/AP
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Matt Rourke/AP
A new study from Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab found more than a third of college students can’t always afford to eat or have stable housing.
Matt Rourke/AP
As college students grapple with the rising costs of classes and books, mortgaging their futures with student loans in exchange for a diploma that they’re gambling will someday pay off, it turns out many of them are in great financial peril in the present, too.
More than a third of college students don’t always have enough to eat and they lack stable housing, according to a survey published Tuesday by researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab.
Overall the study concluded 36 percent of college students say they are food insecure. Another 36 percent say they are housing insecure, while 9 percent report being homeless. The results are largely the same as last year’s survey, which included fewer students.
The 2018 numbers are even higher when broken out to include only community college students. Forty-two percent indicated they struggled the most to get adequate food, as measured by the researchers’ scale. Nine percent said they had gone at least one day during the last month without eating because they lacked the money. And 46 percent said they had difficulty paying for housing and utilities.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of higher-education policy at Temple University and the lead author of the report for the past three years, told NPR that while conditions remain dire for students from low-income families, the burden of covering these basic necessities is spreading into the middle class.
For poor students, she said, “It really undermines their ability to do well in school. Their grades suffer, their test scores appear to be lower, and overall, their chances of graduating are slimmer. They can barely escape their conditions of poverty long enough to complete their degrees.”
Whereas, middle class students “wouldn’t be going through these issues if they weren’t in college” because “their resources pale in comparison to those high college prices.”
For those students facing food insecurity, it means they have trouble getting enough to eat on a daily basis, often leading to skipped meals, weight loss and limited access to nutritious foods.
Housing instability can mean a student is at risk of eviction, behind on utilities payments, or actually homeless, although according to the researchers, homelessness can take on different forms. For instance, it may include students living in a shelter as well as anyone “couch surfing” — staying with friends — or roaming across campus at night, catching short windows of sleep as they move from one empty building to building to another.
The report focused on 43,000 students at 66 institutions — including 31 community colleges and 35 four-year universities — in 20 states and Washington, D.C. Students volunteered to participate and researchers say it is a non-random sample.
However, Goldrick-Rab and her colleagues have touted it as “the largest national assessment of basic needs security among four-year students.”
While the survey did not include any University of California respondents, most of the findings in the current annual study parallel those found by researchers with the UC Berkeley’s Basic Needs Security Work Group, which, in 2016 determined 42 percent of student in the UC system were food insecure.
Other notable findings in Goldrick-Rab’s study include:
More than 60 percent of former foster youth who completed this survey were food insecure and housing insecure, and almost 1 in 4 had experienced homelessness in the last year.
21 percent of homeless students said they felt unsafe where they live.
37 percent of community college students and 29 percent of four-year students reported the food they’d bought just didn’t last and they didn’t have money to buy more.
Among the most surprising findings in the survey, Goldrick-Rab said, “Is that homeless college students devote as much time to the classroom and to studying as do college students who are not homeless. However, they also work more, they commute more, spend more time taking care of other people and they sleep less.”
That is why she is urging higher education institutions to double down on providing services to help financially strapped students graduate. “Because these people have clearly exhibited a resilience that almost any employer would benefit from.”
China’s $50 Billion Tariff Threat Targets U.S. Soybeans, Cars, Whiskey
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China currently buys nearly a third of the U.S. soybean crop — but the country plans to impose tariffs, in response to a Trump administration plan. Here, a worker takes a sample from a truckload of soybeans in Fargo, N.D., last December.
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China currently buys nearly a third of the U.S. soybean crop — but the country plans to impose tariffs, in response to a Trump administration plan. Here, a worker takes a sample from a truckload of soybeans in Fargo, N.D., last December.
Dan Koeck/Reuters
China’s leaders followed President Trump in taking another step toward a new trade war, announcing a plan to put steep tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. imports. China’s proposed 25 percent tariffs would target a wide range of American products, from soybeans and whiskey to airplanes and cars.
“China currently buys about $14 billion worth of American soybeans each year — almost a third of the entire U.S. crop,” NPR’s Dan Charles reports for our Newscast unit. “Prices for U.S. soybeans tumbled by 3 to 5 percent” on the news, Dan adds.
China is retaliating for President Trump’s plan, announced Tuesday, to impose possible tariffs on Chinese goods valuing $50 billion in areas such as aerospace, robotics and machinery. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce calls the U.S. action “an evident violation of rules of the World Trade Organization” that also “threatens China’s economic interests and security.”
As that stern language suggests, there is brinkmanship afoot: The timing of when the Chinese tariffs might take effect is linked to when the Trump administration imposes U.S. tariffs, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
As for the early economic effects of China’s plan, NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Beijing, “Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 2 percent. Soybean futures tanked on the news, and shares in Boeing in pre-market trading were down by more than 3 percent.”
Both countries’ proposed tariffs promise a 25 percent levy on imported goods — but there are distinct differences between the U.S. and Chinese lists.
The Trump administration’s tally covers some 1,300 products in a broad range of sectors, from electronics components to medical devices, and from false teeth to detergent chemicals. While that long list quickly created concerns for many businesses, it also suggests the effects of the U.S. tariff might be widely distributed.
But when China released its list, it named only 106 items, meaning that the American producers of those products might feel the pain more acutely. And China’s list is being seen as targeting agricultural products — many of which come from parts of the U.S. that Republicans consider part of their base.
There are also differences in how the two countries presented their tallies. The U.S. list starts with thorium compounds and moves on to depleted uranium, certain isotopes, and the antioxidant supplement coenzyme Q10 — naming the products in an order determined by their eight-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule numbers.
China’s list, in contrast, ranks the threatened items in a selective order, naming soybeans as the No. 1 target, followed by corn products, two types of cotton exports, wheat and meat. The tally also includes frozen orange juice and whiskey, tobacco and cars — and that’s just the first half of the list.
The looming tariffs are the most tangible sign yet of a potential trade war between the world’s two largest economies. For the U.S., it would also bring a spat with its biggest trading partner — a relationship in which China has long held an advantage as a net exporter.
America’s trade in goods with China topped $635 billion in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In that year, the U.S. says its goods trade deficit with China was $375.2 billion.
25 Great Games You Can Play On Laptops and Low-End PCs
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Just because you don’t have access to the fanciest gear around doesn’t mean you have to play subpar games. Even if you’re on a potato computer or low-end PC, there’s plenty out there for you to enjoy. Here are some of Kotaku’s top picks for quality games that should run on almost anything.
Into The Breach
From the makers of FTL comes a turn-based game that you can think of as kaiju chess. Highly addictive, yet brutal, Into The Breach asks players to protect cities from underground aliens. Often, matches come down to how much you’re willing to sacrifice just to live through another day. Randomized power-ups, optional challenges, and unlockable mechs make Into The Breach extremely replayable, too.
Owlboy
Nine years in the making, Owlboy is a lush side-scrolling puzzle platformer with plenty of heart and soul. While none of the puzzles in Owlboy are brain-breakers, they are clever enough to feel rewarding when you solve them. Mostly, though, you’ll be playing Owlboy because its cast of endearing, lovingly-rendered characters. Read more about it here.
Starbound
Starbound is a 2D planet exploration game where you make your own fun. Maybe you’d like to build the most elaborate fortress. Maybe you want to meet alien races and unearth their mysteries. Maybe you want to dive for treasure and fight ferocious enemies. Or, maybe you just want to assemble a good crew for your spaceship. Starbound lets you play from a variety of different races, or enjoy the game with a friend. Plus, there are a ton of mods to download.
80 Days
One of the best-written games around, 80 Days is a steampunk adventure about exploring the world in, well, 80 days. There are over 150 cities to explore, each with their own characters, secrets, and storylines. 80 Days is as much of a game about resource management—making sure you have enough money and items—as it is a game about deciding what’s important when the entire world is at your fingertips.
Devil Daggers
It’s you against an endless demonic horde in the arcade shooter Devil Daggers. Harkening back to classic FPS shooters, Devil Daggers is a no-frills game all about shootin’ real good and movin’ real fast. See how long you can last, try to beat your own score, and don’t get unnerved by the creatures that lurk in the dark.
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth turns an already beefy game into something massive—especially if you get any of the DLC. Like the initial entry, Afterbirth is a randomly generated top-down shooter where you dive deep into a god-forsaken basement. Terrors abound here, but fortunately, there are hundreds of powerful and bizarre items to help you survive. It’s a game you can play for dozens of hours and still experience new things in every single run. Combined with unlockable characters, challenge runs, local co-op and more, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a lot of bang for your buck. Just know that it’s a crass game that loves gross-out humor, which is to say, there’s a whole lot of poop in here.
Undertale
While the internet got a little too overzealous about this humble RPG, Undertale is still absolutely worth playing. Undertale is an earnest game that allows you to talk your way out of battles, which is great, because some enemies are too memorable to just kill. Partially a bullet hell shooter, and partially a subversive game that breaks the fourth wall, Undertale is the rare game that evokes capital F feelings.
Borderlands
Borderlands is a classic loot-driven open-world shooter that you can play with up to three friends. While some of the humor has aged poorly, it’s still a rush to tear down a boss and see what goodies it has left behind.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Shadowrun: Dragonfall is the perfect game for those of you who love getting lost in a meaty, evocative CRPG world (think Fallout or Divinity: Original Sin, except cyberpunk.) While there’s plenty of tactical rigor in the turn-based battles, Dragonfall’s biggest hook is the narrative. Expect to have long, fascinating conversations with characters about the world and its politics.
Celeste
Celeste is technically a difficult “masocore” platformer, but unlike other games in the genre, Celeste actually seems to care about you, the player. Challenge doesn’t exist for the sake of challenge here: Celeste’s character is undergoing a mental health journey, and climbing a precarious mountain is part of her road to recovery. Celeste doesn’t revel when you fail. Instead, it asks you to get back up, because it knows you can do this. But for those of you who are looking to test your mettle, Celeste has a host of optional levels and collectibles that can eat up entire evenings, too.
Flinthook
A platforming roguelite shooter, Flinthook is all about a space pirate trying to steal some treasure. Levels are randomly generated, but the twist is that you primarily get around with a grappling hook. Flinthook may look cute, but dodging around enemies, environmental hazards, and trekking across maze-like ships is tough.
Butterfly Soup
Butterfly Soup is the funniest game I’ve played in years. It’s a visual novel that tells the tale of a group of friends who play baseball. It’s a highly specific game about queer Asian Americans living in California, but by diving into their experiences, Butterfly Soup showcases an extremely human narrative. Also, Butterfly Soup has the most realistic depiction of shitposting that I’ve ever seen.
Hearthstone
Hearthstone has had its ups and downs, but for a free-to-play card game that runs on anything from a phone to a toaster of a laptop, it’s hard to beat. The game has evolved a ton over the past few years, with new sets introducing unique mechanics and weird interactions, but there’s a steady-enough flow of gold to keep earning cards or Arena runs. The animations are gorgeous, the tactics simple to learn but complex to master, and if you’re a Blizzard follower, there’s a distressing amount of fan service. The Dungeon Run is secret highlight, mixing roguelike with the base game to create a fresh take on the game’s format. If you have a weak machine, a competitive edge, and time to kill, there aren’t many better ways to do it than Hearthstone. Just don’t be like me; limit yourself on the booster pack spending, okay?
-Eric Van Allen
Darkest Dungeon
Are you the kind of person who kind of thrives on stress, and do you have a fascination with gothic horror? If the answer is yes to either of those, then Darkest Dungeon is for you. In this turn based RPG, you’ll take a very expendable team of adventurers through some monster ridden caves, where they will almost certainly lose their minds and die. Managing their moods is half the fun though, as characters who break take on new traits, good and bad, that affect their ability to explore dungeons. Try not to lose your head as they lose theirs.
– Gita Jackson
Stardew Valley
If you haven’t played the mega-popular farming simulator Stardew Valley, it’s never too late to start. Inspired by the classic series Harvest Moon, you head off to the sleepy town of Stardew Valley to farm, fish, mine and get married. It’s simply massive game that you could easily play forever as you get to know the charming characters. Plus, you can have a pet cat or dog. It truly has everything. – Gita Jackson
Spelunky
Spelunky is about guiding a silly little character down into a cave system that is created anew for you every time you boot the game up. There’s treasure down there. There’s also snakes, pit traps, jungles full of danger, and a golden idol god that just wants to smash you. Armed with a whip and a jump button, you try to make your way as deeply as you can into it. You won’t make it to the end every time, and you might only make it once or twice over hundreds of hours, but that doesn’t matter. Spelunky is a game about building skills and learning how to approach unfamiliar situations, and there’s a joy in using muscle memory and the best practices you’ve developed over dozens of games to extract yourself from a sticky situation. It’s the original procedurally generated Indiana Jones experience, and it never gets old.
– Cameron Kunzelman
Hyper Light Drifter
Hyper Light Drifter is an enchanting, challenging action RPG that’s hard to put down. Fighting through its Zelda-esque world, the player encounters several colorful zones full of strange animals and puzzles. The protagonist is the Drifter, who suffers from a mysterious disease. Hyper Light Drifter’s mechanics are simple and elegant: one button to dash, one button to sword-attack. By slashing monsters, the player charges their gun. Combat is punishing, but never needlessly so. The player grits their teeth, sighs, and goes at a challenge again and again; the game’s rhythm keeps you going.
– Cecilia D’anastasio
Civilization V
Civ V is so good loads of fans still prefer it to Civ VI. It also runs really well on old PCs and even old laptops, though you may need to be conservative with your map sizes.
– Luke Plunkett
Super Hot
Superhot has a simple concept: time moves when you move. But that small conceit creates a shooting experience that no other game has truly delivered. It’s The Matrix. It’s Max Payne. It’s John Woo. The story is a bit self-serious but extra challenge modes mean that you’ll be playing for a long time afterwards, reveling in each beautiful bullet ballet.
– Heather Alexandra
West of Loathing
West of Loathing is a comedy cowboy game overflowing with off-beat humor. Sure, it’s a side-scrolling RPG at its core, but elaborate gags involving everything from wild west tropes to bean wizards are the real main attraction. There are multiple ways to get through areas, many of them resulting in giant punchlines. It’s a game that commits to the bit and is uniquely funny because of that.
– Nathan Grayson
Invisible, Inc
Where most turn-based tactics games are asking you to kill things, Invisible Inc. flips the genre on its head by asking you to do the opposite. Its emphasis on hiding, theft and visibility harks back to classics like Commandos, replacing wartime dorks with cool cyber-thieves.
– Luke Plunkett
Neo Scavenger
Neo Scavenger is a survival game where you travel post-apocalyptic Michigan avoiding mutants and uncovering a mysterious storyline. The low-fi graphics belie complex crafting and an inventory system where you’ll carry most of your possessions in your hands. Turn-based combat is told through text, and fights are both stressful and hilarious. For a simple-looking game, Neo Scavenger is surprisingly deep and varied.
– Riley MacLeod
Gunpoint
Gunpoint is a stealth game about breaking into buildings to steal data. Your character can rewire a building’s electronics to remotely control doors, light switches, and alarms, which you can be used against enemies. Sometimes you’ll pull of a clever plan and feel like an ace hacker; other times you’ll screw up and smack yourself in the face with a door.
– Riley MacLeod
Crawl
Crawl is a creepy, delightful party game where the players are monsters who take turns killing off another player, the sole human. When the human is dead, the player who got the final hit possesses them. Players choose and level up their monsters, which range from skeletons to oozes, and can receive all sorts of buffs, too. Players who don’t get a chance to play the human receive points fittingly called “Wrath,” which they can spend on monster buffs. Crawl spawns good-natured rivalry and is righteously fun to play with three friends on a couch.
– Cecilia D’anastasio
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
If you’re looking for a massive, sprawling Japanese role-playing game to suck you into a world and never spit you out, you can’t do much better than The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. With a wonderful cast of characters and a world that rewards players who pay careful attention, the affectionately acronymed TitS is satisfying at every turn. This game is the first in a humongous series that’s almost entirely available on PC and easy to run on even the lowest-end potato.