Author: peterjang73

A nerdy father of two, a husband of a beautiful and understanding wife, an engineer who loves anime and tinkering with PCs and games, but most of all, loves God.
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A California Startup Just Flew Its $190,000 All-Electric Flying Car for the First Time

https://www.autoblog.com/news/a-california-startup-just-flew-its-190000-all-electric-flying-car-for-the-first-time

A California-based startup has completed a public test flight of its single-seat, all-electric flying car, taking a major step toward consumer-oriented personal aviation. The demonstration, held at the Center for Automotive Research in Northampton County, North Carolina, saw the craft climb to roughly 150 feet and complete a low-altitude circuit. Priced around $190,000, the vehicle is aimed at individual owners rather than air-taxi fleets, and the company’s test pilot went as far as saying, “Everybody’s going to have one.”

The prototype, developed by Pivotal Aero, uses a lightweight electric VTOL layout and reportedly offers about 25 miles of range with speeds near 60 mph. Under current FAA ultralight-style rules, early models may not require a traditional pilot’s license, though flights are restricted to uncongested areas and daylight operation. The company is pitching it as a recreational or short-hop personal aircraft while it pursues broader approvals.


A Glimpse Into the Future of Flying Cars

The test flight arrives at a moment when hype around airborne personal vehicles is increasing again, especially after claims like those surrounding Tesla’s next-generation Roadster. While Tesla’s concept leans more toward futuristic hovering technology than true eVTOL operation, it reflects the same momentum now seen in Pivotal’s real-world prototype.

Still, the practicality of these machines is far from proven. Regulatory oversight, infrastructure gaps, and the limitations of current battery technology are major hurdles, and safety remains a central question. Recent incidents across the emerging eVTOL field, including a recent one in China, show the need for strong certification and reliability standards before any mass rollout.



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Why This Matters

Pivotal’s prototype suggests that the “personal flying car” niche may grow faster than expected, but only for affluent early adopters. The current price, short range, and restricted-use rules make it more of a specialized recreational aircraft than a mass-market mobility product.

Still, the significance goes beyond hobbyist appeal. As major automakers push into electrification, including Toyota’s new mainstream efforts, the broader transportation landscape is shifting rapidly. Personal electric aircraft represent another branch of that evolution, merging automotive-style usability with simplified aviation.



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What Comes Next

To move beyond demos, companies like Pivotal must secure FAA certifications, expand battery capacity, boost flight time, and build the infrastructure for charging and maintenance. Urban airspace regulation, noise standards, and emergency procedures will also shape how, and where, these vehicles can fly.

Even with massive hurdles ahead, the successful test flight is a reminder that the line between cars and aircraft is blurring. Whether these machines become common or remain niche, the first wave of all-electric flying cars has officially left the ground.

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November 17, 2025 at 02:04PM

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Open-Source Software for 3D Printing with Multiple Materials

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/54191-open-source-software-for-3d-printing-with-multiple-materials

Tech Briefs: What got you interested in this project?

Charles Wade: I’ve always been interested in 3D printing in general, especially the design side. Growing up I struggled to understand engineering, especially math, but 3D printing provided a tactile and visual way to do it. So, that’s what got me into this — I can do what I do as a computer scientist, write code, and also fabricate something in the real world that I can touch and feel.

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November 13, 2025 at 06:55AM

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California Startup Flies Military Version of Its Air Taxi for the First Time

https://gizmodo.com/california-startup-flies-military-version-of-its-air-taxis-for-the-first-time-2000686221

Just three months after announcing a partnership with defense contractor L3Harris, Joby Aviation flew the new hybrid version of its flying car concept that’s been repurposed for military use.

The first flight of the turbine electric, autonomous vertical take-off and landing aircraft took place on November 7 at the company’s facility in Marina, California, Joby announced on Thursday. The California startup is known for developing all-electric air taxis for short, yet pricey, trips in places like Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Its new hybrid aircraft, however, is geared toward defense customers.

“It’s imperative that we find ways to deliver new technology into the hands of American troops more quickly and cost-efficiently than we have in the past,” JoeBen Bevirt, CEO and founder of Joby, said in a statement.

Prepare for takeoff

The new aircraft builds on Joby’s existing technology for its air taxis, integrating a hybrid turbine powertrain with the company’s SuperPilot autonomous flight system. That way, the new aircraft is designed to carry heavier payloads and travel longer distances than the current battery-powered version.

Through its partnership with L3Harris, Joby will also add sensors, surveillance, communications systems, and mission equipment onto the aircraft so that its vehicle can be repurposed for use by the military.

“The magic of dual-use technology is that it creates value in both directions,” Bevirt said. “By building on our proven technology stack, our partners can rapidly deliver new capabilities for the Department of War while we benefit from advancing the maturity of our hybrid and autonomous systems.”

Joby is hoping to cash in on a growing demand by the U.S. military for autonomous and hybrid aircraft. The company noted that the government has allocated roughly $9 billion in the 2026 budget to go toward developing next-generation aircraft.

“The next generation of vertical lift technology enables long-range, crewed-uncrewed teaming for a range of missions,” Jon Rambeau, president of Integrated Mission Systems at L3Harris, said in a statement. “We share a vision with Joby to deliver urgently-required innovation by missionizing VTOL aircraft for defense applications.”

Joby will continue to test its new aircraft on the ground and in flight, and the company is hoping to begin operational demonstrations with government customers by next year.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com/

November 14, 2025 at 03:48PM

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Porsche’s New $8,000 Wireless Charger Could Change EV Ownership Forever

https://www.autoblog.com/news/porsches-new-8000-wireless-charger-could-change-ev-ownership-forever

A Potential Game Changer

A few months ago, Porsche showcased its wireless charging system for vehicles. It has all the potential to change the EV charging landscape, as it aims to reduce the need for wallboxes or large charging stations. With its compact packaging, Porsche says charging at home will be a lot easier. We also reckon it has a practical use in EV fleets, too.

It’s about to roll out soon and will be an optional extra for the upcoming Cayenne EV. The question is, how does it work?

Porsche

The Setup

The charging pad measures 2.3 inches tall, 78 inches wide, and 46 inches long. It’s then activated by the driver’s phone, and the charger and vehicle will request for a password to begin charging. Porsche says it only needs to be done once, and the system will automatically start the next time the vehicle drives over the pad thanks to an integrated wi-fi module.

The pad is plugged into a power source that then converts AC into DC voltage. The device weighs 33 pounds, or about as much as a toddler. One of the built-in safety features is that it automatically stops when an obstruction is detected (such as a pet or a curious child), and resumes once it’s no longer there.

Charge is transferred via two copper coils. A current is sent to one, while the second one amplifies it from the magnetic field generated by the system. That field allows wireless charging to be possible. It’s a similar arrangement to wireless chargers for mobile devices, but Porsche had to repackage it in a way that it remains compact enough for automotive application. Scaling up wasn’t an option.

Porsche

How’s the Charging Rate?

What’s interesting here is that charging plate has a voltage of 85 kHz and 2,000v in an oscillating circuit. That allows it to send a charge upwards into the vehicle’s battery if it’s not perfectly aligned by up to four inches. Of course, the car can’t trip up the charger if it’s way out of line.

All in all, the system produces 11 kW of charging power. For reference, most home charging systems out out 3 to 7 kW, while your typical public charging station does about 11 to 22 kW. Okay, it’s not a rapid charger, but at least it’s gentle on the vehicle’s batteries, ensuring battery health in the long run.

Porsche

Porsche says that it will continue to develop its vehicle wireless charging tech down the line. From there, we can expect quicker charging rates, as well as more clever packaging in years to come.

How much is it, then? It’s about $8,000 including installation at current conversion rates. Not exactly cheap as home chargers are about ten times less (sans installation), but at least it charges faster than most home systems. Well, nobody said that new technology ever came cheap.

As for the first-ever Porsche Cayenne EV, the full reveal will be on November 19.

Porsche

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November 16, 2025 at 10:36AM

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‘Shockingly large’ amount of sensitive satellite communications are unencrypted and vulnerable to interception, researchers find

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/shocking-vulnerabilities-satellite-communications-study

Cybersecurity researchers have intercepted vast quantities of private voice calls and text messages, including potentially sensitive communications of government and military officials, transmitted over completely unprotected satellite communication links.

When the researchers decided to put satellite communications under scrutiny, they thought they would find some flaws. What they discovered was much worse than their wildest dreams. Using a commercial off-the-shelf satellite dish mounted on the roof of a university campus in San Diego, they scanned internet traffic routed via 39 geostationary satellites visible from southern California.

"A shockingly large amount of sensitive traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, internal corporate and government communications, private citizens’ voice calls and SMS, and consumer Internet traffic from in-flight wifi and mobile networks," the researchers wrote in a statement. "This data can be passively observed by anyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer-grade hardware."

It turns out that many of these satellites are using outdated equipment, the researchers say. "Geostationary satellites are a somewhat older technology so our expectation was that they will be using some older, outdated cryptography," Dave Levin, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Maryland who led the research, told Space.com. "So, we thought we would try to listen and then see whether we could break this cryptography. It turned out we didn’t have to because the cryptography wasn’t used at all in large part."

Geostationary satellites orbit Earth at a distance of 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers). At this distance, the orbital velocity of a satellite matches the speed of Earth’s rotation. As a result, the satellite appears suspended above a fixed spot on the equator, having a stable view of a large portion of the globe.

Before the advent of low-Earth-orbit internet-beaming megaconstellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink, geostationary satellites were the dominant solution for satellite communications. They are still widely used today, including for military purposes. The satellites scrutinized in the new study make up only about 15 percent of the world’s entire geostationary fleet, Wenyi "Morty" Zhang, a PhD researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the study, told Space.com. He thinks the scope of the problem is likely much worse.

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Levin said that what the team found was "as bad as one could hope." The researchers could listen to private phone calls, read text messages, but also see sensitive traffic transmitted by companies and government and military organizations. Data of passengers using in-flight WIFI provided onboard of commercial airliners were also easily visible.

"There were way more things in the clear than we had anticipated," Levin added. "Moreover, there were also more sensitive things than we had anticipated."

Zhang said the transmissions included messages sent by Mexican military and the police, and even some communications by the U.S. Government.

"It was quite shocking to us," said Zhang, who built the eavesdropping antenna and led the technical side of the project. The entire set-up, he said, cost a few hundred dollars and consisted of commercially available equipment.

The complete absence of encryption of the satellite links was only one part of the problem, added Levin. Hundreds of companies, frequently unaware of the workings of satellite communications systems, were sending their data via those satellites without end-to-end encryption, which is a standard in today’s secure internet communication.

Data being transmitted by hundreds of companies including mobile telephone operator T-Mobile were thus in plain sight of the researchers. The team has not yet disclosed the names of all the affected companies. They are bound by responsible disclosure rules that require them to give the affected parties time to fix the problems before making their issues public, but they stated that millions of users have been made vulnerable through the complete lack of encryption.

The researchers spent mere days investigating each of the satellites. Still, the amount of intercepted communications was mind-boggling. A dedicated attacker could easily harvest even more data. And in addition to gathering sensitive information, attackers could find many ways to actively exploit those vulnerabilities.

"Just from being able to see people’s text messages, you might be able to get their two-factor authentication codes and then log into systems as them," said Levin. "But an adversary could step up to another level and begin interjecting their own messages. They could, for example, try to interfere with critical infrastructure."

Levin added that although the affected companies first didn’t want to believe they had a problem of such a scope at their hands, they all responded "positively" and in many cases were not even aware how much of their data was transmitted via satellites.

The research was presented in the Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference and is available online.

via Latest from Space.com https://www.space.com

November 10, 2025 at 04:05PM

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Warning! Don’t open these WhatsApp images, else you’ll get hacked

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2965623/warning-dont-open-these-whatsapp-images-else-youll-get-hacked.html

A scam is currently circulating on WhatsApp that could be very dangerous for you. Users are receiving seemingly harmless messages—usually from unknown numbers without unique names—and those messages contain nothing more than a photo along with a question along the lines of “Is that you?” or “Do you know this person?”

It’s a clear attempt to get you to download and open the attached image. With WhatsApp, you first have to authorize the download of images, and that’s exactly what the scammers are after.

In fact, the file isn’t a picture of you or someone you know, but rather it’s been manipulated to deliver malware and open up ways for your smartphone, tablet, or PC to be hacked. Afterwards, the scammers can gain access to your private data and even use it to blackmail you.

How the image download scam works

The scammers are exploiting a vulnerability in WhatsApp that makes it possible to inject manipulated images or videos without being recognized as such by the app. They can gain access to the parsing process via the file preview that’s generated when an image is downloaded, and this process breaks files down into smaller packages that are needed for the processing of messages.

If code snippets containing malware are injected during this process, scammers can use that malware to gain access to target devices. You don’t see any of this happening because these processes run in the background while you’re opening the image.

What does this mean for you? Not only can your WhatsApp account be stolen, but your data on the device can also be intercepted and taken. You have to be careful of who you trust on WhatsApp.

How to not be a victim to this scam

Whenever you get unsolicited messages, always pay special attention to who’s sending the message and why. Unknown numbers often conceal scammers who message people at random and hope that someone will be careless enough to fall for their tricks. It’s best to block them.

Also, never open images or other files if you aren’t 100% sure of what they contain, if you don’t 100% trust the one sending them to you, and if it seems like they really want you to open them for some reason.

To play it extra safe, you should disable the automatic downloading of media, which you can do by navigating to Settings > Storage and data. Under Auto-download media, deselect all file types by unchecking the boxes (even if your Wi-Fi connection is active).

Last but not least, make sure you always install the latest WhatsApp updates. This fixes known security vulnerabilities, reducing the chance that a scammer can exploit flaws to trick you. It’s currently not know when WhatsApp will update to fix this particular vulnerability.

Further reading: WhatsApp is banning AI chatbots like ChatGPT soon

via PCWorld https://www.pcworld.com

November 7, 2025 at 09:30AM

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Toyota Says Its Next EV Batteries Will Last 40 Years — And They’re Almost Ready

https://www.autoblog.com/news/toyota-says-its-next-ev-batteries-will-last-40-years-and-theyre-almost-ready

Toyota Still Believes in EVs

Toyota, as an automotive company, has been the biggest EV pragmatist. Its outspoken and revered leader, Akio Toyoda, has been vocal about his considerations and has raised doubts about the EV push of the industry his company dominates.

While their approach to EVs has been conservative, Toyota appears to have been quietly working behind the scenes to perfect its own EV technology. 


Solid-State Batteries are the Future

According to recent developments, Toyota is developing a Solid State Battery (SSB) that can last up to 40 years, which is four times the current lifespan of EV batteries. What is even more impressive is the claim that they are targeting production applications of their Solid State Batteries by 2027 or 2028.

The technology behind Solid State Batteries sounds good on paper; it promises a range of at least 1,000 Kilometers, and is supposed to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper than the current crop we have today.

Toyota

The Value for Money Option

Keiji Kaita provided insight on its upcoming SSB during the recently concluded Japan Mobility Show (JMS), Car Expertreports. 

Kaita is the president of Toyota’s Carbon Neutral Advanced Engineering Development Center. He was quoted as saying from the get-go, SSBs might cost more to produce in the current technological climate, but they are, of course, working with their supplier to properly integrate the technology into a more affordable package in the long term. 

Furthermore, Kaita also claims that the SSBs will most likely outlast the rest of the car itself, allowing for the opportunity to swap out batteries, which will, of course, offer greater value for money to each owner. 

Staggeringly, Kaita went on to say that the target is to ensure 90% battery capacity and condition by year 40 of the lifespan. Last October, Toyota decided to collaborate with Sumitomo Metal Mining, which will help in the production of cathode materials for the SSBs. 

Toyota’s realistic approach to EVs has enabled it to properly divert resources to something that could potentially give it an edge in the near and far future.

Toyota

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November 7, 2025 at 08:36AM