May 2025 – Page 2 – Peter's Quasi-Daily Blah-g

Ventiva’s fanless PC cooling technology is evolving from a curiosity to what appears to be a genuine game-changer: not only is it demonstrating 45W cooling capabilities with two partners, but Ventiva is also claiming that its ICE9 system can cool up to 100 watts of thermal energy as well.

Dell — the partner with which Ventiva originally worked with — is one of the companies interested in the 45W cooling solution. The other is Compal, a “white box” contract manufacturer that builds PCs for any number of vendors who then claim them as their own.

Ventiva surfaced late last year, and we sat down with company executives at CES 2025. Rivals like Frore or xMEMS use a vibrating membrane to replicate the actions of a fan, moving cool air over heated elements within a PC and then outside the system. Ventiva essentially ionizes the air, which is pushed away from a charged wire and creates airflow.

The amount of air moved, and how much cooling is applied, depends on a few factors: the size of the cooling component (which Ventiva calls an ICE), how much charge is applied, and how many ICE devices are working together. At CES 2025, however, Ventiva was talking about moving just 25 watts’ worth of thermal energy, enough for the 15W of an Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake”-U chip, for example., but not quite enough for the 28W “Arrow Lake” chips or the rival Ryzen AI 300 processors, whose TDPs are also about 28W.

By pushing up to 40W, Ventiva’s partnerships with Compal and Dell would allow both companies to design laptop reference designs that could accommodate a wider variety of PC processors, including while they were running in excess of their rated TDP in turbo mode. The ICE technology is less than 12mm high, allowing thinner laptops to be made.

Ventiva is also looking at the future. The company is demonstrating a 100W test laptop at Computex 2025 this week, which it will presumably use to strike even more partnerships.

“AI-driven laptops are transforming the way we work, create, and play, but their increasing thermal output requires a new level of device heat management,” said Carl Schlachte, chairman, president and chief executive of Ventiva, in a statement. “This is our highest-performing thermal management system to date, enabling laptop OEMs and ODMs to push power to the limit, and stay totally cool, under any workload, from 3D design to AI development to immersive game playing.”

While 100 watts of cooling is well below what gaming laptops can consume under full load, there’s certainly a chance that a midrange laptop might be able to use Ventiva’s solution for some sort of gaming application. And boy, wouldn’t a silent gaming laptop — without the need to dunk it in a vat of coolant — be a thing of beauty?

via PCWorld https://www.pcworld.com

May 20, 2025 at 05:34AM

May 19, 2025

Are Meal Kits Cheaper than Groceries in 2025? We Break It Down

https://www.wired.com/story/are-meal-kits-cheaper-than-groceries-in-2025/

The standard knock, of course, is that meal kits are expensive: anywhere from $7 to $14 a portion, less than a restaurant meal but more than most food budgets. So I set an experiment for myself. Armed only with meal kit recipe cards, I went to my local grocery store to see if I could make the meals for less. Reader, it wasn’t easy.

In fact, I mostly failed. For the sake of science, I bought everything at the store that the meal kit provided in the box, including rice or “Italian herb seasoning,” even if I otherwise already had it at home—but tried to buy it in as small a portion as I could. Where quality was credibly equivalent to the meal kit, I bought the lowest-cost option. Portions were for two, not for a family.

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And I only went to one store for each meal, meaning if I had to improvise substitutes to make the meal happen, that’s what I did. No one’s going to three stores for a Tuesday dinner, and so I did what people do when they’re shopping for themselves on a weeknight: I bought what was there.

My conclusion, not to spoil the ending, is that the real bonus offered by a meal kit is sauces, spices, and flavors, doled out in small portions rather than large jars. You can maybe buy a steak for less, even at an all-organic butcher, but you won’t get your cream-cheese sauce with roasted red peppers, the Parmesan cheese for your rice, and the herbs you rub your meat with.

Aside from time savings, it turns out that what a meal kit does best is serve up single- or double-serve flavor at relatively low cost compared with procuring it yourself. When trying to replicate meal kit sauces and spices at a grocery store, I ended up spending a lot more—though of course I then also had multitudinous condiments left over for future meals.

Which is to say: You can, of course, eat much more cheaply than a $12 kit meal. But you can’t easily eat these exact things this cheaply, unless you already own the right spices and bulk ingredients. Here’s my experience trying.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Ingredients: 2 boneless, center-cut pork chops or 2 skin-on salmon fillets; 1 cup long-grain white rice; 4 cloves garlic; 2 tbsp vegetarian ponzu sauce, 4 tbsp soy glaze, 6 tbsp cumin-Sichuan peppercorn sauce, 12 oz carrots, 4 scallions, 2 tsp black and white sesame seeds

via Wired Top Stories https://www.wired.com

May 18, 2025 at 06:42AM

May 19, 2025

Venus Aerospace debuts potentially revolutionary rocket engine with landmark 1st flight (video)

https://www.space.com/technology/venus-aerospace-debuts-potentially-revolutionary-rocket-engine-with-landmark-1st-flight-video

Houston-based startup Venus Aerospace has completed the first-ever test flight of a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) in the United States.

The launch took place on Wednesday (May 14) from Spaceport America in New Mexico. A small rocket equipped with Venus’ RDRE lifted off at 9:37 a.m. EDT (1337 GMT; 7:37 a.m. local time in New Mexico).

The milestone marked the first successful test of such an engine from U.S. soil and took Venus a "step closer to making high-speed flight accessible, affordable and sustainable," the company said in a statement.

Venus Aerospace conducted the first-ever test flight with its rotating detonation rocket engine on May 14, 2025. (Image credit: Venus Aerospace)

"This is the moment we’ve been working toward for five years," Venus CEO Sassie Duggleby said in the statement.

The test serves as a proof of design for Venus’s RDRE and keeps the company on track for runway-based high-speed flight, she added: "We’ve proven that this technology works — not just in simulations or the lab, but in the air."

The Venus RDRE uses a compact, high-efficiency design the company hopes can eventually power aircraft up to Mach 6 — six times the speed of sound — starting from conventional runways. Compared to traditional rocket engines, RDREs offer greater thrust in smaller packages, but up until now the technology has been mostly theoretical.

Normally, rocket engines burn fuel in a combustion chamber in a steady, controlled process. RDREs use a continuous detonation wave that travels in a circle within a ring-shaped chamber, which produces higher pressure and efficiency and results in increased thrust with less fuel.

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"This milestone proves our engine works outside the lab, under real flight conditions," Venus CTO Andrew Duggleby said in the same statement. "We’ve built an engine that not only runs, but runs reliably and efficiently — and that’s what makes it scalable."

The RDRE is designed to work in tandem with Venus’s VDR2 air-breathing detonation ramjet — a combination the company says will enable sustained hypersonic flight without the need for a booster. (Hypersonic flight is generally defined as Mach 5 and above.)

"This is the foundation we need that, combined with a ramjet, completes the system from takeoff to sustained hypersonic flight," Andrew Duggleby said.

With the successful test in the books, Venus is planning full-scale propulsion test of their integrated system as it moves to qualify the design of its future Stargazer M4, a reusable passenger aircraft capable of reaching Mach 4.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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

May 18, 2025 at 09:03AM

May 16, 2025

Arsenic Levels May be Rising in Rice Because of Increased CO2 and Surface Temperatures

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/arsenic-levels-may-be-rising-in-rice-because-of-increased-co2-and-surface

When arsenic is mentioned, many people associate it with a bygone poison. The type of quiet killer used in a murder mystery set on a train somewhere in Victorian England. It seems like a problem of the past.

However, arsenic is a naturally occurring substance that can contaminate groundwater and food irrigated with tainted water. And in an alarming new study, researchers have found that climate change is impacting the level of arsenic that people are ingesting.

Given that arsenic is a carcinogen, it’s primed to become a lethal killer. Billions of people are at risk of developing arsenic-induced diseases.

Why Arsenic Levels are Rising in Rice

In a 2025 study in The Lancet, an international team of researchers revealed the results of a study that measured two components associated with climate change — increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and surface temperatures — in rice paddies in China.

“One important chemical aspect that has been known about rice is its ability to accumulate arsenic, leading to an important and crucial question: Can CO2 and temperature affect arsenic concentration, and if so, what are the health consequences?” says Lewis H. Ziska, an associate professor in environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

The study was the first of its kind. Although scientists have long understood how both inorganic and organic arsenic can make their way into food or water, they weren’t sure how climate change might influence arsenic levels.

To find out, the researchers grew rice in controlled paddies in China from 2014 to 2023. To a certain extent, the research team expected to find some arsenic in the rice because it grows in flooded paddies and absorbs arsenic from the water.

The research team also expected the CO2 levels and surface temperatures would increase because climate change scientists have charted a projection of the likely increase. But would increased CO2 levels and temperatures lead to higher arsenic levels? And what might that mean if people eat the tainted crop?

Impacts of Eating Arsenic

The study found that the increased CO2 levels and temperatures indeed lead to higher concentrations of arsenic. The researchers’ rice paddies were representative of rice paddies in Asia, which means that what happened in their paddies is likely happening in others around the region.

Higher arsenic rates in rice are a major health concern. Arsenic is a known carcinogen. When found in drinking water, there is an increased risk of bladder and skin cancer. Other studies have found that ingesting arsenic can lead to cancer in the digestive tract, hematopoietic system, kidneys, liver, or lymphatic system.

Problematically, billions of people can now be considered at risk for arsenic-related cancers. More than half of the world’s population depends on rice as a staple food. Scientists are concerned that the increased arsenic in a staple food like rice could lead to a spike in future cancer cases throughout Asia.

Rice Consumption in the U.S.

But what does this mean for the U.S. food supply? Rice consumed in the U.S. comes from the Arkansas Grand Prairie, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Delta, or Sacramento Valley. These crops have not been tested by scientists to determine how CO2 levels and surface temperatures are impacting the arsenic concentrations. But if climate change can raise arsenic levels in Asia, Ziska says it can happen in the U.S. as well.

“It seems likely given the biogeochemistry of how rice can accumulate arsenic when grown under flooded (paddy) conditions,” Ziska says.

It’s a research area that Ziska says needs more attention, both in terms of long-term study support and public awareness. Many people don’t realize that climate change has the ability to alter the food supply by creating conditions that are ripe for toxins.

“Climate change isn’t just about wildfires and sea-level rise and storms of the century. It’s also affecting a food staple — rice — that is consumed by half the world’s population every day. Maybe we should pay attention,” he says.

This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the country’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emilie has authored three nonfiction books. Her third, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, releases October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.

via Discover Main Feed https://ift.tt/HouwOd9

May 15, 2025 at 03:27PM

May 12, 2025

Nintendo grants itself the power to brick Switches with pirated games

https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-grants-itself-the-power-to-brick-switches-with-pirated-games-162129077.html?src=rss

Nintendo’s latest legal move to combat piracy may be super effective. According to a new change in the Nintendo User Agreement, the console maker can brick your Switch, or render it useless, if it’s found with pirated games or mods. While some people may have glazed over the changes since Nintendo didn’t make this a major announcement, Game File’s Stephen Totilo dug through the changes and spotted the major updates.

In Nintendo’s own words, you shouldn’t "bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services." The company’s previous agreement only prohibited if you "adapt, reverse-engineer, or modify a Nintendo user account," but this updated language gives exact definitions of what you can’t do with your Switch. If you do break these rules, Nintendo could make your "applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part." In plain English, that means if you’re found with an emulator or pirated copies of games, your Switch might just end up being a very expensive paperweight.

This latest legal leap isn’t surprising considering Nintendo’s strict stance on emulation. In March 2024, the company filed a lawsuit against the popular Switch emulator called Yuzu claiming that the developers were facilitating piracy. Later that year, another emulator called Ryujinx shut down after Nintendo offered an agreement to the development team to discontinue the project in October. This latest user agreement update comes on the heels of the upcoming release of the Switch 2 that’s planned for June 5.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/PSnczoF

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

May 10, 2025 at 11:27AM

May 9, 2025

This $1M flying car can reach speeds of 155 mph

https://www.popsci.com/technology/flying-car-aircar/

A Slovakian startup working to make the age-old dream of flying cars a reality says it has a new prototype that could ship as early as 2026. Klein Vision, which has spent the past three decades developing its “AirCar,” has already completed over 170 flight hours and more than 500 takeoffs and landings. It also became one of the first vehicles of its kind to receive a certificate of airworthiness back in 2022.

Now, the company says it’s ready to shift out of the testing phase and into production. Whether it can actually get there, however, remains far from certain. Many companies have tried—and failed—to bring flying cars to life.

AirCar prototype. *Image: Klein Vision* Hand-out

How the AirCar works

Klein Vision claims its Jetsons-like vehicle can transform from a four-wheel car into a fixed-wing aircraft in under two minutes. Video demonstrations of its transition from flight mode to driving show the two wings retracting and folding in on themselves, somewhat resembling a hardtop convertible. Once in car mode, the company says it generates downforce using a spoiler and elevator pitch. The newest iteration of the vehicle can reportedly reach top speeds of 124 mph on the road and 155 mph in the air, with a maximum flight range of around 1,000 kilometers. (620 miles).

“The AirCar is a fusion of certified aviation engineering and advanced automotive design—a true dual-mode vehicle that meets rigorous standards in both air and ground performance,” AirCar co-founder Anton Zajac said in a statement.

The company did not immediately respond to Popular Science‘s request for comment, but told The Next Web that it hopes to start shipping to customers as early as 2026, with an estimated price between $800,000 and $1 million. According to The Next Web, the newly announced model includes several noteworthy improvements. It features a 280-horsepower motor—double the power of the previous version. It can also fly longer, drive farther, and switch between modes slightly faster. The first iteration of the AirCar received a Certificate of Airworthiness from the Slovak Transport Authority after completing 70 hours of “rigorous flight testing,” according to the company. This newest version will also need to receive certification before it can legally take to the skies.

But even if the new and improved AirCar finds buyers, potential owners shouldn’t expect their expensive new toy to soar over rush hour traffic. In car mode, the AirCar can, in theory, operate much like any other road vehicle. Those looking to fly it, however, will first need to drive to an airport and take off from a runway. For now, the AirCar’s flight path is limited to travel between airports. The video below shows the original AirCar making its maiden flight back in 2021.

Making flying cars is much easier said than done

Dreams of functional flying cars date back to the days of Henry Ford in the early 1900s. For now, they remain primarily in the realm of fiction, but that might be changing ever so slightly. Startups like Terrafugia and Moller Skycar have previously demonstrated the ability to transform between car and plane modes, but neither were able to successfully bring their vehicles to a commercial market. Terrafugia actually received a certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration, but it has since reportedly shuttered its US operations after being acquired by the Chinese firm Geely back in 2017. Moller Skycar famously listed its flagship vehicle on eBay that same year—with the caveat that the buyer would not be legally allowed to fly it.

Where there’s significantly more commercial activity currently ongoing is in the closely related area of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles. These vehicles have wheels but are intended to be able to lift off into the air without the need for a runway. In practical terms, they are somewhere in between a flying car and a helicopter. The two leading companies in that space, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, have already struck deals with airlines in the US and the U.K to transport passengers between airports and helicopter pads. In theory, that would allow time-crunched travellers to bypass traffic on busy streets.

But those use cases are still a far cry from the vision many futurists have of personal flying cars swarming city skies. Many of the obstacles keeping that vision grounded go beyond the technology itself. Current certification processes mean owners of these vehicles would need to acquire a pilot’s license to operate them. Federal and local regulators would also need to radically reimagine traffic logistics and safety rules to accommodate what would essentially be a new dimension of navigation. There’s also the very real concern about what happens if one of these flying cars falls out of the sky. The far more likely scenario is that a handful of airworthy car-plane hybrids may reach the market—but remain confined to use as expensive toys for wealthy enthusiasts.

The post This $1M flying car can reach speeds of 155 mph appeared first on Popular Science.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

May 8, 2025 at 01:38PM

May 9, 2025

I built a desktop PC specialized for AI. Now I seriously regret it

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2771474/i-built-a-desktop-pc-specialized-for-ai-now-i-seriously-regret-it.html

Since AI has diffused into every aspect of the technology sector, I’ve been more than a little tempted to try my hand at some of AI’s cooler applications. That growing temptation finally culminated in me building a desktop PC just for AI — to try my hand at vibe coding apps just for fun.

My budget wasn’t that high, so for the build I landed on an AMD Ryzen 5 2400G CPU with a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, and an Nvidia RTX 3090 video card. That combination was validated by my fellow PC builders online as entirely suitable for AI, so I felt confident I was onto a good thing.

And they weren’t wrong! My new PC worked well for my newest hobby, allowing me to dabble in making simple apps in DeepAgent. But with the gift of hindsight, I now realize that I made a big mistake with my build, and I deeply regret it.

The issue was and still is that I had built a PC suitable for one use case only, and in doing so it has since become obsolete to my life. I arrived at my rig’s configuration by unknowingly breaking one of life’s less spoken-about rules: “Know thyself.”

By that I mean two things: The first is that in my life I have Buckley’s chance of compartmentalizing my devices for just one use — I’m just too busy and inevitably end up using them for everything. My phone is the classic example of that –- it’s my mobile notetaker, my repository for holiday snaps, and my communication’s hub, all in one.

Secondly, I had overlooked a personality trait that I sometimes exhibit, one that I share with the character Toad from the classic children’s story The Wind in the Willows, and that is the tendency to get all worked up over a new hobby that can last for several months but then I lose interest quickly and stop it abruptly.

Of course, I should have known that AI was the most recent of these temporary hobbies, soon to be replaced by something else.

These two oversights would have been no problem at all had I selected more versatile hardware for my AI PC. But I had chosen potato-like components, suitable for running LLMs but not much more. That aha! moment came after a lengthy coding session when I decided to give the neurons a rest and loaded up a game of CounterStrike: Go.

My spiffy AI PC, which until then I had otherwise been chuffed about, at that very moment became an insubordinate nuisance.

Yes, I had a decent graphics card, but my PC was severely bottlenecked at the CPU and no number of settings changes were going to improve that. Like most gamers, I have a minimum frame rate that I simply can’t bear to play beneath — that’s 60FPS.

The best I could achieve on my AI PC, even in games with cartoony graphics, was a measly 40FPS — so it was of little use to me for any kind of serious gaming.

Pixabay: Andreas160578

Sure, I could have just changed out the CPU for a more powerful one, but I had other bottlenecks too; Like the slow 8GB RAM onboard, and a PSU so underpowered it was only really suitable for running the lights in a chicken coop.

If I had to find a moral in all of this, like in a family talk session at the end of a cheesy 1990s sitcom, it would be this: Don’t build a PC for just one application; reach higher with your hardware specs right from the get-go and build a more powerful and versatile rig capable of a whole bunch of stuff. If you do, you will save yourself a ton of hassle and possibly a ton of money too.

And, no matter what your next hobby is (composing music? VR gaming? Heck, even snapping time lapse videos of your cat!) you will have a powerful enough rig to cover your needs!

Further reading: 8 truly useful AI tools that make your life and work easier