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Did you get enough about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips in 2024? To start off 2025, the chipmaker known for finally bringing ARM to PC—and usable this time—now aims to carve a niche in the cheap laptop or mini-PC market. The new Snapdragon X platform isn’t plus and it isn’t elite, although if you want to get your mother a ARM-based small PC for nothing but browsing and streaming, this could be your first CPU of choice..

The current staple of Oryon-based Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips include an 8-core variant. The Snapdragon X has the same number of cores, though it’s dialed back to 3 GHz clock speeds on the same 4nm processor node and a 30 MB cache. It has a 135 mb/s memory bandwidth but maintains the same 45 TOPS neural processor as the other Snapdragon PC CPUs.

Does the NPU really matter so much when its made for a PC that has a limited amount of onboard RAM? Likely not. The Snapdragon X is more meant to compete against other, low-end CPUs like the Intel Core Ultra 5 120U from early last year. Qualcomm claims its new chip is capable of close to 60% better benchmarks in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024, though for a low-end PC the most important thing is how it handles browsing tasks with better power efficiency. Qualcomm claimed it should get 157% better power efficiency at ISO power than the last-gen Intel chip.

Intel just released new CPUs for both its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake lineup, including a new U line. Without benchmark comparisons, all we have to go off is the company’s specs. Otherwise, the Snapdragon X supports Bluetooth 5.4 and WiFi 7. Devices with this chip should be able to support 4K HDR video capture and HiFi audio.

There should be several OEMs debuting new Snapdragon X-based PCs during this year’s CES. Lenovo is first out the gate with two mini-PCs, the ThinkCentre neo 50q QC and Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini x (1L, 10). Both include the Snapdragon X Plus, though the IdeaCentre is geared more toward creatives looking for a Mac mini alternative.

For as long as humans have suffered at the hands of the storms they have dreamed of controlling the weather. The United States, like all great empires lost to hubris, has long sought to manipulate the skies to its own ends. A new Federal report has revealed America sucks at it.

The report comes from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates the U.S. government. It’s narrowly focused on “cloud seeding,” the practice of adding silver iodide crystals to clouds to make them bust and give up that sweet sweet rain. As droughts hit the western states on a routine basis, many local governments are attempting to use cloud seeding to bring the rains.

It’s not working well. The GAO conceded there’s some validity to cloud seeding, but that it’s almost impossible to measure its effectiveness. “Cloud seeding may increase water availability and result in economic, environmental, and human health benefits. In the studies GAO reviewed, estimates of the additional precipitation ranged from 0 to 20 percent,” the report said. “However, it is difficult to evaluate the effects of cloud seeding due to limitations of effectiveness research.”

The idea of seeding clouds with something to make them rain started in the late 19th century but wasn’t studied and perfected until after World War II. “Scientists demonstrated the basis of cloud seeding in the 1940s when they observed in the laboratory that water present in clouds could be artificially induced to create ice crystals using dry ice or silver iodide crystals,” the GAO said in its report. “Extensive federal funding of research and development, including field experimentation, followed this discovery. For example, in fiscal year 1978, total federal funding for weather modification was approximately $68 million, in 2024 dollars.”

Scientists could never quite prove it worked. Or, if it did, how effective the seeding was. In the 1980s, the federal government slashed cloud seeding funds. These days, most cloud seeding schemes are local affairs. According to the GAO, nine states (California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming) are seeding the clouds.

Methods and specifics of seeding differ greatly between countries and even states. It can be done from an aircraft flying above or through a cloud system, or from a large cannon on the ground that pumps particulates into the air. It’s often done with silver iodide, but sodium chloride, dry ice, liquid propane, and other salts are used too.

The GAO report is a list of the limitations of the tech. Utah alone is dumping $12 million a year into seeding the clouds without too much to show for it. It’s hard to estimate how much it would have rained without cloud seeding, so there’s not a great way to make a control group for any study. It’s also hard to know how much the seeding affected rainfall in a specific area. Many previous studies of seed-based rainfall showed results that weren’t statistically significant.

“While one study found an average increase in precipitation of 3 percent across 118 randomized cases, this effect was not statistically distinguishable from zero,” the GAO said. “One study reported an average precipitation increase of 3 percent between 1977 and 2018 across nine cases, but the statistical results could not conclusively determine an effect from cloud seeding in seven of the cases.”

The GAO also noted that no one knows what pumping silver iodine crystals and other particulates into the clouds to generate rain does to flora and fauna on the ground. More water in dry areas is, generally, better. But changing the water levels in delicate and complicated ecosystems can have unintended consequences. “One stakeholder said it is not clear if cloud seeding could improve fish outcomes through higher water levels and lower water temperatures, and it is uncertain how increased soil moisture from cloud seeding might translate into healthier, less dry forests with reduced susceptibility to wildfires.”

Silver iodine appears non-toxic in small doses, but the science is far from settled. “Silver iodide is nearly insoluble in water,” the report said. “However, when it dissolves it releases a small number of silver ions. In high enough quantities, silver ions—a known antimicrobial substance—could have harmful effects on beneficial bacteria in the environment and water resources.”

The GAO also called out another problem with cloud seeding programs: conspiracy theories. Government weather control has long been a feature of conspiracy theories. It’s a popular topic for Alex Jones and gained prominence this year after Georgia GOP rep Marjorie Taylor Greene spread it around following Hurricane Helene.

This has led some lawmakers to view cloud seeding as a threat. Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill in April that banned all forms of cloud seeding in the state. In interviews with media, the Tennessee lawmakers said they’d taken the action to prevent chemtrails in the skies. A ban on cloud seeding will do nothing to prevent chemtrails, which are just the plumes of condensation and exhaust aircraft leave in their wake.

History tells us that all freedoms are conditional. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, as part of a socialist commitment to women’s health and well-being. Sixteen years later, that decision was reversed once Stalin was in power and realized that birth rates were falling.

The pressure on all nations to keep up their population levels has never gone away. But in 2025, that demographic crunch is going to get even crunchier—and the casualty will be gender rights. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, the rate at which babies are being born has been plummeting for 15 years. In Japan, Poland, and Canada, the fertility rate is already down to 1.3. In China and Italy, it is 1.2. South Korea has the lowest in the world, at 0.72. Research published by The Lancet medical journal predicts that by 2100, almost every country on the planet won’t be producing enough children to sustain its population size.

A good deal of this is because women have more access to contraception, are better educated than ever, and are pursuing careers that mean they are more likely to avoid or delay having children. Parents are investing more in each child that they do have. The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than babymakers is thankfully crumbling.

But the original dilemma remains: How do countries make more kids? Governments have responded with pleas and incentives to encourage families to procreate. Hungary has abolished income tax for mothers under the age of 30. In 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was seen weeping on television as he urged the National Conference of Mothers to do their part to stop declining birth rates. In Italy, Premier Giorgia Meloni has backed a campaign to reach at least half a million births a year by 2033.

As these measures fail to have their intended effect, though, the pressure on women is taking a more sinister turn. Conservative pro-natalist movements are promoting old-fashioned nuclear families with lots of children, achievable only if women give birth earlier. This ideology at least partly informs the devastating clampdown on abortion access in some US states. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights have nothing to do with population concerns should note that in the summer of 2024, US Senate Republicans also voted against making contraception a federal right. This same worldview feeds into the growing backlash against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence for some poses a threat to the traditional family. The most extreme pro-natalists also include white supremacists and eugenicists.

The more concerned that nations become about birth rates, the greater the risk to gender rights. In China, for instance, the government has taken a sharply anti-feminist stance in recent years. President Xi Jinping told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing.”

For now, most women are at least able to exercise some choice over if and when they have children, and how many they have. But as fertility rates dip below replacement levels, there is no telling how far some nations may go to buoy their population levels. 2025 looks to be a year in which their choice could well be taken away.