If there is any company that’s on a roll when it comes to providing more compute power in smaller packages, it’s Nvidia. Their Jetson product line that provides AI and other forms of accelerated computing is a great example. I’ve been able to spend some time with its latest embeddable “robot brain” offering — the Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin (starts at $399 when available for production applications later this year). It has enough GPU power for some of the most demanding robot applications, while still fitting in the same form factor as Xavier, its predecessor. It consumes from 15 to 60 watts, depending on the power profile used.
(Photo: Anne Nygård/Unsplash)The remains of a man buried in what’s now Alabama reveals that the continent’s oldest skull surgery occurred at least 3,000 years ago. The man’s skeleton was discovered during the 1940s at Little Bear Creek, a reservoir in northwest Alabama. The skeleton was accompanied by 162 others under a seashell-covered burial mound. Though many of these remains were held at a museum moving forward, bioarchaeologist Diana Simpson from the University of Nevada had the opportunity to study the man’s skeleton in 2018. (The museum-held remains have since been returned to local indigenous communities for reburial.)
Most digital objects are designed from the ground up in a modeling program, but 3D scanning is increasingly viable. In fact, you might have all the technology you need riding around in your pocket. could eventually digitize your real life stuff, generating high-quality digital objects. You can even give it a shot today, if you manage to make it into the very limited early beta. So, imagine you want to create a 3D model of a chair. You could build it from scratch in a 3D modeling application like Maya or Autodesk, but you can’t just dive in and create with these programs — they’re powerful and therefore pretty complicated.
(Photo: Dawn McDonald/Unsplash)The Department of Transportation has revealed new fuel economy standards designed to combat climate change and help Americans save money on gas. Led by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, USDOT has mandated that all new passenger cars and light trucks reach an industry-wide fleet average of 49 mpg by 2026. This bumps up the estimated fleetwide average by approximately 10 mpg when compared to that of model year 2021, making the updated Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards the strongest revision to date. Reducing the country’s collective reliance on fossil fuels has been top of mind recently, both for policymakers and for the average driver trying to commute to work.
(Photo: Brett Jordan/Unsplash)A new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing reveals that billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk has purchased nine percent—or 73,486,938 shares—of Twitter stock. The , submitted yesterday, makes Musk Twitter’s largest shareholder with a stake worth $2.89 billion. (This is based on Twitter’s closing price from the Friday afternoon prior.) The transaction has caused Twitter’s share price to balloon up to 27 percent, down just one point from Monday. Musk’s purchase is surprising, given his very public beef with Twitter. Musk has gotten in with the SEC before for influencing Tesla stock prices with what he claims to be innocent tweets.
Dell has unveiled a host of new software technologies designed to make hybrid work arrangements more productive. The software suite is labeled Dell Optimizer, and in typical Dell fashion there’s a raft of software tools that are part of it. Since it’s software for people working from home, all the tools have a “making a Zoom call from my couch” scenario in mind. Despite the corporate angle Dell’s taking here, which always induces a yawn or two, there’s one very interesting new feature: the ability to connect to two internet sources at the same time. Dell calls this technology ExpressConnect, and says it’s, “the world’s first simultaneous multi-network connection.
For years now In-plane switching (IPS) panels have been the go-to choice for anyone who cares about image quality. There’s other options, such as Twisted Nematic (TN) and Vertical Alignment (VA), but neither of these panels can match IPS in color reproduction and off-axis viewing angles. IPS panels also offer better contrast than TN panels. Despite its superiority, IPS isn’t perfect, and can give off a bit of “glow” when viewed from the side. They also offer less contrast than VA panels. Plus, OLED monitors are finally coming to the PC world and nothing can compete with their “perfect” blacks.
Smartphones have long been treated as disposable objects — use them for two years, and then it’s time to upgrade to a new model. As phones have gotten more capable, users have started to expect longer support and better repair options. But repairing a phone by yourself? That can be tricky without official components and directions, but starting this summer. has announced it will partner with iFixit to offer its customers self-repair kits for select devices. It is not the first to do this — Motorola started offering repair kits in partnership with iFixit several years ago, but it hasn’t been good about adding support for newer phones.
(Photo: Airbus)The world’s largest passenger airliner has completed a test flight using cooking oil for fuel. The Airbus A380, a massive wide-body airliner used by international commercial airlines like British Airways, Emirates, and Korean Air, touched down Friday after a test flight from Airbus’ French headquarters in Toulouse. The plane was powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), a blend of used cooking oil, agricultural residue, and non-fossil CO2 which sustained the plane’s single Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine throughout the three-hour trip. Airbus has actually conducted test flights with pure SAF before, albeit with smaller aircraft. It tested an in March of last year, followed by a much smaller single-aisle aircraft in October.
