Hasta La Gadget!

The image of the “Wheel of Fortune” host and the far-right lawmaker smiling together has the internet buzzing..

The queen was photographed by Ranald Mackechnie in May 2022 at Windsor Castle, ahead of her Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

Boom recently lost its jet engine partner for the Overture supersonic jet, and other major engine manufacturers aren’t interested in the project either, Insider has reported. After Boom signed an “engagement agreement” with Rolls-Royce for supersonic jet engines back in 2020, the latter announced last week that it had left the project. Now, other major jet engine manufacturers including Pratt & Whitney, GE Aviation, Honeywell and Safran Aircraft Engines have told FlightGlobal they’re not currently interested in supersonic aircraft.

Boom said that the project is still on track, though, and that it will soon announce an engine partner. “We can reconfirm our intention to announce Boom’s selected engine partner and transformational approach for reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable supersonic flight, later this year.” Boom told Insider. The company has 20 airplanes on order from American Airlines and 15 from United. It plans to build build a factory in California and start flying passengers by 2029.

For its part, Rolls-Royce said that “after careful consideration… [we] have determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time.”

After careful consideration, Rolls-Royce has determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time.

There are a limited number of other manufacturers capable of developing a supersonic jet engine, and all of the biggest ones said that it’s not in their plans. Honeywell, Safron and GE shut down the idea, while Pratt & Whitney stated that supersonic travel is “tangential” to its business.

Pratt & Whitney cited efficiency as an issue for supersonic jets, and other manufacturers said they’re focused on reducing fuel-burn. That’s the primary direction for the industry right now, given criticism of air travel’s contribution to global warming. In addition, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recently bashed supersonic travel, noting in a report that it would use 7-9 times more fuel per passenger, per kilometer, than subsonic jets. 

Boom has said that it would offset its carbon output through the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). However, the ICAO report said that would be a poor use of scarce SAF fuels, given the high fuel burn compared to a regular jet. It also noted that “the high cruise altitude of supersonics increases the residence time of emissions significantly.”

The storm knocked out the power grid and unleashed floods and landslides in Puerto Rico, where the governor said the damage was “catastrophic.”

After the launch of the ROG Phone 6 Pro gaming phone, some hardcore fans were left wondering what happened to the “Ultimate” variant. As it turns out, ASUS waited for over two months before unveiling its “one more thing”: the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. It’s identical to the 6 Pro in almost every way, except for four things: the new “space gray” color, the interesting choice of the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor (which is what the “D” in “6D” stands for), the switch to the faster LPDDR5X RAM, and the new “AeroActive Portal” design for blowing cool air into its internal heat-dissipation fins — I’ll abbreviate this as heatsink from here onwards.

The AeroActive Portal itself is essentially a door flap that opens when the bundled AeroActive Cooler 6 is attached, so that a portion of the cool wind produced by the fan — at nearly 1,000cc per second — is guided through a wind tunnel and into the heatsink, with hot air coming out from the top slot. The heatsink is, of course, linked to the generously sized thermal layers covering the logic board and battery cells, in order to transfer heat from the components to the airflow. This is to help sustain a high frame rate over a longer period while gaming, as well as to ensure the phone is still comfortable to hold.

Richard Lai/Engadget

ASUS claimed that after 60 minutes of Perfdog benchmarking on Genshin Impact at 60Hz in air cooling mode, the ROG Phone 6D reached 36.9°C (98.42°F), which was 3.4°C lower than the ROG Phone 6 in the same mode. It appears that the AeroActive Portal does make a notable difference. Likewise in “Frosty” and “Frozen” modes (with the Peltier thermoelectric cooling chip enabled), and it’s worth noting that the AeroActive Cooler 6 is the only Peltier-enabled cooler in the market that doesn’t require additional power externally — it only needs that for the more powerful “Frozen” mode.

While the AeroActive Portal only kicks in when an AeroActive Cooler 6 is attached, you can open it temporarily in settings for cleaning purposes. The flap is otherwise shut tight to safeguard the phone’s IPX4 splash resistance. It also has fall detection for automatically retracting the flap, and the stepping motor along with the zirconium alloy hinge are apparently good for over 40,000 flips — both of which are based on the learnings from the now-retired Flip Camera feature from the Zenfone series.

ASUS

The 6D Ultimate packs the same set of key features as the 6 Pro: 165Hz 6.78-inch AMOLED display, 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 512GB of storage, 6,000mAh battery, 65W fast charging (42 minutes), Dirac-tuned front-facing stereo speakers, ultrasonic “AirTiggers” and a customizable “ROG Vision” color display on the back. It’s also the same set of cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with Sony’s IMX766 sensor, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera plus a 5-megapixel macro camera; and on the front, there’s a 12-megapixel selfie camera with a Sony IMX663 sensor.

For the processor, ASUS made the surprise switch to MediaTek for its Dimensity 9000+ processor, which apparently scores a tad higher than the ROG Phone 6’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The company added that while the Snapdragon flagship chipset packs a better GPU, the Dimensity’s CPU is allegedly 10 percent more powerful (albeit with the same 3.2GHz maximum clock speed), and this is more crucial to most mobile games. The CPU is complemented by the faster LPDDR5X RAM as well, though this is the same reason as to why this is capped at 16GB instead of 18GB here.

ASUS

The ROG Phone 6D Ultimate will be available across Europe very soon, with the sole model (16GB RAM with 512GB storage) priced at €1,399 (around $1,400) or £1,199. Again, this premium model comes bundled with an AeroActive Cooler 6. There’s also the ROG Phone 6D launching alongside, which is basically the ROG Phone 6 but packing MediaTek’s chipset and LPDDR5X RAM instead (also, it’s just an RGB logo instead of an ROG Vision screen on the back; and no AeroActive Portal, of course). This starts from €949 (around $950) or £799 with the 12GB RAM plus 256GB storage base model.