Hasta La Gadget!

Compared to a few of my coworkers, I’ve been a real Debbie Downer regarding foldables. Huddled for drinks or games with friends, I’d receive the usual “oohs” and “ahhs” every time I took out a new foldable I was reviewing. Then I would tell them the price. They’d grimace and say some variation of “No way I’m spending…

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AI is too dumb to regulate now, according to Meta’s head of artificial intelligence research in an interview with the Financial Times. Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, tried to dismiss the most overblown fears of AI while offering a libertarian take against any real attempt to regulate the rapidly expanding…

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A group of 22 students from Eindhoven University of Technology, known as Solar Team Eindhoven, has achieved a significant milestone by successfully driving the world’s first off-road solar car, Stella Terra, on a challenging 1,000-kilometer journey from Northern Morocco to the Sahara.

This solar-powered vehicle, characterized by its green exterior inspired by nature, demonstrated its capabilities in navigating rugged terrains, including dry riverbeds, forested areas, steep mountain trails, and loose desert sand.

The world’s first off-road solar car, Stella Terra. (Image: Solar Team Eindhoven)

Stella Terra’s power source is a network of photovoltaic panels covering nearly the entire upper surface of the car, which includes the roof and hood. The car is designed to be road-legal, boasts a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour, a weight of 1,200 kilograms, and a range of 710 kilometers on sunny days. In off-road conditions, the range typically averages around 550 kilometers, depending on the surface.

The team drove this solar-powered car from Northern Morocco to the Sahara. (Image: Solar Team Eindhoven)

The development of Stella Terra began with its introduction as a concept vehicle in March 2023, followed by the presentation of a real-life model in September 2023. The challenge was to create a self-sustaining off-road vehicle that could operate solely on solar power.

This required designing many components, from the suspension to the inverters for the solar panels. Solar Team Eindhoven’s team manager, Wisse Bos, emphasized the importance of ensuring that Stella Terra could withstand the harsh conditions of off-roading while remaining efficient and lightweight enough to rely on solar power.

The upper surface of Stella Terra is covered with solar panels. (Image: Solar Team Eindhoven)

Before embarking on the 1,000-kilometer journey through various landscapes, Stella Terra underwent extensive testing in the Netherlands. To their delight, the solar car proved to be even more efficient than anticipated, using 30% less energy than expected. This efficiency allowed them to complete the entire trip relying solely on solar energy without the need for charging stations.

The successful expedition not only demonstrates the potential of sustainable off-road travel but also showcases the innovation and dedication of Solar Team Eindhoven in advancing solar-powered transportation. Hopefully, this technology will start to be more explored and vehicles with solar panels start to be mass-produced in the near future.

World’s First Off-Road Solar Car Triumphs On Sahara Journey

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Alienware just announced a refresh to the popular m17 R5 gaming laptop. The m17 was already a stellar example of an AMD Advantage system and the m18 kicks this up a notch or two. The Alienware m18 goes all-in with AMD integration, with the company boasting that its the “most powerful 18-inch AMD Advantage laptop” ever made.

The term AMD Advantage is marketing speak for a computer that’s built from the ground up for gaming via various AMD chipsets and technologies. To that end, the m18 is the first computer to feature the all-new AMD Radeon RX 7900M laptop graphics chip. These laptops also come equipped with the well-regarded AMD Ryzen 7945HX CPU. So, yeah, this thing’s a beast, with Alienware calling it a “performance juggernaut.”

The Radeon RX 7900M has been engineered to deliver “desktop-class” visuals even when playing power-hungry AAA titles. The GPU is filled with techy features, like second-gen raytracing accelerators, 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM and other “advanced capabilities to push the limits of gaming and content creation on the go.”

The Ryzen 9 7945 CPU helps everything move along thanks to 16 performance cores, 32 processing threads and AMD’s proprietary Zen 4 chiplet technology. The CPU was manufactured using the new 5nm design, the first for gaming laptops, which promises better power efficiency and faster performance.

These laptops ship with AMD’s Adrenaline Edition software suite, so you can access the SmartShift tool to shift power between the GPU and CPU in real-time to boost performance. Additionally, the company’s proprietary SmartAccess graphics tech automatically prioritizes game performance and reduced latency when using FreeSync.

Alienware

Laptops are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet, however, and the m18 has some other perks worth mentioning. These computers come equipped with Alienware’s Cryo-tech thermal regulation technology. This thermal interface material extends to both the CPU and GPU, with an expanded vapor chamber covering each component, helping to dissipate heat across the entire system. Four thin fans finish this process by pulling heated air through eight heat pipes and out via five vents.

You also get an 18-inch display panel equipped with both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, with a 16:10 aspect ratio, QHD+ resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. You can overclock this refresh rate all the way to 480Hz at the expense of resolution for competitive gaming scenarios. An FHD webcam and an IR camera for facial recognition are also on board.

As for RAM and storage, there’s user-replaceable dual-channel DDR5 memory and you can shop options with up to three M.2 SSDs for a combined total of 8.5TB of storage. The laptop boasts some aesthetic flourishes, like an aluminum lid and bottom cover, an aluminum die-cast inner frame and an embossed “18” on the exterior. The m18 is available today with a starting price of $2,800.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alienwares-latest-gaming-laptop-is-the-first-to-feature-amds-radeon-rx-7900m-gpu-130033731.html?src=rss

WhatsApp is finally giving you the option to send voice notes without concerns about them being recorded or shared. The messaging app is rolling out a feature that lets you set voice notes to view once and then self-destruct, WABetaInfo reports. Now, there’s really very little reason to call anyone.

The new feature works similarly to when you set a photo sent over WhatsApp to be viewable only once. When recording a voice note, you’ll see the number one inside a circle. Simply click that, and your voice note will become a one-time listen. However, you cant hear it again either, so if you’re someone who either likes the sound of your own voice (rare) or to analyze everything you’ve just said, then you might want to skip it. It also appears that the audio will be lost if your recipient accidentally closes out of the conversation while listening to it.

With voice notes’ popularity growing tremendously over the past few years, this new feature could be a great option for sending friends your streaming password, card information or just cold-hard gossip without it getting out there. The ability to set your audio messages to listen once is currently in beta testing on both Android and iPhone devices but should roll out to more testers in the coming days. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whatsapp-tests-self-destructing-voice-notes-113555275.html?src=rss