What a difference a week makes. This past weekend, Formula 1 went back to Bahrain, the site of this year’s preseason test, for round four of the 2025 season. Last week’s race in Japan sent many to sleep, but that was definitely not the case on Sunday. The overtaking was frenetic, the sparks didn’t set anything on fire, and the title fight just got that little bit more complicated. It was a heck of a race.

V10s? Not any time soon

Before the racing got underway, the sport got some clarity on future powertrain rules. An ambitious new ruleset goes into effect next year, with an all-new small-capacity turbocharged V6 engine working together with an electric motor that powers the rear wheels. Just under half the total power comes from the hybrid system, much more than the two hybrid systems on current F1 cars, and developing them is no easy task. Nor is it cheap.

F1 is also moving to supposedly carbon-neutral synthetic fuels next year, and that has prompted some to wonder—increasingly loudly—if instead of the expensive hybrids lasting for four years, maybe they could be replaced with a cheaper non-hybrid engine instead, like a naturally aspirated V10.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: An attorney for the Federal Trade Commission told a judge that Facebook, fearing the competitive threat of Instagram posted to their social media network, acquired both as a way to “neutralize” the rival. “They decided that competition was too hard,” the FTC’s attorney, Daniel Matheson, said in his opening statement in the government’s antitrust case against the Meta Platforms social media empire.

He argued that with Meta’s monopoly in social media, “consumers do not have reasonable alternatives they can turn to,” even as satisfaction has declined. At stake is the potential breakup of Facebook-parent Meta, as the government has zeroed in on the 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 purchase of WhatsApp.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The colonial victory against the British in the American Revolutionary War was far from a predetermined outcome. In addition to good strategy and the timely appearance of key allies like the French, Continental soldiers relied on several key technological innovations in weaponry. But just how accurate is an 18th-century musket when it comes to hitting a target? Did the rifle really determine the outcome of the war? And just how much damage did cannon inflict? A team of military weapons experts and re-enactors set about testing some of those questions in a new NOVA documentary, Revolutionary War Weapons.

The documentary examines the firing range and accuracy of Brown Bess muskets and long rifles used by both the British and the Continental Army during the Battles of Lexington and Concord; the effectiveness of Native American tomahawks for close combat (no, they were usually not thrown as depicted in so many popular films, but there are modern throwing competitions today); and the effectiveness of cannons against the gabions and other defenses employed to protect the British fortress during the pivotal Siege of Yorktown. There is even a fascinating segment on the first military submarine, dubbed “the Turtle,” created by American inventor David Bushnell.

To capture all the high-speed ballistics action, director Stuart Powell relied upon a range of high-speed cameras called the Phantom Range. “It is like a supercomputer,” Powell told Ars. “It is a camera, but it doesn’t feel like a camera. You need to be really well-coordinated on the day when you’re using it because it bursts for, like, 10 seconds. It doesn’t record constantly because it’s taking so much data. Depending on what the frame rate is, you only get a certain amount of time. So you’re trying to coordinate that with someone trying to fire a 250-year-old piece of technology. If the gun doesn’t go off, if something goes wrong on set, you’ll miss it. Then it takes five minutes to reboot and get ready for the new shot. So a lot of the shoot revolves around the camera; that’s not normally the case.”

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Formula One cars, the world’s fastest racecars, need to grip the track for speed and safety on the curves — leading engineers to design cars that create downforce. And racing fans are even told that “a Formula 1 racecar generates enough downforce above a certain speed that it could theoretically drive upside down,” writes the automotive site Jalopnik.

“McMurtry Automotive turned this theory into reality after having its Spéirling hypercar complete the impressive feat…”

Admittedly, the Spéirling’s success can be solely attributed to its proprietary ‘Downforce-on-Demand’ fan system that produces 4,400 pounds of downforce at the push of a button… For those looking to do the math, Spéirling weighs 2,200 pounds. With the stopped car’s fan whirling at 23,000 rpm, the rig was rotated to invert the road deck… Then, the hypercar rolled forward a few feet before stopping while inverted. The rig rotated the road deck back down, and the Spéirling drove off like nothing happened.
The McMurtry Spéirling, as a 1,000-hp twin-motor electric hypercar, didn’t have to clear the other hurdles that an F1 car would have clear to drive upside down. Dry-sump combustion engines aren’t designed to run inverted and would eventually fail catastrophically. Oil wouldn’t be able to cycle through and keep the engine lubricated.
The car is “an electric monster purpose-built to destroy track records,” Jalopnik wrote in 2022 when the car shaved more than two seconds off a long-standing record. The “Downforce-on-Demand” feature gives it tremendous acceleration — in nine seconds it can go from 0 to 186.4 mph (300 km/h), according to Jalopnik.

“McMurtry is working towards finalizing a production version of its hypercar, called the Spéirling PURE. Only 100 will be produced.”

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Nvidia has announced plans to manufacture AI supercomputers entirely within the United States, commissioning over 1 million square feet of manufacturing space across Arizona and Texas. Production of Blackwell chips has begun at TSMC’s Phoenix facilities, while supercomputer assembly will occur at new Foxconn and Wistron plants in Houston and Dallas respectively.

“The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and CEO. “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency.”

The company will deploy its own AI, robotics, and digital twin technologies in these facilities, using Nvidia Omniverse to create digital twins of factories and Isaac GR00T to build manufacturing automation robots. Nvidia projects an ambitious $500 billion in domestic AI infrastructure production over the next four years, with manufacturing expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are some great keyboard attachments for Apple’s iPad but, sometimes, you just want to physically write things down with a “pencil.” While the Apple Pencil lineup can be confusing (see our helpful guide here), there are two great options currently on sale. 

Take the 23 percent discount on the Apple Pencil Pro, for instance. The markdown drops its cost to $99 from $129, only $10 more than its all-time low price. Apple released this top-end model last year and it’s certainly the best of the bunch.

It offers features such as squeeze gesture to see menu options and a built-in gyroscope that improves the process of changing your pen’s orientation and brush tools. Plus, it works with Apple’s Find My network, so you can easily locate the tool at any time. However, it’s only compatible with select iPads, including the iPad Pro with an M4 chip, iPad Air with M2 or M3 chips and the iPad mini with A17 Pro.

If you don’t want to spend close to $100, the Apple Pencil with a USB-C port is also on sale. The 2023 model is available for $66, down from $79 — a 16 percent sale. The big benefit (other than the reduced price) is that it works with a lot more iPads than the Pencil Pro. The Apple Pencil with a USB-C port also has all the basics, like tilt sensitivity, magnetic attachment and supporting Apple Pencil hover when using an iPad Pro.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-apple-pencil-pro-drops-back-down-to-99-134027919.html?src=rss

Federal scientists responsible for monitoring the health of West Coast fisheries are cleaning office bathrooms and reconsidering critical experiments after the Department of Commerce failed to renew their lab’s contracts for hazardous waste disposal, janitorial services, IT, and building maintenance.

Trash is piling up at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staffers told ProPublica. Ecologists, chemists, and biologists at Montlake Laboratory, the center’s headquarters in Seattle, are taking turns hauling garbage to the dumpster and discussing whether they should create a sign-up sheet to scrub toilets.

The scientists—who conduct genetic sampling of endangered salmon to check the species’ stock status and survival—routinely work with chemicals that can burn skin, erupt into flames, and cause cancer. At least one said they’d have to delay mission-critical research if hazardous waste removal isn’t restored.

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Access to a high-quality webcam isn’t always guaranteed: While decent options are now built into most laptops, they’re not all of an acceptable standard. Maybe you’ve got a monitor without a webcam attached; maybe you want a different angle—there are numerous reasons why you might need another webcam.

If you’ve got an iPhone, you’ve actually got a webcam, too. The process for setting up your iPhone as a webcam has gotten easier down the years, especially on macOS, though you can also use it as a connected camera on a Windows PC with a little more effort.

Use your iPhone as a webcam on macOS

Macs, iPhones, and other Apple gadgets all work fairly seamlessly together in a variety of ways now, from mirroring an iPhone on macOS to using your iPad as a second display. Included in this suite of cross-device tricks, under the name Continuity Camera, is the option to use your iPhone as a webcam for any app on your Mac.

There are some simple rules for getting this to work. Both your Apple computer and your iPhone need to have wifi and Bluetooth enabled, and need to be signed into the same Apple account. The two devices must be within 10 meters or 30 feet of each other and meet the minimum requirements (in short, an iPhone launched in 2018 or later and running iOS 16 or later, and a Mac running macOS 13 Ventura or later).

Choosing an iPhone as a camera in FaceTime.
Credit: Lifehacker

Assuming you’ve checked all those boxes, open up Settings on your iPhone, head to General > AirPlay & Continuity, and make sure Continuity Camera is enabled. You then need to get your iPhone in landscape orientation—you can change it around while you’re using it, but the initial connection needs to be in landscape mode.

Load up any webcam-using app on macOS, and you should then see your iPhone as an option for the video feed. With FaceTime, for example, open the Video menu and you should see it listed. You’re able to move the iPhone and change its angle while it’s in use, but you can’t switch between the front and rear cameras: You can only use the rear camera for your webcam.

This all works wirelessly over wifi and Bluetooth, but you can also connect your iPhone to your Mac via a USB cable too, if you want to—you might find you get a slightly more stable connection, and it also means you won’t be draining your phone’s battery while you’re using it as a webcam.

You can pause or disconnect from your iPhone screen.
Credit: Lifehacker

Click the video feed icon in the menu bar at the top of the macOS interface to access the various webcam features Apple now offers, including Portrait and Studio Light, though not all of them work on all iPhones: For keeping yourself in view via Center Stage, for example, you need an iPhone with an ultra-wide camera. You can also enable Desk View from this drop-down menu, which lets you create a top-down view of whatever’s on your desk (very handy for sharing documents).

While your iPhone is in use as a webcam, you’ll see a Pause button on the iPhone screen, which temporarily stops the live feed. A second button underneath, Disconnect, turns off webcam mode completely. You can also close down the video app you’re using or switch to a different webcam to exit out of webcam mode on your iPhone.

Use your iPhone as a webcam on Windows

Using your iPhone as a webcam on Windows is a little more involved, and you’re going to need the assistance of a third-party app to get everything working. However, there are plenty of apps to choose from for the job, and most of them are free or at least offer the basic webcam functionality for free.

One app that’s been reliably serving users for a long time is DroidCam. You need to get both the Windows client installed on your computer, and the iOS app installed on your iPhone, and then all you need to do is launch them both—there’s no need to register an account, and everything works over your wifi network.

Using DroidCam on Windows with an iPhone.
Credit: Lifehacker

The application gives you a few settings and filters to play around with so you can get your feed looking exactly how you want it, and with DroidCam running, your iPhone is then available as a webcam option for any software running on your PC. It will simply show up as a webcam you can switch to.

You can use DroidCam free of charge, but if you pay $4.99 a year or a one-off fee of $14.99, you get access to resolutions above 1080p and can remove the DroidCam watermark on your webcam feed. Paying for the software also adds a few more controls on both the Windows and the iOS side.

Another option that I’ve found straightforward and reliable is Camo. As with DroidCam, you need to get the software set up on Windows, and on your iPhone via the iOS app. It couldn’t be much simpler to set up, with no registration needed, and you can connect over wifi or by plugging your iPhone into your Windows computer with a USB cable.

Camo offers a range of video effects and filters.
Credit: Lifehacker

Camo is much more of a software suite, with a range of features you can use with any webcam you like: From exposure and white balance adjustments to clever background effects. Once you’ve got your iPhone configured as a webcam inside Camo, you can then use it to deliver a video feed in any other app on Windows.

Most of Camo’s features are available to use free of charge, but there is a Camo Pro subscription level that will set you back $4.99 a month. The key benefits are video resolutions up to 4K (rather than 720p), support for variable frame rates, and access to a smart zoom feature that uses some clever tricks to improve zoom levels without losing image quality.

Dolphins are generally regarded as some of the smartest creatures on the planet. Research has shown they can cooperate, teach each other new skills, and even recognize themselves in a mirror. For decades, scientists have attempted to make sense of the complex collection of whistles and clicks dolphins use to communicate. Researchers might make a little headway on that front soon with the help of Google’s open AI model and some Pixel phones.

Google has been finding ways to work generative AI into everything else it does, so why not its collaboration with the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP)? This group has been studying dolphins since 1985 using a non-invasive approach to track a specific community of Atlantic spotted dolphins. The WDP creates video and audio recordings of dolphins, along with correlating notes on their behaviors.

One of the WDP’s main goals is to analyze the way dolphins vocalize and how that can affect their social interactions. With decades of underwater recordings, researchers have managed to connect some basic activities to specific sounds. For example, Atlantic spotted dolphins have signature whistles that appear to be used like names, allowing two specific individuals to find each other. They also consistently produce “squawk” sound patterns during fights.

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