Microsoft announced the Cobalt 200 processor as their next-generation cloud-native CPU for the Azure Cloud. The Cobalt 200 will feature 132 Arm Neoverse-V3 based cores…
You have to give Porsche credit for going in early on EVs. The Taycan is a stellar sedan/wagon that’s only gotten better. But even for a niche manufacturer like Porsche, it’s not exactly a mass-market machine. To really move the needle on EVs, you need something more family friendly, and for the brand from Stuttgart, that’s the Macan.
Porsche’s gas-powered crossover SUV is its best-selling machine in the US, so it’s an absolutely vital piece of the company’s success. It’s also Porsche’s second full-on, battery-powered machine to hit the market. The Macan Electric doesn’t replace its internal combustion predecessor, rather living alongside it on the dealership floor, creating a brutal sibling rivalry and a potentially difficult choice for buyers: gas or electric?
Actually, Porsche made it a pretty easy decision. This is the right one.
The Macan Electric shares a silhouette and a segment with that other Macan, but from a technology standpoint, there’s little the two agree upon. The Macan Electric is built on a new platform called PPE, which at one point was destined to be the underpinnings of a smorgasbord of electrified offerings from both Porsche and Audi, including the A6 E-Tron and Q6 E-Tron.
For now, at least, Americans’ increasingly fickle attitudes toward EVs have stymied some of those plans, meaning this Macan and the upcoming Cayenne Electric are the only two Porsches built from those bones. The Macan is the smaller of the two, powered by a variety of different configurations, starting with a single-motor, rear-drive configuration with 355 horsepower on the low end, up to the 630-hp, dual-motor Macan Turbo Electric on the high end. Buyers can also select the dual-motor Macan 4 Electric, speedier 4S Electric or quicker still GTS Electric.
I tested a base Macan Electric, its rear-mounted, 355-hp motor enough to scoot this 5,004-pound SUV from zero to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds. The top-shelf Macan Turbo Electric gets to 60 in 3.1 seconds, absolutely humiliating the quickest exhaust-spewing Macan GTS’s 4.3-second time.
Of course, this is a Porsche, not a drag machine, and so cornering is key. Helping with the handling is an adaptive air suspension that not only lets you go from stiff to firm at the twist of a knob but also raises or lowers dynamically. When you’re hunting for range or speed, the SUV gets down into an aerodynamic tuck low to the earth. If you’re looking to head off-road, it’ll hike itself up by 1.6 inches.
While I wouldn’t consider this an off-roader as such, the dual motor configurations should be competent in lower-grip situations. Open differentials at either end will keep your all-roading aspirations limited, but on some icy, slippery roads during the week I spent living with one, even the rear-drive Macan proved sure-footed and easy to handle, despite its summer-oriented Pilot Sport EV tires.
At the heart of all that is a 100-kilowatt-hour battery, which offers the Macan Electric an EPA-rated range of up to 315 miles, depending on which trim you go with. In my testing, which included extended periods of driving with my foot flat to the floor, I managed 2.8 miles per kWh. That’s a theoretical maximum range of 280 miles if you’re driving like you stole it. Anyone doing the school run in a more sedate way will have no problem meeting or beating that EPA rating.
Beyond performance, the Macan Electric has another advantage over its internal combustion counterpart: it has a more modern interior. The highlight is the 12.6-inch, curved gauge cluster. Using buttons on the steering wheel, you can cycle through various views and telemetry elements to suit your desire for data or need to remain undisturbed.
That’s paired with a 10.9-inch touchscreen in the middle, and you can even opt for a third display embedded way over on the right side of the dashboard. This one allows you to access streaming services like YouTube. I’ve never seen the point in that, though, but that’s only because I’ve yet to meet a passenger who wouldn’t rather just use their smartphone.
Porsche’s PCM interface on that central touchscreen is simple and clean, with more than a passing iOS resemblance. Perhaps that’s why the company has been an early adopter of CarPlay Ultra. For the Android faithful, wireless Android Auto is here too, and it works great, looking nearly native on the widescreen display.
Through simple menus, you can do everything from track lap times to enable or disable the augmented digital engine tone, which Porsche calls Electronic Sport Sound. I confess the futuristic whirring and whooshing does make driving aggressively a bit more fun, but most of the time I prefer to have it off.
Thankfully, not everything is controlled through the touchscreen. There’s a separate, capacitive-touch panel just below it for climate-related functions, including toggling the prodigiously warm heated seats (which I’m enjoying as I write this). You’ll find a physical volume knob there, too.
The Macan seats five comfortably, though I’d stick to four for anything longer than a quick run to a team lunch. Front and rear seats are comfortable, and there’s a tolerable amount of legroom in the back. Headroom back there, though, is limited. If you have tall co-workers, they’ll be tripping over each other to call shotgun.
In the grand spectrum of SUVs on the roads today, the 188.3-inch-long Macan Electric is on the smaller side. But, as an EV, it’s heavy for a crossover. At just a tick over 5,000 pounds, it’s a substantial 850 pounds heavier than a regular base Macan.
Porsche’s engineers addressed that as best they could with the aforementioned fancy suspension, plus larger, 20-inch wheels on each corner. The result is an SUV that is, in Sport or Sport Plus modes, remarkably fun to drive. Its steering is extremely quick for an SUV, which makes this thing feel lighter than it is.
All the grip provided by those tires and suspension really gives you the confidence to push through the corners, too. And, when you push too hard, it breaks away quickly and predictably. I enjoyed romping on the throttle hard mid-corner to kick the tail out, the Macan giving me just enough time to grin and give a bit of a steering correction before everything was right and the tires were stuck again.
It’s not a sports car, no doubt about that, and it tends to wallow a bit on bumpy roads thanks to all that weight, but it is far more engaging and fun than just about anything else in this category. Even this base model is quick off the line, but its breakneck initial throttle response is tempered by a somewhat flat acceleration at higher speeds. It just doesn’t have the kind of Autobahn-dominating top-end that Porsches are typically known for.
I suppose I’d have to cough up the extra $10,000 for the GTS, or a further $20,000 for the $109,000 Turbo if I really wanted that. Yes, these things get expensive quick. The base Macan Electric I drove started at $73,500, but carried enough options to drive its out-the-door price to $86,865.
You are, at least, getting a machine that readily does double-duty. Despite its responsiveness and eager handling, the Macan Electric does a stellar job of settling down when you twist that Drive Mode knob on the steering wheel to the left, unwinding the suspension and relaxing the experience. The SUV manages excellent compliance over broken roads, flying over railroad tracks without complaint, and just generally being a calm and competent cruiser.
But there’s one, undeniable flaw that drove me absolutely nuts in the Macan Electric: a complete lack of lift-off regenerative braking. Porsche continues its adamant refusal to offer anything even approaching a one-pedal driving experience. That’s a frustrating thing to me — maybe not quite as frustrating as GM phasing out Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, but pretty close.
After driving a few different prototypes of the Macan Electric during its development phase, I very much enjoyed my time with a final, production version on some familiar roads around my home. It excelled in the dry and on slippery, early winter roads, made me smile when I was feeling rowdy, and then disappeared into the background when I just wanted to get home.
It isn’t a perfect machine. I’d hoped for a little more roominess inside, I lament the lack of one-pedal driving, and honestly, I wish Porsche’s exterior designers had gone a little crazier. At a quick glance, it looks a lot like a first-gen Tesla Model Y, especially in Gentian Blue Metallic, which is a dead ringer for Tesla’s Deep Blue Metallic.
And there’s also the significant premium that you’ll have to pay to get into one: $10,000 over a base, gas-powered Macan. For that, you’re getting a lot of extra performance, a dose of extra tech and all the joys and simplicities that come with living the EV lifestyle. That makes it well worth it in my book.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/2025-porsche-macan-electric-review-the-obvious-choice-when-the-budget-allows-140000851.html?src=rss
We’re in something of a purple patch if you’re a fan of clever new technology in single-seat race cars. Out in the Middle East, the autonomous A2RL crew held another race at Yas Marina, one that by all accounts was a lot more impressive than the last time the self-driving race cars competed against a human. Formula E teams are getting ready for the debut next year of their Gen4 era, which sees cars with real downforce and almost twice as much power. Meanwhile we only have a few months left before we see the results of F1’s new technical rules change, as the sport adopts far more powerful electrical propulsion and active aerodynamics. But what if there was an electric single-seater that was faster around a track than any of these?
That’s the idea behind the DRG-Lola, a racing concept designed from the ground up by Lola Cars, the storied-now-reborn British race car manufacturer, and Lucas di Grassi, veteran of the hybrid LMP1 sportscar days and FIA Formula E champion. Di Grassi is one of the more thoughtful racing drivers out there and is a passionate advocate of clean technologies in racing—in 2020 he shared his earlier thoughts on where Formula E could take its technical direction.
The DRG-Lola is much closer to reality than that 2020 concept; di Grassi has relied on existing battery and motor technology, rather than some uninvented unobtanium to make it all work. It generates 804 hp (600 kW) from a pair of electric motors driving the front and rear axles and is powered by a 60 kWh battery pack that’s arranged in modules on either side of the driver’s cockpit.
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The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ in Platinum Silver is currently priced at $749.99, down from its regular $999.99, and price trackers confirm this is the tablet’s lowest price to date. That discount alone makes a premium device more approachable, especially one that PCMag didn’t hesitate to call “excellent” in their review. They also named it their Editor’s Choice and their pick for the best Android tablet of 2024, which sets a certain expectation. The S10+ meets most of it.
The 12.4-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display looks sharp and handles colors cleanly, and its anti-reflective coating makes a difference when you’re using it outdoors. It still struggles under direct sunlight, but you won’t be tilting the screen around during a casual commute or on your couch. The tablet also feels sturdy in the hand, thanks to Samsung’s Armor Aluminum frame and Gorilla Glass 5 on the front, and the IP68 rating means it can handle dust and water better than any iPad.
Performance-wise, the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ chip paired with 12GB of RAM keeps apps running smoothly without hesitation, and the 256GB of storage (with support for up to 1.5TB via microSD) makes it easy to load up with work files or games. Demanding games like Genshin Impact run smoothly, and not surprisingly, everyday tasks like email, browsing, reading, and hopping between apps don’t strain it either. Battery life lands at a little over eight hours in continuous playback at full brightness, which is decent, though anyone hoping for an all-day endurance champion might want to keep expectations in check.
Samsung’s software and AI tools round out the experience. Android 14 with One UI 6.1.1 brings multitasking shortcuts, a desktop-like DeX mode, and Galaxy AI tools such as Circle to Search, automatic note cleanup, and webpage summaries. These small conveniences add up and make the tablet feel more helpful in day-to-day use. Samsung also promises four years of OS updates and seven years of security patches. That said, the cameras feel like the most compromise-heavy part of the tablet. The 13MP main camera and 8MP ultra-wide do fine for video calls and scanning pages, but colors skew oversaturated and lack detail compared to what you’d expect at this price. Still, this is one of the best tablets you can buy in 2025, according to our Associate Tech Editor Michelle Ehrhardt.
An anonymous reader shares a report: California-based TP-Link says it may take a sales hit of more than $1 billion because of erroneous reports that the networking company’s technology has been “infiltrated” by Beijing. In a lawsuit, TP-Link claims its competitor, Netgear, orchestrated a smear by planting false claims with journalists and internet influencers with the goal of scaring off customers.
Closely held TP-Link, which makes wireless routers, alleges in a complaint filed Monday that Netgear’s campaign “threatens injury to well over a billion dollars in sales” and violates a 2024 settlement of a patent fight. That accord, in which TP-Link agreed to pay Netgear $135 million, includes a provision that the public company promises not to disparage its rival, according to the suit in Delaware federal court.
The suit comes as TP-Link faces growing scrutiny in Washington over national-security issues. US lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern that TP-Link’s wireless equipment could be exploited by Chinese hackers following a series of attacks on its routers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Unity and Epic Games, the creators of today’s biggest video game engines, have announced a partnership that will make Unity games available in Fortnite. Epic has allowed creators to publish their own experiences (or “islands”) within Fortnite since 2018, and the number of experiences has grown considerably over the recent years. In 2024, 198,000 islands were published within the game, double the number from the previous year. This partnership has the potential to grow Fortnite experiences even further by welcoming Unity developers and can give existing developers more freedom.
“Just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together in order to build the open metaverse in a way that’s interoperable and fair,” said Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, in a statement. “Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.” Sweeney announced the partnership with Unity CEO Matt Bromberg at Unity’s annual developer conference. They said that developers will be able to publish games that use Unity’s game engine on Fortnite sometime next year. The companies promised to announce more details and exact timing in the future.
Just announced at Unity’s Unite 2025 show in Barcelona: Unity has built an amazing new networking protocol enabling Unity games to come into Fortnite next year. This will enable an incredible variety of games to reach a new audience in new ways! https://t.co/varnV2ybCu
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) November 19, 2025
In addition, Unity has announced that the cross-platform commerce management dashboard it launched in October will support Unreal Engine. The dashboard allows developers to manage pricing and promotions across websites and stores for mobile and PC from one place. It will start supporting Unreal Engine in early 2026.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/unity-games-are-coming-to-fortnite-133000076.html?src=rss
Systemd 259 RC1 previews the removal of SysV init script support and introduces major compatibility changes ahead of the v260 transition.
Amazon is selling the Echo Spot smart speaker for just $50 as part of a Black Friday promotion. The sale applies to multiple colorways and represents a discount of $30. This isn’t a record low price, but it’s extremely close.
For the uninitiated, the Echo Spot is a diminutive little speaker/alarm clock hybrid unit. It’s a cute little doodad and looks great on a nightstand. The screen is customizable, so it doesn’t have to display a clock. It can show song titles, smart home control dashboards, the weather and a lot more. Of course, there are numerous clock faces to choose from.
The Spot not only integrates with Amazon’s smart assistant Alexa, but it provides access to the newfangled Alexa+. This is a smarter and more conversational version of the iconic smart assistant. Like most modern AI products, it’s still working out some bugs. The underlying tech, however, is promising.
The speaker is decent enough for the size, though you won’t be using it to fuel any house parties. It’s a great tool for bedroom-based listening. This version doesn’t have a camera, which is actually great news for the privacy conscious.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazons-echo-spot-smart-speaker-drops-to-50-for-black-friday-130550875.html?src=rss
You probably haven’t heard of Read AI. The company has quietly been making a name for itself in the crowded AI space, signing up 50,000 customers daily in recent months. At first glance, Read AI resembles apps like Otter.ai. You can use the software to transcribe and summarize meetings, but it’s also more ambitious than that.
“It’s AI on standby,” Read AI CEO David Shim explains, adding that the company’s vision is to give people a tool that can record, transcribe and analyze nearly every professional conversation they have, no matter where those discussions take place and whether they occur online or in-person. Today, Read AI is taking a major step toward realizing that vision with the release of its new Operator agent (I’ll admit, the company could have picked a more original name), and new apps for Windows, macOS and Android.
Between its own software, including an existing iOS app, and third-party integrations, Read AI users can now connect their accounts to more than 22 other platforms. Some of the more notable inclusions there are Gmail, Outlook, Slack, HubSpot and Notion. More importantly, with Read AI’s mobile apps, you can record impromptu in-person meetings; the company has data showing that more than half of professional conversations occur outside of online spaces.
In any case, no matter where you talk to your colleagues, Operator is there to generate notes and insights. “We don’t just look at meetings,” Shim says. “We look at topics that are interesting to you.” To that end, Read AI has built a series of in-house multimodal models that look for context beyond what’s said during any interaction you record. For example, the company’s systems are designed to catch when you enthusiastically answer a question or look away in disinterest, and use that data to decide how the software goes about summarizing your meetings.
“That context is what enables us to identify what is valuable to you, and make that discoverable,” says Shim. One way Read AI will surface those insights is through a feature the company calls Monday Brief. At the start of every week, you’ll get a summary of all the calls and conversations you had over the last seven days, with suggestions for follow-up actions you can take.
Now, you might be wondering, like I was, how Read AI hopes to compete in a market where a company like Microsoft is aggressively pushing Copilot on its users. If Shim is worried about the big players, he doesn’t show it. “There’s a need for an independent third party,” he says. “There’s always something new coming out. And that ability to be the independent third-party that plugs into different solutions is actually what consumers want and need.” To his point, since the launch of Copilot two years ago, Read AI has seen a 20x increase in the daily number of people using its software alongside Microsoft Teams. “We’ve seen the same thing along those lines for Zoom and Google Meet.”
He believes the company’s approach to data privacy is another differentiator. By default, users are opted out of their data being used for training Read AI’s future models. Shim also notes the company takes recording disclosure seriously. “You need to notify people that you’re [recording] a call, and we put that front and center every single time.”
If you want to try Read AI, the company offers a free plan that includes five meeting transcripts per month. Pricing for its paid subscriptions start at $19.75 per month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/read-ai-is-building-a-note-taking-app-that-works-nearly-anywhere-130000235.html?src=rss
The fourth race of Zwift Racing League 2025/26 Round 2 happens Tuesday, November 25, and it’s a team time trial on the new Watts the Limit route in NYC. This is an interesting TTT route, with plenty of pitch changes to keep us on our toes and unique characteristics that make it a much faster course than you might think.
Let’s dig into crucial segments, escalators, bike choice tips, and more!
Watts the Limit is a fresh route from the recent New York map expansion. And while the Strava segment profile (above) may look lumpy – like a city skyline, in fact – it’s actually a fairly flat and fast route, thanks to escalators helping us out of the subway tunnels!
All categories will race a full lap of this out-and-back route, for a total of 31km with 219m of elevation. (Although it’s not really 219m, since ~95 of those meters are on escalators.)
Most of this course is close to pan-flat, with major elevation changes taking place quickly in between as you enter or exit subways. Here are the key points you’ll keep in mind as your team attacks this course:
Warning: the new escalators in NYC may prove tricky if there’s a big difference between the highest and lowest rider weights on your team!
Community feedback is saying, and our tests are confirming, that heavier riders slow much more on the escalators than lighter riders. (Heavier riders, take heart: Zwift knows about this issue, and internal sources tell me a change is planned soon to make escalators perform much more uniformly across various riders. Light riders: enjoy the escalators while you still can! 
)
I ran bots of various weights up one of the longer escalators on the route (the final escalator you’ll hit, in fact). Each bot’s power was set so they would all have approximately the same escalator entry speed (~46 kph), and that power remained steady as they went up and over the top of the escalator. Here’s how much each bot slowed down between entering and exiting the escalator:
Of course, most teams won’t have a 50kg (or even 25kg) weight difference between riders. But the heavier you are, the more you should plan to push on escalators to keep your speed high. And lighter riders will probably want to keep their power fairly steady, to avoid shooting off the front!
Two more escalator tips:
Read more about the Watts the Limit route >
Bike choice here is simple: go aero. On a flattish route like this, weight doesn’t matter much, and aero is everything! The best setup by far is the CADEX Tri frame paired with the DT Swiss Disc wheels, but you’ll need to be at level 40+ to access this sweet rig:
If you don’t have access to this setup, check out “Fastest TT Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level” and use the fastest TT frame and wheelset available at your level.
One more note on bike choice: upgrading your frame makes a big difference. A fully upgraded frame saves around 13 watts, or ~48 seconds per hour of riding. Read all about the performance improvements you receive from upgrades here.
Many recon rides are planned each week on the upcoming ZRL route. If you’re unfamiliar with this course, jump into an event and familiarize yourself with the route! Find a list of upcoming ZRL recon rides at zwift.com/events/tag/zrlrecon.
Additionally, riders in the Zwift community do a great job every week creating recon videos that preview the courses and offer tips to help you perform your best on the day. Here are the recons I’ve found (comment if you find another!):
Successful team time trialing on Zwift requires a challenging combination of physical strength, proper pacing, and Zwift minutiae like picking a fast bike, understanding drafting in a TTT context, and getting your frame fully upgraded.
Flatter courses like this week give valuable seconds to teams with big pure-power riders who can keep their power high on the front while staying in single-file formation to conserve in the draft behind. Extra seconds can also be gained by pacing smartly, ramping up the effort on short climbs and recovering a bit once you’re up to speed on the short descents.
On a course like this week’s, I highly recommend all team members set their Trainer Difficulty to the same value so you’re all feeling the gradient changes similarly. (When one rider has it set to 100% and another 25%, the first rider may ramp up power much more than the second when a climb hits, which can make a mess of your team formation.)
Your goal in a ZRL TTT is to get four riders across the line in the shortest time possible. That means every team’s pace plan will differ based on each rider’s abilities. I highly recommend having an experienced DS on Discord directing your team, especially if your team contains some inexperienced TTT riders.
Lastly, if you want to go further down the TTT rabbit hole, I highly recommend Dave Edmond’s Zwift TTT Calculator tool.
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For nearly half a century, the United States has relied on a powerful, quiet engine to drive its innovation economy. It’s not in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, but in the research labs of universities and non-profit institutions across the country. This engine, created by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, is the single most successful piece of economic legislation of the past 50 years. It has been responsible for countless life-saving drugs, world-changing technologies and entirely new industries.
Today, that engine is under direct threat from an unexpected source: the U.S. government itself.
A recent proposal from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—suggesting the government should seize half of all patent royalties from federally funded university research—represents a profound misunderstanding of what makes this system work. Standing in firm opposition is the Bayh-Dole Coalition, a group of universities, researchers, patient-advocacy groups and business leaders who understand the stakes. They are fighting to protect a law that has been the cornerstone of American innovation, and their fight is one we should all be paying attention to.
To understand the current battle, one must first understand the world before Bayh-Dole. Prior to 1980, the U.S. government funded billions in research at universities. When that research led to an invention, the patent rights defaulted to the federal government. This sounds reasonable until you look at the results. As detailed in the Bayh-Dole Coalition’s digital library, the government had amassed 28,000 patents by 1980 and had successfully licensed less than 5% of them. The Government was, quite literally, sitting on a treasure trove of innovation and letting it gather dust on a shelf.
The Bayh-Dole Act, a bipartisan effort co-sponsored by Senators Birch Bayh (D-IN) and Bob Dole (R-KS), introduced a simple, revolutionary change. It allowed universities, non-profits and small businesses to retain ownership of the inventions they created with federal funding.
This was not a giveaway. As the Coalition’s technical summary of the Act explains, this ownership came with a critical new responsibility: a mandate to actively pursue commercialization. Universities were now incentivized to file for patents and, most importantly, license those patents to private-sector companies—startups and established firms alike—that could shoulder the risk and cost of turning a raw idea into a marketable product.
The results have been staggering. The impact of Bayh-Dole and technology transfer is undeniable. It has spurred the creation of over 15,000 startup companies, supported millions of jobs and contributed trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy. From the Google search algorithm to life-saving cancer treatments, the fingerprints of Bayh-Dole are everywhere.
This proven system now faces a grave threat from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. His recent proposal suggests that the government should simply “take” 50% of the patent royalties universities earn from these inventions. The rationale seems to be that since the government provided the initial grant funding, it is entitled to a direct cash-back return.
This proposal fundamentally misunderstands the government’s true “return on investment (ROI).” The government’s ROI was never meant to be a simple royalty check. Its return is a stronger economy, the creation of new high-tech jobs, global leadership in science and new medicines that save lives. The Bayh-Dole system was designed to produce those outcomes, which it has done spectacularly.
Lutnick’s plan treats the complex, delicate ecosystem of innovation like a simple ATM, and in doing so, it threatens to break the entire machine.
The reaction from the innovation community, led by the Bayh-Dole Coalition, has been swift, unified and overwhelmingly negative. As the Coalition’s official statement declared, the proposal “would dismantle the innovation ecosystem” and “undermine U.S. leadership.”
To back this up, the Coalition released survey results from its members—the very people on the front lines of technology transfer. The findings were not just clear; they were practically unanimous. A full 99% of respondents said the proposal would harm their ability to commercialize technology, and 98% said it would make them less likely to license patents to companies.
This isn’t just about money; it’s about incentives. As Joseph Allen, the Coalition’s Executive Director, wrote in a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed, this proposal is nothing short of “a tax that would kill innovation.”
Why? Because university patent royalties are not “profits.” This money is immediately reinvested into the research enterprise. It pays for the high costs of filing and maintaining patents—a risky, expensive venture that often fails. It funds the technology transfer offices that bridge the gap between labs and industry. Most importantly, it provides seed funding for new, high-risk research, supports graduate students and buys critical lab equipment.
Taking 50% of that money doesn’t just reduce the pie; it shatters the incentive structure. With half the potential return gone, universities will be forced to abandon thousands of promising, early-stage inventions. They will only be able to afford to patent the “safest bets,” letting potentially revolutionary (but less certain) ideas die in the lab. Private companies, seeing the university support system gutted, will be less willing to partner and invest the millions needed to bring a product to market. The pipeline of innovation would slow to a trickle.
The Bayh-Dole Act is perhaps the most successful and least-understood law of our time. It transformed the U.S. from a passive funder of research into an active cultivator of innovation, creating a system that is the envy of the world. The Bayh-Dole Coalition is fighting to protect this system not for the sake of universities, but for the sake of the entire nation.
Secretary Lutnick’s proposal is a short-sighted cash grab that would sever the link between public research and public benefit. It would disincentivize discovery, destabilize partnerships and ultimately surrender America’s competitive edge. The government’s role should be to champion and strengthen the Bayh-Dole framework, not dismantle it for a fraction of its true value.
OnePlus got its start courting the enthusiast community by offering blazing-fast phones for a low price. While the prices aren’t quite as low as they once were, the new OnePlus 15 still delivers on value. Priced at $899, this phone sports the latest and most powerful Snapdragon processor, the largest battery in a mainstream smartphone, and a super-fast screen.
The OnePlus 15 still doesn’t deliver the most satisfying software experience, and the camera may actually be a step back for the company, but the things OnePlus gets right are very right. It’s a fast, sleek phone that runs for ages on a charge, and it’s a little cheaper than the competition. But its shortcomings make it hard to recommend this device over the latest from Google or Samsung—or even the flagship phone OnePlus released ten months ago.
US buyers have time to mull it over, though. Because of the recent government shutdown, FCC approval of the OnePlus 15 has been delayed. The company says it will release the phone as soon as it can, but there’s no exact date yet.
ClamAV will retire outdated signatures on December 16, reducing both databases by about 50% to improve performance and trim update costs.
When it comes to GPU virtualization we have seen AMD engineers carry out a lot of work in recent years around the Xen hypervisor even when it hasn’t seen as much interest from other vendors. We found out that much of their interest in Xen for GPU virtualization is due to automotive / in-vehicle infotainment demands and it remains that way. They continue cooking some new features and they say “the best is yet to come” in a new presentation on their Xen virtualization efforts…
Alice Ryhl of Google sent out the main set of Rust language code changes for the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics/display driver subsystem ahead of Linux 6.19. Notable is continued DRM core infrastructure work for Rust plus the open-source NVIDIA “Nova” driver continues taking shape albeit isn’t yet ready for end-user usage…
Intel’s ISA documentation was updated last week to confirm Nova Lake processors will support AVX10.2 and APX extensions after they were not officially acknowledged in prior versions of the spec and the initial open-source compiler enablement with -march=novalake also left them without those prominent ISA capabilities. Following that documentation update, a few days ago LLVM Clang updated their Nova Lake compiler support for the new ISA capabilities and now the GCC compiler has received similar treatment…
Sent out today was likely the last batch of HID subsystem fixes ahead of the Linux 6.18 kernel releasing as stable around the end of the month. With it are some new device-specific quirks for fixing hardware support for a mouse and keyboard…
When Meta announced last year that it was ditching third-party fact checkers in favor of an X-style Community Notes system, the company was careful to note that it would only implement the changes within the United States to start. Now, nearly a year later, the social media company is getting ready to expand the crowd-sourced fact checks to more countries, and is asking the Oversight Board for advice on a potential rollout.
The company has requested that board weigh in on “factors we should consider when deciding which countries, if any, to omit from the international roll out” of Community Notes. Notably, Meta isn’t asking the Oversight Board to advise on the merits of replacing traditional fact-checking organizations. Instead, the company wants guidance on how to approach country-specific challenges and whether there should be any carveouts.
“We respectfully ask the Board to focus its examination on the country-level factors relevant to omitting countries from the international roll-out, and not on topics such as general product design or the operation of the Community Notes algorithm,” the company wrote in its request shared by the board.
Up to now, Meta has been experimenting with Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in the United States only. People who want to be able to author notes still need to be approved, but the company allows anyone to rate notes. However, it seems that the feature so far hasn’t gained as much traction for Meta as it has on X. In September, the company said that just 6 percent of the more than 15,000 notes that had been contributed had actually been published.
In a statement from the Oversight Board, the group said it would consider issues like whether a crowd-sourced fact checking system would make sense in countries with “low levels of freedom of expression” or without a free press, as well as places with “low levels of digital literacy.” It also said it was hoping to hear public comments from researchers who have studied different approaches to countering misinformation.
Unlike with a typical case from the Oversight Board, which deals with specific content moderation decisions, Meta has no obligation to implement any of the group’s recommendations. But, the company has previously chosen to follow its suggestions in previous policy advisory opinions, including its decision to roll back COVID-19 misinformation rules following a recommendation from the board.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-asks-the-oversight-board-to-weigh-in-a-little-on-community-notes-ahead-of-expansion-110000208.html?src=rss
