While Microsoft is publishing more games than ever before, fewer and fewer of them are getting physical editions on its home turf. Microsoft-owned Oblivion’sThe Outer Worlds 2 will get a standard disc option on PlayStation 5 but only a code in a box for Xbox Series X owners. It’s the latest example of a growing…
iOS 26 has introduced a new feature that will help CarPlay take better advantage of the shape of your vehicle’s display, Apple announced at WWDC 2025. When enabled, the new Smart Display Zoom will shrink down elements on the screen to fit an extra row of app icons.
“Vehicle screens come in many shapes and sizes,” CarPlay engineer Olivia Hess explained in a developer video spotted by MacRumors. “In iOS 26, some screen configurations allow drivers to adjust their display scale with Smart Display Zoom configurable within Settings in CarPlay. When Smart Display Zoom is enabled, your CarPlay app will be automatically resized to the new display scale.”
Though the change is relatively small, it should make CarPlay less of a hassle to use if you have a lot of apps. The feature is only available in a developer beta for now, but will appear in a public beta next month and in the final iOS 26 release by September this year.
CarPlay is receiving other updates as part of the iOS 26 update. It will feature a more compact view for incoming calls so the display doesn’t obfuscate directions. Tapbacks (i.e. emoji responses) and pinned conversations are coming to Messages in CarPlay, and widgets and Live Activities can be reflected on the infotainment system. These updates will be present in CarPlay Ultra too.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/ios-26-will-fit-carplay-to-better-match-the-shape-of-your-cars-screen-120036182.html?src=rss
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There isn’t one ideal way to lay out your garden. Gardeners can opt for a chaos garden, where everything grows wildly together, or a companion-planted garden, where many different kinds of vegetables and flowers intersperse. Some people, though, want a perfectly laid out, symmetrical garden, with straight lines of vegetables spaced perfectly in rows. For those people, here are two ways to achieve that.
Planting from seed is the most efficient way to grow many vegetables, like radishes, beets, kohlrabi and turnips, but seeds are hard to space perfectly. Enter a seed square. A plastic grid with holes perfectly spaced in a variety of patterns, the square is placed in your garden bed, and you push seeds into the holes in the pattern you wish to achieve. These should correspond to the recommended spacing on the seed packet, but most of the vegetables I just named have the same recommended spacing: two to three inches between seeds. Make sure you place two to three seeds in each hole, in hopes that at least one germinates. You can always trim back the seedlings to one later.
Seed squares aren’t expensive, but you can make your own using a piece of cardboard. Draw a grid on a one foot by one foot piece of cardboard. Use a hole punch or awl to make holes in symmetrical patterns on the cardboard. You can paint the square to help you easily note the patterns while out in the garden planting.
If you are gardening by the foot, you can use the seed square to plant multiple different vegetables in each square foot of space in your garden. By laying them out with the seed square, even different vegetables will grow in a structured pattern.
You don’t have to repeat the same pattern throughout a garden bed, either. You can dedicate a portion of the whole bed to pattern seeding, or mix up the pattern from square foot to square foot.
If you’re buying starts or growing your own, it’s easier to keep your plants in a tight grid. All you have to do is plonk the starts in the soil where you want them— you can see the pattern as you plant. With seedlings, a seed square won’t help— the holes aren’t big enough—so it’s best to use a tool like a piece of PVC or a yardstick to lay out where plants will go. Use the PVC or yardstick to draw lines in the topsoil to divide the garden bed into a grid.
As with the seed square, you can sketch the layout ahead of time, but generally, you want to keep blocks of rows—a block for each vegetable. The blocks don’t have to all have the same spacing, or even go in the same direction. By maintaining the grid, your garden will still look clean and professional when everything grows in.
After such a disastrous end to the previous era of superhero movies with the terrible Batman & Robin, the Caped Crusader and the DC universe entered a state of dormancy. Marvel was ascending into superhero supremacy, but Warner Bros. had a goal to bring Batman back onto the big screen. After two good films, the…
Still trying to earn that 60-minute Alpe badge? Our first featured event this week may help you out. See it below, plus four other fun picks!
Alpe 60 min Pace 
Unique Event Achievement Badge
The USMES Torturefest and Giant are collaborating to bring a weekly series of paced Alpe du Zwift rides to the community. The pace changes each week of the month, and this week the two ride paces are 60 minutes and 75 minutes. (We’re just featuring the 60-minute ride here).
If you’ve ever wanted help hitting that fabled 60-minute Alpe target (and the Liftoff! achievement badge that comes with it), here’s a motivating way to make it happen!
Saturday, June 14 @ 1pm UTC/9am EDT/6am PDT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/4984971
DBR Social Ride
Beginner Friendly Legacy Leaders
Looking for a fun social ride? Join the experienced DBR time for 60 minutes on Watopia’s Big Flat 8 route. The ride leader will keep a pace at 30-35kph, but you aren’t limited to that speed – the ride description says “… it’s ok to ride ahead and join other riders in front – just remember to be social.”
Sunday, June 15 @ 7:55am UTC/3:55am EDT/12:55am PDT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5015548
SISU Scramble
Mass Start Popular Series
The twice-a-week SISU Scramble series is now underway, and this weekend’s race is on London’s Triple Loops (41km, 564m).
Read all about the SISU Scramble >
One thing that makes these races extra interesting is that they are mass start, with all riders visible on the course.
Multiple events this weekend
See all upcoming SISU events at zwift.com/events/tag/sisu
The Ultimate Women’s Mini Races – City Sites
Punchy Race Unique Event
Women’s Mini Races (3 races in an hour) happen each Sunday, but the ULTIMATE Mini Races are a bigger monthly event organized by Vinnette Powell of Team eSRT. If you’re looking for some punchy women-only racing, check out these events.
This Sunday’s races are city-themed and held on custom-length versions of the 6 Train Reverse, Lutece Express, and Classique Reverse routes. Two time zones are available.
Sunday, June 15 @ 3pm UTC/11am ET/8am PT and @ 6pm UTC/2pm ET/11am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/esrt
JETT Endurance Ride 100km 2.5~3.3w/kg
Endurance Challenge Pace Options
Here’s a popular long ride with two pace options: B group at 3-3.3 W/kg, or C at 2.5-2.9 W/kg. Both groups will be riding The London Pretzel route for 100km, with optional efforts on some of the intermediate segments if you’d like.
Choose your desired pace, listen to the ride leader, and get that endurance work done! Both categories have a leader (yellow beacon) and sweepers.
Saturday, June 14 at 8:05pm UTC/4:05pm ET/1:05pm PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5014842
We choose each weekend’s Notable Events based on a variety of factors including:
In the end, we want to call attention to events that are extra-special and therefore extra-appealing to Zwifters. If you think your event qualifies, comment below with a link/details and we may just include it in an upcoming post!
Tria, an Avnet company focused on embedded compute platforms, has introduced a new lineup of Qualcomm-powered SoMs. Based on Snapdragon and QCS series processors, the modules support scalable designs using standards like OSM, SMARC, COM-HPC, and COM Express for applications in automation, edge AI, medical systems, and more. The MSC OSM-LF-IQ615 module adopts the OSM […]
It’s been a busy week! In this episode, Devindra and Senior Editor Jessica Conditt dive into their final thoughts on the Switch 2, as well as Jess’s time covering Summer Game Fest. We also put a bow on WWDC 2025 and explore what works and doesn’t with Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign.
Summer Games Fest 2025: Sword of the Sea, Mouse: PI for Hire, Big Walk and a ton more indies – 1:17
Nintendo Switch 2 review: more polish on the Switch form factor with scant new releases – 22:09
WWDC 2025 wrap up: what will users think of liquid glass? – 38:11
Air Traffic Control audio reveals Predator drones flew over LA protests – 53:31
Meta announces large investment in Scale AI and a new AI Superintelligence initiative – 54:24
Warner Bros. Discovery to split into two devisions along old company lines – 59:12
Pop culture picks – 1:00:34
Host: Devindra Hardawar
Guests: Jessica Conditt
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-switch-2-review-summer-game-fest-and-wwdc-2025-113008170.html?src=rss
Greetings Arsians! It’s time—at least in some parts of the world—to celebrate dads. Father’s Day is nearly here, and as there’s a custom of gift-giving, many of us will have to choose something. Below, various Ars editors have identified a few things they’ve bought recently that they think could be great gifts for dads—with the caveat that there are an indefinably large spectrum of variations of what dads are like. Still, we did our best to include a few things that are pretty general, and a few that are weirdly specific. In any case, want to show some appreciation for your dad? Here are some options you can throw some money at.
86Lux Book Light – $15
Unless your father has light dimmers or has jumped onboard the small-lights-not-big-ones interior design trend, chances are there are two environments available to him for reading: one, giant, bright ceiling light that is great for reading but not so great for setting an immersive and relaxing mood, or well, darkness. Enter the clip book light, a good way to light up the page at a brightness suitable for not-so-new eyes without harshing the reading vibes. The 86Lux Book Light is one of many offerings, but we like its simple design. It has multiple temperature and brightness levels, and it’s adjustable, so it can reliably clip onto most books.
HP announced last year it was going to be the first to offer hardware based on Google Beam (formerly ‘Project Starline’), the light field-based 3D videoconferencing platform. Now, HP unveiled ‘Dimension’, which is being pitched to enterprise at $25,000 a pop.
HP Dimension with Google Beam is said to use six cameras and “state of the art AI” to create a realistic 3D video of each participant, displayed on a special 65-inch light field display with realistic size, depth, color, and eye contact.
HP says the device, which will be sold to select partners starting in late 2025, will be priced at $25,000. This notably doesn’t come with the Google Beam license, which is sold separately.
As an enterprise-first device, HP Dimension is slated to support Zoom Rooms and Google Meet, so it can do 3D immersive chats, but also 2D traditional group meetings, integrating cloud-based video services such as Teams and Webex.
“We believe that meaningful collaboration thrives on authentic human connections, which is why we partnered with Google to bring HP Dimension with Google Beam out of the lab and into the enterprise,” said Helen Sheirbon, SVP and President of Hybrid Systems, HP Inc. “HP Dimension with Google Beam bridges the gap between the virtual and physical worlds to create lifelike virtual communication experiences that brings us closer together.”
First introduced in 2021, Google Beam (ex ‘Project Starlight’) combines a light-field display to show natural 3D depth without the need for an XR headset or glasses of any sort—essentially simulating a face-to-face chat between two people.
In its testing, HP says Beam this makes for 39% more non-verbal behaviors noticed, as well as 37% more users noting better turn taking, and 28% noticing an increase in memory recall over traditional videoconferencing platforms.
The post Google’s First ‘Beam’ Videoconferencing Device is ‘HP Dimension’, Coming Late 2025 at $25,000 appeared first on Road to VR.
You forget how much of a hit, how much of a turnaround, the Nintendo Switch turned out to be. After the major wobble (and baffling form factor) of the Wii U, Nintendo came back with a hybrid console that would replace and fuse its handheld and home console lineages. The console had no right being as playable (and enjoyable) as it was.
Now, finally, its successor has landed. And for once, Nintendo’s calling its new console a sequel. Nintendo took the best features from the original and upgraded nearly all of them.
The major upgrades in hardware include a bigger 7.9-inch LCD screen, a more mature design that feels more solid and significantly upgraded performance and power. The only major drawback is battery life. Nintendo says it should provide between 2 and 6.5 hours of runtime on a single charge, but that depends on how resource-intensive your games are.
According to Sam Rutherford’s review testing: “In Mario Kart World, the Switch 2 lasted two hours and 23 minutes, which is on the lower end of Nintendo’s official estimate. Meanwhile, in the NS2 edition of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the console fared a bit better with a time of 2:56.” Compared to the OLED Switch’s battery life, it’s a reduction, but it’s also equivalent to other high-powered handhelds, like the ROG Ally X and Steam Deck.
Check out our full review (and perhaps our guide to the best games on the original Switch — because backward compatibility).,
— Mat Smith
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If you’re struggling to find a good present for Father’s Day, MasterClass has discounted its subscriptions by up to 50 percent. I grabbed a similar deal for myself, unfortunately only 40 percent off, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the solid interface and how many courses are available. Many course videos can even be downloaded for viewing offline.
Nothing CEO Carl Pei has been teasing this news since April, but now it’s official: You might actually be able to buy the company’s next flagship phone. The Nothing Phone 3 will be available to purchase from Amazon or directly from the company. Until now, only the Phone 2 has made it to general sale in the US. For the other models (including the very impressive Phone 3a), users would have to buy a unit via a beta program, which has no after-sale support. Any caveats? Well, there will be no carrier discount. The Phone 3 will support 4G and 5G with AT&T and T-Mobile. While there’s no explicit support for Verizon, the Phone 2 worked well with its network, so that’ll probably be the case with the third phone.
How much? There’s no official US price yet. Pei recently said it would cost £800 in the UK at launch, which would translate to around $1,080 in US dollars.
Infinite Machine made waves with its retro-futuristic P1 electric bike, and now it’s back with the Olto. Its new e-bike boasts 40 miles of range and a top speed of 33 mph, with a 20 mph limit while riding in the bike lane.
Just like the P1, the Olto e-bike looks both futuristic and retro, (like a transformer that turns into a vape.) What’s notable is it can carry two riders at the same time, and you can add accessories, like child carriers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111554900.html?src=rss
Though it’s absent from today’s flatscreen launch, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic will receive VR support post-release.
There’s been some confusion these last few months about the state of VR support in Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic. Initially demoed at PAX West last year on PlayStation VR2, doubts emerged following February’s State of Play presentation. Steel Wool Studios scrubbed all mention of PS VR2 from the game’s store page soon after the presentation offered a first look at gameplay, also removing the headset’s mention from PlayStation Blog and social media.
While the developer didn’t offer an official statement at the time, we’ve now learned that VR support is still planned as a post-launch update. In an interview with YouTuber Dawko, which we initially missed last month, game director Evan Lampi confirmed that Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic will reach VR “soon after” after the flatscreen launch.
“We pivoted a little bit. We’re launching [on flatscreen] Steam and PS5, and VR is coming after launch sometime,” stated Lampi.
A specific release date wasn’t confirmed, and the interview doesn’t outright confirm if the upcoming game is also coming to SteamVR. However, it’s worth noting that both Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted and Help Wanted 2 also received multiplatform VR support, so the chances seem likely.
Set in the abandoned workshop of Murray’s Costume Manor, Secret of the Mimic is the next mainline entry that sees you tasked with unraveling a mystery left behind by its reclusive inventor. The Mimic can adapt to any costume it chooses, and you’re tasked with retrieving Fazbear’s prototype technology while escaping this relentless foe.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic arrives today on PC and PS5, while a PlayStation VR2 release date remains unconfirmed.
Vet is an open source tool designed to help developers and security engineers spot risks in their software supply chains. It goes beyond traditional software composition analysis by detecting known vulnerabilities and flagging malicious packages.
The post Vet: Open-source software supply chain security tool appeared first on Linux Today.
As artificial intelligence has advanced, AI tools have emerged to make it possible to easily create digital replicas of lost loved ones, which can be generated without the knowledge or consent of the person who died.
Trained on the data of the dead, these tools, sometimes called grief bots or AI ghosts, may be text-, audio-, or even video-based. Chatting provides what some mourners feel is a close approximation to ongoing interactions with the people they love most. But the tech remains controversial, perhaps complicating the grieving process while threatening to infringe upon the privacy of the deceased, whose data could still be vulnerable to manipulation or identity theft.
Because of suspected harms and perhaps a general repulsion to the idea of it, not everybody wants to become an AI ghost.
As I jumped over buildings and quickly flinged to rooftops, Reach made me glad to have accrued VR legs in the past few years. The debut title by nDreams Elevation takes cues from existing mechanics and the studio’s own institutional knowledge of the space, and turns them up to eleven.
Reach has been in development since 2022 by nDreams Elevation. During a hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest, senior technical designer Robert Harper said the team is made up of both VR veterans who’ve worked on games like Synapse, as well as developers acquainted with flatscreen projects.
The result is an action-adventure game featuring a reluctant hero tasked with traversing through an underground civilization. The demo, which entailed the game’s tutorial, was more of a grounded glance of the seemingly grandiose scope that the studio is aiming for. I traversed through city streets while a helicopter made chase, defeating dozens of human grunts along the way. I didn’t get to set foot in the mysterious civilization or confront the massive robotic foes shown in the trailer. Yet, Reach has stayed rent free in my mind for days after.
Shuhei Yoshida, a game industry veteran who worked at PlayStation since 1993, first played Reach in a very early stage around three years ago. NDreams wanted feedback, asking people to get their hands on it and test the mechanics. Funnily enough, Yoshida kept trying and failing to get used to the game’s acrobatics.
After around 10 years of experience with VR, he’s able to tell when the developers behind a project are doing a good job. Normally, if he starts to sweat, that’s a sign that he’s getting nauseated. Yet, as he continued to see Reach’s evolution over the years, he can now play for long sessions without issues. After leaving Sony in January of this year, nDreams asked him to help launch the game as an ambassador.
Getting to this point, especially for a high-intensity VR game, has not been easy. “It’s really hard because people don’t read things, right?”, Yoshida said jokingly regarding tutorialization.
As Harper explained, there were quite a few obstacles around some of Reach’s most involved mechanics. Mantling, for example, was originally entirely gesture based, in a similar way to the likes of Horizon Call of the Mountain. During tests, nDreams found that newer VR adopters would constantly fail to do the right mental input, and so they ended up falling to their deaths.
“You give everybody the same instruction, but everybody feels differently, everybody moves slightly differently,” Harper said.
The solution was to make it so mantling requires the player to keep pushing the left analog stick forward. This way, even if someone isn’t doing the input correctly, as long as they’re still grabbing from a ledge, they can simply move the stick and the game will automatically complete the movement without a risk of falling. Harper said that this is especially useful for playing in seated mode, as you can’t actually push your arms down through, say, your couch.
Flinging was also hard to figure out. In essence, some platforming sequences in Reach ask you to hold onto a ledge, push your “body” back, and then quickly fling toward the other ledge or grappling point by throwing your hands in a quick motion. It took a ton of fine-tuning to make it easy to pick up.
During the demo, I had no issues performing all of these actions. In fact, once I found my bearings, I was able to enter a flow state, and most movements became second nature, even when having close calls after long jumps. Yet, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve been playing and covering VR games for a few years now, so I’m familiar with the locomotion demanded from players.
“Generally when playing the game, the systems work best if you’re just nice, slow, and graceful, but you can’t just tell people to do that, right, because it’s, you know, action movie, explosions everywhere, you’re going to die in five minutes,” Harper said. “You’re going to panic a bit, right? There’s a few cracks that we saw in the demos, but I’m pretty pleased with the current state of traversal.”
Harper attributes this fine-tuning to being fortunate of having a long pre-production time where the team could “just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.” If it didn’t, the developers were happy to discard the idea. More often than not, however, they found that people were adapting just fine.
“Our approach to motion sickness was, we’ll deal with it if it’s a widespread problem,” Harper said. “Admittedly a lot of our developers have VR legs, but we do have a lot of people coming from outside the space. After the first week or so they’re fine, despite all the crazy stuff we’re doing.”
Looking back, Yoshida reflected on the early days of VR, in which studios were concerned about making people sick, sometimes favoring movement options like warping rather than allowing players to just walk in virtual environments, which got in the way of immersion. Games like Reach showcase how far technology has come, thanks to better performance, tracking, and framerate, as well as having experienced developers who’ve been working on VR for years.
Yoshida would like to see a wider adoption of VR in the future, as well as headsets becoming thinner, lighter, and less awkward to wear. He believes that the progress is there, and while it may not be as quickly as people hope for, he remains optimistic about it.
“I always admire these, you know, survivors of VR developers,” Yoshida said. “After stupid money left the industry, now you know only good companies left still keep making games.”
Reach is releasing on PS VR2, SteamVR, and Quest headsets this year.
Welcome to Edition 7.48 of the Rocket Report! The shock of last week’s public spat between President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has worn off, and Musk expressed regret for some of his comments going after Trump on social media. Musk also backtracked from his threat to begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft, currently the only way for the US government to send people to the International Space Station. Nevertheless, there are many people who think Musk’s attachment to Trump could end up putting the US space program at risk, and I’m not convinced that danger has passed.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Quebec invests in small launch company. The government of Quebec will invest $10 million Canadian dollars ($7.3 million) into a Montreal-area company that is developing a system to launch small satellites into space, The Canadian Press reports. Quebec premier François Legault announced the investment into Reaction Dynamics at the company’s facility in Longueuil, a Montreal suburb. The province’s economy minister, Christine Fréchette, said the investment will allow the company to begin launching microsatellites into orbit from Canada as early as 2027.
Anker has recalled its PowerCore 10000 power bank (model A1263) due to an issue with the lithium battery that can cause it to “overheat, posing fire and burn hazards to consumers,” the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC) wrote. The company received 19 reports of fires and explosions, including two reports of minor burn injuries and 11 property damage claims totaling over $60,700.
It’s a large recall covering 1,158,000 units sold (in the US only) through Amazon, Newegg and eBay between June 2016 and December 2022. To confirm that you have that specific model, check the rear of the device to confirm it reads: “Anker PowerCore 10000” with model number “A1263.”
To receive a $30 gift card or replacement 10,000 mAh power bank, you’ll need to send a photo with the submission date and word “recall” or “recalled” written in permanent marker. You must also send a photo showing the model number and serial number printed on the bottom of the power bank, along with a receipt (though the latter is optional). See Anker’s recall page for more details.
Once you receive confirmation that your power bank is subject to the recall, you must dispose of it safely at a municipal household hazardous waste (HHW) collection center (call ahead to confirm if they accept rechargeable lithium-ion batteries). Do not throw them in recycling bins, the trash or battery disposal bins available at retailers.
Though generally safe and reliable, lithium ion batteries can degrade over time and pose a fire hazard. Couriers like FedEx and airlines have strict rules about transporting them, and Southwest Airlines recently decreed that passengers must have battery chargers visible when in use on flights.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/anker-recalls-over-a-million-power-banks-due-to-fire-and-burn-hazards-110017437.html?src=rss
Le Mans Ultimate, an official game for the FIA World Endurance Championship, enters full release next month on SteamVR.
Previously released last year on Steam Early Access, Le Mans Ultimate by Studio 397 will reach version 1.0 on July 22. Announced before this year’s famous 24-hour race kicks off, this landmark update also introduces two free 2025 cars, the Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH and Mercedes-AMG LMGT3, alongside promised improvements to polish and performance. All 2025 official liveries will be included for free too.
While this won’t be available at Version 1.0’s release, Studio 397 also confirmed that Le Mans Ultimate will add the European Le Mans Series. This category also sees the introduction of both the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) and LMP3 class vehicles, and three famous circuits: Silverstone, Paul Ricard (Le Castellet) and Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Pricing and a release window will be shared “in the coming months.”
As for what’s next, the developer confirmed it’s planning further updates following Version 1.0. That includes a single-player career mode that’s “currently in early production,” letting you take on roles within set teams and progress through the ranks while making “career-impacting choices based on race results.” Driver swaps are also mentioned, and a Q1 2026 release is targeted.
Version 1.0 arrives on July 22 on Steam with PC VR support, and it’s out now in early access.
Meta has struck a new deal with geothermal startup XGS Energy to supply 150 megawatts of carbon-free electricity for its New Mexico data center. “Advances in AI require continued energy to support infrastructure development,” Urvi Parekh, global head of energy at Meta, said in a press release. “With next-generation geothermal technologies like XGS ready for scale, geothermal can be a major player in supporting the advancement of technologies like AI as well as domestic data center development.” The Verge reports: Geothermal plants generate electricity using Earth’s heat; typically drawing up hot fluids or steam from natural reservoirs to turn turbines. That tactic is limited by natural geography, however, and the US gets around half a percent of its electricity from geothermal sources. Startups including XGS are trying to change that by making geothermal energy more accessible. Last year, Meta made a separate 150MW deal with Sage Geosystems to develop new geothermal power plants. Sage is developing technologies to harness energy from hot, dry rock formations by drilling and pumping water underground, essentially creating artificial reservoirs. Google has its own partnership with another startup called Fervo developing similar technology.
XGS Energy is also seeking to exploit geothermal energy from dry rock resources. It tries to set itself apart by reusing water in a closed-loop process designed to prevent water from escaping into cracks in the rock. The water it uses to take advantage of underground heat circulates inside a steel casing. Conserving water is especially crucial in a drought-prone state like New Mexico, where Meta is expanding its Los Lunas data center. Meta declined to say how much it’s spending on this deal with XGS Energy. The initiative will roll out in two phases with a goal of being operational by 2030.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The UCI opted not to include the One Cycling project when it finalised the men’s and women’s WorldTour races through to 2028 on Thursday, with the governing body describing the scheme as “lacking sporting coherence”.
One Cycling, reportedly backed by a company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, wanted to overhaul professional road cycling’s calendar. It proposed remodelling the cycling calendar into a league and broadcast rights to aid the financial stability of teams.
But the UCI Management Committee voted the proposal down at a meeting this week in Arzon, France.
“While welcoming the fact that road cycling is attracting new investors, the UCI Management Committee nevertheless unanimously decided, following the PCC’s vote in this direction, not to respond to the request, as it stands, to include the OneCycling project in the UCI Women’s WorldTour and UCI WorldTour calendars,” the UCI said in a statement.
“The project, which had been developed by certain teams and organisers, in collaboration with a sports investment fund, was deemed incompatible with the governance and regulatory framework of the UCI as well as lacking sporting coherence.”
One Cycling was announced in October 2023. The brainchild of Richard Plugge, the general manager of the Visma–Lease a Bike team, the scheme has support from other WorldTour teams, including Ineos Grenadiers and RedBull Bora hansgrohe.
Plugge said last year: “With One Cycling, we aim to involve everyone, including the Tour [de France], other teams, and the UCI – everyone. Cycling has much greater potential beyond the current financial scope. This applies not only to me but also to organizers and other teams. This isn’t about creating a Super League; it’s about working together.”
A source close to One Cycling told CyclingNews that the Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO), which organises the Tour de France and La Vuelta, has a “monopoly on the sport” and that One Cycling wanted to work with them.
But Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said “everywhere and every time cycling has tried to transform itself solely with money, it has failed.”
With its ambitions to launch in time for the 2026 WorldTour blocked, One Cycling’s prospects have changed. But there could still be hope for the scheme.
“[T]he UCI wishes, as do all cycling’s stakeholders, to continue discussions with the representatives of this project in order to collaborate on the internationalisation of the UCI Women’s WorldTour and UCI WorldTour calendars and the economic development of our sport,” the UCI’s statement said.
The UCI’s plans for the 2026 WorldTour season include the addition of a women’s version of Dwars door Vlaanderen, which was previously a UCI ProSeries race.
The 2026 UCI Women’s WorldTour will comprise 28 events in 11 countries, with a total of 77 days of racing, beginning with the Santos Tour Down Under in Australia. The men’s UCI WorldTour will feature 36 races, with 171 days of racing.
Elsewhere, the UCI’s Management Committee announced huge changes to its tech regulations, with one industry insider telling BikeRadar: “They ignored everything the industry said – literally everything.”
GNU Nano 8.5 command-line text editor rolls out with saved anchors, improved syntax coloring, and updated keystrokes.
