The Acer Swift 7 is the thinnest notebook you can buy, and it feels like the notebook of the future. But it makes too many compromises along the way, and some weird design choices hold it back.
The post We want every laptop to be as thin as an iPhone. But is it practical? appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Supermicro announced the results of an investigation into the controversy surrounding its motherboards. The investigation was launched in response to reports that alleged the motherboards were compromised with malicious hardware.
The post Supermicro investigation: no spy chips found on our motherboards appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
In an echo of the US in 2016, accounts linked to Russia and right-wing conspiracy theorists are spreading misinformation on Twitter.
Source: Wired
The House Judiciary Committee spent more time on partisan squabbles than urgent questions around Google’s data and privacy practices.
Source: Wired
With the spread of self-driving technology, gimmicks like the Whopper Detour will become much more pervasive—and a little bit creepy.
Source: Wired
We were promised jetpacks, but let’s be honest, they’re just plain unsafe. So a nice drone ride is probably all we should reasonably expect. Lift Aircraft is the latest to make a play for the passenger multirotor market, theoretical as it is, and its craft is a sleek little thing with some interesting design choices to make it suitable for laypeople to “pilot.”
The Austin-based company just took the wraps off the Hexa, the 18-rotor craft it intends to make available for short recreational flights. It just flew for the first time last month, and could be taking passengers aloft as early as next year.
The Hexa is considerably more lightweight than the aircraft that seemed to be getting announced every month or two earlier this year. Lift’s focus isn’t on transport, which is a phenomenally complicated problem both in terms or regulation and engineering. Instead, it wants to simply make the experience of flying in a giant drone available for thrill-seekers with a bit of pocket money.
This reduced scope means the craft can get away with being just 432 pounds and capable of 10-15 minutes of sustained flight with a single passenger. Compared with Lilium’s VTOL engines or Volocopter’s 36-foot wingspan, this thing looks like a toy. And that’s essentially what it is, for now. But there’s something to be said for proving your design in a comparatively easily accessed market and moving up, rather than trying to invent an air taxi business from scratch.
“Multi-seat eVTOL air taxis, especially those that are designed to transition to wing-borne flight, are probably 10 years away and will require new regulations and significant advances in battery technology to be practical and safe. We didn’t want to wait for major technology or regulatory breakthroughs to start flying,” said Chasen in a news release. “We’ll be flying years before anyone else.”
The Hexa is flown with a single joystick and an iPad; direct movements and attitude control are done with the former, while destination-based movement, takeoff and landing take place on the latter. This way people can go from walking in the front door to flying one of these things — or rather riding in one and suggesting some directions to go — in an hour or so.
It’s small enough that it doesn’t even count as a “real” aircraft; it’s a “powered ultralight,” which is a plus and a minus: no pilot’s license necessary, but you can’t go past a few hundred feet of altitude or fly over populated areas. No doubt there’s still a good deal of fun you can have flying around a sort of drone theme park, though. The whole area will have been 3D mapped prior to flight, of course.
Lifting the Hexa are 18 rotors, each of which is powered by its own battery, which spreads the risk out considerably and makes it simple to swap them out. As far as safety is concerned, it can run with up to 6 engines down, has pontoons in case of a water landing, and an emergency parachute should the unthinkable happen.
The team is looking to roll out its drone-riding experience soon, but it has yet to select its first city. Finding a good location, checking with the community, getting the proper permits — not simple. CEO Matt Chasen told New Atlas the craft is “not very loud, but they’re also not whisper-quiet, either.” I’m thinking “not very loud” is in comparison to jets — every drone I’ve ever come across, from palm-sized to cargo-bearing, has made an incredible racket and if someone wanted to start a drone preserve next door I’d fight it tooth and nail. (Apparently Seattle is high on the list, too, so this may come to pass.)
In a sense, engineering a working autonomous multirotor aircraft was the easy part of building this business. Chasen told GeekWire that the company has raised a “typical-size seed round,” and is preparing for a Series A — probably once it has a launch city in its sights.
We’ll likely hear more at SXSW in March, where the Hexa will likely fly its first passengers.
Source: TechCrunch
Thought VR was too expensive and too bulky? Well, VRgineers is here with a giant $5,800 headset to prove that you lack perspective.
The Prague-based startup just showed off its latest piece of high-end VR hardware which it will be launching at this year’s CES expo. The headset sports an 180-degree field-of-view, dual 2560 x 1440 OLED displays and a form factor that’s massive. The big focus of the revamped XTAL headset seems to be in the lenses which have a brand new design meant to expand what users can see at full resolution inside the headset while also minimizing distortion elsewhere.
The headset has integrated Leap Motion hand-tracking, is compatible with a variety of tracking systems and leans heavily on voice controls.
What VRgineers has built is quite obviously professional-focused. It’s pushing industry boundaries in field-of-view and resolution.
Their focus is clearly enterprise given its $5,800 price tag. Specifically, the startup seems to be trying to capture the automotive market where VR is actually being leaned on heavily in design and manufacturing.
The high-end VR headset market is in a bit of an interesting spot right now. Oculus has kind of seemed to hurt the rest of the market by having driven hardware margins so low in the quest to make VR more approachable. It’s difficult to fault them for wanting to recoup some of their investment in OculusVR, but the more niche hardware players have really been usurped by a competitor that’s just operating on longer timelines.
Things are looking up for more high-end focused VR startups though, Oculus seems to be moving in a different direction for its next PC VR hardware release. We reported last month, that Oculus was looking to keep a lot of stuff the same with its next headset, possibly called the “Rift S”. This leaves some positive room for high-end VR startups to charge exorbitant amounts for their products but also deliver more niche feature sets for customers at the same time.
Source: TechCrunch
During a Capitol Hill hearing, US Rep. Ted Poe presses Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the question. Pichai doesn’t really answer.
Source: CNET
The special variant of the 6T will be available Dec. 13 and cost $699.
Source: CNET
Planning on buying an electric car? A skateboard chassis might be in your future.
Source: CNET