How two Nissan Leafs help make a regional airport more resilient

We’ve seen schoolbuses and big pickups do V2G; how about a smaller car?

Not everything about the future sucks. Like electric cars. Sure, there’s one thing that dinosaur-burners do better—short refueling stops—but even the least efficient EV is still multiple times better than its gas equivalent. So much better in fact that it offsets all the extra energy needed to make the battery within a year or two. They’re quieter, and easy to drive. And in a pinch, they can power your house from the garage. Or how about an airport?

OK, we’re not talking about a major international airport (although I really need to talk to someone at Dulles International Airport about my idea to electrify those Space 1999-esque mobile lounges at some point). But up in Humboldt County, California, there’s a microgrid at the Redwood Coast Airport that has now integrated bidirectional charging, and a pair of Nissan Leaf EVs, into its operation.

The microgrid has been operating since 2021 with a 2.2 MW solar array, 8.9 MWh of battery storage, and a 300 KW net-metered solar system. It can feed excess power back into PG&E’s local grid and draw power from the same, but in an outage, the microgrid can keep the airport up and operational.

Read full article

Comments

“How about no”: FCC boss Brendan Carr says he won’t end news distortion probes

Carr rejects criticism from four former FCC chairs, including three Republicans.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says he won’t scrap the agency’s controversial news distortion policy despite calls from a bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners.

“How about no,” Carr wrote in an X post in response to the petition from former FCC leaders. “On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.”

The petition filed yesterday by former FCC chairs and commissioners asked the FCC to repeal its 1960s-era news distortion policy, which Carr has repeatedly invoked in threats to revoke broadcast licenses. In the recent Jimmy Kimmel controversy, Carr said that ABC affiliates could have licenses revoked for news distortion if they kept the comedian on the air.

Read full article

Comments

Deals roundup (11-14-2025)

With two weeks to go until Black Friday, most Amazon Fire tablets are already on sale at deep discounts. And at those prices they offer pretty good bang for the buck… if you’re either willing to live within Amazon’s walled garden or j…

With two weeks to go until Black Friday, most Amazon Fire tablets are already on sale at deep discounts. And at those prices they offer pretty good bang for the buck… if you’re either willing to live within Amazon’s walled garden or jump through some hoops to install the Google Play Store and make other […]

The post Deals roundup (11-14-2025) appeared first on Liliputing.

What’s it like to compete in the longest US off-road rally with no GPS?

Hydrogen and solar power the rally infrastructure, but navigation is low-tech.

I’ve been involved with the Rebelle Rally since its inception in 2016, either as a competitor or live show host, and over the past 10 years, I’ve seen it evolve from a scrappy rally with big dreams to the world-class event that it is today.

In a nutshell, the Rebelle Rally is the longest competitive off-road rally in the United States, covering over 2,000 kilometers, and it just happens to be for women. Over eight days, teams of two must plot coordinates on a map, figure out their route, and find multiple checkpoints—both marked and unmarked—with no GPS, cell phones, or chase crews. It is not a race for speed but rather a rally for navigational accuracy over some of the toughest terrain California and Nevada have to offer. There are two classes: 4×4 with vehicles like the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco and X-Cross for cars like the Honda Passport and BMW X5. Heavy modifications aren’t needed, and many teams compete for the coveted Bone Stock award.

For this 10th anniversary, I got back behind the wheel of a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness as a driver, with Kendra Miller as my navigator, to defend my multiple podium finishes and stage wins and get reacquainted with the technology, or lack thereof, that makes this multi-day competition so special.

Read full article

Comments

Three astronauts are stuck on China’s space station without a safe ride home

“This does not meet the release conditions for a safe manned return.”

Wrapping up 204 days in orbit, three Chinese astronauts flew back to Earth aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft Friday, leaving three crewmates behind on the Tiangong space station with a busted lifeboat.

Commander Chen Dong, concluding his third trip to space, and rookie crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie touched down inside their spacecraft at the Dongfeng landing zone at 1:29 am EST (06:29 UTC) Friday. The parachute-assisted landing occurred in the mid-afternoon at the return zone, located in the remote Gobi Desert of northwestern China.

Chinese space officials upended operations on the country’s Tiangong space lab last week after astronauts found damage to one of two Shenzhou return capsules docked at the station. The China Manned Space Agency, run by the country’s military, announced changes to the space station’s flight plan November 4, the day before three crew members were supposed to depart and fly home.

Read full article

Comments

Forget AGI—Sam Altman celebrates ChatGPT finally following em dash formatting rules

Ongoing struggles with AI model instruction-following show that true human-level AI still a ways off.

Em dashes have become what many believe to be a telltale sign of AI-generated text over the past few years. The punctuation mark appears frequently in outputs from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, sometimes to the point where readers believe they can identify AI writing by its overuse alone—although people can overuse it, too.

On Thursday evening, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that ChatGPT has started following custom instructions to avoid using em dashes. “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!” he wrote.

The post, which came two days after the release of OpenAI’s new GPT-5.1 AI model, received mixed reactions from users who have struggled for years with getting the chatbot to follow specific formatting preferences. And this “small win” raises a very big question: If the world’s most valuable AI company has struggled with controlling something as simple as punctuation use after years of trying, perhaps what people call artificial general intelligence (AGI) is farther off than some in the industry claim.

Read full article

Comments

Micro Journal Rev.2.1 is a distraction-free writerDeck with a full-sized keyboard and flip-up display

The Micro Journal line of devices are portable writing machines, or “writerDecks” designed to provide a distraction-free experience thanks to a combination of high-quality keyboards, small screens, and just enough hardware and software to l…

The Micro Journal line of devices are portable writing machines, or “writerDecks” designed to provide a distraction-free experience thanks to a combination of high-quality keyboards, small screens, and just enough hardware and software to let you quickly boot into a word processor. Developer Un Kyu Lee has designed a bunch of Micro Journal models over the past […]

The post Micro Journal Rev.2.1 is a distraction-free writerDeck with a full-sized keyboard and flip-up display appeared first on Liliputing.

World’s oldest RNA extracted from ice age woolly mammoth

Sequencing an ancient creature’s RNA opens up a new window into extinct life.

A young woolly mammoth now known as Yuka was frozen in the Siberian permafrost for about 40,000 years before it was discovered by local tusk hunters in 2010. The hunters soon handed it over to scientists, who were excited to see its exquisite level of preservation, with skin, muscle tissue, and even reddish hair intact. Later research showed that, while full cloning was impossible, Yuka’s DNA was in such good condition that some cell nuclei could even begin limited activity when placed inside mouse eggs.

Now, a team has successfully sequenced Yuka’s RNA—a feat many researchers once thought impossible. Researchers at Stockholm University carefully ground up bits of muscle and other tissue from Yuka and nine other woolly mammoths, then used special chemical treatments to pull out any remaining RNA fragments, which are normally thought to be much too fragile to survive even a few hours after an organism has died. Scientists go to great lengths to extract RNA even from fresh samples, and most previous attempts with very old specimens have either failed or been contaminated.

A different view

The team used RNA-handling methods adapted for ancient, fragmented molecules. Their scientific séance allowed them to explore information that had never been accessible before, including which genes were active when Yuka died. In the creature’s final panicked moments, its muscles were tensing and its cells were signaling distress—perhaps unsurprising since Yuka is thought to have died as a result of a cave lion attack.

Read full article

Comments