Month: December 2022

Enlarge / Raspberry Pi 4 boards could be freely ready to purchase again, without the snipe hunt experience, in Q3 2023. (credit: ReadyPlayerEmma / Wikimedia (cc-by-sa-2.0)))

There hasn't been much good news involving Raspberry Pis lately, at least for those looking to buy. But the single-board system maker says to take heart. Individual units are heading out now, and more are coming soon.

In a "Supply chain update" blog post ("It's good news!"), CEO Eben Upton wrote that Raspberry Pi has "set aside a little over a hundred thousand units, split across Zero W, 3A+, and the 2GB and 4GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4, for single-unit sales." During the pandemic-spurred component shortage, most of the Pis produced every month were going to businesses, leaving those in need of one or two for a project refreshing rpilocator and cursing their timing. Zeros will start showing up first, then 3A+, then different models of 4.

Upton acknowledged this reality (and even linked the locator) and asked that people buy only from approved resellers and consider the Pico and Pico W lines for projects that might fit, as those lines remain strong. As of this morning, a few 3A+ and CM4 models showed an optimistic green on the rpilocator spreadsheet.

Enlarge / The high-powered Nova Laser before it creates nuclear fusion inside its target chamber at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment.

Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes — a milestone known as net energy gain or target gain, which would help prove the process could provide a reliable, abundant alternative to fossil fuels and conventional nuclear energy.

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which uses a process called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s biggest laser, had achieved net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks, the people said.

Enlarge / The Radeon RX 7900 XTX's three-fan cooler. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Nvidia's RTX 4080 and 4090 GPUs are amazing performers. They are also amazingly expensive, starting at $1,200 and $1,500 and going way up for cards from partners like MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus. The 4080 is nearly twice as expensive as the original $699 MSRP for the RTX 3080.

These price hikes are caused in part by pandemic-era concerns like supply chain snarls and inflation and partly by a cryptocurrency-fueled boom (now over, blessedly) that encouraged a network of scalpers to snap up every single high-end GPU they could. Also at play was a lack of competition and the increasing cost and complexity of building gigantic, monolithic chips on cutting-edge manufacturing processes. Today, AMD is trying to solve the latter two problems with the launch of its Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs.

At $899 and $999, the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX are still objectively expensive—but because they're not a further escalation over the starting price of the RX 6900 XT, both cards are what pass for a bargain in today's GPU market. If you're looking for cards that can consistently handle 4K gaming at 60 fps and higher, these GPUs do it for less than Nvidia's latest, and they're good enough and fast enough that they'll hopefully start driving Nvidia's prices down a bit, too.

Enlarge / Mitsubishi's plug-in hybrid SUV has been comprehensively redesigned for 2023. (credit: Mitsubishi)

It wasn't all that long ago that we were questioning whether Mitsubishi would continue operating in the US. With an aging lineup that was far from being considered class leaders, the future was looking bleak. Thanks to a partnership with the Nissan and Renault alliance, however, prospects are looking more optimistic.

The Mitsubishi Outlander was redesigned in 2021 with an abundance of technology and parts shared with the Nissan Rogue and represented a dramatic improvement over its rather forgettable predecessor. The Outlander isn't simply a reskinned Rogue, though, as it's built by Mitsubishi in Japan, while the Rogue is made in the US.

For 2023, Mitsubishi introduces a new Outlander PHEV, a plug-in hybrid variant that is more powerful than the standard Outlander as well as the PHEV model it replaces. Its 20 kWh lithium-ion battery pack's capacity marks a 45 percent improvement over last year, yet it takes up less room beneath the floor. Under the hood is a 2.4 L Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder engine that is mated with an electric generator and motor. A second electric motor powers the rear wheels for Mitsubishi's advanced all-wheel-drive system called Super-All Wheel Control (S-AWC).