Month: May 2023

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  The inner screen. [credit: Evan Blass ]

The Pixel Fold is a real device that is quickly approaching its release date. The Google I/O developer conference is next week, May 10, where we hope to learn more about the Pixel Fold. But before then, Evan Blass posted the official pictures of the device. Blass' account is private, but the pictures are re-hosted in several places now, like The Verge.

The most interesting picture shows the inner display in its 7.6-inch glory. Compared to the designs of Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo, Google made many unique and interesting design decisions here. The first was the decision to not use an in-screen camera like basically all other foldables and instead shrink the screen to create a large top bezel for the camera. There seems to be nothing else in that bezel other than that tiny circle though, which is a huge waste of space.

The bottom bezel is also supersized compared to other devices on the market. The faint outline in the bezel represents the raised, plastic part of the bezel. Foldables have a raised rim all along the edge of the display to keep the display connected to the phone (foldable displays, since they have to fold, are not entirely bonded to the body) and to prevent the two halves of the display from rubbing against each other. It feels weird to have to dust off bezel complaints in 2023, but foldables are devices with significant size and weight concerns since they are supposed to fit into a pocket, and this is already a clear area where Google could improve. Foldables becoming lighter and more compact will be a big battleground in the future.

• 

  The inner screen. [credit: Evan Blass ]

The Pixel Fold is a real device that is quickly approaching its release date. The Google I/O developer conference is next week, May 10, where we hope to learn more about the Pixel Fold. But before then, Evan Blass posted the official pictures of the device. Blass' account is private, but the pictures are re-hosted in several places now, like The Verge.

The most interesting picture shows the inner display in its 7.6-inch glory. Compared to the designs of Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo, Google made many unique and interesting design decisions here. The first was the decision to not use an in-screen camera like basically all other foldables and instead shrink the screen to create a large top bezel for the camera. There seems to be nothing else in that bezel other than that tiny circle though, which is a huge waste of space.

The bottom bezel is also supersized compared to other devices on the market. The faint outline in the bezel represents the raised, plastic part of the bezel. Foldables have a raised rim all along the edge of the display to keep the display connected to the phone (foldable displays, since they have to fold, are not entirely bonded to the body) and to prevent the two halves of the display from rubbing against each other. It feels weird to have to dust off bezel complaints in 2023, but foldables are devices with significant size and weight concerns since they are supposed to fit into a pocket, and this is already a clear area where Google could improve. Foldables becoming lighter and more compact will be a big battleground in the future.

Enlarge / Super Heavy ascends on a pillar of flame in April 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

In a wide-ranging talk on Saturday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk reviewed the debut launch of the Starship rocket on April 20. The bottom line, he said, is that the vehicle's flight slightly exceeded his expectations and that damage to the launch site was not all that extensive. He expects Starship to fly again in as few as two or three months.

"Basically the outcome was roughly sort of what I expected and maybe slightly exceeded my expectations," he said. "And I'm glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small, and it looks like it can be repaired quite quickly. It was actually just good to get this vehicle off the ground because we've made so many improvements in Booster 9 and beyond."

Musk spoke for about an hour during a Twitter spaces event, responding to questions from several journalists and spaceflight enthusiasts. For those unable to listen, what follows is a summary of what Musk said.

Enlarge / Super Heavy ascends on a pillar of flame in April 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

In a wide-ranging talk on Saturday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk reviewed the debut launch of the Starship rocket on April 20. The bottom line, he said, is that the vehicle's flight slightly exceeded his expectations and that damage to the launch site was not all that extensive. He expects Starship to fly again in as few as two or three months.

"Basically the outcome was roughly sort of what I expected and maybe slightly exceeded my expectations," he said. "And I'm glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small, and it looks like it can be repaired quite quickly. It was actually just good to get this vehicle off the ground because we've made so many improvements in Booster 9 and beyond."

Musk spoke for about an hour during a Twitter spaces event, responding to questions from several journalists and spaceflight enthusiasts. For those unable to listen, what follows is a summary of what Musk said.

Two of the most fundamental tools of the modern Unix-like command line, sudo and su, are being rewritten in the modern language Rust as part of a wider effort to get critical but aging infrastructure pieces replaced by memory-safe counterparts.

As detailed at Prossimo, a joint team from Ferrous Systems and Tweede Golf, with support from Amazon Web Services, is reimplementing sudo and su. These utilities allow a user to perform actions with the privileges of another user (typically a higher-level superuser) without having to learn and enter that other user's password. Given their age and wide usage, the Prossimo team believes it's time for a rework.

"Sudo was first developed in the 1980s. Over the decades, it has become an essential tool for performing changes while minimizing risk to an operating system," writes Josh Aas. "But because it's written in C, sudo has experienced many vulnerabilities related to memory safety issues."

Two of the most fundamental tools of the modern Unix-like command line, sudo and su, are being rewritten in the modern language Rust as part of a wider effort to get critical but aging infrastructure pieces replaced by memory-safe counterparts.

As detailed at Prossimo, a joint team from Ferrous Systems and Tweede Golf, with support from Amazon Web Services, is reimplementing sudo and su. These utilities allow a user to perform actions with the privileges of another user (typically a higher-level superuser) without having to learn and enter that other user's password. Given their age and wide usage, the Prossimo team believes it's time for a rework.

"Sudo was first developed in the 1980s. Over the decades, it has become an essential tool for performing changes while minimizing risk to an operating system," writes Josh Aas. "But because it's written in C, sudo has experienced many vulnerabilities related to memory safety issues."

Enlarge / This is the second-generation Kia Niro EV, and it is a rather great little electric vehicle. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Last month, we reviewed a great little hybrid, the 2023 Kia Niro. In fact, Kia offers this little hatchback with three different efficient powertrains, and today we're looking at the entirely electric version, the 2023 Kia Niro EV. Ditching the internal combustion engine and replacing it with a slab of lithium-ion cells pushes the price up somewhat—starting at $39,550, the Niro EV is almost $11,000 more expensive than the parallel hybrid version—but on the upside, you get a right-sized electric car that's extremely efficient, particularly on short journeys.

This Kia Niro EV is in fact the second Niro EV we've tested—the first impressed us mightily when we reviewed it back in 2020. The technical specifications of the battery electric powertrain are actually very similar to those in the previous version. There's a 64.8 kWh lithium-ion traction battery between the axles, which powers a 201 hp (150 kW) electric motor that drives the front wheels.

The all-electric powertrain adds a fair bit of mass to the Niro; its curb weight of 3,721–3,803 lbs (1,688–1,725 kg) makes it almost 20 percent heavier than the parallel hybrid version. But in addition to having more power, the Niro EV makes a lot more torque—188 lb-ft (255 Nm), in fact—so it feels much peppier to drive.