Month: September 2024

Enlarge / This was supposed to be Ford's answer to the VW Beetle, a small, light, efficient, front-wheel drive car called Cardinal. (credit: Ford)

Between 100 percent tariffs and now an impending ban on software, it's clear that America's auto industry is more than a little worried about having its lunch eaten by heavily subsidized Chinese car makers. But it's far from the first time that the suits in Detroit have seen storm clouds arriving from far-off lands.

In 1957, Detroit automakers' dominance of the US market seemed unbeatable. Smaller, independent American automakers Studebaker, Packard, Nash, Hudson, Kaiser, and Willys-Overland underwent various mergers to match the might of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to little avail.

Yet America's Big Three faced a small but growing problem: foreign automakers.

Enlarge / Shark intestines are naturally occurring Tesla valves; scientists have figured out how to mimic their unique structure. (credit: Sarah L. Keller/University of Washington)

Scientists at the University of Washington have re-created the distinctive spiral shapes of shark intestines in 3D-printed pipes in order to study the unique fluid flow inside the spirals. Their prototypes kept fluids flowing in one preferred direction with no need for flaps to control that flow and performed significantly better than so-called "Tesla valves," particularly when made of soft polymers, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As we've reported previously, in 1920, Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla designed and patented what he called a "valvular conduit": a pipe whose internal design ensures that fluid will flow in one preferred direction, with no need for moving parts, making it ideal for microfluidics applications, among other uses. The key to Tesla's ingenious valve design is a set of interconnected, asymmetric, tear-shaped loops.

In his patent application, Tesla described this series of 11 flow-control segments as being made of "enlargements, recessions, projections, baffles, or buckets which, while offering virtually no resistance to the passage of fluid in one direction, other than surface friction, constitute an almost impassable barrier to its flow in the opposite direction." And because it achieves this with no moving parts, a Tesla valve is much more resistant to the wear and tear of frequent operation.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Battery-electric vehicles accounted for 8 percent of new vehicle sales in June and July of this year and should be above 8 percent for September, according to estimates from S&P Global Mobility. While growth has slowed from the 50 percent year over year we experienced in 2023, the trend is still positive, with market share increasing from 7 percent in the first three months of the year. That also has to be seen in the wider context of overall new vehicle sales, which are expected to drop by 12 percent this month.

"New vehicle sales remain stuck in neutral," said Chris Hopson, principal analyst at S&P Global Mobility. "The overall tenor of the auto demand environment remains one of consistent, but unmotivated volume levels as consumers in the market continue to be pressured by high interest rates and slow-to-recede vehicle prices, which are translating to high monthly payments."

The rapid growth of BEV sales in the US was, until recently, mostly a tale about Tesla. During the pandemic, it flourished, as car buyers could order their Tesla online, and the automaker displayed far more flexibility over supply-chain hiccups than its legacy rivals. Sales soared, but not as much as the share price.

Today marks the debut of the first full trailer for the second season of The Last of Us, the grim but compelling post-apocalyptic drama on HBO that's based on the popular video game of the same name.

The trailer revisits the first season's two protagonists—Joel and Ellie—five years after Joel's fateful choice. Here's the simple, straightforward logline HBO provided:

After five years of peace following the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.

In addition to returning characters, we get some glimpses of some new characters and the actors who will play them. Jeffrey Wright (Westworld, American Fiction) will reprise his role as Isaac from the game, while Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Justified) will play Abby, a key character in the sequel.

Enlarge (credit: Михаил Руденко | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

On Thursday, some links to the notorious shadow library Library Genesis (Libgen) couldn't be reached after a US district court judge, Colleen McMahon, ordered what TorrentFreak called "one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions" ever issued by a US court.

In her order, McMahon sided with textbook publishers who accused Libgen of willful copyright infringement after Libgen completely ignored their complaint.

To compensate rightsholders, McMahon ordered Libgen to pay $30 million, but because nobody knows who runs the shadow library, it seems unlikely that publishers will be paid any time soon, if ever.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel has spent most of 2024 investigating and trying to fix a problems that was causing crashes and instability for owners of its high-end 13th- and 14th-generation Core desktop processors. In April, Intel suggested that motherboard makers could be the problem because many motherboards used power settings that exceeded Intel's defaults.

By the summer, Intel had tracked down one root cause of the problems and had released a microcode update to resolve it: The CPUs were making “elevated voltage requests,” which could degrade performance and stability and damage the hardware over time. The company and motherboard makers released separate BIOS updates to fix the incorrect default power settings and the elevated voltage requests, but Intel said in August that it was still looking into other possible problems and fixes.

Today, the company is releasing what should be the final fix for the problem, which, as Tom's Hardware reports, is a confluence of four issues: too-high motherboard defaults, a bug that kept some CPUs from downshifting when they were running too hot, a bug where CPUs were being given too much voltage for an extended period, and a bug where CPUs were given too much voltage when they were idle.

Enlarge / Shelves sit empty where Boar's Head meats are usually displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Anselmo, California. (credit: Getty | )

A 10th person has died in the nationwide Listeria outbreak connected to Boar's Head deli meats, which otherwise appears to be slowing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

In an update about the outbreak on Wednesday, the CDC said that since its last update on August 28, only two new cases have been identified, bringing the outbreak's current total to 59 cases in 19 states. All 59 cases were hospitalized. One new death was reported in New York, bringing the total deaths to 10.

In an alert to the media, the agency noted that "Illness reports have started to decrease, and CDC will update this notice less frequently." However, the risk of more life-threatening infections is not yet over.