Month: November 2024

April Fools’ joke results in Japanese firm making a beige ’80s throwback PC case

You can fit lots of modern hardware inside—and prop your monitor on top.

Putting out a joke product on April Fools' Day can sometimes be a clever way to quietly gauge the reaction to a wild idea without having to really commit to it.

Nerdish purveyor ThinkGeek did this a few times with the 8-bit tie and the Tauntaun sleeping bag. Pokemon Go crystallized in some ways from a Google Maps joke. And just recently, PC case-maker SilverStone has decided that so many people were into its beige-tastic FLP01 case idea, tossed onto X (formerly Twitter) late on March 31 Tokyo time, that it will now release it in early 2025 in Japan for the USD equivalent of $130.

Proof of life for the off-white box that sits on a desk. Credit: SilverStone
The SLP-01, as configured by SilverStone at the Expo 2024. Credit: SilverStone
Top 3/4 view of the SLP-01 case, with PSU and graphics card showing.
3/4-view of the SLP-01 case shown off at Expo 2024, captured by Ascii.jp. Credit: Ascii.jp
Front view of the SLP-01, with an Asus disc drive tray ejected from the front.
The 5-1/4 drive bays are fake, but the ability to use an honest-to-goodness CD drive is real. Credit: Ascii.jp

As shown off at SilverStone's Expo 2024 show in Akihbara last weekend (and spotted on Tom's Hardware), the FLP-01 is a combination of simulacrum and serious, with heavy NEC PC-9800 homage. It has fake 5.25-inch floppy blanks, but they cover real optical disc drive and button/port modules. At SilverStone's Japan Expo, the firm packed a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, Intel Core Ultra 7 256K CPU, and full-size ATX motherboard and PSU. There are, of course, power and disk activity LEDs on the front. As displayed, SilverStone's demo unit had three intake fans and plenty of room for whatever else you could pack in here.

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April Fools’ joke results in Japanese firm making a beige ’80s throwback PC case

You can fit lots of modern hardware inside—and prop your monitor on top.

Putting out a joke product on April Fools' Day can sometimes be a clever way to quietly gauge the reaction to a wild idea without having to really commit to it.

Nerdish purveyor ThinkGeek did this a few times with the 8-bit tie and the Tauntaun sleeping bag. Pokemon Go crystallized in some ways from a Google Maps joke. And just recently, PC case-maker SilverStone has decided that so many people were into its beige-tastic FLP01 case idea, tossed onto X (formerly Twitter) late on March 31 Tokyo time, that it will now release it in early 2025 in Japan for the USD equivalent of $130.

Proof of life for the off-white box that sits on a desk. Credit: SilverStone
The SLP-01, as configured by SilverStone at the Expo 2024. Credit: SilverStone
Top 3/4 view of the SLP-01 case, with PSU and graphics card showing.
3/4-view of the SLP-01 case shown off at Expo 2024, captured by Ascii.jp. Credit: Ascii.jp
Front view of the SLP-01, with an Asus disc drive tray ejected from the front.
The 5-1/4 drive bays are fake, but the ability to use an honest-to-goodness CD drive is real. Credit: Ascii.jp

As shown off at SilverStone's Expo 2024 show in Akihbara last weekend (and spotted on Tom's Hardware), the FLP-01 is a combination of simulacrum and serious, with heavy NEC PC-9800 homage. It has fake 5.25-inch floppy blanks, but they cover real optical disc drive and button/port modules. At SilverStone's Japan Expo, the firm packed a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, Intel Core Ultra 7 256K CPU, and full-size ATX motherboard and PSU. There are, of course, power and disk activity LEDs on the front. As displayed, SilverStone's demo unit had three intake fans and plenty of room for whatever else you could pack in here.

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Nach Facebook-Leak: BGH spricht Betroffenen Anspruch auf Schadensersatz zu

Wer von einem Datenleck betroffen ist, muss keine besondere Beeinträchtigung nachweisen, um Schadensersatz zu erhalten. Doch viel Geld ist nicht zu erwarten. (Datenleck, Soziales Netz)

Wer von einem Datenleck betroffen ist, muss keine besondere Beeinträchtigung nachweisen, um Schadensersatz zu erhalten. Doch viel Geld ist nicht zu erwarten. (Datenleck, Soziales Netz)

Racing turns its back on heavy, expensive hybrids for sustainable fuel

Racing’s experiment with hybrid powertrains isn’t going great.

Over the past decade, spurred on by series like Formula 1 and the World Endurance Championship, the world of motorsport began to embrace hybrid powertrains. In addition to being a sport and entertainment, racing also serves as a testbed for new vehicle technologies, having pioneered innovations we now take for granted, like seat belts, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But that dalliance with electrification may be nearing its end as two high-profile series announce they're ditching batteries and electric motors starting next year in favor of sustainable fuels instead.

Formula 1 first officially allowed hybrid power in 2009, and by 2014, the series' rules required every car to sport a pair of complex and costly energy-recovery systems. The more road-relevant discipline of sports prototypes also began dabbling with electrified powertrains around the same time, with the first win for a hybrid car at Le Mans coming in 2012.

The budgets involved for those programs were extravagant, though. Until it instituted a cost cap, F1 team budgets stretched to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In endurance racing, Audi and Porsche spent comparable amounts on their hybrid WEC campaigns, and while Toyota managed to make do with much less, even it was spending more than $80 million a year in the mid-2010s.

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Racing turns its back on heavy, expensive hybrids for sustainable fuel

Racing’s experiment with hybrid powertrains isn’t going great.

Over the past decade, spurred on by series like Formula 1 and the World Endurance Championship, the world of motorsport began to embrace hybrid powertrains. In addition to being a sport and entertainment, racing also serves as a testbed for new vehicle technologies, having pioneered innovations we now take for granted, like seat belts, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But that dalliance with electrification may be nearing its end as two high-profile series announce they're ditching batteries and electric motors starting next year in favor of sustainable fuels instead.

Formula 1 first officially allowed hybrid power in 2009, and by 2014, the series' rules required every car to sport a pair of complex and costly energy-recovery systems. The more road-relevant discipline of sports prototypes also began dabbling with electrified powertrains around the same time, with the first win for a hybrid car at Le Mans coming in 2012.

The budgets involved for those programs were extravagant, though. Until it instituted a cost cap, F1 team budgets stretched to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In endurance racing, Audi and Porsche spent comparable amounts on their hybrid WEC campaigns, and while Toyota managed to make do with much less, even it was spending more than $80 million a year in the mid-2010s.

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SpaceX president predicts rapid increase in Starship launch rate

“It’s going to be hard to catch us, but I certainly hope people try.”

As SpaceX made its final preparations for the sixth launch of its Starship rocket, the company's chief operating officer and president spoke at a financial conference on Friday about various topics, including the future of the massive rocket and the Starlink satellite system.

The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocket toward operational missions.

"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years," Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York City. "We want to fly it a lot."

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