Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Inventor James Dyson described his career as "a life of failure" in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, citing setbacks as drivers of innovation. The 77-year-old creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, who built a $16.8 billion fortune according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, created 5,127 prototypes over five years before successfully launching his signature product in 1993. "If something works, it's less challenging, it's less interesting," Dyson said. "If something's gone wrong, you want to know why it's gone wrong, and it's a learning process."
Dyson's company abandoned its electric vehicle project in 2019 despite investing over $600 million, concluding it wasn't commercially viable. The prototype now sits prominently at the company's Singapore headquarters. "I had to be pragmatic about it and say it's too risky for us to do, which is a shame because I loved doing it," Dyson said.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Ruby on Rails creator and Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, makes a case for why Google shouldn't be forced to sell Chrome: First, Chrome won the browser war fair and square by building a better surfboard for the internet. This wasn't some opportune acquisition. This was the result of grand investments, great technical prowess, and markets doing what they're supposed to do: rewarding the best. Besides, we have a million alternatives. Firefox still exists, so does Safari, so does the billion Chromium-based browsers like Brave and Edge. And we finally even have new engines on the way with the Ladybird browser.
Look, Google's trillion-dollar business depends on a thriving web that can be searched by Google.com, that can be plastered in AdSense, and that now can feed the wisdom of AI. Thus, Google's incredible work to further the web isn't an act of charity, it's of economic self-interest, and that's why it works. Capitalism doesn't run on benevolence, but incentives.
We want an 800-pound gorilla in the web's corner! Because Apple would love nothing better (despite the admirable work to keep up with Chrome by Team Safari) to see the web's capacity as an application platform diminished. As would every other owner of a proprietary application platform. Microsoft fought the web tooth and nail back in the 90s because they knew that a free, open application platform would undermine lock-in -- and it did!
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the breaking-news department: Widespread power outages were reported Monday in parts of Spain, Portugal and France, affecting critical infrastructure like airports and causing transportation disruptions. From a report: "The interruption was due to a problem in the European electricity grid," E-Redes, the national energy supplier of Portugal, said in a statement. In addition to Portugal, it said, "The blackout also affected regions of Spain and France, due to faults in very high voltage lines."
E-Redes said that the outage was widespread across Spain, with outages in Catalonia, Andalusia, Aragon, Navarre, the Basque Country, Castile and Leon, Extremadura and Murcia. In France, the Portuguese energy supplier said, "the Basque Coast and the Burgundy region also experienced power cuts."
Spain's national power company, Red Electricia, said in a post on X that it had restored some power in the north and south of the peninsula. The cause of the outages was not immediately clear. But the effects of the disruption were felt in cities across the region.
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the charging-ahead department: Sales of electric vehicles in America jumped 10.6% in the first three months of 2025 (compared to the same period in 2024), reports Bloomberg.
And research provider BloombergNEF expects all of 2025 will see a 31.5% sales increase from 2024's sales in the U:S. — slightly above the global increase rate of 30%. (That's 22 million battery-powered vehicles around the world.)
"EV adoption is cruising along in the U.S.," Bloomberg writes, with interest "spreading from early-adopters to mainstream consumers" tired of paying for gas and oil changes — and attracted by new products from familiar brands:
Of the 63 or so fully electric cars and trucks on the U.S. market, one quarter weren't available a year ago. The product blitz includes the first EV offerings from Acura, Dodge and Jeep, second models from Mini and Porsche and two more battery-powered machines each from Cadillac and Volvo...
Many of the new EVs are relatively affordable. Cox Automotive estimates the price spread between EVs broadly and internal combustion cars and trucks has shrunk to just $5,000. General Motors, meanwhile, plans to resurrect its Chevrolet Bolt later this year with a price point around $30,000...
Children's Week 2025 2025-04-28 02:40:02
Posted by from MMO Champion
Children's Week 2025
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
It's time to give back to the children of Azeroth during Children's Week! Take an orphan under your wing and show them what the hero's life is like!
When: 28 April–5 May
Where: Visit Orphan Matron Nightingale in Stormwind, Orphan Matron Battlewail in Orgrimmar, Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath, Orphan Matron Aria in Dalaran, Caretake Padae in Dazar'alor, or Orphan Matron Westerson in Boralus, or Matron in Training Ullna in Khaz Algar and make a child's dream come true!
What's New in 2025
Children's Week comes to Dornogal!
New currency,
Well-loved Figurine
Four new orphans to adopt—Skibbles, Destien, Kitzy, and Threadis
Three new pets—
Argos,
Helpful Workshop Bot, and
Goggles
Stormwind and Orgirmmar-inspired weapon transmog sets:
Arsenal:
Arsenal: Children's Stormwind Guard Weapon Set (Painted Wooden Sword, Wooden Stormwind Shield, Painted Wooden Dagger, Painted Fighting Prop)
Arsenal:
Arsenal: Children's Orgrimmar Guard Weapon Set (Painted Wooden Axe, Wooden Orgrimmar Shield, Painted Wooden Hatchet, Painted Axe Prop)
New Children’s Week vendors can be found neat the Orphan Matrons in Dornogal (Jepetto Joybuzz, Stormwind (Brundia Braidhammer), and Orgrimmar (Leial Knitterton).
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the beautiful-mind department: A new DARPA project called expMath "aims to jumpstart math innovation with the help of AI," writes The Register. America's "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" believes mathematics isn't advancing fast enough, according to their article...
So to accelerate — or "exponentiate" — the rate of mathematical research, DARPA this week held a Proposers Day event to engage with the technical community in the hope that attendees will prepare proposals to submit once the actual Broad Agency Announcement solicitation goes out...
[T]he problem is that AI just isn't very smart. It can do high school-level math but not high-level math. [One slide from DARPA program manager Patrick Shafto noted that OpenAI o1 "continues to abjectly fail at basic math despite claims of reasoning capabilities."] Nonetheless, expMath's goal is to make AI models capable of:
- auto decomposition — automatically decompose natural language statements into reusable natural language lemmas (a proven statement used to prove other statements); and
auto(in)formalization — translate the natural language lemma into a formal proof and then translate the proof back to natural language.
"How must faster with technology advance with AI agents solving new mathematical proofs?" asks former DARPA research scientist Robin Rowe (also long-time Slashdot reader robinsrowe):
DARPA says that "The goal of Exponentiating Mathematics is to radically accelerate the rate of progress in pure mathematics by developing an AI co-author capable of proposing and proving useful abstractions."
Rowe is cited in the article as the founder/CEO of an AI research institute named "Fountain Adobe". (He tells The Register that "It's an indication of DARPA's concern about how tough this may be that it's a three-year program. That's not normal for DARPA.")
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the power-plays department: Remember First Light Fusion? Founded in 2011, it was a pioneering British startup that in 2022 "successfully combined atomic nuclei, which U.K. regulators called a milestone in the decades-long push for fusion energy.
It's now "pulled the plug on plans to build its first reactor," reports the Telegraph, abandoning its push for a prototype power plant based on its "projectile fusion" technology due to a lack of funding.
The technology involves a 5p-sized projectile being fired at a fuel cell at extreme speeds using electromagnets to generate a powerful reaction and simulate collisions at extremely high speeds, such as those in space. Instead of building its own plant, First Light plans to supply other nuclear power companies with one of its inventions, called an "amplifier", which houses a nuclear fuel capsule and boosts the power of fusion reactions.
The group has burned through tens of millions of pounds trying to bring its technology to fruition... The decision to ditch its original plan will allow First Light Fusion to be more "capital light", the nuclear group said in March, while licensing its inventions would generate more revenues. The company said it had recently secured the first tranche of a new funding round. Mark Thomas, First Light Fusion's chief executive, said: "We have been very pleased with the response to our strategy pivot, moving to an enabler of inertial fusion while rapidly accelerating revenues...
First Light Fusion's other investors include Chinese technology giant Tencent.
The Pokémon series is currently in the midst of an unprecedented drought. The franchise recently broke its previous record for the longest gap between new entries, and Pokémon Legends: Z-A isn’t due out on Switch until “late 2025.” Fortunately, a bunch of existing Pokémon games are currently on sale over at Woot, in…
A greatest hits collection of Star Wars PC games are currently on sale right now on GOG, just a few days ahead of May the 4th. And some are now part of an awesome preservation program that will help keep them playable for years to come.
Grand Theft Auto V’s latest PlayStation Plus tour is about to end. Rockstar Games’ perennial bestseller (over 210 million copies to date) is leaving the subscription library after just six months, ahead of Grand Theft Auto VI’s arrival sometime in the fall. But it’s not the only big name departing in May. Some other…
“Sinners” is a critical sensation, but more importantly, it’s on the path to financial success for Warner Bros. That means writer/director Ryan Coogler will get the chance few Black filmmakers get: the opportunity to create an extended cinematic universe.
A demo event for the Switch 2 was only meant to give fans a taste of the upcoming hardware and its launch lineup, including the next-gen version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But one Nintendo diehard took that opportunity and used it to roll credits on the game by finishing the final boss fight in under…
If there’s one thing The Last of Us loves to do, it’s twist the knife. Did you feel like you were starting to recover from the events of last week’s devastating episode? Are you ready to sit back and relax with your favorite post-apocalyptic show, even after Pedro Pascal’s grisly end in episode two? In case you were…
Hey folks. Y’all feeling alright after last week’s harrowing episode of The Last of Us? Everybody have a productive therapy session to talk about your TV peepaw’s death? Alright, cool, because we’re gonna spend this week’s episode doing more therapy and leaning harder into the show’s worst tendencies. Strap in, folks.…
