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New Spinning Drone Hides In Plain Sight Published on 2026-08-02T22:09:00Z To design invisible drones, researchers have tried camouflage, transparent materials and light-bending optical systems. But engineers at Northwestern University used "motion blur," which an announcement from the school notes is the effect that makes fast-spinning fans seem to disappear. "The drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn't completely invisible, it morphs into a ghostly smudge that seamlessly blends into the background... " To design the drone, the Northwestern team first used a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Then, they used artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones' major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries. After sifting through many different conf...

Is There a Way to Promote Open Document Formats Instead of 'MS Office' Format? Published on 2026-08-02T21:09:00Z The Register looks at exactly why "It is practically impossible to move any non-trivial Word document out of MS Office to a non-MS suite and back again without it being more trouble than it's worth." OOXML, developed by Microsoft and first standardized by Ecma in 2006, became the ISO/IEC 29500 standard in 2008 after a grueling and adversarial process. Microsoft pursued standardization because it has always been a standards-led organization dedicated to maximizing the options for its customers. Or because it had to at gunpoint, while vowing silently to follow the letter of the law but stymie its intent. You decide... The Document Foundation (TDF) which spends its days worrying about such things, reports that Microsoft has effectively broken the standard by sticking with a transitional version as its default rather than the cleaner Strict variant. Th...

Steam On Linux Use Back Above 4% In July Published on 2026-08-02T19:34:00Z Valve just published the Steam Survey results for July 2026, reports Phoronix, "and they point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use." Back in March Steam on Linux hit a record high of 5.33%, dropped to 4.52% in April, landed at 3.99% in May, and then in June was at 3.69%. The just-published numbers for July put Steam on Linux use at 4.01%, as an improvement over the prior two months but still well off the percentage highs of March and April... The July data puts SteamOS Holo as powering around 22% of Steam on Linux gaming systems. That's also with the Steam Machine now shipping, in addition to the Steam Deck. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is Big Tech's AI Gamble Starting to Look Riskier? Published on 2026-08-02T00:12:00Z The Washington Post looks at giant tech companies "feeding every available dollar into the cash-incinerating maw of AI machines." They warn "Tech superstars that once had oodles of cash left over at the end of each year are now flipping into the red..." [While optimists expect] huge corporate profits and a society-wide boost to wealth and well-being... questions about that AI vision are now growing more urgent: When, if ever, will this payoff arrive? And what will the fallout be for Americans if the titanic investment doesn't quickly deliver? "This AI thing better work out because if it doesn't ... we're going to have a problem," said Torsten Slok, chief economist at investment firm Apollo Global Management. AI costs and doubts are spreading. The U.S. stock market has swooned this summer over fear of the AI bubble going bust... The AI gamble sweepin...

150-Game Discount Bundle Raises $57,000 for Videogame Workers 'Hardship Fund' Published on 2026-08-01T22:42:00Z "An itch.io game bundle put together by Necrosoft Games and The United Videogame Workers-CWA union is a new way gamers can show their support for developers who have been let go amidst the ongoing video game industry labor crisis," writes Kotaku. Launched Thursday, it's already raised $57,859 from 3,984 contributors. (Average contribution size: $14.52) The bundle is pay-what-you-want with a minimum purchase price of $10, offering DRM-free PC versions of games including A Short Hike, SkateBIRD, and my favorite game in the pack, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure ... The bundle will be available through August 13. The gaming blog Rock Paper Shotgun shares more details, starting with this quote from the bundle's page on itch.io: "Reports say 33% of the industry lost their jobs in the last two years, and the jobs they could fill are disappe...

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Discovers a Field of Honeycomb Textures Published on 2026-08-01T21:39:00Z NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back images of honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each one about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) across. NASA reports: The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande. In a 360-degree panorama that the rover captured on June 19 and 20, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days, or sols, of the mission, the polygonal shapes spread in all directions for as far as the rover can see... "[T]his sea of polygons took our breath away," said the mission's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California... Some of the polygons that the mission has spotted in the past clearly formed as mud cracks, though a variety of processes can contribute to their honeycomb textures, including cycles...

Apple's Stock Drops Nearly 10%. How Will It Respond to Memory Shortage? Published on 2026-08-01T20:15:00Z Apple's stock "fell just shy of 10% on Friday," reports Yahoo Finance, "after CEO Tim Cook warned about the impact of the global memory shortage on the company's business." During Apple's third quarter earnings call, Cook said the company paid significantly more for memory in the quarter and expects that to further increase in the current period. And while Apple is able to offset some of that price jump, it won't be able to tackle it all... The CEO said that iPhone and Mac sales outpaced Apple's own expectations and that a lack of flexibility in the supply chain is making it more difficult to keep up with demand. Yahoo Finance cited an investment analyst who predicts overall gross margins for Apple's iPhone could drop from 38% to 34.5%. But another analyst sees a scenario where Apple "raises iPhone prices, unit growth will ...