US Navy Has Patents on Tech It Says Will ‘Engineer the Fabric of Reality’

The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using “inertial mass reduction,” and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.” From a report: Dubbed the “UFO patents,” The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build…

As Google Eyes Australia Exit, Microsoft Talks Bing With Prime Minister

Software giant Microsoft is confident its search product Bing can fill the gap in Australia if Google pulls its search over required payments to media outlets, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday. From a report: Australia has introduced laws that would force internet giant Google and social media heavyweight Facebook Inc to negotiate payments to domestic media outlets whose content…

Vancouver Seaplane Company To Resume Test Flights With Electric Plane

A Vancouver seaplane company says its retro-fitted all electric airplane is set to take to the skies for more test flights this year, as it pushes forward with its plans to make commercial air travel cheaper and greener. CBC.ca reports: “There’s no wavering in our confidence and determination and interest in getting this done,” said Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall. Founded…

Google Workers To Form Global Union Alliance

Google employees from across the globe are forming a union alliance, weeks after more than 200 workers at the search engine giant and other units of parent company Alphabet formed a labor union for U.S. and Canadian offices. From a report: Alpha Global was formed in coordination with UNI Global Union, a union federation that represents about 20 million workers globally,…

Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at ZDNet: When Elastic, makers of the open-source search and analytic engine Elasticsearch, went after Amazon Web Services (AWS) by changing its license from the open-source Apache 2.0-license ALv2) to the non-open-source friendly Server Side Public License, I predicted “we’d soon see AWS-sponsored Elasticsearch and Kibana forks.” The next day, AWS tweeted it “will launch new forks…

Boston Globe Will Consider People’s Requests To Have Articles About Them Anonymized

The Boston Globe is starting a new program by which people who feel an article at the newspaper is harmful to their reputation can ask that it be updated or anonymized. From a report: It’s reminiscent of the E.U.’s “right to be forgotten,” though potentially less controversial, since it concerns only one editorial outlet and not a content-agnostic search engine. The…

The DeLorean Might Be Coming Back As an Electric Car

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The DMC DeLorean has been out of production for almost 40 years, but now we’ve learned that the iconic vehicle might be coming back as an electric car. In 1995, Stephen Wynne bought the company’s old inventory and trademark to relaunch the brand based in Texas. At first, the plan was to bring…

Pandemic Paved the Way for Sim Racing, but Will It Last?

It takes more than gasoline to make a racecar run. It requires money. And money requires sponsors. And sponsors require spectators who they hope will become customers. Which became a problem for motorsports when Covid-19 shut down tracks worldwide early last year. The cash drought put teams, tracks and race series in danger of extinction. From a report: The industry turned…

Opera Now Has a Game Engine To Go With Its Gamer-Focused Browser

Opera has acquired YoYo Games, a British game development platform best known for GameMaker Studio 2, and is launching its Opera Gaming division. Engadget reports: Opera has bought the company for a simple reason: Opera GX. The gamer-focused web browser was launched in early access back in June 2019. Its headline feature is a slide-out control panel that lets you limit…

Penn State Engineers Are Developing An Inexpensive, Thermally-Modulated Battery For Electric Cars

schwit1 shares a report from Penn State University: Range anxiety, the fear of running out of power before being able to recharge an electric vehicle, may be a thing of the past, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries that have a range of 250 miles with the ability to charge in…