A group representing U.S. airlines plans to urge federal aviation officials to permanently reduce helicopter traffic around Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., following a January collision by an Army Black Hawk into an American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 people.Airlines for America, in written testimony prepared for a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday, calls on the Federal Aviation Administration to permanently suspend some helicopter routes near the airport with limited exceptions for essential military or medical emergencies.The testimony, seen by Reuters, also calls for military aircraft to be required to use a key safety system known as ADS-B near large airports in which aircraft determine and broadcast their position using satellite navigation to avoid collisions.Airlines for America represents American, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and other airlines.The FAA has temporarily barred most helicopters near the airport located in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the U.S. capital since the crash pending a preliminary report due out this month from the National Transportation Safety Board.The Black Hawk, carrying a crew of three, collided with the airliner, carrying 64 passengers and crew members, on the night of January 29, with the wreckage plunging into the river. There were no survivors.U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said the Army helicopter was operating with its ADS-B turned off, which is permitted by the FAA for military aircraft.Airlines for America wants the FAA to evaluate whether any helicopter routes that could conflict with airplane flights at Reagan could be moved farther away from commercial traffic.The group also urged an immediate FAA review of air traffic near large airports.The FAA should conduct an immediate review of identified potential hot spots of conflicting air traffic operating near large airports, the group said in the testimony, adding that the agency should be able to to suspend or eliminate traffic routes if unnecessary risk exists.The FAA declined to comment on the testimony but noted that it is conducting a review of helicopter routes near other airports. The FAA is due to review the existing restrictions once the NTSB preliminary report is issued.The FAA is allowing only presidential transport and emergency police or medical helicopters near the airport and banning civilian flights whenever President Donald Trumps helicopter is flying nearby. These restrictions have significantly impacted flights.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a February 5 speech in Washington called for ending non-essential military helicopter flights near the airport.If we have generals who are flying in helicopters for convenience through this airspace, thats not acceptable. Get a damn Suburban (vehicle) and drive you dont need to take a helicopter, Duffy said.David Shepardson, Reuters

TheCIAis headed to theSouth By Southwestfestival to share tips on finding innovative solutions to complex challenges.Americas preeminent spy agency will deliver a presentation Sunday on creative problem solving at the annual SXSW music festival and tech conference held in Austin, Texas, the CIAannounced Monday.The typically tight-lipped agency said a CIA historian and one of the agencys public affairs officers will deliver the talk, entitled Mission Possible: The Spies Guide to Creative Problem Solving.Sundays presentation from the CIA comes during the first weekend of the event, which brings together thousands of artists, technology experts, business leaders and entrepreneurs.The agency said its tips on creative problem solving are designed to be helpful to anyone, even if their particular challenges dont include running covert surveillance, organizing clandestine meetups or sniffing out double agents.Come learn how creative problem-solving has helped resolve complex challenges weve faced in protecting national security, and how you can apply creative thinking to your own seemingly impossible missions, the agency wrote in a social media post promoting the talk.This months presentation comes at a tumultuous time for Americas intelligence community. The agency recentlyoffered buyout offersto employees as part of PresidentDonald Trumpand billionaireElon Musksefforts toshrink and reshapethe federal government.Trump haslong criticized Americas intelligence agencies, and his CIA director,John Ratcliffe, has promised big changes, claiming the agency has strayed from its original focus on human-collected intelligence.Ratcliffe is a former congressman and one-time director of national intelligence.David Klepper

Televisions have evolved massively over the past couple of years, going from liquid crystals to organic LEDS to quantum dots, but fundamentally, the principle behind a television remains the same pixels light up in different colors, coming together to make a picture. New technologies have just simply tried to perfect this, making each pixel smaller, brighter, and also simultaneously darker. However, what if I told you that a lot of new technology could be just recreated by repurposing old tech? DIY Perks, the YouTube channel known for turning discarded electronics into brilliant creations, has done exactly thattaking a broken LCD TV and a dated DLP projector and transforming them into a display that delivers contrast levels rivaling OLED panels. Its an experiment that shouldnt work, and yet, with some clever engineering, it does.The project started with an aging LCD TV, one that had lost its backlight but still had a functional display panel. The problem with old LCDs is their inability to produce deep blacks, a limitation caused by their reliance on always-on backlighting. Modern LED TVs try to fix this with local dimming, where different sections of the backlight can be dimmed independently. But because the number of zones is relatively small, this method introduces a halo effect known as blooming, where bright areas bleed into dark ones. The ideal solution would be a backlight with thousands of independent dimming zones, but that kind of precision is expensive to manufacture. Instead of accepting these limitations, DIY Perks realized that a high-resolution projector might be the missing piece of the puzzle.Designer: DIY PerksAt first glance, using a projector as a backlight sounds absurd. After all, projectors are designed to shine images onto a wall, not illuminate the rear of an LCD panel. But even an outdated 1024768 projector has over 700,000 individual pixels, making it vastly more precise than the coarse LED dimming zones found in high-end TVs. The idea was simple: strip the LCD TV down to its raw panel, place a diffusion sheet behind it to evenly distribute light, and use the projector to create a dynamic backlight where each pixel can function as its own dimming zone. In theory, this would eliminate blooming entirely and allow for stunning contrast.Stripping the TV down was the first challenge. With careful disassembly, the fragile LCD panel was freed from its housing and placed into a custom frame for stability. The diffusion sheet, the thickest layer of the original backlight, was salvaged to ensure smooth light distribution. The projector itself needed modification too. Normally, a DLP projector creates color by shining white light through a spinning color wheel, but since this build only required pure light, the color wheel was removed. This single tweak massively boosted brightness, ensuring enough light reached the LCD panel for a usable image.The first test was promising but flawed. The projected image didnt align perfectly with the LCD, causing ghosting and other artifacts. This was where software processing came in. Using OBS Studio (a free video-editing software used by livestreamers), DIY Perks applied a luma key filter to create a luminance map, ensuring only dark areas received dimmed backlight. A glow filter was also added to softly expand the illumination zones, reducing alignment issues. With these tweaks, the system suddenly worked astonishingly well. Blacks were deep, highlights remained crisp, and the screen took on an OLED-like appearance, despite being built from discarded components.Side-by-side comparisons against a modern LED TV made the improvements clear. While the DIY screen couldnt match the sheer brightness of an LED panel, its black levels were superior. Scenes with strong contrasts looked cleaner, with no visible blooming. A simple white cursor on a black background showed how precise the backlight was, tracking each point of light with pinpoint accuracy. The improvement was undeniable.The biggest obstacle left was practicality. A standard long-throw projector needed to sit meters behind the screen, making it difficult to integrate into a typical living room. One possible solution was switching to a short-throw projector, which could sit directly behind the TV. Another option involved mirrors, using a ceiling-mounted mirror to bounce light down to a second mirror behind the TV, allowing the projector to be wall-mounted. While not the most elegant setup, it made the concept more viable.Beyond this proof of concept, theres potential for even greater refinement. Using multiple projectors could increase brightness, making the display more usable in daylight. Replacing the projectors bulb with LEDs could improve efficiency and color accuracy. With so much room for experimentation, DIY Perks has opened the discussion to their forum and Discord community, encouraging others to build on the idea. Considering how far this project has come from such humble beginnings, its exciting to think about whats next. And if youve gotten this far, yes, the process is laborious at best and its just easier to spring $1,300 for an LED but if youre mad enough, even just a little, this project has already excited you enough to search for broken tech on craigslist.The post Homemade OLED? This DIYer Built a High-Contrast TV From Scrap For Free first appeared on Yanko Design.

Depending on where you grew up, most school desks probably look the same and seeing one that you were familiar with brings up a lot of good (or bad) memories. But there are parts of the world where school desks are actually a luxury that not everyone can afford. There are schools in rural areas that have to make do with shared tables or if they did have desks, they are not of the best materials and are not conducive to learning. Designer: NOS DesignThis concept for Clever School Desk, a redesign of the common school desk, was born out of analyzing desks in rural schools in Mexico. The designers wanted to create something that was affordable, convenient, can last longer, can be easily transported, and also can withstand extreme weather conditions that are common in most of these areas. The concept that they came up with is a two-piece school desk made from recycled plastic. The desk has a round seat with an oval backrest and a rotating board as the desk which they can move around depending on what they need at the moment. They can use it for writing and reading and then if they just need it as a table to place their things, they can move it to the side. There is a hook on the back where they can hang their school bags. Theres also a pocket under the seat where they can store their books, notebooks, and other school supplies. The seats are conically shaped so they can be stacked on top of each other in case they need to be stored away. They can be produced in many colors so the desks dont need to be the usual boring brown. They are mass produced through rotomolding that uses recycled polyethylene. Its also light enough to be transported easily to the rural areas that will be needing them. In essence, the Clever School Desk is more than just a piece of furniture; its a tool for empowerment. By addressing the specific needs of underserved communities, NOS Design has demonstrated how thoughtful design can bridge educational gaps. This innovative desk, with its focus on affordability, durability, and practicality, promises to transform learning environments and unlock the potential of countless students. Its success underscores a crucial point: that even the most basic elements of a classroom can be redesigned to create a more equitable and inspiring space for learning, proving that clever solutions can indeed make a world of difference.The post School desk reimagined as a colorful, light, and fun pieces to light up rural classrooms first appeared on Yanko Design.

Small but mighty, powerful but affordable, the latest Mac mini is Apple best value proposition, and everything most creatives will need on an everyday basis.

Last week, the Florida-based company Lonestar Data Holdings launched a shoebox-size device carrying data from internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the government of Florida, among others, on board Intuitive Machines Athena lander. When its device lands on the moon later this week, the company will be the first to explicitly test out a question that has been on some technologists minds of late: Maybe its time to move data centers off Earth?After all, energy-guzzling data centers are springing up like mushrooms all over the world, devouring precious land, straining our power grids, consuming water, and emitting noise. Building facilities in orbit or on or near the moon might help ameliorate many of these issues.For Steve Eisele, Lonestars president and chief revenue officer, a big appeal of putting data storage on the moon is security. Ultimately, the moon can be the safest option where you can have a backup for your data, Eisele says. Its harder to hack; its way harder to penetrate; its above any issues on Earth, from natural disasters to power outages to war.Lonestars device is equipped with eight terabytes of storage, about as much as a high-end laptop. It will last for just a couple of weeks before lunar night descends, temperatures plummet, and solar power runs out. But the company expects that to be enough time to test practicalities like downloading and uploading data and verifying secure data transfer protocols.And it has bigger plans. As early as 2027, the company aims to launch a commercial data storage service using a bunch of satellites placed in the Earth-moon Lagrange point L1, a gravitationally stable point 61,350 kilometers above the moons surface. There, the spacecraft would have a constant view of Earth to allow continuous data access.Other companies have similar aspirations. The US space company Axiom, best known for organizing short trips to the International Space Station for private astronauts, intends to launch a prototype server to the station in the coming months. By 2027, the firm wants to set up a computing node in low Earth orbit aboard its own space station module.A company called Starcloud, based in Washington state, is also betting on the need to process data in space. The company, which raised an $11 million round in December and more since then, wants to launch a small data-crunching satellite fitted with Nvidia GPUs later this year.Axiom sees an urgent need for computing capacity in space beyond simply providing an untouchable backup for earthly data. Todays growing fleets of Earth- and space-observing satellites struggle with bandwidth limitations. Before users can glean any insights from satellite observations, the images must be downlinked to ground stations sparsely scattered around the planet and sent over to data centers for processing, which leads to delays.Data centers in space will help expedite many use cases, says Jason Aspiotis, the global director of in-space data and security at Axiom. The time from seeing something to taking action is very, very important for national security and for some scientific applications as well. A computer in space would also save costs that you need to bring all the data to the ground.But for these data centers to succeed, they must be able to withstand harsh conditions in space, pull in enough solar energy to operate, and make economic sense. Enthusiasts say the challenges are more tractable than they might appearespecially if you take into account some of the issues with data centers on Earth.Better in space?The current boom in AI and crypto mining is raising concerns about the environmental impact of computing infrastructure on Earth. Currently, data centers eat up around 1% or 2% of the worlds electricity. This number could double by 2030 alone, according to a Goldman Sachs report published last year.Space-tech aficionados think orbiting data centers could solve the problem.Data centers on Earth need a lot of power to operate, which means they have a high carbon footprint, says DamienDumestier, a space systems architect at the European aerospace conglomerate Thales Alenia Space. They also produce a lot of heat, so you need water to cool them. None of that is a problem in space, where you have unlimited access to solar power and where you can simply radiate excess heat into space.Dumestier, who led an EU-funded study on the feasibility of placing large-scale IT infrastructure in Earths orbit, also sees space as a more secure option than Earth for data transportation and storage. Subsea fiber-optic cables are vulnerable to sabotage and natural disasters, like the undersea volcanic eruption that cut Tonga off from the web for two weeks.High above Earth, data centers connected with unhackable laser links would be much harder to cut off or penetrate. Barring antisatellite missiles, space-based nuke explosions, or interceptor robots, these computing superhubs would be nigh untouchable. That is, except for micrometeorites and pieces of space debris, which spacecraft can dodge and, to some extent, be engineered to withstand.Outside of Earths protective atmosphere, the electronic equipment would also be exposed to energetic particles from the sun, which could damage it over time. Axiom plans to tackle the problem by using hardened military equipment, which Aspiotis says survives well in extreme environments. Lonestar thinks it could avoid the harsh radiation near the moon by ultimately placing its data centers in lava tubes under the lunar surface.Then there is the matter of powering these facilities. Although solar power in Earths orbit is free and constantly available, its never previously been harvested in amounts needed to power data infrastructure at the scale existing on Earth.The Thales Alenia Space study, called ASCEND (an acronym for advanced space cloud for European net zero emission and data sovereignty), envisions orbiting data platforms twice as large as the International Space Station, the largest space structure built to date. The server racks at the heart of the ASCEND platforms would be powered by vast solar arrays producing a megawatt of power, equivalent to the electricity consumption of about 500 Western households. In comparison, the solar panels on the ISS produce only about one-quarter that amount240 kilowatts at full illumination.Launch costsand the environmental effects of rocket launchesalso complicate the picture. For space-based data centers to be an environmental win, Dumestier says, the carbon footprint of rocket flights needs to improve. He says SpaceXs Starship, which is designed to carry very large loads and so could be cheaper and more efficient for each kilogram launched, is a major step in the right directionand might pave the way for the deployment of large-scale orbital data centers by 2030.Aspiotis echoes those views: There is a point in the not-too-distant future where data centers in space are as economical as they are on the ground, he says. In which case do we want them on the ground, where they are consuming power, water, and other kinds of utilities, including real estate?Domenico Vicinanza, an associate professor of intelligent systems and data science at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, tempers the optimism, however. He says that moving data centers to space en masse is still a bit of a moonshot. Robotic technologies that could assemble and maintain such large-scale structures do not yet exist, and hardware failures in the harsh orbital environment would increase maintenance costs.Fixing problems in orbit is far from straightforward. Even with robotics and automation, there are limits to what can be repaired remotely, Vicinanza says. While space offers the benefit of 24-7 solar energy, solar flares and cosmic radiation could damage sensitive electronic equipment and current electronics, from mainstream microchips to memories that are not built and tested to work in space.He also notes that any collisions could further crowd Earth orbit with space debris. Any accidental damage to the data center could create cascading debris, further complicating orbital operations, he says.But even if we dont move data centers off Earth, supporters say its technology we will need to expand our presence in space.The lunar economy will grow, and within the next five years we will need digital infrastructure on the moon, Eisele says. We will have robots that will need to talk to each other. Governments will set up scientific bases and will need digital infrastructure to support their needs not only on the moon but also for going to Mars and beyond. That will be a big part of our future.

The second developer beta of iOS 18.4 brings Visual Intelligence to the iPhone 15 Pro, and introduces an Apple Vision Pro app along with new Emoji characters.Apple has released the second developer beta of iOS 18.4.On Monday, Apple released iOS 18.4 developer beta 2 with the build number 22E5216h, replacing the previous 22E5200s. The software release comes a week after the first developer beta, which reportedly caused boot loop issues on older devices.Monday's software update has seemingly resolved this problem, as the second developer beta is now available for all of the previously affected devices, including the iPhone 12 and iPad 8, as well as the fourth-generation and M2 models of the iPad Air. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Apple has included a number of new emoji in the iOS 18.4 developer beta, with characters proposed by the Unicode Consortium in May 2024 finally making their way for use in Messages.Seven new emoji in the iOS 18.4 developer betaApple's second developer beta for iOS 18.4 adds a number of new features, including some new emoji characters. The eight graphical symbols are coming up in Messages and other text-based apps for those who install the developer beta's latest build, issued on Monday.There are eight new characters appearing on the emoji list, consisting of: Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Palisades homeowners and leaders of rebuilding efforts have expressed opposition, at times crudely, about the prospect of adding low-income housing. Even rebuilding the apartments that were there face challenges. Landlords expect to struggle through a morass of bureaucracy to bring back their buildings, and confusion over possible income or rent restrictions only adds to the unpredictability.Thereporting states more than 1,300 multifamily units were lost in the Pacific Palisades. Those who hope to rebuild them may be hard put when faced with the prospects of rising construction and insurance costsin spite of the removals of previous restrictions that are a part of the city and state orders.Chief Recovery Officer Steve Soboroff says the exclusionary vision of their opponents is "elitist" though their fears of a drastic change are unfounded ("Were not rethinking. Were rebuilding"). This comes after the City Councils decision to approve new regulatory updates to the 2021-2029 housing element restricting new affordable developments to commercial and high-density areas.More of our coverage of the Los Angeles Firesin the Pacific Palisades and Altadena can be found here:L.A. offers waivers to homeowners affected by wildfires to access to their building plansOliver Wainwright: better urban strategies must come from L.A.'s ashesHow long will recovery from L.A.'s fires ...

This years winners of the Jane Drew Prize for Architecture and Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecturehave been announced by the UK-based publications The Architectural Review and Architects Journal as part of their annual W Awards program.The 13th edition of the Awards saw the Anne Lacaton, co-founder of Lacaton & Vassal, chosen as the 2025 Jane Drew Prize winner. Her contributions to equity practices in the field led the citation, along with a commitment to design excellence that was highlighted by the firms multistage Palais de Tokyo renovation and other works that are defining what it means to build responsibly in the 21st century.Speaking of her accomplishments, Manon Mollard, Editor of The Architectural Review said: "Far from pretensions to stardom, Anne Lacatons practice is considered and audacious, with a clarity of purpose that must be celebrated. With Jean-Philippe Vassal, she places residents and users at the centre, and designs buildings that...