The Helios Horizon has completed what its developers call the first crewed, fixed-wing flight powered by solid-state batteries. New Atlas reports: On June 5, test pilot Miguel Iturmendi lifted off from Zephyrhills Municipal Airport in Florida at the controls of the Helios Horizon -- the first crewed, fixed-wing aircraft ever to fly on solid-state batteries. The flight was neither spectacular in distance nor in duration -- it was a series of short tests to validate the aircraft's weight and balance after the new batteries had been installed -- but it didn't need to be to make history. [...] The Helios Horizon's previous lithium-ion pack delivered 260 Wh/kg (watt-hours per kilogram, a measure of how much energy a battery holds relative to its weight). The new solid-state cells hit 410 Wh/kg, a 60% jump. Chief test pilot and company founder Miguel Iturmendi expects that figure to grow another 40% within two years.

Though the battery pack can be topped up over any AC outlet, no special infrastructure needed, fast-charging is also supported for up to 80% capacity in under 15 minutes. The aircraft also recovers energy in flight through wing-mounted solar panels and a regenerative system that spins the propeller as a wind turbine during glides and descents. "Regenerative flight can significantly extend the aircraft's range," Iturmendi said after the test flights.

The Helios Horizon itself started life as a Pipistrel Taurus motorized glider. Iturmendi's team added proprietary battery management, a custom propulsion stack, thermodynamic controls, and solar panel wing extensions. The aircraft already holds the world altitude record for electric planes in its weight class, having reached 24,000 ft (7,315 m). The next goal is 40,000 ft (12,192 m), commercial cruising altitude, in stratospheric flights planned for later this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The team behind the AI Octopus Euro 2024 predictor has updated its simulator for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this time allowing users to throw natural-language scenarios at the model and see how the tournament might shake out. "Sensible questions work – a red card, a key injury, a heat wave, a squad switching base camp – but so do the daft ones, e.g. 'What if the tournament were played with rugby rules?'" said Luzmo CTO and co-founder Haroen Vermylen. The system is simple: enter a scenario in a prompt box, and the predictor spits out how the results might go. The raw data includes squad quality based on player information, heat and altitude factors, injury data, and so on. A Monte Carlo simulation of the tournament is used to generate win/lose/draw probabilities, and the score line is derived from 5,000 match runs. The engine behind the Euro 2024 AI Octopus was written in TypeScript. This time around, the team used Rust. "We moved to Rust to also be able to run things more quickly, as now there is a real-time component to this," Vermylen told The Register. "Before it could run for five minutes or so. Now we want the predictions to actually come out within two to three seconds of actual simulation time." OpenAI models parse the request and generate summaries, and an agent is used to create or transform scenarios, call the calculation engine, answer questions, and so on. A user doesn't need to be a data scientist to ask questions and understand the answers. It's certainly rapid, recalculating the results based on suggested scenarios (even one in which we pondered the effect of politically dubious emissions from a certain world leader). Not that all scenarios will work. Vermylen told us that filtering was in place to ignore profanities and "to avoid scenarios that would just be harmful to certain groups." And then there is the age-old issue of an AI parser simply not understanding the prompt. Clarity is key. Using natural language is a great alternative to a UI with settings and sliders, but that ease of use can result in misunderstandings. As the tournament progresses, the data will be refined. At the time of writing, the baseline reckons that Spain will beat England in the final. Spain currently has an 18 percent chance of lifting the trophy and a 26.8 percent chance of reaching the finals. Those figures can, of course, be altered by feeding in scenarios. For example, we asked: "What if the Spanish team eats a bad paella?" Spain's chance of winning the tournament then dropped to 1.5 percent, with France as the projected champion. We also asked it what would happen if we replaced the England team with Register writers. Suffice to say that scenario did not end well. We asked Vermylen what was next. "The Olympics would be nice… or the Eurovision. We'd like to give the United Kingdom a win." ®

Kyu John has added a photo to the pool:

• Group 2: Scotland, 161-5, beat Ireland, 121, by 40 runs

• Kathryn Bryce struck 60 from 39 balls

Scotland notched up a historic maiden World Cup win on Saturday, coming out on top against Ireland by 40 runs. The Scotland captain, Kathryn Bryce, struck a powerful 60 from 39 balls and followed it up with a brilliant one-handed caught-and-bowled to see off Alana Dalzell in the first over of Ireland’s chase.

It was an emotional occasion for the 28-year-old Kirstie Gordon, who switched allegiance back to her native Scotland this year after playing a handful of internationals for England in 2018-19. Gordon had been in tears before play as Flower of Scotland rang out around the ground, but she was all smiles three hours later after returning figures of three for 16.

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Funeral procession travels to palace as people remember royal’s campaigning and work for underprivileged

As the sun began to set on the golden spires and gilded finials of Bangkok’s Grand Palace, the gates waited to open for the return of a princess.

Since December 2022, Princess Bajrakitiyabha had been in hospital, having collapsed while out training her dogs. After nearly four years in a coma, the princess died earlier this week.

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Footy Addicts helps amateur players find a game at short notice – and tackles the problem of loneliness

Cries of “Boss! Boss! Boss!” emerge from the pitch during a hard-fought game of football in a London park. There aren’t a lot of names used in this game, because most players only met just before kick-off. They were brought together by an app that’s injecting life into grassroots football.

Footy Addicts was invented to solve an infuriating problem for amateur players – the late dropout, which can lead to unbalanced teams and ruined games. The app brings together strangers who are desperate to play football, and who can step in after a cancellation to make up the numbers at short notice.

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Company said US government believes safeguards can be bypassed and product used to identify software vulnerabilities

Anthropic said it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.

The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of the national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, April 1976

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

probably at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1997, possibly at speed week -- from a box of slides I found at an antique store in Los Angeles in 2019.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

De Ghanese regering heeft Canada op het matje geroepen vanwege het besluit om middenvelder Thomas Partey geen visum te verstrekken.

The ghost of Versailles haunts Ukraine’s peace.

Live coverage of Saturday's Formula 1 practice session for the 2025 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in Spain.

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Waarom? Wat nou waarom dit is the greatest country on god's green earth en morgenavond is het nog iets groter en groener. Het is Trumps verjaardag en voor het eerst in zijn leven dacht hij: weet je, ik doe mezélf eens iets cadeau. En dat cadeau werd UFC Freedom 250 (met die naam omdat de VS volgende maand 250 jaar bestaan), waarbij ongekende geweldenaars IliaTopuria versus JustinGaethje en Ciryl Gane tegen een ZWAARGEWICHT AlexPereira. Enorme voorbeschouwing onderstaand.

De Main Card Countdown

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"Freedom is the only way"

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De Britten zijn in de ban van het oplaaiend racistisch geweld in Noord-Ierland.

In The Guardian staat vandaag een achtergrondartikel onder de titel: ‘Riots and racism: why is the UK burning?‘

John Drury, hoogleraar sociale psychologie aan de Universiteit van Sussex, was mede-auteur van een analyse van de rellen in 2024 die volgden op de moord op drie meisjes in Southport, Merseyside, door een dader die direct na de moord ten onrechte werd voorgesteld als asielzoeker. “Dit zijn collectieve racistische aanvallen,” zei Drury over de gebeurtenissen in Belfast en Southampton. “Wit slachtofferschap is een enorm krachtige mobiliserende factor. Het is een empirische vraag hoeveel van die deelnemers werkelijk geloven in dit witte slachtofferschap. Sommigen gebruiken het als excuus, maar sommigen geloven oprecht dat het deel uitmaakt van hun ideologie. Dat noemen we modern racisme.” Drury zei dat er de afgelopen jaren sprake is geweest van een normalisering van giftige anti-immigrantenretoriek, versneld door mensen online die aanvankelijk anoniem hun ideeën konden verspreiden, maar zich nu gesterkt voelen, niet alleen door stemmen aan de periferie, maar ook door de gevestigde media en politici. “Als je kijkt naar wat er met Brexit is gebeurd, dan zie je dat er een bekende betekenis aan de Brexit-stemming werd gekoppeld: het was een xenofoob referendum,” zei Drury. “We zagen direct daarna een piek in haatmisdrijven op basis van ras en etniciteit, omdat mensen het gevoel hadden dat ze niet alleen waren – ‘Veel mensen in het land denken zoals ik’ – en dat is precies wat deze mensen nu denken. Dus ja, we hebben een probleem met racisme, maar het is meer dan dat. Het is het probleem dat racisten macht krijgen.”