Month: January 2022

Enlarge (credit: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

Archaeologists in Egypt recently rediscovered two sphinxes that guarded the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun. Despite 3,400 years of weathering, the sphinxes still bear the carved limestone face of the pharaoh, who is adorned with a royal headdress and beard. The pair of 8-meter-long sphinxes flank the entrance to a processional avenue, which celebrants would have followed from the main part of the temple to a columned courtyard.

The Temple of Millions of Years lasted less than a century

Amenhotep III ordered the temple, which he called the Temple of Millions of Years, to be built late in his reign. The temple served as a monument to the pharaoh’s rule—think of it as an especially grand, monarchist version of a US presidential library—but also as a temple where priests could hold rituals and make offerings to the dead pharaoh, who was worshipped as a god.

The sprawling 35-hectare complex stood across the Nile River from the ancient city of Thebes, where Amenhotep III ruled in life. It’s also not far from the Valley of the Kings and Amenhotep III’s royal tomb. Ancient records describe the earthquake that destroyed most of the temple in about 1200 BCE, leaving only two 18-meter-tall, 720-ton statues of Amenhotep III standing.

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It has been two years since Google sparked dreams of PC gaming coming to Chromebooks. We’ve yet to hear word on when we’ll be able to frag on Chrome OS, but we now know that work is being done to bring RGB-backlit keyboards to the operating system. And since RGB and gaming go hand in hand, these keyboards could find their way into potential Chromebooks with Nvidia RTX graphics cards.

In April, Nvidia announced that it is working with MediaTek, which makes the SoCs in many Chromebooks, to create a reference platform that supports Chromium and Nvidia SDKs, as well as Linux. In a press release, the GPU maker promised to bring together RTX graphics cards and Arm-based chips to deliver ray tracing “to a new class of laptops.” In 2021, Nvidia demoed RTX on a MediaTek Kompanio 1200, a chip that MediaTek says will be in “some of the biggest Chromebook brands.”

The news came more than a year after Google announced that it was working on bringing Steam to Chromebooks. It doesn’t matter if the laptops have RTX graphics if there are no PC games worth playing on them. There hasn’t been much news on RTX or Steam support since. But at least we know that work is underway on another part of making gaming on Chromebooks a thing: RGB.

Enlarge / The LMDh regulations cap the cars’ downforce:drag ratio, so designers don’t have to spend as much time worrying about aerodynamics and can use more road car styling cues. Not that you can really make that out on this wrapped prototype. (credit: Porsche)

If there were any doubts about Porsche taking its return to prototype racing seriously, they’re now gone.

The company’s new car is not due to race in earnest until this time next year; in fact, it’s so early in the car’s development that it hasn’t been officially named. But that hasn’t stopped the automaker, together with Penske Racing, from starting the new car’s track testing program ahead of competing in two championship series in 2023, beginning with next year’s 24-hour race at Daytona in Florida.

“The rollout of the LMDh racing car was also the first track outing for Porsche Penske Motorsport,” said Urs Kuratle, project manager for Porsche’s LMDh program. “The squad worked well together right from the start. This shows a high level of professionalism in all areas. After all, the operational requirements for the safe running of a hybrid vehicle are very high. In the next outings, we will focus on going deeper into the required processes and procedures. During these first test days at Weissach, the V8-biturbo impressed us in every respect. We’re convinced that we’ve chosen precisely the right unit.”

Enlarge / Neil Young performs at FirstMerit Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island during Farm Aid 30 on September 19, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois. (credit: Getty Images | Raymond Boyd)

With Neil Young having told Spotify that it can keep him or podcaster Joe Rogan but not both, the streaming company today said it will remove Young’s catalog of music.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” Spotify said in a statement to Deadline and other media organizations. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place, and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Young’s music was still on Spotify as of this writing but will presumably be removed soon unless either Young or Spotify change their minds. Objecting to misinformation about COVID aired on Rogan’s podcast, Young told Warner Records this week that Spotify “has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.”

Enlarge / Could Air Force officers fly on Boom Supersonic’s Overture aircraft one day? (credit: Boom Supersonic)

The US military has indicated its interested in commercial supersonic flight by granting as much as $60 million to Boom Supersonic for its airliner development efforts.

The Colorado-based company has announced that the Air Force awarded a three-year contract to Boom to accelerate research and development of its Overture airliner. Separately this week, Boom also selected Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the site of its first full-scale manufacturing facility. There, Boom plans to begin production in 2024, with the first Overture aircraft slated to roll out in 2025, fly in 2026, and carry its first passengers by 2029.

Boom is designing Overture to carry between 65 and 88 passengers at subsonic speeds over land and supersonic speeds over water—more than twice as fast as current commercial aircraft. The aircraft is designed to operate on 100 percent “sustainable” fuels, and the company says the vehicle will be net-zero carbon from day one.