Author: easyfilo

Enlarge (credit: famichu/Github)

Cherry’s MX switches are the most well-known in the mechanical keyboard world, and countless other brands mimic the switches’ iconic cross-stem design to deliver tactile typing. Now, a magnetic twist to the Cherry MX style has resulted in a 3D-printable mechanical switch with an adjustable actuation point.

Recently shared via Github by a user named famichu and spotted by Hackaday this week, the homegrown MagLev Switch MX is a 3D-printable switch with Cherry MX Red-like linear travel. With the familiar cross-stem design, the switches are compatible with any keycaps that would fit on a Cherry MX switch.

But instead of using a spring in each switch for actuation, like Cherry’s switches, the MagLev Switch MX uses a neodymium magnet in the stem and another in the bottom housing, with a Hall-effect sensor in between.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Some Mazda owners in the Seattle area are stuck with bricked infotainment systems after listening to a particular radio station.

According to the Seattle Times, the problem began on January 30 and afflicted Mazdas from model years 2014 to 2017 when the cars were tuned to the local NPR station, KUOW 94.9. At some point during the day’s broadcast, a signal from KUOW caused the Mazdas’ infotainment systems to crash—the screens died and the radios were stuck on 94.9 FM.

From there, the infotainment systems became trapped in a rebooting loop, never successfully completing the task. When afflicted owners took their cars to be checked at local Mazda dealers, they were told that the “connectivity master unit” was dead and needed to be replaced.

Enlarge (credit: ony Avelar/Bloomberg)

Many of Intel’s current woes can be traced to the fact that the company was left out of the iPhone. Whether Intel passed on the opportunity or couldn’t meet the spec is by now a moot point, but missing out on the smartphone revolution—and its billions of chips—played no small part in the company falling behind the leading edge.

Now, Intel is ponying up $1 billion in an attempt to avoid repeating history.

The company announced an “innovation fund” this week that places bets on a couple of key technologies, chief among them RISC-V, a free, open source instruction set that shows promise in low-power and embedded systems, markets that are expected to grow significantly over the next several years.

Enlarge / The interior of JET, configured as a scale model for ITER, overlaid with an image of a plasma present in the tokamak during experiments. (credit: EUROfusion)

On Wednesday, the EUROfusion consortium announced that the Joint European Torus (JET), located near Oxford in the UK, had set a new record for released energy. Over the course of a five-second “pulse,” 59 megajoules of energy were released, double the previous record for tokamak fusion set at JET in 1997.

Despite the impressive numbers, the results are still well short of the break-even point where the fusion energy released would match the energy input required to trigger the fusion. Still, the work provides an important validation of the approach being taken at the next major fusion project, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER.

Two ways to fuse

Fusion takes place when atomic nuclei are brought close enough together that they merge, creating a heavier element. It’s the process that powers stars, and it could produce vast amounts of energy from small amounts of hydrogen isotopes if we could reproduce the temperatures and pressures found in stars here on Earth. So far, we’ve taken two main approaches to the process.

Enlarge / In Elden Ring, you get a horse. (credit: Bandai Namco)

Last month, publisher Namco Bandai took down its online player-versus-player servers for all PC Dark Souls games after players found a serious vulnerability that allowed for remote execution of malicious code on an opponent’s computer. While a Reddit user who publicly identified that issue said the exploit would also work on Namco Bandai’s upcoming Elden Ring, the publisher is now assuring players that the highly anticipated title will be protected.

“We have extended the investigation to Elden Ring… and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms,” Namco Bandai wrote in a tweet Wednesday morning.

The wording of that statement suggests that Elden Ring‘s online services will launch as expected when the game is released on February 25. That’s important for players looking forward to online co-op gameplay, competitive multiplayer battles/invasions, and even basic message support between player worlds, as seen in Dark Souls.