Tech

Honda to enter increasingly crowded AAM craft sector with an (e)VTOL airplane

Japanese automotive giant Honda Motor Co. has announced continued diversification of its wide-ranging manufacturing activities with plans to develop electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) craft as part of its pursuit of renewable-powered advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles.

Honda officials revealed their intention to enter the increasingly crowded eVTOL sector in an announcement that also outlined plans for developing an avatar robot with a multi-fingered hand, and new space technology for lunar surface operation.

Lower silicon production in China may increase chip production costs

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A surge in pricing for silicon metal may become a big issue for Apple and other major manufacturers, with production cuts in China shooting up the price of the material by 300% in less than two months.

Silicon is an important part of the technology landscape, being used for chip production as well as in other industries, including glass production and even concrete, as well as silicone products. However, it seems that the supply of the material is getting extremely tight, despite silicon being abundant enough to make up 28% of the earth’s crust.

While issues ranging from higher chip demand and water shortages have impacted device vendors so far, in what is termed the global chip shortage, silicon itself is a growing problem area. In a report by Bloomberg, production cuts in China has forced up the price of the material to triple what it was two months previous.

Fedora Linux 35 Beta Released for Public Testing with the GNOME 41 Desktop, Linux Kernel 5.14

The Fedora Project announced today the release and general availability of the beta version of the upcoming Fedora Linux 35 operating system for public testing.

Fedora Linux 35 is the next major version of the popular GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat and it’s now available for public beta testing one month ahead of the planned release on October 26th, 2021.

As expected, Fedora Linux 35 will pack all the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. The beta version ships with the RC (Release Candidate) development version of the latest GNOME 41 desktop environment series, which brings some cool new features and improvements for the Fedora Workstation edition.

Open source + book!

A simple, open hardware device for reading that anyone can build for themselves

The Open Book Project

Purchase the E-Book FeatherWing PCB on Tindie
Purchase the Open Book PCB on Tindie
Setup guide for the E-Book Wing (and Assembly Video)
Setup guide and documentation for the Open Book
Project page on Hackaday.io
Mailing list signup; I haven’t sent anything yet, but when I have something big to share, you’ll get it there.
With that out of the way, on with the readme!

As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading — the Kobo, the Nook, the Kindle and even the iPad — are closed devices, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners’ interests are not always aligned with readers’.

Google Finally Shifting To “Upstream First” Linux Kernel Approach For Android Features

Google’s Android had been notorious for all of its downstream patches carried by the mobile operating system as well as various vendor/device kernel trees while in recent years more of that code has been upstreamed. Google has also been shifting to the Android Generic Kernel Image (GKI) as the basis for all their product kernels to further reduce the fragmentation. Looking ahead, Google is now talking of an “upstream first” approach for pushing new kernel features.

Google’s Todd Kjos talked today during Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC2021) around their Generic Kernel Image initiative. With Android 12 and their Linux 5.10 based GKI image they have further cut down the fragmentation to the extent that it’s “nearly eliminated”. With the Android 12 GKI, most of the vendor/OEM kernel features have now either been upstreamed into the Linux kernel, isolated to vendor modules/hooks, or merged into the Android Common Kernel.