In the hotly contested Indian TWS market, OPPO has carved a unique place for itself with...
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The new BMW iX3 is an important car for the automaker. It’s the first of a new series of vehicles that BMW is calling the Neue Klasse, calling back to a range of cars that helped define the brand in the 1960s. Then, as now, propulsion is provided by the best powertrain BMW’s engineers could design and build, wrapped in styling that heralds the company’s new look. Except now, that powertrain is fully electric, and the cabin features technology that would have been scarcely believable to the driver of a new 1962 BMW 1500.
In fact, the iX3 is only half the story when it comes to BMW’s neue look for the Neue Klasse—there’s an all-electric 3 series sedan on the way, too. The sedan will surely appeal to enthusiasts, particularly the version that the M tuning arm has worked its magic upon, but you’ll have to wait until early 2026 to read about that stuff. Which makes sense: crossovers and SUVs—or “sports activity vehicles” in BMW-speak—are what the market wants these days, so that’s what comes first.
As we learned earlier this summer, BMW leaned heavily into sustainability when it designed the iX3. There’s extensive use of recycled battery minerals, interior plastics, and aluminum, and the automaker has gone for a monomaterial approach where possible to make recycling the car a lot easier. There’s also an all-new EV powertrain, BMW’s sixth-generation. When it goes on sale here next summer, the launch model will be the iX3 50 xDrive, which pairs an asynchronous motor at the front axle and an electrically excited synchronous motor at the rear for a combined output of 463 hp (345 kW) and 475 lb-ft (645 Nm).
© BMW
It’s not often, as a tech reviewer, that you receive a new phone and fall in...
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[Metal Massacre Fab Shop] has a review of a portable plasma cutter that ends up being a very good demonstration of exactly what these tools are capable of. If you’re unfamiliar with this kind of work, you might find the short video (about ten minutes, embedded below) to be just the right level of educational.
Plasma cutters work by forcing compressed air through a small nozzle, and ionizing it with a high voltage. This process converts the gas into a very maneuverable stream of electrically-conductive, high-temperature plasma which can do useful work, like cutting through metal. The particular unit demonstrated also has a rust removal function. By operating at a much lower level, the same plasma stream can be used to give an effect not unlike sandblasting.
Of course, an economical way to cut metal is to just wield a grinder. But grinders are slow and not very maneuverable. That’s where a plasma cutter shines, as [Metal Massacre Fab Shop] demonstrates by cutting troublesome locations and shapes. He seems a lot more satisfied with this unit than he was with the cheapest possible (and misspelled!) plasma cutter he tried last year.
And should you want a plasma cutter, and aren’t afraid to salvage components? Consider building your own.
When someone creates a US patent, they go through a review process to stop the most blatant copies from previous patents or pre-existing work. After this, you may still have bad patents get through, which can be removed through litigation or publicly accessible methods such as Inter Partes Review (IPR). The latter of which is planned to be changed as we know it in the near future.
IPR is a method where an individual can claim that an existing patent is invalid due to pre-existing work, such as something the individual should have creative ownership over. While there is always the litigation method of removing blatantly fraudulent patents, a small business or the average person is unlikely to have the funds.
New regulations are changing how IPRs can be filed in some substantial ways. Now, if someone files an IPR, they give up the right to future litigation on their rights over a patent. This is obviously not ideal for someone who may have their own products on the line if an IPR is to fail. Additionally, IPRs will no longer be able to be even tried if there are existing cases against the patent, even under poor previous cases. While this change is meant to increase the efficiency of the patent office, there are some serious consequences that must be looked into either way. The patent office also cites IPRs being beneficial to larger organizations rather than the smaller businesses, though you can make your own conclusions based on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s arguments here.
Hackaday certainly can not give any legal advice on how this change will affect you, but there are cases given by both sides that may persuade you to write to your legal representatives if you live in the States. Even still, we here at Hackaday have seen our fair share of patent trolls causing issues. If you want a case of blatant patent shenanigans check out these 3D printing layers that promise improved strength!
Thanks [patentTrollsAreTheWorst] for the tip!
Sam Ransbotham teaches a class in machine learning as a professor of business analytics at Boston College, and what he’s witnessing in the classroom both excites and terrifies him.
Some students are using AI tools to create and accomplish amazing things, learning and getting more out of the technology than he could have imagined. But in other situations, he sees a concerning trend: students “phoning things into the machine.”
The result is a new kind of digital divide — but it’s not the one you’d expect.
Boston College provides premier tools to students at no cost, to ensure that socioeconomics aren’t the differentiator in the classroom. But Ransbotham, who hosts the “Me, Myself and AI” podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review, worries about “a divide in technology interest.”
“The deeper that someone is able to understand tools and technology, the more that they’re able to get out of those tools,” he explained. “A cursory usage of a tool will get a cursory result, and a deeper use will get a deeper result.”
The problem? “It’s a race to mediocre. If mediocre is what you’re shooting for, then it’s really quick to get to mediocre.”
He explained, “Boston College’s motto is ‘Ever to Excel.’ It’s not ‘Ever to Mediocre.’ And the ability of students to get to excellence can be hampered by their ease of getting to mediocre.”
That’s one of the topics on this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, a collaboration with Me, Myself and AI. Sam and I compare notes from our podcasts and share our own observations on emerging trends and long-term implications of AI. This is a two-part series across our podcasts — you can find the rest of our conversation on the Me, Myself and AI feed.
Continue reading for takeaways from this episode.
AI has a measurement problem: Sam, who researched Wikipedia extensively more than a decade ago, sees parallels to the present day. Before Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica was a company with employees that produced books, paid a printer, and created measurable economic value. Then Wikipedia came along, and Encyclopedia Britannica didn’t last.
Its economic value was lost. But as he puts it: “Would any rational person say that the world is a worse place because we now have Wikipedia versus Encyclopedia Britannica?”
In other words, traditional economic metrics don’t fully capture the net gain in value that Wikipedia created for society. He sees the same measurement problem with AI.
“The data gives better insights about what you’re doing, about the documents you have, and you can make a slightly better decision,” he said. “How do you measure that?”
Content summarization vs. generation: Sam’s “gotta have it” AI feature isn’t about creating content — it’s about distilling information to fit more into his 24 hours.
“We talk a lot about generation and the generational capabilities, what these things can create,” he said. “I find myself using it far more for what it can summarize, what it can distill.”
Finding value in AI, even when it’s wrong: Despite his concerns about students using AI to achieve mediocrity, Sam remains optimistic about what people can accomplish with AI tools.
“Often I find that the tool is completely wrong and ridiculous and it says just absolute garbage,” he said. “But that garbage sparks me to think about something — the way that it’s wrong pushes me to think: why is that wrong? … and how can I push on that?”
Searching for the signal in the noise: Sam described the goal of the Me, Myself and AI podcast as cutting through the polarizing narratives about artificial intelligence.
“There’s a lot of hype about artificial intelligence,” he said. “There’s a lot of naysaying about artificial intelligence. And somewhere between those, there is some signal, and some truth.”
Listen to the full episode above, subscribe to GeekWire in Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and find the rest of our conversation on the Me, Myself and AI podcast feed.
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