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This week's news recap is here with a lot of news and announcements from the Build 2025 developer conference, a bunch of new Windows 11 preview builds, fresh features for inbox Windows 11 apps, more Xbox games for PlayStation 5, and other stories. Quick links: Windows 10 and 11 Windows Insider Program Updates are available Reviews are in Gaming news Windows 11 and Windows 10 Here, we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And, of course, you may find a word or two about older versions. Build 2025, Microsoft's annual developer conference, took place this week. There, the company announced some interesting stuff for Windows 11. While it was primarily aimed at developers, regular users will also find some of the upcoming changes useful and interesting. The Settings app, for one, is getting the new Advanced page for the Settings app (now available in the latest preview build). There is also a new command-like editor called Edit, WinGet Configuration for quick dev environment deployments, and more. Developers and users will also be glad to learn about the Microsoft Store improvements, which include the "last updated" date for apps, free registration for individual developers, better Health Reports in the Partner Center, direct Win32 updates, and more. Microsoft is also improving Administrator protection in Windows 11, adding quantum encryption to Windows builds, and bringing Model Context Protocol support to its operating system. Moving from announcements to releases, Microsoft pushed KB5061768 to Windows 10 users to address BitLocker recovery loops on certain Intel-based systems. The update is available in the Microsoft Update Catalog only (not obtainable via Windows Update). Now, here is some interesting Windows trivia. A Microsoft engineer published a blog post explaining how Windows cleverly guesses it despitenot knowing how fast your processor actually is. Another engineer showed how bad code in apps can lead to Windows system slowdown. Also, here is a remastered version of the original Windows 95 wallpaper, in case you want some high-resolution nostalgia on your 4K monitor, and an interesting discussion about which Windows version is the best for old PCs (not Windows 11). Windows Insider Program Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week: Builds Canary Channel Build 27863 The Canary Channel received a relatively small build with post-quantum cryptography support and a few bug fixes. Dev Channel Build 26200.5603 (KB5058488) A pretty big release with new stuff like the announced AI actions in File Explorer, the Advanced Settings page, redesigned Windows Widgets, an improved energy saver, the ability to compress images before sharing them, and plenty more. Beta Channel Build 26120.4151 (KB5058486) This build is identical to 26200.5603 from the Dev Channel. Build 26120.4151 (KB5058515) In this build, Microsoft introduced new capabilities for Click to Do, some widget improvements, lock screen widget customization, more app recommendations across the operating system, and various fixes. Release Preview Channel Build 26100.4188 (KB5058499) This preview of the upcoming non-security update delivers more AI-powered capabilities to compatible Copilot+ PCs, HDR improvements, new Copilot features, and various fixes for audio, USB, MMC, input, and more. Plenty of new features in this week's builds are rolling out gradually, including AI Actions for File Explorer. However, as usual, you can enable them with a simple third-party tool. Check out this article to learn how to force-enable AI Actions in File Explorer. Some hidden stuff for Windows 11 was also discovered this week. For one, it looks like Windows 11 will soon have its own variant of Handoff from macOS. During a Build session, Microsoft showcased how users can transfer their workflow from a mobile device and continue where they left off on Windows 11. Nothing has been publicly announced, though. Second, Microsoft is working on the ability to save screen recordings as GIFs in Snipping Tool. What is not hidden are the new features for Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad, which Microsoft announced earlier this month at its Surface event. Those features are now rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Canary Channels. Updates are available This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties. At Build 2025, Microsoft announced many updates. Starting with open-source, GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code and Windows Subsystem for Linux are now open-source, which means everyone can build their own projects based on them and contribute to the development. Recently, Microsoft sent an email asking for feedback on a new set of Office icons. While a public announcement has not been made yet, someone on Reddit took the matter into their own hands and made the icon pack themselves. Behold, a pack of high-quality Office icons that you can download right now. Speaking of Office, Microsoft introduced its presentation customization tool for PowerPoint to Mac users. This accessibility feature helps create a logical reading flow for elements in your slide and improves other aspects that make it easier for viewers to make sense when viewing and reading your slides. This week brought plenty of browser updates. Microsoft, for one, is making Google Chrome a bit safer by bringing Edge's automatic privilege de-elevation mechanism to the most popular browser in the world. Microsoft Edge received this feature six years ago, and now, it is finally making it to Chrome. Microsoft also released two updates: one for Edge Stable and one for Edge Beta. These updates introduced more Copilot for the new tab page and fixed a bunch of bugs. At Build 2025, Microsoft announced several updates to its browser, including free content filtering on Edge for Business, PDF translation, summaries, and take automation. The company also proposed a new AI API web standard to help developers integrate AI functionality into their web apps. Vivaldi received a new feature update under version 7.4. While it is not the biggest release, it introduced some neat improvements, such as better keyboard shortcut controls and enhancements to the address bar. Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting: PowerToys received a small update with fixes for Command Palette, Workspaces, and Quick Accent. Microsoft shared details about Lumma malware, which infected nearly 400,000 computers. Signal received a new privacy feature that blocks Windows Recall and other screenshot-taking apps. Microsoft Planner is getting a new feature to save hours of your time. Microsoft announced the public preview of SQL Server 2025. Microsoft announced Copilot Tuning for model training with organizational data. Windows AI Foundry has been unveiled as a unified platform for local AI development. Microsoft revealed GitHub Copilot, a coding agent competitor to OpenAI Codex. ExplorerPatcher for Windows 11 received a fix for version 24H2 and a few important changes. Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week: Nvidia 576.52 WHQL with the RTX 5060 support and bug fixes. Also, Nvidia released a firmware update for the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti to fix black screens during reboots on systems with old motherboards. Reviews are in Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week This week, Robbie Khan reviewed the Sharge ICEMAG 2, an interesting Qi2 wireless power bank with active cooling to keep temperatures low when charging your device wirelessly. It has a unique design and solid build quality, but some of its quirks lowered the final score. On the gaming side Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts, and more. PlayStation is getting another slice of the Xbox pie. Ninja Theory announced that Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is coming to PlayStation 5 later this year. No exact dates have been shared yet, though. Valve released an update for SteamOS. Version 3.7.8 arrived in the Stable Channel with a few important changes, such as support for other AMD-based handhelds, a battery limiter for the Steam Deck, and multiple bug fixes. Nvidia is running a Summer Sale, during which you can purchase six months of the GeForce NOW Performance plan with a 40% discount for just $29.99. In addition, the company added support for more games, including the enhanced edition of the STALKER trilogy, Survive the Fall, Blades of Fire, Monster Train 2, and more. Speaking of GeForce NOW, it is now available in the updated Xbox app on PC. The app can now prompt you to select the preferred streaming service: Xbox Cloud Gaming or GeForce NOW. Other changes in the May 2025 update include improved widgets for the GameBar and more. Xbox Game Pass now has more games. Microsoft announced the latest additions to the catalog, which include Moster Train 2, Creatures of Ava, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Symphonia, Spray Paint Simulator, and more. Deals and freebies This week's Weekend PC Game Deals is full of Warhammer specials, Witcher anniversary discounts, and three freebies from the Epic Games Store, which include the just-released Deliver At All Costs. Other gaming news includes the following: Ubisoft released the Siege X year 10 roadmap and new system requirements on PCs and consoles. Microsoft brought over 50 classic Activision games to Game Pass in the new Retro Classics app. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

The anti-piracy team at Kakao Entertainment likes to stand out and not just when there's good news to report. Like the avian beauty that inspired its name, P.CoK's approach is part eye-catching, part distraction, but it does appear to be working. With help from what it describes as an underground network of volunteer informants, P.CoK claims to have shut down 28 pirate sites. It also posts 'insider' evidence and items of proof to social media, to dispel any lingering doubt. If it was possible to strip away the roles and behaviors that inevitably lead to head-on clashes, in some cases pirates and piracy fighters might find ways to get along. In some cases they may love the same things. Yet back in the real world, the insatiable appetite for pirated content owned or protected by the latter, means the war never ends, only the shape changes. Whether South Korean publishing company Kakao Entertainment had always intended to do something different isn’t clear, but when it comes to presentation, no equivalent approach to fighting piracy exists at scale anywhere else. The Krew Launched in 2021 to proactively protect Kakao Entertainment’s ‘webtoon’ comic library, the new ‘P.CoK’ anti-piracy unit’s name was inspired by the ‘eyes’ on a peacock’s feathers. “We’re always on the lookout for illegal use of Kakao Entertainment’s exclusive content worldwide,” the Kakao ‘Krew’ explained in 2023. P.CoK conceded that it couldn’t yet put a figure on the scale of the piracy it was addressing or the monetary value of any losses attributable to it. Of course, even the wider industry has to settle for best estimates, so a fairly blunt but honest admission was fundamentally credible, yet also quite rare. At the time, forming a complete database of pirate sites responsible for sharing Kakao content remained a work in progress. On the prevention side, P.CoK reported working with watermarking, image recognition, and usage pattern analysis, which helped the team “keep an eye on things and nip illegal activity in the bud.” Complete the Quest, Level Up Like much of the corporate world, anti-piracy work and how it’s presented to the outside world may at times undergo a little cosmetic filtering, to send the right message or benefit from being seen in a particular light. Due to the nature of the work there may be an element of misdirection, especially when the target audience are those the company and often the police are determined to catch. In P.CoK’s case, some things that are so neat and perfect, you really, really want them to be true. Maybe they are. Piracy Culture, Videogame Culture? No Problem As presented, there are three people in the team, all quite young with great names – Xeno, Hani, and Jeno. These people undoubtedly understand Kakao’s audience, especially those who prefer not to pay—on sites where they’re also active members. P.CoK also enjoys webtoons and without getting too personal, one spent a number of years as a webtoon artist. Then the icing on the cake – at least two are gamers. One likens shutting down a site to “clearing a stage” in a game and the other focuses on anti-piracy strategic planning and then “leveling up after completing a quest.” Documenting Progress The publication of an anti-piracy white paper every six months (Sixth Edition here) provides an overview of progress and challenges in Kakao’s fight against piracy. As reported in February’s edition, a total of 240 million illegal content removals worldwide in the second half of 2024 contributed to a grand total of 740 million removals overall. This was made possible by Kakao’s Trusted Copyright Removal Program (TCRP) status at Google, and the small matter of filing 30,000 takedown requests every day. Some rightsholders use their takedown notice volumes as a proxy for progress in the fight against piracy; at least in the beginning, the removal of a million links to pirated content tends to speak for itself. Yet when Kakao mentions a 10.9% decrease in takedown notices in its sixth White Paper, compared to the number cited in the fifth, the reduction represents progress instead. The decline was largely attributed to P.CoK’s long-term monitoring and the subsequent shutdown of a “major domestic” pirate site. Kakao identifies the platform as site “A”, almost certainly a reference to Agitoon and the linked Agitoon Novel sites shut down in a law enforcement operation last August. “The case underscores the critical role of site shutdowns in reducing overall piracy activity,” Kakao noted in February. “Kakao Entertainment has consistently emphasized that shutting down a site by identifying its operator is at the core of its response to illegal distribution.” Rare outlier examples aside, when a site operator’s anonymity is compromised, that can forever change the game. Anti-piracy outfits tend to keep unmasking details secret for operational reasons. P.CoK likes to tell those stories on social media. Raising Awareness, Recruiting Informants The theory that raising awareness of piracy discourages illegal consumption, is being tested in several ongoing campaigns. Spreading the message that piracy hurts everyone involved in creating webtoons, is one of P.CoK’s responsibilities. The day-to-day platform of choice for raising awareness is Twitter. At what point spreading the gospel of Kindness to Creators began its transformation isn’t clear, but today the P.CoK account on X is much more than that. Acting as a notice board for P.CoK’s anti-piracy activities and the availability of legal content, the channel also encourages webtoon fans to report links to illegal content, wherever they exist online. For fans and supporters prepared to go further, P.CoK’s channel on X acts as a recruitment office for informants. After obtaining useful information from piracy circles, they head back to base where the information is relayed to P.CoK for enforcement purposes. Having gathered a number of willing informants over the last couple of years, P.CoK claims to have built an underground network that actively supports its One Point Response System. Shutting Sites Down Using Any Legal Means Traditional wisdom suggests that revealing details of an anti-piracy enforcement plan up front may introduce unnecessary risk. Yet having shared the details of its One Point Response System with TorrentFreak recently, at face value P.CoK probably thinks otherwise. P.CoK’s response to infringement begins with TTT: Targeting, Tracing, and Takedown. It’s at this early stage that the technical aspects, operations, revenue streams, and community details of pirate sites are gathered together, and cross-referenced with P.CoK’s databases of illegal site operators and the networks they operate in. After combining and analyzing all available information, a shortlist of suspected site operators is compared with a list of actual operators. After final verification, the next stage can begin. P.CoK says that it reaches out to the operators of pirate sites and services via “legally effective communications” such as email or physical documents. From the information available to us, the strategy seems to rely on operators believing there’s a credible threat of escalation, but they hold none of the cards. Anonymity Gone – Choose a Poison With the clear emphasis being placed on removing all anonymity, proving that to be the case will likely support efforts to convince operators that anything other than total capitulation is already a lost cause. Those who push back could face civil or criminal action. Those who decide to comply and throw in the towel are expected to post a public announcement, shut down their site, and pledge never to infringe again. These final ‘goodbye’ statements are also posted on X, where the consequences of non-compliance are on display, presumably for the benefit of others in a similar position. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a severed head on a pike, with a comfortable chair and maybe a beer as a tempting potential off-ramp. Of course, there are no restrictions on who can read these types of notices, which range from members of the public curious about content being made available for free, to lower tier pirate site staff and uploaders nervous about maintaining anonymity. Even those daydreaming about launching a site of their own one day might stumble upon one of the statements below and take a different course. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Anti-piracy outfits aren’t typically known for seeking this type of attention. That being said, we assume P.CoK only has to take Kakao’s interests into account and having agreed the parameters, it simply gets on with the job. We’re informed that the total number of sites shut down has risen to 28 following the sudden closure of Reaper Scans announced this week. A ‘goodbye’ message posted by the operators of Reaper Scans revealed that the demise of the 10 million visits per month site was triggered by a cease-and-desist notice received via email. It transpires that P.CoK had identified three Reaper Scans operators in as many countries (United States, India and Croatia) and for good measure, addressed them personally using their real names. Why Reveal the Plan and Who Benefits? While the plan is quite detailed, specific, and at times, fairly elaborate, it contains no information useful to pirate site operators. Equally, there’s no sign of anything that undermines P.CoK or Kakao or the strategy itself. That naturally leads to the obvious question: who benefits from the details being made public? Assuming that this is a true representation of P.CoK’s plan, it’s fundamentally solid; identify the suspects, leave no space for maneuver, provide an exit strategy, and work hard in advance to ensure that despite the presence of choice, site operators have only one viable option. Indeed, by being unambiguous about how things are likely to play out, at all times there’s a tacit understanding over where this will inevitably end up for the freshly deanonymized. The joker in the pack concerns the informants; how many actually exist, or do any exist at all? Are they effective? Who are they? To the extent that answers to any of those questions are in any way helpful, pirate site communities have been known to self corrode from excessive suspicion alone. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Earlier this month, we shared the first part of our review of AMD's new RX 9070. It was about the gaming performance of the GPU, and we gave it a 7.5 out of 10. The 9070 XT, in contrast, received a full 10 out of 10. The main reason for the lower score on the non-XT was the relatively high price and thus the poorer value it offered compared to the XT. We thought the price was much closer to the XT than it needed to be. While the RX 9070 proved to be more power efficient than the XT, for a desktop gaming graphics card, value and performance typically take the front seat compared to something like power efficiency. However, that may not be the case in terms of productivity which also takes into account things like power savings. Thus, similar to the one we did for the XT model, we are doing a dedicated productivity review for the RX 9070 as well where we compare to against the 9070 XT, 7800 XT, as well as Nvidia's 5070 and 4070. AI performance is a very important metric in today's world and AMD also promised big improvements thanks to its underlying architectural improvements. We already had a taste of that with the XT model so now it's time to see how good the non-XT does here. Before we get underway, this is a collaboration between Sayan Sen (author), and Steven Parker who lent us their test PC for this review. Speaking of which, here are the specs of the test PC: Cooler Master MasterBox NR200P MAX ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 Intel Core i7-14700K with Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut Pad T-FORCE Delta RGB DDR5 (2x16GB) 7600MT/s CL36 (XMP Profile) 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade SSD Windows 11 24H2 (Build 26100.3194) Drivers used for the 7800 XT, 9070 XT and 9070 were Adrenaline v24.30.31.03 / 25.3.1 RC (press driver provided by AMD), and for the Nvidia RTX 5070 and 4070, GeForce v572.47 was used. (From the left) Sapphire Pulse 9070 XT, Nvidia 5070 FE, and Pulse 9070 First up, we have Geekbench AI running on ONNX. The RTX 5070 gets beaten by both the 9070 XT and 9070 in quantized and single precision (FP32) performance. Similarly, the 4070 gets close to the 9070 in half-precision (FP16) performance, but the latter is an enormous 30% faster in quantized score and nearly 12.2% better in single precision (FP32). The reason for this beatdown is the amount of memory available to each card. The Nvidia GPUs have 12GB each and thus only do better in the FP16 precision tests since the other ones are more VRAM-intensive. Next up, we move to UL Procyon suite starting with the Image generation benchmark. We chose the Stable Diffusion XL FP16 test since this is the most intense workload available on Procyon suite. Similar to what we saw on Geekbench AI, the Nvidia GPUs to relatively better here as it is FP16 or half precision which means the used VRAM is lower. So this is something to keep in mind again, if you wish to float32 AI workloads, it is likely that graphics cards with greater than 12 GB buffers would emerge as victors. There is still a big improvement on the RX 9070 compared to the 7800 XT as we see a ~54% gain. This boost is due to improvements to the core architecture itself as VRAM capacities of both cards are the same at 16 Gigs. Following image generation, we move to the text generation benchmark. In this workload, we see the least impressive performance of the 9070 in terms of how much it improves over the 7800 XT. The former is up to ~7.25% faster here. The 9070 is also not as well-performing as the Nvidia 4070 in Phi and Mistral models, although it does do better in both the Llama tests. Another odd result stood out here where the 5070 underperformed all the cards including the 7800 XT in Llama 2. We ran each test three times and considered the best score and so we are not exactly sure what happened here. Wrapping up AI testing, we measured OpenCL throughput in Geekbench compute benchmark. The RX 9070 did not fare well here at all even falling behind the 7800 XT and it is significantly slower than the three other cards. Interestingly, even the RTX 5070 could not beat the 4070 on OpenCL so perhaps this suggests that OpenCL optimization has not been a priority for either AMD or Nvidia this time. It could also be an issue with Geekbench itself. Conclusion We reach the end of our productivity performance review of the 9070 and we have to say we are fairly impressed but there is also a slight bit of disappointment. It is clear that the 9070 as well as the 9070 XT really shine when inferencing precision is higher, and that is due to the higher memory buffers they possess compared to the Nvidia 5070. But on FP16, the Nvidia cards pull ahead. Still RNDA 4, including the RX 9070, see big boost over RDNA 3 (7800 XT). As we noted in the image generation benchmark, which is an intense load, there is over a 50% gain. So what do we make of the RX 9070 as a productivity hardware? We think it's a good card. If someone was looking for a GPU around $550 that can do both gaming and crunch through some AI tasks this is a good card to pick up especially if you are dealing with single precision situations or some other VRAM-intense tasks. And we already know it is efficient so there's that too. For those however looking for a GPU that can deal with more, AMD recently unveiled the Radeon AI PRO R9700 which is essentially a 32 GB refresh of the 9070 XT with some additional workstation-based optimizations. Considering everything, we rate AMD's RX 9070 a 9 out of 10 for its AI performance. Price is less of a factor for those looking at productivity cases compared to ones considering the GPU for gaming, and as such, we felt it did quite decent overall and can be especially handy if you need more than 12 GB. Purchase links: RX 9070 / XT (Amazon US) As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Scientists have discovered that trees near volcanoes change color when a volcano is becoming more active. Now, NASA and the Smithsonian Institution are teaming up to track these changes from space. Before a volcanic eruption, magma rising underground releases gases like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Trees absorb the carbon dioxide, making their leaves greener and thicker. Scientists are using satellite images from NASA’s Landsat 8 to detect this greening, along with data from airborne instruments in the Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean (AVUELO). “Volcano early warning systems exist,” said Florian Schwandner, chief of the Earth Science Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “The aim here is to make them better and make them earlier.” Volcanic eruptions are dangerous and unpredictable. About ten percent of the world’s population lives in areas that could be affected. People living close to volcanoes face risks like flying rock, ash clouds, and toxic gases. Even those farther away can experience mudslides or tsunamis caused by eruptions. Since eruptions can't be stopped, finding ways to predict them early is important for safety. Spotting volcanic activity from space isn’t easy. Scientists can track sulfur dioxide because it’s easier to detect, but volcanic carbon dioxide—the earliest sign of magma rising—is harder to measure. "A volcano emitting the modest amounts of carbon dioxide that might presage an eruption isn’t going to show up in satellite imagery," said volcanologist Robert Bogue of McGill University. Traditionally, researchers have had to travel to volcanoes to measure carbon dioxide directly. But with over 1,300 potentially active volcanoes worldwide, many are in remote, difficult-to-reach locations. Checking tree responses instead offers a simpler way to monitor volcanic activity. "The whole idea is to find something that we could measure instead of carbon dioxide directly," said Bogue. Nicole Guinn, a volcanologist at the University of Houston, used satellite images from Landsat 8, NASA’s Terra satellite, and ESA’s Sentinel-2 to study trees near Mount Etna in Sicily. Her research found a clear link between tree leaf color and volcanic carbon dioxide. To confirm the accuracy of satellite images, climate scientist Josh Fisher led a ground study in March 2025. His team measured carbon dioxide and collected leaf samples from trees near the Rincon de la Vieja volcano in Costa Rica. “Our research is a two-way interdisciplinary intersection between ecology and volcanology,” Fisher said. Tracking trees as volcano indicators has some limitations. Some volcanoes don’t have enough trees nearby, and environmental factors like weather and plant diseases can affect tree growth. But past success has shown the potential of this approach. In 2017, scientists upgraded sensors at Mayon volcano in the Philippines, detecting signs of an impending eruption. They recommended evacuations, and over 56,000 people were safely moved before the volcano erupted in January 2018. “There’s not one signal from volcanoes that’s a silver bullet," said Schwandner. "But it will be something that could change the game.” Source: NASA This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a new idea that could make underwater and aerial vehicles move more smoothly and efficiently. Their inspiration? The dimples on a golf ball. Golf balls fly farther than smooth ones because their dimples cut down on pressure drag—basically, the force that slows things down when moving through air or water. The researchers applied this concept to a new spherical prototype with dimples that can be adjusted. They tested its performance in a wind tunnel. “A dynamically programmable outer skin on an underwater vehicle could drastically reduce drag while eliminating the need for protruding appendages like fins or rudders for maneuvering,” said Anchal Sareen, an assistant professor at U-M. “By actively adjusting its surface texture, the vehicle could achieve precise maneuverability with enhanced efficiency and control.” This could be useful for things like ocean exploration, mapping, and gathering environmental data. The prototype is made by stretching a thin latex layer over a hollow sphere filled with tiny holes. When a vacuum pump is turned on, the latex gets pulled in, forming dimples. Turning off the pump makes the sphere smooth again. To measure how well the dimples reduced drag, researchers placed the sphere inside a three-meter-long wind tunnel, holding it in place with a thin rod. They changed the wind speed and adjusted the depth of the dimples. A load cell recorded the aerodynamic forces, while high-speed cameras tracked airflow patterns. The results showed that shallow dimples worked better at high wind speeds, while deeper dimples were more effective at lower speeds. Adjusting dimple depth helped cut drag by up to 50% compared to a smooth sphere. “The adaptive skin setup is able to notice changes in the speed of the incoming air and adjust dimples accordingly to maintain drag reductions,” said Rodrigo Vilumbrales-Garcia, a postdoctoral research fellow at U-M. “Applying this concept to underwater vehicles would reduce both drag and fuel consumption.” The researchers also discovered that the textured surface could generate lift, a force that helps steer the sphere. By activating dimples on only one side, they caused the air to flow differently, creating a force that pushed the sphere in a specific direction. Tests showed that, with the right dimple depth, the sphere could generate lift forces up to 80% of the drag force. This effect was similar to the Magnus effect, which typically requires constant rotation. “I was surprised that such a simple approach could produce results comparable to the Magnus effect,” said Putu Brahmanda Sudarsana, a graduate student at U-M. Looking ahead, Sareen hopes to collaborate with other experts to improve this technology. “This smart dynamic skin technology could be a game-changer for unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, offering a lightweight, energy-efficient, and highly responsive alternative to traditional jointed control surfaces,” she said. Source: University of Michigan, AIP Publishing This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend