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Teenage Engineering’s sweet new Computer-2 PC case has the company’s coveted aesthetic, requires a single screw, and, in a surprising twist, is completely free. The Swedish design and hardware studio has found a way to democratize its typical cool product drop to make fans happy and create new ones. Because the Computer-2 is one part brilliant product, one part ingenius marketing strategy. The design of the Computer-2 The Computer-2 is constructed from a single sheet of semitransparent polypropylene plastic, so the case unfolds like origami from a flat pattern into a fully functional, rounded-corner mini-ITX chassis through an ingenious system of living hinges and snap hooks. The translucent material gives users a clear view of their components while maintaining the clean, industrial aesthetic that has made Teenage Engineering’s products instantly recognizable. [Photo: Teenage Engineering] Despite its seemingly simple construction, the case accommodates a mini-ITX motherboard, SFX power supply, 80-millimeter chassis fan, and dual-slot graphics cards up to 180 millimeters in lengthall the essentials for a compact but capable PC build. Fredrik Josefsson, the industrial designer behind Computer-2, tells me these features emerged from practical needs within Teenage Engineering’s Stockholm offices: “We like to make small form factor computer chassis for our own office desks, and this is the latest generation of that.” The tool-free assembly instructions reveal TEs obsession with elegant simplicity and clever product architecture. The case requires virtually no hardware beyond a single screw (for GPU mounting), relying instead on carefully designed snap mechanisms and friction fits. Users unfold the chassis like a cardboard box, snap the power supply into the rear panel, click the motherboard into place using integrated hooks, mount the fan with silicone fasteners, and fold the entire assembly shut. The included silicone feet, O-rings for the handle, and power LED components complete the package, transforming what’s typically a screwdriver-intensive process into something closer to assembling furniture from Ikeaif Ikea made dressers that could run Cyberpunk 2077. [Image: Teenage Engineering] Soft skin, hard requirements Josefsson tells me that the studios only requirement was that the chassis be entirely in plastic, manufactured in a single mold, without screws or additional components like power switches. “And we almost succeeded!” he says, ceding the design’s single screw. Unfortunately, the single-mold construction requirement meant the case’s flat footprint is too large for most consumer 3D printers, despite Teenage Engineering’s history of releasing printable designs. “The living hinges would need to be redesigned to not break. Maybe next time!” Josefsson says. The manufacturing process presented unexpected challenges that pushed the team’s problem-solving abilities. They managed to make it so cheap, Josefsson admits, that “for a while it looked like the packaging would be more expensive to produce than the product. At the start of the project, they thought they would be able to sell the case for just $9, but that changed at the end of the design and testing process. We managed to make it cheaper than we expected, and someone came up with the idea to sell them for [nothing]. Why not?” Josefsson tells me. The cases, he says, are manufactured in China. [Photo: Teenage Engineering] Moar please Computer-2 is Teenage Engineering’s most democratized product drop yet, removing the financial barrier that typically limits access to the company’s cult-favorite gear. Unlike previous entries in its Flipped Out 25 product drop schedulewhich started with the $1,999 OP-1 Field synthesizerComputer-2’s free pricing transforms an exclusive product launch into a customer acquisition strategy seemingly disguised as generosity. (Or maybe TE is that generous. Gotta love the Swede spirit). At a production cost of less than $9 per unit, Teenage Engineering essentially converts manufacturing expenses into marketing spend, besting industry benchmarks where customer acquisition costs range from $68 to $86 for e-commerce businesses to $205 to $341 for B2B companies. Research shows that acquiring new customers costs 5 to 10 times more than retaining existing ones, making promotional giveaways an increasingly attractive alternative to traditional advertising channels. The case is currently sold out, but Josefsson assures me that new units will hit the store soonthough he won’t reveal how many units were initially available or how many will return. Jus set your Google alarm for that free TE candy and get ready to snatch it.
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In a bold, strategic move for the U.S., acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced plans on August 5 to build a nuclear fission reactor for deployment on the lunar surface in 2030. Doing so would allow the United States to gain a foothold on the moon by the time China plans to land the first taikonaut, what China calls its astronauts, there by 2030. Apart from the geopolitical importance, there are other reasons why this move is critically important. A source of nuclear energy will be necessary for visiting Mars, because solar energy is weaker there. It could also help establish a lunar base and potentially even a permanent human presence on the moon, as it delivers consistent power through the cold lunar night. As humans travel out into the solar system, learning to use the local resources is critical for sustaining life off Earth, starting at the nearby moon. NASA plans to prioritize the fission reactor as power necessary to extract and refine lunar resources. As a geologist who studies human space exploration, Ive been mulling over two questions since Duffys announcement. First, where is the best place to put an initial nuclear reactor on the moon, to set up for future lunar bases? Second, how will NASA protect the reactor from plumes of regolith (loosely fragmented lunar rocks) kicked up by spacecraft landing near it? These are two key questions the agency will have to answer as it develops this technology. Where do you put a nuclear reactor on the moon? The nuclear reactor will likely form the power supply for the initial U.S.-led moon base that will support humans wholl stay for ever-increasing lengths of time. To facilitate sustainable human exploration of the moon, using local resources such as water and oxygen for life support and hydrogen and oxygen to refuel spacecraft can dramatically reduce the amount of material that needs to be brought from Earth, which also reduces cost. In the 1990s, spacecraft orbiting the moon first observed dark craters called permanently shadowed regions on the lunar north and south poles. Scientists now suspect these craters hold water in the form of ice, a vital resource for countries looking to set up a long-term human presence on the surface. NASAs Artemis campaign aims to return people to the moon, targeting the lunar south pole to take advantage of the water ice that is present there. Dark craters on the moon, parts of which are indicated here in blue, never get sunlight. Scientists think some of these permanently shadowed regions could contain water ice. [Photo: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center] In order to be useful, the reactor must be close to accessible, extractable, and refinable water ice deposits. The issue is we currently do not have the detailed information needed to define such a location. The good news is the information can be obtained relatively quickly. Six lunar orbital missions have collected, and in some cases are still collecting, relevant data that can help scientists pinpoint which water ice deposits are worth pursuing. These datasets give indications of where either surface or buried water ice deposits are. It is looking at these datasets in tandem that can indicate water ice hot prospects, which rover missions can investigate and confirm or deny the orbital observations. But this step isnt easy. Luckily, NASA already has its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover mission built, and it has passed all environmental testing. It is currently in storage, awaiting a ride to the moon. The VIPER mission can be used to investigate on the ground the hottest prospect for water ice identified from orbital data. With enough funding, NASA could probably have this data in a year or two at both the lunar north and south poles. How do you protect the reactor? Once NASA knows the best spots to put a reactor, it will then have to figure out how to shield the reactor from spacecraft as they land. As spacecraft approach the moons surface, they stir up loose dust and rocks, called regolith. It will sandblast anything close to the landing site, unless the items are placed behind large boulders or beyond the horizon, which is more than 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away on the moon. Scientists already know about the effects of landing next to pre-positioned asset. In 1969, Apollo 12 landed 535 feet (163 meters) away from the robotic Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which showed corrosion on surfaces exposed to the landing plume. The Artemis campaign will have much bigger lunar landers, which will generate larger regolith plumes than Apollo did. So any prepositioned assets will need protection from anything landing close by, or the landing will need to occur beyond the horizon. Until NASA can develop a custom launch and landing pad, using the lunar surfaces natural topography or placing important assets behind large boulders could be a temporary solution. However, a pad built just for launching and landing spacecraft will eventually be necessary for any site chosen for this nuclear reactor, as it will take multiple visits to build a lunar base. While the nuclear reactor can supply the power needed to build a pad, this process will require planning and investment. Human space exploration is complicated. But carefully building up assets on the moon means scientists will eventually be able to do the same thing a lot farther away on Mars. While the devil is in the details, the moon will help NASA develop the abilities to use local resources and build infrastructure that could allow humans to survive and thrive off Earth in the long term. Clive Neal is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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In Silicon Valley boardrooms, a small group of executives is quietly making decisions that will shape the lives of billions. And most of us wont know what those decisions are until its too late to change them. In July, the White House published “Americas AI Action Plan,” a 28-page document that reads like an industrial policy for a new arms race. Buried in Pillar I is a line that tells you exactly where U.S. policy is headed: Revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change. When governments start crossing out those words by design, its fair to ask who is setting the terms of our technological futureand for whose benefit. This is more than rhetoric. The same plan boasts of rolling back the prior administration’s AI order, loosening oversight, and fast-tracking infrastructure and energy for data centers. It recasts artificial intelligence primarily as a geopolitical race to “win,” not as a societal system to govern. Its a perspective less about stewardship and more about deal-making, a style of governance that treats public policy like a term sheet. That framing matters: When the policy goal is speed and dominance, accountability becomes a nice-to-have. The European path Europe has chosen a completely different sequence: Set guardrails first, then scale. The EU AI Act entered into force in August 2024 and phases in obligations through 2026, with enforcement designed around risk. Imperfect? Sure. But the message is unambiguous: Democratic institutionsnot just corporate PRshould define acceptable uses, disclosures, and liabilities before the technology is everywhere. Meanwhile, the center of gravity in AI sits with a handful of firms that control compute, models, and distribution. Consider computethe acceleratorbased computing capacity (GPU/TPU time) required to train and run modern AIas well as models and distribution. Analysts still peg Nvidias share of AI accelerators at around 90%, and hyperscalers lock up capacity years in advance. That scarcity shapes who can experiment, who cant, and who pays whom for access. When the head of state approaches technology policy like an investment banker, those negotiations arent about public interest; theyre about maximizing a deal, often for the states coffers, and sometimes for political capital. Opacity compounds the problem. OpenAIs own GPT4 technical report declines to disclose the training data, model size, or compute used, explicitly citing competition and safety. Whatever you think of that rationale, it means society is being asked to accept consequential systems while remaining largely blind to what went into them. Trust us” is not governance. Concentrated power If you want a small but vivid example of how private choices ripple into public life, look at what happened when OpenAI released a flirty voice called Sky that many thought sounded like Scarlett Johansson. After public backlash, the company paused the voice. A cultural boundary was drawn not by a regulator or a court, but by a product team, a crisis comms cycle, and a corporate decision. Thats a lot of power for a very small group of people. Power also shows up on the utility bill. Googles latest environmental reporting links a 48% increase in greenhouse emissions since 2019 to datacenter growth for AI, and documents 6.1 billion gallons of water used in 2023 for coolingnumbers that will rise as we scale. Mistrals life cycle analysis goes further, estimating perprompt energy and water use for its models. Every ask the model has a footprint; multiply by billions and you cant pretend its free, no matter how much of a climate change denialist you may be. So yes, the United States is winning the raceto concentrate decisions that affect expression, employment, education, and the environment in a tiny crcle of boardrooms. The result is a democratic deficit. The public is reduced to spectators, reacting to faits accomplis instead of setting the rules. The alternative What would it look like to flip the script? Start by treating AI as infrastructure that requires public capacity, not just private CapEx. The National AI Research Resource pilot reflects the right instinct: Give researchers and startups shared access to compute, data, and tools so that inquiry isnt gated by hyperscaler contracts. Make it permanent, wellfunded, and independent, because open science dies when access is controlled by NDA. Second, attach conditions to public money and public procurement. If agencies and schools are going to buy AI, they should demand basic disclosures: which data were used for training; what guardrails govern outputs; which independent tests the model has passed; and an energyandwater ledger tied to time and place, not annual averages. If a vendor cant meet those bars, they dont get the contract. Thats not antiinnovation. Its market discipline aligned with public values. Third, separate layers to curb lockin. Cloud providers shouldnt be able to mandate that their model must use their chips to run their services as the default. Interoperability and data portability arent romantic ideals; they are how you keep a sector competitive when three firms control the stack. Fourth, transparency must mean more than model cards written by the vendor. For systems above a certain scale, we should require auditable disclosures to qualified third partieson training data provenance, evaluation suites, and postdeployment performance. If that sounds onerous, thats because consequence at scale is onerous. Weve learned this in every other critical infrastructure. Finally, align the environmental story with reality. Water and energy disclosures must be realtime, facilityspecific, and verified. Water positive by 2030 doesnt help a town whose aquifer is being drained this decade. If companies want to be first to ship frontier models, they should also be first to implement 24/7 carbonfree energy procurement and hard water budgets tied to local hydrology. A deeper danger Theres a deeper danger when national technology strategy is run like a business portfolio: Efficiency and revenue become the primary metrics, overshadowing the harder-to-quantify needs of citizens. In the private sector, sacrificing ethics, transparency, or long-term stability for a profitable deal can be chalked up to shareholder value. In government, that same trade-off erodes democracy itself, concentrating decisions in even fewer hands and normalizing a profit-first lens on matters that should be about rights, safeguards, and public trust. The point is not to slow AI. It is to decide, in public, which AI we want and on what terms. The U.S. is capable of both ambition and restraint; we did it with aviation, with medicine, with finance. AI should be no different. If we leave the big choices to a few firms and a few political appointees, well get a future built for us, not by us. And the price of rewriting it later will be higher than anyone is admitting today.
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