In a nutshell: Andy Green will return to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats on Tuesday in a new kind of record car: one powered by hydrogen-burning engines. The British driver, who holds the land-speed record for a diesel car, will drive JCB’s Hydromax in an official attempt overseen by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile. The company is using the run to demonstrate its hydrogen internal-combustion technology under extreme conditions.

The Hydromax is a 32-foot vehicle powered by two hydrogen engines adapted from JCB construction machinery. Together, they produce 1,600 horsepower. Rather than using hydrogen in a fuel cell to make electricity, the engines mix pressurized hydrogen gas with air and ignite it.

Green reached 368.347 mph during practice last week. If he can repeat that performance in the official attempt, he would beat the 350.092 mph diesel record he set at Bonneville 20 years ago. He could also pass the current hydrogen internal-combustion record of 185.5 mph and the electric-vehicle record of 341.3 mph.

“What the peak speed is, I can’t say. We just don’t know,” Green told The AP. “Part of the adventure here is we’re going to find out.”

The run will be a test of whether hydrogen combustion can work at a level far beyond its usual industrial use. JCB has spent more than $134 million developing hydrogen engines. The company says they produce no carbon dioxide from the tailpipe and could have a role in heavy-duty equipment, where batteries can be difficult to use because of weight, charging needs, and operating demands.

“If you’re serious about emissions, you have to be serious about hydrogen, and a land-speed project is the perfect way to prove it,” JCB Chair Anthony Bamford said at the car’s unveiling in May.

Hydrogen’s environmental case is more complicated than tailpipe emissions alone. Most of the world’s hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. JCB has signed a deal to buy green hydrogen, which is produced using renewable energy, though that form of hydrogen remains a small part of the global supply.

There are also safety issues. Hydrogen is stored under pressure and is highly flammable. Green said the team put the car through extensive testing before bringing it to Bonneville. He has spent months learning how the engines work together and how the car behaves on the salt surface.

“We’re managing the risks very carefully,” Green said.

The conditions at Bonneville add another layer of difficulty. The salt flats offer a long, open course, but the surface has limited grip. Green will use a parachute to slow the car after the run. The attempt is planned for shortly after sunrise, before the desert heat builds.

Bonneville has been used for speed attempts since 1914. The flat, white expanse sits about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City on the Utah-Nevada border. Its straightaway runs for about 10 miles, and spectators watch from roughly a quarter-mile away.

Green understands the place land-speed racing holds in the public imagination. In 1997, he became the first and only person to drive a car faster than sound. His jet-powered Thrust SSC reached 763.035 mph in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, producing sonic booms that shook the nearby town of Gerlach.

Now 64, Green said he had expected to be finished with racing before JCB asked him to take on the Hydromax project. The car will not challenge his supersonic record. Its purpose is more practical: to show what a hydrogen combustion engine can do when pushed to its limits.

Image credit: The AP

Immersive audio formats are not won in engineering labs or hotel suites at CES. They are won when people can press play, hear something better and never have to think about which codec, container or licensing agreement made it happen.

That has always been the challenge for Eclipsa Audio, the open immersive audio format developed by Samsung and Google as an alternative to Dolby Atmos and DTS. When eCoustics first heard Eclipsa at CES 2025, the technology worked, Samsung was putting it into its TVs and soundbars, and Google had given it an enormous potential distribution platform through YouTube. What it desperately needed was more actual content.

Samsung is now trying to solve that problem through Samsung TV Plus.

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Eclipsa Audio Moves Beyond YouTube

Samsung says Eclipsa Audio is now being used with musicals and live performance content on Samsung TV Plus. The company has developed an IAMF-based system for encoding, delivering and playing the immersive audio streams on compatible televisions and soundbars, while unsupported devices automatically receive a conventional stereo version.

Samsung didn’t simply run a few test files through a television and call the press office. During development, the company captured a live performance in a 280-seat concert venue, converted the spatial recording to Eclipsa Audio, streamed it through a Samsung TV Plus channel and played it back through a Samsung television. Samsung says the system preserved the placement of vocals, instruments, audience reaction and the acoustics of the venue.

The more interesting part is what comes next. Samsung says it plans to expand Eclipsa Audio on TV Plus into K-pop concerts, classical performances, movies and sports, with longer-term possibilities including letting viewers emphasize vocals or individual instruments and selecting between commentary and stadium sound during sporting events.

Why Samsung TV Plus Matters

Samsung TV Plus isn’t some experimental streaming app hidden six menus deep beside the owner’s manual. Samsung reported in February that the free ad-supported service had surpassed 100 million monthly active users worldwide, with roughly 4,300 channels and 66,000 on-demand videos across 30 countries.

Obviously, 100 million Samsung TV Plus users are not suddenly listening to Eclipsa Audio. But the size of the platform gives Samsung something every new audio format needs: distribution without asking consumers to subscribe to another service or buy content separately.

YouTube already gave Eclipsa a potentially enormous creator platform. Samsung TV Plus gives it a more conventional television environment where concerts, movies and sports can demonstrate why immersive audio matters without the viewer first searching YouTube for an IAMF demonstration clip.

Does Eclipsa Audio Actually Have a Fighting Chance?

More than it did 18 months ago.

The biggest advantage remains the underlying IAMF (Immersive Audio Model and Formats) architecture. IAMF is an open, codec-agnostic specification designed to deliver immersive audio across everything from headphones and televisions to multi-speaker home theater systems. It does not lock creators and manufacturers into a proprietary audio codec or licensing model.

Google has also continued building the infrastructure around it. YouTube accepts Eclipsa Audio content, Google offers open-source Eclipsa production tools, and Android 16 QPR2 added software decoding for IAMF. Samsung, meanwhile, has incorporated Eclipsa support across its current television and soundbar ecosystem.

Those are not insignificant partners. Google controls YouTube and Android. Samsung sells an enormous number of televisions and soundbars and now operates a streaming platform with 100 million monthly users. If you’re going to pick two companies to push an alternative immersive audio standard, you could do considerably worse.

But Dolby is not packing its office furniture into boxes.

Dolby Atmos Still Has the Huge Advantage

Dolby Atmos has something Eclipsa cannot manufacture overnight: an enormous installed ecosystem of movies, television shows, music, streaming services, AV receivers, processors, soundbars, televisions and other devices.

That remains Eclipsa Audio’s biggest problem.

We have already encountered the hardware gap ourselves. Our recent coverage of the Denon AVR-X2900H and AVR-X3900H noted that Eclipsa decoding was still absent, even though Denon’s new corporate connection to Samsung through Harman makes future support seem like an obvious possibility. The Marantz AV 30 also did not support Eclipsa Audio when we reviewed it earlier this year.

Until Eclipsa appears routinely on mainstream AV receivers, more soundbars and non-Samsung hardware — and until major studios and streaming platforms start delivering meaningful libraries of movies and music in the format — Dolby Atmos remains miles ahead.

Samsung TV Plus doesn’t change that overnight.

It does, however, make Eclipsa Audio considerably harder to dismiss.

The Bottom Line

Eclipsa Audio does not need to kill Dolby Atmos to succeed. It needs enough content, hardware support and distribution that manufacturers and creators have a reason to support both.

YouTube gave Samsung and Google the creator side of that equation. Android is expanding the playback foundation. Samsung TVs and soundbars supplied the initial hardware. Samsung TV Plus now gives Eclipsa another real content platform where ordinary viewers can encounter it without going looking for it.

That is far more consequential than another impressive CES demonstration.

Dolby Atmos still owns the high ground, and Hollywood support remains the mountain Eclipsa Audio has to climb. But for the first time since its introduction, Samsung and Google’s immersive format is starting to resemble an ecosystem rather than an experiment.

And that gives it a fighting chance.

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YouTube could soon become a less viable earning source for new content creators. The platform just announced updated rules for monetization via its YouTube Partner Program and, well, it’s not the best news. New content creators will need to show some impressive metrics in order to qualify for the partner program. Starting on February 1, users will need at least 1,000 subscribers and either 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.

That’s a gigantic leap from the current requirements. Right now, those looking to enroll in the partner program need 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 watch hours in the past year or 10 million Shorts views in the past 90 days. So in a few months everything is doubling, aside from the subscriber count requirements.

Additionally, Shorts creators will have to maintain 10 million views every 90 days to earn money from the pool. Falling below this threshold won’t boot someone from the program entirely, but will turn off the cash spigot for that 90-day period.

Current partners will also face new rules next year. They must maintain either 1,000 watch hours each year or 1 million Shorts views. However, this can be avoided if creators amp up their release schedules, as posting two long-form videos or five Shorts every 90 days will keep them in good standing with the program. Finally, YouTube will remove creators from the program if they haven’t uploaded content for at least six months.

YouTube says this will all work out because it’s expanding the Premium Lite subscription to “all countries where we offer YouTube Premium.” This is a scaled-back version of the platform that lets people watch videos without ads, but doesn’t include the music-streaming service. The company says “with these additional subscribers, creators can expect higher earnings.” It also says that creators will have access to a better revenue pool for views obtained via Premium Lite subscribers.

However, we don’t actually know if the Premium Lite tier brings in enough new subscribers to offset these new requirements. YouTube doesn’t publicly disclose subscriber counts for each specific tier, though it has reported a combined total of 125 million paid users for both tiers across the globe. YouTube on its own, without any subscriptions, lures in nearly 2.7 billion users each month.

The platform has been making big changes lately, in an attempt to compete with actual streamers like Netflix and HBO Max. YouTube has signed deals for exclusive broadcasting rights to shows from people like Trevor Noah. It also now lets creators organize content into “seasons.”

from the it’s-always-conspiracy-tuesday-in-this-white-house dept

We’ll see how long US Attorney (and, of course, former Fox News personality) Jeanine Pirro gets to keep her job. I would guess the exit door is only inches away from hitting her ass since she refused to carry out Donald Trump’s plan to punish Reflecting Pool visitors for highlighting the failures of his no-bid contract buddies.

Former Olympian David Hearn got rung up first on federal vandalism charges. Then he got un-rung, once the DOJ told the court Doug Burgum’s Interior Department had basically lied to it about the most likely causes of the peeling sealant and algae swarms that embarrassed the president into pressing criminal charges and threatening journalists.

The crux of dismissal motion by the DOJ was this:

[I]t was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents to the USAO-DC indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (“AIC”), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026. It was not until after these documents were produced that USAO-DC first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI. Indeed, USAO DC could only rely (on the information provided by DOI that the damage was entirely caused by vandals, including the defendant in this case, David Hearn…

Despite the insult of being lied to by a fellow member of the federal government, the DOJ could only bring itself to move for a dismissal without prejudice, which means the administration can always take another swing at Hearn and the other Reflecting Pool defendants.

The good news is that everyone facing criminal charges for supposedly “vandalizing” the botched, hasty pool repair job is now off the hook… at least for now.

Court records now show that prosecutors are dropping the charges against the three other defendants – Justin Carreno, Cameron Thiers and Sophie Dennison-Gibby – who were all accused of destruction of property with a value of less than $1,000.

The bad news is everything else. Ever since the first dismissal, both Donald Trump and DOI Secretary have done little more than bash Pirro for actually doing her damn job and claiming (again, without evidence) that the Reflecting Pool was vandalized, rather than just mishandled by a.) one of Trump’s donors/pool guys and b.) a company that had never been awarded a federal contract before.

For what it’s worth, it seems Pirro did confront Trump and Burgum about their wild antifa-vandalism-whatever-the-fuck assertions. Pirro did the right thing and — according to this report — did it well.

Mr. Trump raged against Ms. Pirro in private on Monday. Then he raged a little to reporters. Rumors she would be fired burbled through West Wing. Then he raged a little bit more before hosting a high-drama, face-to-face meeting with Ms. Pirro at the White House worthy of two decorated veterans of confrontational reality TV.

Mr. Burgum had been invited too, so Ms. Pirro came prepared. She entered the White House from the West Executive driveway in a bright red blazer that matched her fight-back mood, schlepping a white box containing evidence, plus a black box with documents, on wheels.

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This confrontation seemed to have gone as well as it possibly could. According to NYT sources, Pirro made a solid case that Burgum had concocted a vandalism cover story to conceal his contribution to the Reflecting Pool embarrassment. This is as good as it gets when it comes to Trump:

Mr. Trump seemed considerably less angry by day’s end, the person said.

It didn’t last long. In addition to the insults he handed out immediately following the Hearn dismissal, Trump had this to say in the days following the White House meeting with Pirro:

“U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should re-visit her hastily made decision,” ​Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

[…]

Trump, who has ​repeatedly alleged that vandals damaged the pool, has sharply ​criticized Pirro for dropping the case, saying this week that she had “choked” under pressure from a judge and “folded like an ​umbrella.”

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And, as is par for the course for Trump, he’s also attacked the judge handling the case (who did nothing more than respect the government’s dismissal motion) and disparage the work done by the pool crews he so recently defended as so far above reproach that any issues with the pool whatsoever could only be due to malicious acts of vandalism.

If this were a normal presidency and a normal timeline, I’d say something pithy like “it’s all over but the desperate flailing.” But it isn’t, so any pithiness is immediately undercut by the realization that “desperate flailing” is MAGA GOP SOP, and with this party in power, it can always be converted into actual punishment of Trump’s perceived enemies.

Trump can never be wrong, so he’s back on his vandalism bullshit.

President Trump on Saturday posted photos of alleged vandalism to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool amid a push for Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to revisit a recent decision to drop charges related to the pool.

Late Saturday, the president posted two photos of what appeared to be graffiti and some peeling of the coating of the pool. Both photos were labeled with the word “Vandalism.”

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Just imagine the dumbest, weakest, vaguest, conspiracy theory-ist shit you’ve ever seen. Now, lower your expectations.

These are pictures taken of something somewhere. One is labeled “RIP,” which is hardly instructive since we can’t tell what this is or what relevance this peeling has to do with anything. Even if we are to immediately believe (or even recognize) these to be photos of the Reflecting Pool and its lining, there’s nothing in here that immediately suggests malicious damage, rather than what’s already on the record: a hasty application job done by under-qualified people working under severe time constraints and somehow still managing to go millions of dollars over budget.

These are the sort of things you bring to the attention of the contractor performing the work, not the sort of thing you use to support criminal charges. It’s one thing to see a shattered window and a heavy object nearby. It’s quite another to see some peeling weather stripping around the sill and claiming your house has been vandalized.

This government is nearly as dangerous as it is stupid. But that’s only because its stupidity is unparalleled. The most venal president in history is seeing the end results of his willingness to allow his loyalty to be purchased. It’s the worst form of kleptocracy: one that’s fully bought into the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Filed Under: asshats, department of interior, doj, donald trump, doug burgum, failure, jeanine pirro, trump administration

Companies: atlantic industrial coatings, greenwater solutions

The organisation plans to expand its manufacturing and testing footprint across Ireland and the North West.

US tech firm Vertiv, which specialises in data centre and IT services, has submitted an application to Donegal County Council. The request involves adding an additional 7,000 square metres of space to the Letterkenny facility, which will generate up to 300 new jobs. 

The organisation has plans to further develop its presence across the country, in particular the North West and will focus on recruiting for the Letterkenny, Donegal, Derry and Dublin sites. 

According to Vertiv, the organisation has onboarded more than 500 across its local facilities since the beginning of 2026. The new opportunities are set to include multiple engineering and operational roles across the business, which will expand manufacturing capacity and deepen Vertiv’s technical expertise in power, cooling and industrialised infrastructure. 

Commenting on the announcement, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, TD said, “Vertiv’s decision to expand in Donegal and create hundreds of new skilled jobs is very welcome news for the region and for Ireland. 

“Investments of this scale support balanced regional development, strengthen our enterprise base, and demonstrate the confidence international companies continue to place in Ireland as a location for long-term growth.”

Paul Ryan, the president of Vertiv in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said, “This planned investment reflects the strategic importance of our operations across Ireland and the North West. As demand for critical digital infrastructure continues to accelerate, we are helping customers to deploy AI and data centre capacity worldwide. 

“The expected extension, together with continued recruitment across our facilities, is part of our ongoing actions to support continued growth, while creating opportunities for skills development and career growth across the region.”

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• Tor unveils Snowflake Volunteer as a standalone Android app
• The app lets users share their open internet connection
• It is the result of a collaboration between Tor and Bloco

The team behind the censorship-resistant Tor Browser has unveiled Snowflake Volunteer — a standalone Android app that lets you help people living in restricted countries bypass internet censorship.

Developed in collaboration with Portuguese Android studio Bloco, the app expands on Snowflake‘s capabilities. That’s Tor’s pluggable transport, which allows people on censored networks to connect to the Tor network via volunteer-operated proxies, making their connection appear as normal traffic.