Fascist regimes pushed narratives of domestic bliss, yet relied on women’s unpaid labor. In the US today, ‘womanosphere’ influencers promote the same fantasies

In 1980, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, an unrepentant former leader of the Nazi women’s bureau in Berlin from 1934 to 1945, described her former job to historian Claudia Koonz as “influencing women in their daily lives”.

To her audience – approximately 4 million girls in the Nazi youth movement, 8 million women in Nazi associations under her jurisdiction, and 1.9 million subscribers to her women’s magazine, Frauen Warte, according to Koonz – Scholtz-Klink promoted what she called “the cradle and the ladle”, or reproductive and household duties as essential to national strength.

Adrian aka Silent aka CookiePLMonster did a deep investigation into how a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2.

One reaction I saw to this was “Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? Surely there aren’t any bugs in it after all these years.”

While there may not be bugs in critical sections, there may still be performance issues. And since critical sections are so heavily used, small performance issues can add up to large ones.

We saw some time ago that many synchronization objects were made unfair to avoid lock convoys.

At around the same time, critical sections were optimized to reduce their memory footprint, particularly their cost to non-paged pool. Non-paged pool is an expensive resource since (as the name suggests) it cannot be paged out. On systems doing large-scale computing, even a small cost in non-paged pool is multiplied by a enormous number of critical sections, resulting in outsized non-paged pool pressure that creates performance and reliability problems.

More recently, changes were made to critical sections to try to detect and mitigate priority inversions, and (what is significant in 24H2) those mitigations were optimized further by moving more of the work into user mode and avoiding some cases that previously entailed kernel mode transitions.

The critical section may be an old dog, but it’s still learning new tricks in order to keep pace with a computing environment that is bigger, faster, and more concurrent that it was three decades ago.

The post Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Set up in the 1980s, Giroscope has morphed into a social agency running neighbourhood services and creating jobs

Forty years ago, a small group of students and university dropouts living rough had a novel idea. What if they pooled meagre savings and jobless benefits for a modest terrace house, rather than rent a run-down flat?

They raised a deposit for a £3,200 mortgage on a neglected two-bedroom property in the Victorian terraces of west Hull, running down to the quayside of a once-thriving fishing port, from where boats used to trawl the north Atlantic.

There is a new plane in development that hopes to be the future of aviation. The Otto Aerospace Phantom 3500 promises to cut business jet fuel burn by 60 percent and make aviation more accessible than ever. One way the startup company wants to achieve this is by deleting all of the windows of its new plane and replacing them with gigantic screens. Apparently, this is also supposed to get Gen Z into private jet travel. This plane is supposed to make its first flight in only two years, so let’s talk about what in the world is going on here.

The world of aviation is on a relentless pursuit to gain efficiency. A more efficient aircraft can burn less fuel, be cleaner for the environment, and, perhaps most importantly for operators, be cheaper to run. Over the past several years, we’ve seen fantastic advancements in turbofan engine technology and efficiency, the increased use of composites to cut down on weight, and an industry-wide obsession with aerodynamics. Airlines, fractional operators, and everyone else are always looking for the next big thing in aviation.

So the Otto Aerospace Phantom 3500 is pretty much like catnip. This plane is promising greater range, a much lower fuel burn, much better aerodynamics, and higher marketability than business jets of similar size. Yet, Otto Aerospace is not some crazy idea by some guys in Silicon Valley, but a serious venture with some big names attached to it. Flexjet, a specialist in fractional private jet ownership, just placed an order for 300 Phantom 3500 business jets, a deal that could be worth $5.85 billion based on the estimated selling price of the aircraft. The Phantom 3500 has been all over the news and social media, even publications that don’t normally report on planes.

But what’s the big deal here? What’s so exciting about this plane?

Extreme Aero

Otto Aerospace was founded in 2008 by William ‘Bill’ Otto, who wanted to reinvent air travel. The company explains William’s story:

Frustrated with the inconvenience of commercial air transportation, high private air travel costs and the environmental impact, Bill led the successful development of Celera subscale models and Celera 500L—a full-size technology demonstrator aircraft.

Bill’s unconventional approach to problem-solving gave rise in 1974 to Otto Laboratories, Inc., which became one of the most recognized accident reconstruction firms in the world. While serving as founder and president of the Laboratories, he traveled more than two million miles to various accident sites throughout the world. Bill’s extensive travel brought air transportation problems to light, and so began the Otto Celera journey.

Talking to aviation publication FlightGlobal, Otto said that his company’s goal was to build a private plane that could fly nonstop between any two cities in the United States and do so with a speed and cost comparable to flying commercial. That mission of making private flight as accessible as commercial travel remains today.

Before developing the Celera, Otto was a scientist at the Los Alamos Scientific Labs, where he worked on nuclear weapons and torpedoes. At another time in his career, he worked for North American Aviation, where he led development of the Minuteman missile guidance system.

His aircraft, the Celera 500L (above), made huge promises. One of them was that the Celera 500L would have 59 percent less drag than a typical aircraft of similar size. Why? Because the aircraft is said to take advantage of full laminar flow. I’ll let aviation education website Boldmethod explain:

Air, believe it or not, is sticky. Really, it’s viscous – as it flows over the surface of your wing, it slows down due to friction. In fact, immediately above the surface of your wing, the air isn’t moving at all. Imagine you’re flying at 100 knots in your Piper Cherokee. The air flows around your wing at around 100 knots – or somewhat faster due to your airfoil. However, if you measure the airspeed within an inch of the wing’s surface, you’ll find that the airflow slows down. As you reach the surface of your wing, the airflow’s speed drops to zero. The area where friction slows down the airflow is called the boundary layer.

The boundary layer isn’t very deep, maybe .02 to an inch thick, but it’s important. It’s the source of skin friction drag, and can actually decrease pressure drag.

Air flowing in the boundary layer travels in one of two states: laminar flow and turbulent flow. In laminar flow, the air flows smoothly across a surface and the streamlines move parallel to each other. A lamanar-flow boundary layer is very thin – possibly only .02 inches thick. As you move up and away from a surface, the airflow’s speed smoothly increases in a laminar flow boundary layer until it reaches free-stream speed.

Achieving perfect laminar flow is often considered to be one of the holy grails of aviation. NASA points out that scientists were even researching laminar flow in the 1930s. Achieving full laminar flow is, as you’ve probably guessed by now, extraordinarily difficult. Planes are full of little bits and pieces all over that create turbulent airflow. Screws, rivets, and even joints in panels cause turbulence. Windows, doors, hatches, and external equipment also cause turbulence, too. Oh, and surface imperfections also cause disturbances, too.

This is a major reason why the Celera 500L, and now the Phantom 3500, have absolutely no windows aside from the flight deck. To Otto Aerospace, adding windows will mean unnecessary weight and drag. It’s also why both of these aircraft have a unique teardrop shape.

Anyway, Otto Aerospace began construction of the Celera 500L in 2015, and the aircraft’s aerodynamic prototype made its first flight in 2018. The aircraft was powered by a Red Aircraft A03 550 HP V12 engine and was pitched as having a range of 4,500 nautical miles. It was supposed to enter production in 2024 or 2025, but Otto Aerospace has since decided to evolve the Celera further, making the Phantom 3500.

Today, the Fort Worth, Texas-based Otto Aerospace says it’s “guided by former leaders from Boeing, Textron, General Dynamics, Lockheed, and more.” One figure who is featured in Otto’s press kit is Dennis Muilenburg, the now-former CEO of Boeing, who was ousted during the 737 Max scandal. Now, he’s the chairman of Otto Aerospace. William Otto is a board member.

That brings us to the plane that these folks are trying to put into the sky really soon.

The Phantom

The Otto Aerospace Phantom 3500 starts off as a full composite airframe, which takes advantage of Otto Aerospace’s latest laminar flow research. The company says that, based on wind tunnel testing that was carried out in 2024, the new airframe cuts drag by 35 percent compared to a typical business jet of similar size.

That fuselage will be built by Leonardo S.p.A. in Italy. The landing gear will also be built in Italy by Mecaer Aviation. The proposed spec sheet says that the Phantom 3500 will have a cabin with 6’5″ of headroom, a maximum range of 3,500 nautical miles, a cruising altitude of 51,000 feet, and a balanced field takeoff run of 3,500 feet. Power is said to come from a pair of Williams International FJ44-4 QPM turbofan engines, which punch out 3,621 pounds of thrust during takeoff. Loaded, the aircraft is projected to come in at under the Federal Aviation Regulation Part 23 maximum takeoff weight limit of 19,000 pounds.

Otto Aerospace claims that the aircraft is being designed around what it calls a “Virtuous Cycle,” basically, a chain reaction of one thing that leads to other things. Otto claims that its super slippery fuselage and wing design lowers drag by 35 percent, which means that the airplane doesn’t need to burn as much fuel to go the same distance as the competition. In turn, Otto says, this means that the plane can carry a smaller fuel load, use smaller engines, and have a smaller structure.

This then continues, Otto says, because their smaller all-composite airframe has fewer materials, which should bring down manufacturing costs, reduce labor, and speed up production. Otto then says that all of this adds up to a plane that should have decent performance even with its smaller engines, and the company claims it’ll be able to climb to 51,000 feet in 28 minutes directly from takeoff. Add it all up, Otto says, and you get a plane that reduces fuel burn by 60 percent and is 50 percent cheaper to operate than a typical super-midsize business jet.

Of course, all of this is theoretical because Otto has not built a single operational Phantom 3500 yet. Honestly, the proposed specs and the promises aren’t really going to amaze me until one of these planes is in the sky and proving itself.

About Those “Windows”

But what is stopping me in my tracks are the windows that the up to nine passengers are supposed to “look out” of, or the lack thereof. At first, Otto said that its plane doesn’t have windows because that’s what it needed to do to achieve its claimed huge drag reduction. Now, the company is taking a different and weird tack. The company’s latest media kit says this:

The Phantom will also debut the world’s first ultra-wide passenger windows, spanning an unprecedented 72 inches wide, thanks to its proprietary SuperNatural Vision (SNV) technology. SNV reveals a glare-free, color-enhanced, panoramic view of the curvature of Earth in stunning clarity from its cruise altitude of 51,000 feet. The windows are lighter, quieter, safer, and more energy efficient, offering a passenger experience unlike anything seen in flight before.

This is a little weird. In my eyes, the plane cannot have “the world’s first ultra-wide passenger windows” as they aren’t windows, but giant screens displaying a video feed from the plane’s exterior cameras. Screens instead of windows also add some weird quirks. Are these 3D screens? Because if not, the person trying to look out of the giant digital window screen that’s just a handful of inches from their face might see a distorted image. Look at your phone screen at an angle and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, as Jason Torchinsky helpfully pointed out in the past, digital windows and mirrors suck for people who don’t have perfect vision. Remember, you’re looking at a video feed on a flat panel; you’re not looking at what’s actually happening outside. Imagine having to put on your glasses just to see “outside” of the aircraft or to watch CNN:

Otto Aerospace also says that it plans to apply its technology to a longer-range version of the Phantom, and maybe later to a future regional airliner. That brings a whole new set of questions. If this regional airliner has no windows like the Phantom business jet, how are the displays going to work with the cabin crew?

Have you ever been on a flight and wondered why the flight attendants might have asked the passengers to keep their window shades open during the takeoff and landing rolls? There’s a reason for it. Having open shades allows the cabin crew to monitor the aircraft’s surroundings. This can help during an emergency. For example, the cabin crew can look out of the windows and see if the aircraft is on fire or if the exits are blocked.

Likewise, having open window shades helps your eyes adjust to the outside and gives you situational awareness. The next time you’re on a flight and have your shade for the whole ride, open it after the plane lands. You might be amazed that it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to either the brightness or darkness outside of the aircraft.

It’s unclear how removing windows for displays will change that. Will the cameras and displays remain working in an emergency? Also unclear is how the windows will be for people who get motion sick from looking at screens in moving vehicles.

The Gen Z Jet?

It somehow gets deeper from there, because, as a Wall Street Journal exclusive reported:

[Flexjet and Otto Aerospace] said the digitized windows will be compelling to consumers, especially Gen Z travelers who are more technologically savvy.

More specifically, the Phantom 3500 is supposed to get wealthy Gen Z into private jets. It is an interesting marketing strategy and one that I could sort of see working. Though I have to wonder if the Gen Z traveler won’t just ignore the giant screen windows and use their phone. But, of course, the biggest hurdle is that Otto has to get one of these flying. For that, the company says, we’ll have to wait until at least 2027. If all goes well, the company says, it hopes to have these things in service in 2030.

Assuming Otto can put this plane into production and assuming it will be anywhere near what’s being claimed, I like a lot of what’s happening here. Otto’s work reminds me of some of the craziest ideas pitched by Burt Rutan. A lighter, more aerodynamic aircraft that burns less fuel is good. But, admittedly, I am not sold on the idea of not having any windows to look out of. I might be okay with a digital speedometer, but nothing beats looking out of a real airplane window at the world below.

So, that leaves us with a bunch of questions. Is this the future of aviation? Will Gen Z fall in love with a plane of screens? Will the screens be as neat as they look in the renders? Those are questions that we’ll have to wait until 2027 for answers. You bet I’ll be watching this one.

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The post This New Plane Wants To Lure Gen Z Into Private Jets By Replacing All Of Its Windows With Giant Screens appeared first on The Autopian.

It’s hard not to love a good sleeper. A car that looks almost completely ordinary but packs a surprisingly explosive punch, not dissimilar to that of eating seven Taco Bell Doritos Locos tacos in one sitting. Among greats like the original BMW M5 and Lotus Carlton sit those that are relatively unknown, even among this class of cars that speak with acceleration rather than aesthetics. I bet you forgot about the Buick Verano Turbo, didn’t you?

Around the turn of the 2010s, the infamous Chevrolet Cobalt SS took a bow. This 260-horsepower turbocharged sport compact may have been built cheap, but the result was a genuine world-beater when it came to performance. It managed to lap the Nürburgring in 8:22.85, just 2.8 seconds slower than a Camaro SS. As a result, enthusiasts were hoping that GM would build a sequel based on the Cruze. It turns out, the closest successor wasn’t quite what speed merchants had in mind.

Not only did the 2010s mark a rebirth for General Motors after rabbit-earing its pockets in front of legislators, but it also marked a turning point for Buick. The days of rolling waterbeds were over, and as GM’s sub-Cadillac brand, it seemed like the perfect place to stick rebadged Opels left without a home after the demise of Saturn. The European-market Opel Insignia was reworked into the Buick Regal, and topping that model’s range was a stick-shift turbocharged high-performance Regal GS. With a two-liter turbocharged engine cranking out 270 horsepower, available forged wheels and Brembo brakes, and clever suspension geometry, it was a total about-face for Buick. However, an image shift can rarely be done with one model alone. The Regal needed support, and that’s where the Verano came in.

See, Buick needed an entry-level car, not just to get first-time buyers in showrooms but also because the entry-level premium car segment was about to get red hot. In the first half of the 2010s, Acura rolled out the ILX, Mercedes-Benz launched the CLA, Lexus offered the CT, and Audi already had the A3. So what did Buick do? It rebadged the Opel Astra sedan as a model of its own, sharing the same Delta II platform as the Chevrolet Cruze but adding refinement and amenities. Touches like laminated glass, triple-layer door seals, and extra sound insulation kept things quiet. Although a standard 2.4-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine put out 42 more horsepower than the 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine available in the Cruze, it still wasn’t enough puff to help the Verano keep up with the Audi A3.

The solution was simple: Pluck the two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine out of the Regal GS, detune it to 250 horsepower and 265 lb.-ft. of torque, pair it with either a six-speed automatic or a six-speed manual transmission, and put it in the little Verano for the 2013 model year. Unsurprisingly, this had a dramatic effect on acceleration. When Car and Driver tested the Verano Turbo, this unassuming sedan sprinted from zero-to-60 mph in 6.2 seconds, two-tenths quicker than a stick-shift 2012 Volkswagen GTI. Cowabunga!

However, don’t mistake respectable straight-line pace with performance car chops. A Mercedes-Maybach S680 may have a destroyer-of-worlds V12, but it displays a cosseting attitude rather than aggression. Indeed, while the Verano Turbo drove well, a sport compact it was not, as Car And Driver wrote:

The suspension is well damped, the steering accurate and possessed of some feel, and the body motions are nicely controlled, but any sportiness is buried beneath a layer of marshmallow-like luxury. The car as a whole lacks character even with the manual, which prioritizes silken operation over mechanical feel. In braking and handling, the Turbo is virtually indistinguishable from its compressor-free sibling. Also, they look the same, the Turbo distinction consisting of badges, dual exhaust tips, and a vestigial trunklid spoiler.

What we have here is a sort of Midwest sleeper. Something that’s quiet and refined and unassuming but can still wipe the smirk off an IROC-Z driver’s face. All with comforts like a heated steering wheel, leather seats, a Bose audio system, and push-to-start.

While the Verano sold well enough with 197,017 making it into driveways across America over its production run, the turbocharged model is a bit of a unicorn, especially when paired with a manual transmission. At the time of writing, there are no stick-shift Verano Turbos for sale on any of the major used car classified sites, and even the automatics are properly rare. Looking for a high-mileage hero? This 2013 Buick Verano Turbo has 124,628 miles on the clock, but it’s up for sale in Washington for a reasonable $6,950. With one previous owner and a clean history report, it seems to be in decent shape for those looking for a small car with big car refinement.

On the other end of the spectrum, this 2016 Buick Verano Turbo is up for sale in Arizona with a mere 59,118 miles on the clock, and the asking price is $13,795. Granted, it has half the mileage of the other one and is three model years newer, but top-of-the-market with this sort of funky bumper fitment seems a bit much.

Still, if you find a stick-shift Verano Turbo up for sale near you and are looking for a sensible daily driver, it might be worth pouncing on. These things can make noticeably more than 250 horsepower with simple bolt-ons and a tune, and they’re surprisingly comfortable commuters. At the minimum, the next time you see a Verano in the wild, check for a spoiler, dual exhaust tips, and a little “T” badge. If you know, you know.

Top graphic image: Buick

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The post 13 Years Ago, Buick Built A Compact Stick-Shift Sedan That Could Keep Up With A GTI appeared first on The Autopian.

When I owned a new Ford, I had a generally positive experience with dealer servicing. Any maintenance I needed was taken care of the same day, and I usually just chilled in the dealer’s (admittedly pretty bare) waiting room. That room even had a window into the service area, where I could peek into the bays to watch my car get worked on.

I haven’t been back to a Ford dealer in at least a decade, but it sounds like things have changed drastically. According to CEO Jim Farley, the company has a massive shortage of mechanics and technicians, leaving service bays open and customers waiting weeks for repairs.

In an interview published with Yahoo Finance earlier this week, Farley laid out the problem by the numbers:

This morning, when I woke up, there were 6,000 bays in our dealerships with no technicians.

[Yahoo Finance:] So can’t get my car fixed?

No. Two weeks. Average wait is two weeks. Not because we don’t have the parts, we don’t have the mechanics.

Two weeks is far worse than the national average, at least going by this extract of J.D. Power’s Customer Service Index (CSI) study from 2024, which analyzed customer satisfaction at dealerships when it comes to stuff like maintenance and repairs. According to that data, the average wait for an appointment for mass-market brands, like Ford, was just 5.2 days.

J.D. Power hasn’t released that statistic from its 2025 data to the public, but overall, Ford ranked 11th out of 18 mass-market brands this year for customer satisfaction when it comes to vehicle service this year, just below average, and far behind leaders like Subaru, Mini, and Honda.

That begs the obvious question: Why is there a worker shortage at Ford? When asked, Farley didn’t exactly give the most direct answer:

Well, it’s a complicated problem, but there is, let’s put it that way. There are literally a million openings right now. At Ford, we have probably 400,000 repair technician shortages. Across the economy, I think it’s a couple of things. First of all, the productivity has not caught up with the white collar [positions], in fact, it’s gone down over the last 20 years. Number two, the jobs aren’t as glamorous as a white-collar job from college, and I think the permitting and all the regulations has really stunted the growth of these kind of jobs.

By now, you’re probably screaming at your computer, telling Ford they should just offer adequate wages, and the workers will come rushing in. The commenters under Yahoo Finance’s post on Instagram are doing as much. But that might be more of an industry-wide problem than just a Ford problem, at least going by data gathered by job board Indeed. According to the job posting website, the average base salary for an automotive mechanic is $28.40 per hour, just a few cents lower than the average salary for a Ford dealership mechanic. By these numbers, Ford is about on par with the rest of the industry, salary-wise.

If you want to make a great wage at a dealership fixing cars these days, you have to become a technician, differentiating yourself with certifications and brand-specific technical training. And that costs money. Even if you graduate from a trade school, you usually still need extra training to learn how to work on the latest and greatest vehicles. That’s basically what Tom Butman, general manager of Gene Butman Ford in Ypsilanti, Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press earlier this year:

“Technology has exploded with complexity. That’s one of the things that a lot people don’t think about when they think ‘Why do we have a technician shortage?’ ” Butman said. “It’s because technology has complicated the repair process to the point where it’s much more difficult to repair cars.”

Even with a degree from a trade program, Butman said, much of the higher level technical training falls to dealers and automakers. He said some of his best technicians never went to college; rather the dealership invested in training them and getting them certified.

To its credit, Ford has invested in making this process easier. Since 2023, the company has funded the Auto Tech Scholarship program, which, as of 2025, awards $4 million a year to people studying to become service technicians. According to another Free Press article published earlier this week, Farley has even established a task force “to come up with ways to foster the development of more skilled trades people to address the shortage” after meeting with dealers earlier this year.

Whether either of these initiatives will result in shorter wait times and higher customer satisfaction is unclear. In any case, they are steps in the right direction.

Top photo: Ford

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