Watch: Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship rocket engulfed by flames in explosion
A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a routine test on Wednesday (18 June) at Starbase, the company's launch site in Texas.
Footage shows the 36 rocket, which was undergoing a static fire test, suddenly blowing up, with the screen going white before fading to reveal an enormous fireball.
In a statement, Elon Musk 's SpaceX said the rocket suffered 'a major anomaly' whilst preparing for the tenth flight test.
It said that 'all personnel are safe and accounted for', before stating that there are no hazards to nearby communities. The company advised people not to approach the site.
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Geeky Gadgets
an hour ago
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Create Dynamic Excel Interactive Dashboards That Drive Better Decisions
What if you could transform raw, uninspiring attendance data into a visually stunning, interactive tool that not only tracks employee performance but also enables better decision-making? In a world where data drives action, the ability to create a dashboard that is both functional and engaging is a fantastic option. Power BI, with its robust capabilities and advanced DAX formulas, offers the perfect platform to achieve this. Imagine a dashboard that not only highlights attendance patterns at a glance but also adapts dynamically to user inputs—whether filtering by department, time period, or individual employees. This is more than just a reporting tool; it's a strategic asset that turns data into actionable insights. In this exploration, Chandoo uncovers the step-by-step process of building an interactive employee dashboard that combines advanced DAX calculations, dynamic visuals, and thoughtful design principles. From structuring raw data into a star schema to crafting SVG-enhanced visuals that elevate user experience, every detail is covered to help you create a polished and professional solution. Along the way, you'll also learn to overcome common challenges, like optimizing performance and making sure compatibility across devices. By the end, you won't just have a dashboard—you'll have a tool that transforms how attendance data is understood and used. So, how might this innovation reshape the way your organization approaches employee analytics? Interactive Employee Dashboard Example 1: Preparing Your Data The foundation of any effective dashboard lies in well-structured data. Transforming raw attendance data into a star schema format is crucial for optimizing performance and simplifying analysis. Follow these steps to prepare your data: Create dimension tables: Organize your data into separate tables for employees, calendar dates, and attendance statuses. This structure ensures clarity and enhances analytical efficiency. Organize your data into separate tables for employees, calendar dates, and attendance statuses. This structure ensures clarity and enhances analytical efficiency. Add calculated columns: Include fields such as day type (e.g., working day, weekend, or holiday) and week of the month to enable more detailed analysis. Include fields such as day type (e.g., working day, weekend, or holiday) and week of the month to enable more detailed analysis. Clean and standardize inputs: Ensure data consistency by addressing errors, duplicates, and formatting issues to avoid complications during analysis. This structured approach allows for seamless connections between datasets, allowing efficient analysis across multiple dimensions. 2: Designing Dynamic Visuals To make your dashboard both engaging and easy to interpret, incorporate visuals that provide meaningful insights at a glance. Two essential components to include are the calendar view and employee cards. Calendar View Use a matrix visual to display attendance data for each day of the month. Enhance this view with SVG-based visuals to color-code day types, such as green for working days and red for holidays. This visual representation allows users to quickly identify attendance patterns, trends, and anomalies. Employee Cards Design individual employee cards to showcase profile pictures, attendance statistics, and other relevant details. To ensure compatibility with Power BI, convert image URLs into Base64-encoded binary data. This technique ensures that images render correctly, even in offline or restricted network environments. Making an Interactive Dashboard with Power BI Watch this video on YouTube. Take a look at other insightful guides from our broad collection that might capture your interest in Power BI. 3: Using Advanced DAX Measures DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) serves as the backbone of Power BI's analytical capabilities. Advanced DAX formulas enable the calculation of key metrics and enhance interactivity within the dashboard. Examples of useful measures include: Total days and working days: Calculate these metrics for each employee to monitor attendance effectively. Calculate these metrics for each employee to monitor attendance effectively. Attendance percentages: Analyze trends over time to identify patterns and areas for improvement. Analyze trends over time to identify patterns and areas for improvement. Dynamic metrics: Create measures that update based on user-selected filters, such as department, time period, or specific employee groups. These calculations add depth to your analysis, allowing for a more comprehensive evaluation of employee attendance. 4: Enhancing Visuals with SVG SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) can significantly elevate the visual appeal of your dashboard. Custom visuals for calendar cells and employee cards can make the dashboard more engaging and user-friendly. To address Power BI's SVG limitations, consider the following techniques: Optimizing SVG code: Minimize file sizes to improve performance and reduce rendering times. Minimize file sizes to improve performance and reduce rendering times. Using Base64 encoding: Convert image URLs into Base64 format to ensure compatibility with Power BI's rendering engine. Convert image URLs into Base64 format to ensure compatibility with Power BI's rendering engine. Testing visuals: Verify that SVG elements render correctly across different devices and scenarios to ensure a consistent user experience. By incorporating these techniques, you can create unique visuals that enhance both the usability and aesthetic appeal of your dashboard. 5: Crafting an Intuitive Dashboard Design A well-designed dashboard strikes a balance between functionality and aesthetics. Focus on creating a clean, user-friendly layout by incorporating the following elements: Custom backgrounds: Use subtle designs and rounded visuals to give the dashboard a polished and professional appearance. Use subtle designs and rounded visuals to give the dashboard a polished and professional appearance. Interactive slicers: Allow users to filter data by criteria such as month, department, or employee role for a more personalized experience. Allow users to filter data by criteria such as month, department, or employee role for a more personalized experience. Readable fonts and color schemes: Choose styles that enhance clarity and usability, making sure that the dashboard is accessible to all users. Prioritizing user experience ensures that the dashboard is intuitive, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. 6: Addressing Challenges Building a complex dashboard often involves overcoming technical challenges. Anticipating and addressing these issues early in the process can save time and improve the final product. Common challenges and their solutions include: Data transformation: Use a star schema and Power Query to clean and structure raw data effectively. Use a star schema and Power Query to clean and structure raw data effectively. SVG limitations: Optimize SVG designs and use Base64 encoding to ensure seamless rendering in Power BI. Optimize SVG designs and use Base64 encoding to ensure seamless rendering in Power BI. Performance concerns: Simplify DAX measures, limit the use of large visuals, and optimize data models to improve responsiveness. By proactively addressing these challenges, you can create a dashboard that performs well and meets user expectations. 7: Testing and Iterating Thorough testing is essential to ensure the accuracy and usability of your dashboard. Conduct usability testing with end-users to gather feedback on the design, functionality, and overall user experience. Use this feedback to refine the dashboard, making adjustments to better meet the needs of its audience. Regular iteration ensures that your dashboard remains relevant and effective over time. Building an interactive employee attendance dashboard in Power BI requires a combination of data modeling, advanced DAX calculations, and SVG-based visuals. By following these steps, you can create a dynamic reporting tool that provides valuable insights while maintaining a professional and user-friendly design. With careful planning, attention to detail, and a focus on usability, your dashboard can become an indispensable resource for tracking and analyzing employee attendance. Media Credit: Chandoo Filed Under: Guides Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals Disclosure: Some of our articles include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, Geeky Gadgets may earn an affiliate commission. Learn about our Disclosure Policy.
Geeky Gadgets
an hour ago
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Gemini 2.5 Flash Hybrid Reasoning AI Optimized for AI Thinking for Efficiency
What if artificial intelligence could think only when you needed it to? Imagine a tool that seamlessly transitions between complex reasoning and straightforward processing, adapting to your specific needs without wasting resources. Enter Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash, a new AI model that redefines efficiency with its hybrid reasoning capabilities. By allowing developers to toggle between 'thinking' and 'non-thinking' modes, Gemini 2.5 Flash offers a level of control and adaptability that traditional AI systems simply can't match. Whether you're solving intricate problems or managing routine tasks, this innovation promises to deliver precision, scalability, and cost-efficiency—all tailored to your workflow. In this coverage, Prompt Engineering explore how Gemini 2.5 Flash is reshaping the AI landscape with its thinking budget optimization, multimodal processing, and enhanced token capacities. You'll discover how its unique architecture eliminates the need for separate models, streamlining operations while reducing costs. But it's not without its limitations—plateauing performance at higher token usage and capped reasoning budgets raise important questions about its scalability for resource-intensive projects. As we unpack its strengths and challenges, you'll gain a deeper understanding of whether Gemini 2.5 Flash is the right fit for your next AI endeavor. Sometimes, the real innovation lies in knowing when not to think. Gemini 2.5 Flash Overview Understanding Hybrid Reasoning At the core of Gemini 2.5 Flash lies its hybrid reasoning model, a feature that distinguishes it from traditional AI systems. This capability enables you to toggle 'thinking mode' on or off based on the complexity of the task. By managing the 'thinking budget'—the maximum number of tokens allocated for reasoning—you can optimize the model's performance to suit specific use cases. This approach eliminates the need for separate models for reasoning-intensive and simpler tasks, streamlining workflows and reducing operational overhead. Whether you're addressing intricate problem-solving scenarios or routine data processing, the model's adaptability ensures optimal performance. The ability to fine-tune the reasoning process provides a significant advantage, allowing you to allocate resources efficiently while achieving high-quality results. Cost-Efficiency and Competitive Pricing Gemini 2.5 Flash is designed with cost-conscious developers in mind, offering a pricing structure that reflects its focus on affordability and performance. The model's pricing tiers are as follows: Non-thinking mode: $0.60 per million tokens $0.60 per million tokens Thinking mode: $3.50 per million tokens This competitive pricing positions Gemini 2.5 Flash as a cost-effective alternative to other leading AI models, such as OpenAI and DeepSync. By integrating proprietary hardware and software, Google ensures a strong performance-to-cost ratio, making the model an attractive option for projects that require scalability without sacrificing quality. This balance between affordability and capability makes it a practical choice for developers aiming to optimize their resources. Gemini 2.5 Flash Hybrid Reasoning AI Model Watch this video on YouTube. Find more information on Hybrid Reasoning AI by browsing our extensive range of articles, guides and tutorials. Performance and Benchmark Comparisons In benchmark evaluations, Gemini 2.5 Flash ranks second overall on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, trailing only OpenAI's O4 Mini in specific areas. However, it demonstrates significant improvements over its predecessor, Gemini 2.0 Flash, particularly in academic benchmarks. These advancements highlight the model's enhanced capabilities and its potential to deliver robust performance across various applications. While these results underscore its strengths, it is recommended that you test the model against your internal benchmarks to determine its suitability for your unique requirements. This hands-on evaluation will provide a clearer understanding of how Gemini 2.5 Flash can integrate into your workflows and meet your specific needs. Enhanced Token and Context Window Capabilities One of the standout features of Gemini 2.5 Flash is its enhanced token capacity, which significantly expands its utility for developers. The model supports: Maximum output token length: 65,000 tokens, making it ideal for programming tasks and applications requiring extensive outputs. 65,000 tokens, making it ideal for programming tasks and applications requiring extensive outputs. Context window: 1 million tokens, allowing the processing of large datasets or lengthy documents with ease. These enhancements provide a substantial advantage for handling complex inputs and generating detailed outputs. Whether you're working on data-heavy projects or applications requiring extensive contextual understanding, Gemini 2.5 Flash offers the tools necessary to manage these challenges effectively. Multimodal Processing for Diverse Applications Gemini 2.5 Flash extends its capabilities to multimodal processing, supporting a variety of input types, including video, audio, and images. This versatility makes it a valuable tool for industries such as media analysis, technical documentation, and beyond. However, it is important to note that the model does not include image generation features, which may limit its appeal for creative applications. Despite this limitation, its ability to process diverse input types enhances its utility across a wide range of use cases. Key Limitations to Consider While Gemini 2.5 Flash excels in many areas, it is not without its limitations. These include: Challenges with certain logical deduction tasks and variations of classic reasoning problems. A 'thinking budget' capped at 24,000 tokens, with no clear explanation for this restriction. Performance gains that plateau as token usage increases, indicating diminishing returns for resource-intensive tasks. These constraints highlight areas where the model may fall short, particularly for developers requiring advanced reasoning capabilities or higher token limits. Understanding these limitations is crucial for making informed decisions about the model's applicability to your projects. Strategic Value for Developers Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash reflects a strategic focus on cost optimization, scalability, and accessibility, making advanced AI technology available to a broader audience. Its hybrid reasoning capabilities, enhanced token and context window capacities, and multimodal processing features position it as a versatile and scalable tool for developers. By balancing quality, cost, and latency, the model caters to a wide range of applications, from data analysis to technical problem-solving. For developers seeking practical solutions that combine flexibility, performance, and affordability, Gemini 2.5 Flash offers a compelling option. Its ability to adapt to diverse tasks and optimize resource allocation ensures that it can meet the demands of modern AI challenges effectively. Media Credit: Prompt Engineering Filed Under: AI, Top News Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals Disclosure: Some of our articles include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, Geeky Gadgets may earn an affiliate commission. Learn about our Disclosure Policy.
Geeky Gadgets
an hour ago
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iPhone 17 Air
Apple's highly anticipated iPhone 17 Air, set to launch in just three months, is poised to introduce a new standard in smartphone technology. By combining a sleek design with advanced features, the device promises to deliver a seamless and efficient user experience. Despite a reduction in battery capacity, Apple has implemented innovative solutions to ensure that performance and reliability remain uncompromised. Here's an in-depth look at the key advancements that make the iPhone 17 Air a standout in the competitive smartphone market in a new video from Matt Talks Tech. Watch this video on YouTube. Smaller Battery, Big Performance The iPhone 17 Air will feature a 2,800mAh battery, a notable reduction from the 3,560mAh battery found in the iPhone 16. While this change may initially raise questions, Apple has used advanced technologies to maintain battery life comparable to its predecessor. Early estimates suggest the device will offer up to 22 hours of usage, making sure it remains dependable for daily activities such as browsing, streaming, and communication. This achievement is made possible through a combination of hardware and software optimizations. By focusing on energy efficiency and intelligent power management, Apple has demonstrated that a smaller battery doesn't necessarily mean shorter usage times. The result is a device that balances compact design with robust functionality. Carbon-Based Battery Technology: A Step Forward One of the most significant advancements in the iPhone 17 Air is its adoption of carbon-based battery technology, a leap forward from traditional lithium-ion batteries. This innovative approach offers several key benefits that enhance the device's overall performance and efficiency: Higher energy density , allowing the battery to store more power in a smaller space. , allowing the battery to store more power in a smaller space. Reduced energy loss , making sure that power is used more effectively during operation. , making sure that power is used more effectively during operation. Improved charge retention, allowing the battery to maintain its capacity over time. This shift highlights Apple's commitment to sustainability and technological progress. By integrating carbon-based batteries, the iPhone 17 Air not only supports a smaller form factor but also ensures that users experience reliable and long-lasting performance. Power Efficiency with the A19 Chip At the heart of the iPhone 17 Air lies the A19 processor, a next-generation chip designed to optimize energy efficiency without compromising performance. This advanced processor is engineered to handle demanding tasks such as gaming, video streaming, and multitasking with minimal power consumption. Key improvements include: Lower energy draw during high-performance activities, extending battery life. during high-performance activities, extending battery life. Enhanced 5G and Wi-Fi chips, which reduce power usage during wireless connectivity. The A19 chip's intelligent power management ensures that the device delivers peak performance when needed while conserving energy during less intensive tasks. This balance between power and efficiency is a cornerstone of the iPhone 17 Air's design philosophy. ProMotion Display: Stunning Visuals with Efficiency The iPhone 17 Air features an upgraded ProMotion display, which combines vibrant visuals with energy-saving technology. By dynamically adjusting the refresh rate based on the content being viewed, the display minimizes power consumption without compromising quality. For instance: High refresh rates are used for activities like gaming or scrolling, making sure smooth visuals. Lower refresh rates are applied for static content, such as reading or viewing photos, to conserve energy. Compared to traditional OLED panels, this adaptive display technology significantly reduces battery strain. Users can enjoy extended viewing times with rich, detailed visuals, making the iPhone 17 Air an excellent choice for both entertainment and productivity. Faster Charging with Qi 2.2 Technology Charging technology in the iPhone 17 Air has been significantly enhanced with the introduction of Qi 2.2 wireless charging, which supports speeds of up to 50W. This advancement ensures that users can quickly recharge their devices, even with the smaller battery size. Key benefits of this system include: Faster charging times , reducing the wait between charges. , reducing the wait between charges. Convenient wireless charging, offering flexibility and ease of use. Whether using a wireless charger or a traditional cable, the iPhone 17 Air's charging system minimizes downtime, making sure that the device is always ready when needed. This focus on convenience aligns with Apple's broader goal of enhancing the user experience. Slim Design Meets Advanced Functionality Despite its numerous technological advancements, the iPhone 17 Air maintains a slim and lightweight design that prioritizes portability and aesthetics. Apple has successfully integrated features such as the carbon-based battery, A19 chip, and ProMotion display without compromising the device's sleek form factor. This balance between design and functionality ensures that users can enjoy a premium smartphone experience without sacrificing practicality. The combination of a smaller battery, efficient components, and faster charging capabilities underscores Apple's ability to innovate within a compact design. The iPhone 17 Air exemplifies how innovative technology can be seamlessly integrated into a device that is both stylish and highly functional. Redefining Smartphone Efficiency The iPhone 17 Air represents a bold step forward in smartphone technology, offering a unique blend of design, performance, and efficiency. By adopting carbon-based battery technology, incorporating the A19 chip, and upgrading the ProMotion display, Apple has created a device that delivers exceptional battery life despite its reduced capacity. Enhanced wireless connectivity and faster charging further enhance its appeal, making it a compelling choice for users seeking a reliable and innovative smartphone. With its focus on energy efficiency, advanced features, and sleek design, the iPhone 17 Air is set to redefine what users can expect from a modern smartphone. This device is not just an evolution of its predecessor but a testament to Apple's commitment to pushing the boundaries of technology while maintaining a user-centric approach. Stay informed about the latest on the iPhone 17 by exploring our other resources and articles. Source & Image Credit: Matt Talks Tech Filed Under: Apple, Apple iPad, Top News Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals Disclosure: Some of our articles include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, Geeky Gadgets may earn an affiliate commission. Learn about our Disclosure Policy.
