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  • Natilus Debuts Revolutionary Interior Design for the HORIZON Blended-Wing Passenger Aircraft

    Natilus Debuts Revolutionary Interior Design for the HORIZON Blended-Wing Passenger Aircraft

    Natilus’s BWB design offers 40% more interior capacity, which the HORIZON utilizes to make air travel more comfortable and enjoyable. Intended to have a largely customizable layout to meet the needs of each individual airline and its customer base, the HORIZON is reimagining what air travel can be with the introduction of innovative spaces for business travelers to families.

    Work from the Sky in HORIZON’s Video Conference Pods

    For the first time on commercial aircraft, the HORIZON will be equipped with three video conference pods that act as conference rooms for the business-oriented passengers. The pods will be compatible with both video and phone calls and will be Wi-Fi-enabled, so that passengers can continue to collaborate and be productive during flight.

    Families Take Center Stage with Club Seating

    The HORIZON will also include Deluxe Club Seating, where a family of four can comfortably sit two-by-two facing each other, making it easy to communicate, play, and share experiences throughout the flight. No longer limited by the dreaded middle seat, the club seating is attractive for airlines looking to cater to family units with small children.

    Intelligent Lighting Connected to Infotainment

    The HORIZON will be equipped with an intelligent lighting system with simulated skylights and windows that can be customized to a seating zone, mimicking natural light or ambient lighting to ease the impact of jetlag. The lighting can also be coordinated with the infotainment screens to create an immersive entertainment experience.

    HORIZON: Benefits of 40% More Capacity

    With its unique blended-wing body design, the dramatic gains in interior cabin space translate to an entirely new experience for passengers. In this new design, the HORIZON boasts:

    • Luxe, lie-flat first class seats that allow travelers to rest during long-haul flights, evoking a sense of a private retreat;
    • Economy seats where every passenger enjoys their own dedicated seat with back-of-seat infotainment systems, featuring a wide selection of movies, music, and connectivity options to make the journey as enjoyable as it is efficient;
    • Tall ceiling heights at 7.5 feet to make the cabin feel even more spacious; and
    • Eight exit doors for ease of egress, with the possibility for carriers to opt for double doors.

    “The HORIZON is an innovative aircraft that ushers in a new era of air travel, offering significantly more interior space—which we’ve used to create a more comfortable and enjoyable cabin,” said Aleksey Matyushev, CEO and Co-founder of Natilus. “This aircraft will provide our commercial airline customers with the ultimate platform to elevate the passenger experience.”

    About Natilus
    Natilus is a San Diego-based developer of hyper-efficient blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft designed to transport people and cargo more sustainably and efficiently than ever before. Natilus’s BWB aircraft unlocks improved aviation economics by reducing fuel consumption by 30% while increasing payload capability by 40%.The Natilus team is comprised of innovators from General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, Skunkworks, SpaceX, and Piper Aircraft. Learn more at natilus.co.

    SOURCE Natilus

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  • Sobi to amend existing agreement with Apellis for ex-U.S. royalties of Aspaveli® (systemic pegcetacoplan)

    Sobi to amend existing agreement with Apellis for ex-U.S. royalties of Aspaveli® (systemic pegcetacoplan)

      

    Sobi® (STO: SOBI), today announced a capped royalty purchase agreement with Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. under which Sobi will reduce its ex-US royalty obligations to Apellis by 90% for Aspaveli® (systemic pegcetacoplan) in exchange for $275 million upfront and up to $25 million in additional milestone payments dependent on regulatory approvals in the European Union for C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) and primary immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (IC-MPGN).

     

    “We are pleased to continue our ongoing partnership with Apellis and share their strong belief in Aspaveli/EMPAVELI’s potential to deliver significant long-term growth,” said Guido Oelkers, Chief Executive Officer at Sobi.  “We look forward to continuing the regulatory process in Europe and are well positioned to bring this novel treatment to patients with C3G and IC-MPGN leveraging our deep rare disease expertise.”

     

    Aspaveli/EMPAVELI is approved in the European Union, other countries globally, and the US for the treatment of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH) who have haemolytic anaemia, a rare blood disorder. It is currently under review in the European Union and the U.S. for the treatment of C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) and primary immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (IC-MPGN), rare kidney diseases. An opinion by the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) is expected before year-end. In the U.S., the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) action date is July 28, 2025.

     

    “Through our collaboration, Sobi has developed a deep understanding of Aspaveli/EMPAVELI’s potential to significantly improve patient outcomes and deliver long-term value as a rare disease franchise,” said Timothy Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer, Apellis. “This transaction reflects our shared conviction in the potential of Aspaveli/EMPAVELI to transform the treatment landscape for patients with rare diseases, including C3G and IC-MPGN.”

     

    Transaction Highlights

    • Upfront Payment: $275 million in cash.
    • Milestone Payments: Up to $25 million upon EMA approval of Aspaveli® for C3G and IC-MPGN.
    • Royalty Structure: Sobi will reduce its ex-U.S. royalty obligation to Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. by 90% until defined caps are achieved, after which ex-U.S. royalties revert to the original license agreement.
       

     

    About the Sobi and Apellis Collaboration
    Sobi and Apellis have global co-development rights for systemic pegcetacoplan.

    Sobi has exclusive ex-U.S. commercialization rights for systemic pegcetacoplan, and its opt-in rights for future development programs are unchanged, exercisable at any time prior to commercialisation. Apellis has exclusive U.S. commercialization rights for systemic pegcetacoplan and worldwide commercial rights for ophthalmological pegcetacoplan, including for geographic atrophy.
     

    About C3 Glomerulopathy (C3G) and Primary Immune Complex Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis (IC-MPGN)
    C3G and primary IC-MPGN are rare and debilitating kidney diseases that can lead to kidney failure. Excessive C3 deposits are a key marker of disease activity, which can lead to kidney inflammation, damage, and failure. Approximately 50% of people living with C3G and primary IC-MPGN suffer from kidney failure within five to 10 years of diagnosis, requiring a burdensome kidney transplant or lifelong dialysis.1 Additionally, approximately 90% of patients who previously received a kidney transplant will experience disease recurrence.2 The diseases are estimated to affect 5,000 people in the United States and up to 8,000 in Europe.3

     

    About Sobi®
    Sobi is a global biopharma company unlocking the potential of breakthrough innovations, transforming everyday life for people living with rare diseases. Sobi has approximately 1,900 employees across Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. In 2024, revenue amounted to SEK 26 billion. Sobi’s share (STO:SOBI) is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. More about Sobi at sobi.com and LinkedIn.

     

    Contacts 
    For details on how to contact the Sobi Investor Relations Team, please click here. For Sobi Media, click here. 

     

    This information is information that Sobi is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out below, on 1 July 2025 at 1:00 PM CEST.

     

    Gerard Tobin

    Head of Investor Relations

     

     

    References

    1. C3 glomerulopathy. National Institute of Health, Genetics Home Reference. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/c3-glomerulopathy#resources. Accessed November 21, 2019.

    2. Tarragón, B, et al. C3 Glomerulopathy Recurs Early after Kidney Transplantation in Serial Biopsies Performed within the First 2 Years after Transplantation. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. August 2024; 19(8)1005-1015. doi: 10.2215/CJN.0000000000000474.

    3. Data on file using literature consensus.

     

     

     

     

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  • Are salt batteries the future?

    Are salt batteries the future?

    This article is an on-site version of our Energy Source newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Tuesday and Thursday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters

    Welcome to Energy Source, coming to you today from a sweltering London, where a giant heatwave has descended on the city.

    It’s been a hot news cycle as well, as the energy industry digests the news that Shell will not be bidding for BP — at least not before Christmas.

    Meanwhile, a fragile truce remains in place in the Middle East, where hostilities between Israel and Iran seem to be on hold for now.

    If you’d like to test your knowledge of how the oil market responded to previous Middle East crises, try your hand at the FT’s interactive “Draw your own chart” game. It’s harder than you think.

    And in today’s Energy Source, my colleague Camilla Hodgson takes a look at the future of sodium-ion batteries — a potential rival to lithium-ion batteries — and whether they might be overhyped.

    Thanks for reading, Leslie

    Sodium battery hype doesn’t match reality, says new report

    Demand for a new battery technology using sodium ions will grow slower than Chinese electric-vehicle battery maker CATL expects, with hype outpacing real-world deployment, according to new analysis.

    The findings by research group Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, shared exclusively with the FT, found that forecasts by CATL about the growth of sodium-ion batteries were unrealistic.

    The research finds that sodium-ion batteries, which make up less than 1 per cent of the global battery market today, will represent about 3 per cent of batteries in a decade in a base case scenario, and as much as 15.5 per cent in an “early adoption” scenario.

    Sodium-ion batteries — which are made using sodium salt — are seen as a cheaper alternative to lithium-based batteries, and work better at very high and low temperatures. They have started to be used in some large, stationary energy storage systems, as well as in electric scooters in China.

    However, they are typically less energy-dense relative to their size, which has held back their use in EVs, and have become less cost-competitive since the slump in lithium prices.

    Demand was still “relatively small” for what was a “nascent technology”, said Benchmark.

    In April, CATL launched a new range of sodium-ion batteries, which will start mass production by the end of the year. Founder and chief executive Robin Zeng has said he believes sodium-ion batteries could replace up to half of the market for lithium-iron phosphate batteries.

    But Benchmark said on Tuesday that was unrealistic. Although sodium-ion batteries “have a place in the energy transition”, the technology was “not ready to go mass-market and the current positive sentiment is driven by hype”. 

    According to Benchmark, Zeng’s forecast would represent about 1.8 terawatt hours of sodium-ion batteries deployed by 2035. That would require “an immediate breakthrough” in the technology’s performance and cost, and a rise in lithium prices, it said. 

    By contrast, Benchmark’s most optimistic scenario is for demand to reach about 946 gigawatt hours by 2035, or just under 1 TWh, an estimate that also assumed rising lithium prices among other things. 

    CATL and Chinese carmaker BYD are among the biggest manufacturers of sodium-ion batteries.

    Fluctuating commodity prices have encouraged innovations in battery technology. Although lithium-iron phosphate batteries remain the dominant option, a range of alternatives, including sodium-ion and solid-state batteries, are also in development.

    Sodium-ion supply chains need to scale up to bring down costs, and the technology should be directed into areas where it could “differentiate itself now that price isn’t compensating for weaker performance”, said Connor Watts, an analyst at price reporting agency Fastmarkets. 

    That would include the energy storage market, where they would not be competing directly with lithium-based batteries on price. 

    “Sodium’s continued improvement is inevitable, but it will take another few generational improvements before western consumers can be convinced to switch over,” said Watts. (Camilla Hodgson)

    Power Points

    Energy Source is written and edited by Jamie Smyth, Martha Muir, Alexandra White, Kristina Shevory, Tom Wilson and Malcolm Moore, with support from the FT’s global team of reporters. Reach us at energy.source@ft.com and follow us on X at @FTEnergy. Catch up on past editions of the newsletter here.

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  • K. pneumoniae-induced septic embolism and prostatic abscesses in a treatment-naive type 2 diabetic patient: a case report | BMC Infectious Diseases

    K. pneumoniae-induced septic embolism and prostatic abscesses in a treatment-naive type 2 diabetic patient: a case report | BMC Infectious Diseases

    The patient sought medical attention a week ago due to sudden onset of generalized fatigue, dysuria, fever, rectal tenesmus, and constipation. The febrile episodes were characterized by recurrent spikes (39.4 °C) and rigors, notably without accompanying cough, sputum production, diarrhea, or cutaneous eruptions. Based on the provisional diagnosis of “hepatic malignancy with pulmonary metastases and superimposed infection” established at the local hospital, the patient received triple antimicrobial therapy with cefazolin sodium (1.5 g q8h IV) + moxifloxacin (0.4 g qd IV) + ornidazole (0.5 g q12h IV). The patient showed no clinical improvement, with persistent signs of sepsis and hypotension, ultimately necessitating transfer to our tertiary center’s ICU for further management.

    On admission, the patient appeared critically ill with tachypnea (respiratory rate 30/min), facial flushing, fever (38.9 °C), blurred mind, hypotension (BP 86/55 mmHg), and a pulse of 106 bpm. His qSOFA score was 3 and Glasgow Coma Scale score was 11 (E3, V4, M4). Pulmonary auscultation identified globally diminished breath sounds accompanied by coarse moist rales throughout all lung fields, particularly pronounced in bilateral lower zones. Abdominal inspection noted significant distension with marked tenderness localized to the right upper quadrant, where hepatic and renal angle percussion elicited reproducible pain; notably absent were peritoneal signs or shifting dullness. Bilateral lower extremities exhibited grade 2 pitting edema extending to mid-calf level. Rectal examination detected a 3 × 4 cm soft, exquisitely tender mass occupying the anterior rectal wall, demonstrating localized fullness without evidence of sphincter compromise. In addition, the patient had a 5-year history of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) that was completely untreated, with no documented history of glycemic monitoring or pharmacologic intervention. Point-of-care (POC) blood glucose testing showed a concentration of 18.2 mmol/L. The patient is administered 8 units of insulin Neutral Protamine Hagedorn daily at 10 PM and 8 units of insulin aspart before breakfast, lunch, and dinner (30 min prior to each meal). Blood glucose is monitored every 2 h with the goal of maintaining levels within normal limits.

    The arterial blood gas showed pH 7.48, FiO₂ 41% with electrolytes Na⁺ 129 mmol/L, K⁺ 4.2 mmol/L, Cl⁻ 103 mmol/L. Complete Blood Count shows critical leukocytosis (white blood cell 30.93 × 10⁹/L) with severe anemia (hemoglobin 89 g/L), neutrophilia (absolute neutrophil count 15.64 × 10⁹/L), and decreased red blood cell count (2.95 × 10¹²/L). Biochemistry: Marked abnormalities include albumin 20.8 g/L, C-reactive protein 154 mg/L, and procalcitonin 5.9 ng/mL, with low total protein (54 g/L), alanine aminotransferas (8.8 U/L), and uric acid (119 µmol/L). Urinalysis shows 2 + protein, 2 + white blood cells, and 4 + glucose in the patient’s urine. The patient received empiric imipenem/cilastatin 500 mg q6h + vancomycin 1 g q12h with enoxaparin 1 mg/kg q12h, Fluid resuscitation and nutritional optimization.

    Contrast CT scan Showed clots were seen in the right liver vein (Fig. 1A) and left kidney vein (Fig. 1B). Multiple low-density lesions with rim enhancement in the prostate (Fig. 1C) and right liver (Fig. 1A), likely abscesses. Mildly enlarged lymph nodes noted in both groin areas. There were bilateral patchy shadows and nodules in the lungs, a small amount of pleural effusion in the thoracic cavity (Fig. 1D). The cranial CT scan shows no abnormalities in the patient’s brain. The preliminary diagnosis was sepsis and septic embolism (in the right hepatic/left renal vein) secondary to prostatic and hepatic abscesses. Under ultrasound guidance, percutaneous drainage of the right hepatic lobe and transperineal prostatic drainage were sequentially performed, yielding a significant amount of purulent fluid, with subsequent placement of an indwelling catheter in the right hepatic lobe. The drained fluid was sent for bacterial culture and metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) analysis for pathogen identification.

    Fig. 1

    Patient’s CT findings on admission. The patient exhibits hypodense lesions in the right lobe of the liver (A), left kidney (B), and prostate (C). Filling defects are observed in the right hepatic (A) and left renal vein (B). Additionally, there are ground-glass opacities, patchy shadows, and nodular shadows in both lungs (D). Red arrows: Filling defects. Black arrows: hypodense lesions

    KP was concordantly detected across blood culture, purulent fluid culture, and mNGS. Furthermore, mNGS analysis detected the presence of resistance genes to third-generation cephalosporins and penicillins in the identified Klebsiella pneumoniae strain. Therapy de-escalated to imipenem monotherapy. Following a two-week targeted therapy regimen, the patient exhibited significant clinical improvement with concomitant normalization of laboratory parameters. Radiological assessment further revealed complete resolution of the septic embolism (Fig. 2A-B). Contrast-enhanced imaging revealed substantial abscess regression (Fig. 2A-C). Concurrent thoracic imaging showed resolving pulmonary infiltrates and minimal residual pleural effusions (Fig. 2D), prompting discharge with scheduled surveillance.

    Fig. 2
    figure 2

    Patient’s CT findings at discharge. The patient’s imaging findings have significantly improved. The hypodense lesions in the liver (A), kidney (B), and prostate (C) have shown notable resolution. Filling has been restored in the right hepatic (A) and left renal vein (B). Furthermore, the lung tissue has returned to a normal appearance (D). Yellow arrows: Venous filling

    At the 3-month follow-up after discharge, the patient was satisfied with the results of the treatment and has resumed his normal life. The ultrasound examination indicated that the prostate had returned to normal (Figure S1). After adhering to the doctor’s instructions, the patient’s blood glucose levels have been successfully controlled within the normal range. There were no adverse events throughout the process.

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  • Pakistan, India exchange lists of prisoners – RADIO PAKISTAN

    1. Pakistan, India exchange lists of prisoners  RADIO PAKISTAN
    2. Pakistan and India exchange prisoner lists, urge expedited repatriation  Ptv.com.pk
    3. Pakistan, India exchange lists of prisoners in biannual exchange  Geo.tv
    4. India Pak exchange lists of civilian prisoners and fishermen in custody  The Economic Times
    5. India urges Pakistan to expedite release and repatriation of Indian prisoners, including fishermen  IANS LIVE

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  • Netflix’s latest channel partner is NASA – Broadband TV News

    1. Netflix’s latest channel partner is NASA  Broadband TV News
    2. NASA+ is Coming to Netflix This Summer  NASA (.gov)
    3. Netflix To Soon Allow Viewers To Binge Rocket Launches, Spacewalks  Deccan Chronicle
    4. Nexstar set to stream NASA Live  WSAV-TV
    5. Netflix to Integrate NASA+ Live Streaming Feeds  Hits 96

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  • Islamabad, New Delhi share prisoners’ details under consular access agreement

    Islamabad, New Delhi share prisoners’ details under consular access agreement



    Representational image of inmates behind jail bars. — Unsplash/File

    ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and India on Tuesday exchanged lists of prisoners held in each other’s custody, in accordance with the 2008 Agreement on Consular Access, which requires the exchange to take place twice a year—on 1st January and 1st July.

    According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan handed over a list of 246 Indian or believed-to-be-Indian prisoners—comprising 53 civilians and 193 fishermen—to a representative of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

    Simultaneously, India shared with a Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi a list of 463 Pakistani or believed-to-be-Pakistani prisoners, including 382 civilians and 81 fishermen.

    Pakistan has called for the immediate release and repatriation of all Pakistani nationals who have completed their sentences and whose nationality has been verified.

    Islamabad also requested special consular access for all believed-to-be-Pakistani prisoners, including those with physical or mental health conditions, to expedite the confirmation of their national status.

    In its communication, Pakistan further urged India to grant consular access to all prisoners still awaiting it, and to ensure the safety, security, and welfare of all Pakistani detainees in Indian custody.

    The Foreign Office reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to prioritising humanitarian matters and affirmed its continued efforts to secure the early return of all Pakistani prisoners held in Indian jails.

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  • Jemimah Wei and Tash Aw Tell Time and Place ‹ Literary Hub

    Jemimah Wei and Tash Aw Tell Time and Place ‹ Literary Hub

    This is Awakeners, a Lit Hub Radio podcast about mentorship in the literary arts. Robert Frost allegedly said he was not a teacher but an “awakener.” On every episode of this podcast, host Lena Crown speaks with writers, artists, critics, and scholars across generations who have awakened something for one another. We chat about how their relationship has evolved, examine the connections and divergences in their writing and thinking, and dig into the archives for traces of their mutual influence.

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    *

    On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the novelists Tash Aw and Jemimah Wei, who connected when Jemimah signed up for Tash’s fiction master class on “time and place” in Singapore back in 2015.

    Growing up in Malaysia and Singapore, Tash and Jemimah remember having almost no models for what it might look like to be a writer. The publishing industry – and the literary world – seemed to be headquartered elsewhere. This is why it was so important to Tash to return to his region to teach: to show young writers there what was possible.

    After Jemimah had been writing for a while, Tash suggested Jemimah look into graduate school in creative writing, and later he connected her with his literary agent, who now represents them both. Ten years after the master class, their new books were released within weeks of one another, and Jemimah even traveled back to Singapore to help Tash launch his novel in the place where they met.

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    In the first half of the episode, we discuss why Jemimah stood out to Tash in class, how to make a writing life (especially coming from outside the U.S.), being “genre-agnostic,” revising book-length projects, and what to look for in a literary agent.

    In the second half of the episode, Jemimah and Tash share an excerpt from The Original Daughter and The South, and we zoom in on the very themes from Tash’s master class ten years ago: time and place. We focus especially on the factors that influence how we experience time – things like age and maturity level, as well as culture, labor, economics, and the pressure to produce or succeed – and also how we experience time as readers through craft elements like verb tense and perspective, or what Jemimah calls the narrator’s “narrative perch” with respect to past or present events.

     

    Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com

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    ______________________________________

    Tash Aw is the author of five novels and a memoir of a Chinese-Malaysian family, Strangers on a Pier, finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize. His work has won the Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes, an O. Henry Award and twice been longlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into 23 languages. As an essayist and critic, he has contributed to the Paris Review, New York Review of Books, New York Times and the Guardian, among many other publications. He is currently a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin.

    Jemimah Wei is the author of The Original Daughter. Born and raised in Singapore, she is now based between Singapore and the United States. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemmingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, she was named one of Narrative’s “30 below 30” writers and is a Francine Ringold Award for New Writers honouree. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and appears in Guernica, Narrative, Joyland, amongst others. For close to a decade, Jemimah was a host for various broadcast and digital channels, and has written and produced short films and travel guides for Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon.

    More Jemimah: https://jemmawei.com/

    More Tash: https://www.instagram.com/tash.aw/?hl=en

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    Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.

     


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  • Nvidia GeForce graphics cards can now play with more VRAM, thanks to DLSS update

    Nvidia GeForce graphics cards can now play with more VRAM, thanks to DLSS update

    Nvidia has tweaked the latest version of DLSS so that it eats less of your graphics card memory than before, potentially giving your Nvidia GeForce graphics card a little more room to breathe. The change comes with the release of the new Nvidia 310.3.0 Software Development Kit (SDK), which the company says reduces the VRAM demands of DLSS when using upscaling and ray tracing.

    Even at lower resolutions, games with high-resolution textures and ray tracing can push VRAM usage beyond the capacities of many otherwise great GPUs, as we found in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review, with some games really pushing the limits of 8GB of memory. This is where the new Nvidia 310.3.0 SDK can lend a helping hand, reducing the VRAM usage of the new DLSS transformer model by 20%. This potentially frees up additional VRAM to give the GPU a little more headroom before performance falls off a cliff.

    In our tests, as demonstrated in our RTX 5090 review, we’ve found that the new transformer model of Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution has a massive impact on image quality and stability compared to the old CNN model. Game graphics look much sharper and less blurry, and there’s much less noise and ghosting around moving objects too.

    However, enabling the transformer model also results in a slight performance hit compared to the CNN model, and it also uses more VRAM, with Nvidia’s “ballpark” figures in the SDK documentation (as spotted by Videocardz) showing that a game running at 4K would need 387.21MB of VRAM for the DLSS transformer, compared to just 199.65MB for the older CNN model.

    There’s still a VRAM penalty to pay for the transformer model with the new SDK, but Nvidia says that footprint has now been reduced to 307.37MB, a drop of over 20% compared to using the older 310.2.0 SDK, and the drops at other resolutions are all in the same 20% area.

    That’s still a fair amount of memory to allocate just to upscaling, of course, especially when you free up over 100MB by using the CNN model at 4K instead, but it’s good to see the figures coming down. Hopefully, Nvidia is indeed planning a refresh of its Blackwell GPUs with more VRAM, as seen in the latest rumors about the RTX 5070 Super, as well as the RTX 5080 Super.

    If you’re thinking of upgrading your GPU, check out our guide to buying the best graphics card, where we run you through all our favorite options to suit a range of budgets.

    If you head on over to our vibrant community Discord server, you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers. You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides.

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  • FCA highlights ‘delicate balance’ to ensure growth and market integrity

    FCA highlights ‘delicate balance’ to ensure growth and market integrity

    Anthony Harrison, financial services expert at Pinsent Masons, was commenting on a recent speech by FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi. In his comments, Rathi emphasised the need for a financial ecosystem that is not only globally competitive but also rooted in trust, transparency, and innovation.

    “Mr Rathi’s speech highlights the very delicate balance needed to ensure competitiveness and growth while maintaining integrity and high standards across UK financial services,” said Harrison.

    The UK aspires to be the world’s most innovative full-service financial centres by 2035. Financial services contribute £214 billion gross value added (GVA) to the economy, with leading sectors such as banking, insurance, and fintech. However, there are a range of challenges faced by these sectors, including market interconnectedness amplifying shocks, diverging international standards, and increasing global competition.

    To tackle these challenges, the FCA has advocated for ‘outcomes-based’ regulation to better support growth, innovation and accountability. So far, reforms have set out to streamline processes for capital raising, such as listing reforms enabling transactions and the launch of the private shares trading venue PISCES. Further upcoming changes include reducing securitisation frictions, reforming prospectus requirements, and simplifying investment advice to encourage long-term investments.

    Rathi set out the FCA’s aim of fostering a more open approach with firms, grounded in trust and shared problem solving. For instance, initiatives like the FCA’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab allow firms to test innovations safely, with feedback shifting away from streamlining regulations to building confidence and scaling innovation responsibly. This approach aims to strike a balance between regulatory oversight and fostering industry competitiveness, according to the FCA chief.

    The FCA has also acknowledged past criticisms of being overly risk-averse, outlining steps to address them. Changes include the introduction of the consumer duty and proactive measures against financial crime. The FCA has also proposed shifts such as retiring the mortgage charter and considering differentiation in wholesale and retail market regulation, setting a goal of giving long-term confidence to firms and consumers while balancing risk and growth.

    Harrison said: “The FCA appears keen to challenge criticism that it has been too risk averse in the past by championing some bigger initiatives it has implemented in recent years, such as the consumer duty and various successful actions taken in the financial crime space. However, clearly there is more to be done with the government keen to see more growth and less burdensome regulation. Mr Rathi’s comments on retiring the mortgage charter and being open to clearer client classifications applicable to investment firms signal a desire on the regulator’s part to keep pushing forward that growth agenda.”

    Additionally, data prioritisation through new proportional data requirements was noted by Rathi as well as emphasis on the importance of market integrity. Rathi said that compromising standards for competitiveness is not an acceptable approach. Future opportunities were also highlighted by the FCA chief, including the UK’s potential to lead in areas such as tokenisation, appealing to younger, tech-savvy investors.

    Harrison said: “Leveraging data in a smart, efficient way will play a key part in ensuring the regulator’s growth objective. It is not a surprise that the ‘p’ word, ‘proportionate’, has been cited again by Mr Rathi, as it has been by other senior FCA figures in recent speeches. It speaks, again, to the balancing act that is needed but should not be taken to mean that the regulator will be easing off on data requests.”

    “Context is everything, and in certain areas, Mr Rathi has made it clear that visibility matters. With visibility come the need for the right data being produced at the right time to meet regulator requests as they come up, especially in periods of market volatility,” he said.

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