From the site tech-news site XDA Developers: The consumer tech economy needs more DRAM manufacturers, and it needs them more urgently than perhaps at any point in its history. Anyone keeping track of the pricing trends will know that memory prices have climbed into the stratosphere on the back of AI infrastructure's relentless demand, and every consumer device that depends on RAM has traveled from inflated to unaffordable, quarter after quarter, with almost no relief in sight. Which is exactly why a story out of Shenzhen is worth paying attention to, even in its current rumor phase. According to the details circulated by various semiconductor analysts on X, the Chinese government, DRAM maker SwaySure and Chinese tech giant Huawei have partnered to set up a 12-inch memory production plant. If the reports hold up, it could change memory economics for years to come, but not necessarily in the way you'd hope...

SwaySure itself is a known player. The company was registered in Shenzhen in March 2022, is reportedly backed by municipal government, and appears alongside Huawei on the US Commerce Department's Entity List, suggesting Washington has realized the connection between the two entities. Although, that's also where the story becomes a little less straightforward. None of these claims have been independently confirmed, and many of the technical details circulating online trace back to a single X account. Huawei has previously denied operating the wider network of state-backed fabs that analysts have reported. Even the widely quoted figure of 140,000 wafers per month isn't new, and public records indicate SwaySure's production line is already operational. What gives the report weight, then, is the fact that Huawei has spent years building this kind of domestic semiconductor ecosystem through partners that appear to operate independently.

The rationale that analysts on X keep revisiting has little to do with consumer memory. Huawei's Ascend AI accelerators require high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and US export controls have all but cut Chinese entities from procuring HBM from Samsung or SK Hynix... Owning the supply outright solves a problem that purchasing power can't, which is why the DRAM push is read as a bid to secure captive HBM for Huawei's own silicon rather than to flood the market with cheaply manufactured DDR5... The catch, however, is the fact that most of this new and rejuvenated capacity is expected to be absorbed by China's own domestic demand, rather than to relieve the global shortage... This development does not seem to be an isolated incident, given the state of DRAM economics. CXMT, China's largest manufacturer of DRAM, is already running close to 265,000 wafer starts per month as of now as per analyst estimates, and is projected to hit 350,000 by the end of the year, bringing it within the touching distance of Micron's estimated 385,000....

[T]he oligopoly seems to be facing the first credible challenge to its capacity discipline in decades, and it seems to be coming from a country building fabs much faster than the competition could hope to match. Now, whether it tangibly impacts the consumer market economics in the time to come may be a story in its own right in a few years, but for now, for what it's worth, it's a new direction, and much of it feeds optimism.

A Canadian lab has run a chemical process on real spent nuclear fuel "and pulled out 90% of the long-lived danger in 24 hours, the part that forces a burial site to last 100,000 years," notes the blog Autonocio, "with the leftovers meant to fuel a reactor." The standard plan for spent nuclear fuel is to wait it out. You pull the used bundles from a reactor, sit them in a pool of water for seven to ten years while the heat and radiation come down, seal them in concrete casks, and look for somewhere deep and geologically dull to leave them for the next hundred thousand years. Canada has been hunting for that burial site since the 1980s and still doesn't have one in the ground.

A company in Saint John, New Brunswick thinks most of what makes that waste dangerous never needed to go in the ground at all. Moltex Energy Canada says a chemical process it calls WATSS can strip 90% of the long-lived material out of used Canada Deuterium Uranium [CANDU] fuel in 24 hours, and that the concentrated leftovers become fuel for a reactor it wants to build on the same site. The recovery step isn't a slide in a pitch deck anymore. In 2025, World Nuclear News reported that Canadian Nuclear Laboratories ran the process on real used fuel from a commercial Canadian reactor and confirmed the 90% figure.

None of it is generating power yet. What exists is a validated chemical step and a reactor design waiting in line at a regulator. The rest is a 2030s problem.
"The chemistry has a lab result behind it. The reactor does not exist..." the article points out. "Moltex is aiming to have its first WATSS and SSR-W units running at Point Lepreau by the early-to-mid 2030s... Not everyone buys the pitch. Critics have argued the reprocessing creates its own stream of byproducts, that the economics are unproven, and that a single site's stockpile is finite."

But Moltex "isn't alone in trying to burn nuclear waste instead of bury it," the article notes, with Switzerland and Denmark "chasing the same goal a different way." Switzerland's Transmutex drives a subcritical reactor with a particle accelerator, feeding it spent fuel alongside thorium... Denmark's Copenhagen Atomics is building a thorium molten-salt reactor that fits inside a shipping container and runs on the leftovers from conventional plants.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader kwelch007 for sharing the article.

Politico reports that in the Virginia area alone there's dozens of data center projects "that altogether need 70 gigawatts of power — equivalent to 70 nuclear plants" — currently seeking connection to their grid. But there's also concerns about a Virginia data center powered with natural gas and backup diesel generators: When Virginia's top environmental regulator received an analysis warning of data center pollution, it took him less than five minutes to forward it to seven people on his staff... Internal emails obtained by POLITICO through a public records request paint a portrait of an agency that moved quickly to defend the only data center in Virginia that is powering itself — in what former officials and environmental health advocates described as an unusual effort to shape the debate around an industry whose global epicenter is in the state. The agency's pushback focused on the report's findings that the facility in Loudoun County could release harmful amounts of air pollution through eight bus-sized natural gas turbines — as allowed by permits granted by the Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] itself... The request comes as data centers are devising new ways to produce their own power as a way to temper growing public discord over rising electricity prices amid the AI construction boom.

Virginia has more than 600 data centers. The report [commissioned by Virginia's 54-year-old environmental nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council] raised concerns that the data center's on-site power system, which also includes dozens of backup diesel generators, could cause tens of millions of dollars in health damages to people living around the facility, owned by Vantage Data Centers... [The analysis also argued the pollution could lead to 3.4 to 6.5 premature deaths annually.] People living near the Vantage facility in Sterling say its natural gas turbines produce constant noise and air pollution. The permits for Vantage issued by DEQ in 2023 allow cumulative emissions of seven different pollutants, including 95 tons per year of nitrogen oxides and more than 56 tons of soot. Both contribute to asthma and heart attacks.

Those figures are in line with other state permits for minor sources of pollution, but DEQ's permits for Vantage have sparked local concerns because of the facility's location in a residential area... [Viriginia environmental quality officials] raised questions about whether the report wrongly described the facility's potential air pollution as dangerous, when soot levels in Loudoun County are deemed acceptable by America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Health experts, including former EPA air quality official Michael Korber, told POLITICO that soot pollution can negatively affect human health even at EPA-approved levels. The World Health Organization's standard for ambient soot pollution is nearly half of what EPA suggests is safe.
Some current and former staffers on Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality believe it's inappropriate for the agency to issue aggressive statements on the healthfulness of the data centers, with one former department leader saying Virginia's DEQ "is not the health department."

Ars Technica reports: Hyundai Motor Company's plan to put humanoid robots to work by 2028 is not part of current negotiations with striking South Korean autoworkers, according to the company.

The automaker is disputing news reports that partial labor strikes by the Hyundai Motor union at the world's largest automotive plant in South Korea were spurred by concerns about the company's planned deployment of humanoid robots in the United States starting in 2028. [The planned robots are built by Boston Dynamics, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyundai.] A Hyundai statement shared with Ars describes the union's demands as focusing on compensation-related issues such as wage increases, bonuses, and an extension of workers' retirement age. "Potential deployment of robots in Korean production facilities is not part of the current labor-management discussions," according to the Hyundai statement...

Hyundai emphasized that its current plan only covers the initial deployment of the Atlas humanoid robot at Metaplant America, an electric vehicle factory near Savannah, Georgia, starting in 2028. "Decisions about future Atlas deployment at other facilities will be made thoughtfully, in accordance with local operational needs, and in dialogue with the employees and workforce representatives at those sites," the company stated. However, The Wall Street Journal described the Hyundai Motor union as making "unprecedented demands seeking to enshrine job protections in the era of robots and AI," and characterized certain compensation demands as hedging against potential reductions in work hours caused by AI adoption and robotic automation. "Remember that without labor-management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace," the union told Hyundai in an internal letter reported by Reuters.

Hyundai management and the labor union are currently reviewing a proposed wage reform that would "provide factory workers with greater income stability even after the carmaker's planned deployment of humanoid robots," The Korea Times reported. But experts cautioned that the wage overhaul, which would convert hourly pay for overtime and night-shift allowances into fixed wages, could come at the expense of company productivity.

"The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use," writes Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino. "German news site heise.de has a detailed write-up. See a CGI video of the power station and its internals, as well as the company's website [at their respective links]." From the report (translated to English): According to the manufacturer Corpower Ocean, it is the first DNV prototype certificate for a wave energy converter. The certificate confirms that Corpower's technology meets DNV's requirements for structural strength, reliability, and safety, Corpower Ocean announced. The certification process began in the design phase and lasted seven years. DNV oversaw the process from concept development through design, manufacturing, and assembly, to dry-running tests and subsequent operation.

This is an important step, said Patrik Moller, CEO and one of the founders of Corpower Ocean. With the certification, wave energy is no longer just a promising technology, but a proven and financially viable one. This opens up new opportunities for project financing, insurance, and investments in commercial applications. The Corpower C4 wave power plant looks like a normal buoy: It consists of a 19-meter-long floating body with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of approximately 11 tons. The system is anchored to the seabed. A mechanism inside the buoy converts its up-and-down movements in the waves into a rotary motion. This, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. The report notes that the company is "planning the first two industrial-scale wave energy farms off the coasts of Portugal and Scotland," which are scheduled to begin operating sometime between 2027 and 2029.

Apple is reportedly launching a Klarna financing deal that will let U.S. customers spread the cost of devices over up to three years, pushing the company closer to a hardware-as-a-service model. "The only thing you don't get under the new arrangement is AppleCare, for which you'll allegedly need to pay extra," notes Computerworld. From the report: The introduction of the scheme gives consumers a way to purchase the company's popular high-end devices when they are introduced -- no doubt,at higher cost -- this fall. [...] A combination of changed customer habits and external threat means the stars are now aligned for hardware-as-a-service models. "Reframing a device as a low monthly payment protects that [upgrade] cadence and allows Apple to start marketing their products as device-as-a-service to consumers, which no other vendor was ever able to do," [IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo] wrote to me.

There is a one-more-thing aspect to this: the products are effectively being leased, a new approach that will give Apple a stronger grip on EOL devices, helping it grab more of them for refurbishment, resale, and recycling. Over time, this will give the company a much stronger grip on the lucrative second-user market that exists around Apple equipment, even while for almost every consumer product we find the life we want is something we can rent, but probably can't afford to own.

The other solid reason to take a partnership approach is risk management. Apple had intended to develop its own buy-now, pay-later scheme via Apple Pay Later, but abandoned that plan as it became riskier with rising bank rates. "Also, by backing the program with Klarna rather than reviving the in-house subscription plan it shelved in 2024, Apple captures the demand upside without taking the credit risk onto its own balance sheet," Jeronimo said. "Apple Upgrade lands at precisely the moment Apple needs it," Jeronimo wrote in a note seen by Computerworld. "Having just pushed Mac and iPad prices up on the back of the memory shortage, with iPhone increases widely expected in September -- as well as the new iPhone foldable expected at $2,500 -- Apple's real risk is that rising prices even further can impact the upgrade cycle."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one's television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG's webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user's TV. On July 2, [KrebsOnSecurity] featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps. Spur found more than 42 percent of apps available for download on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one's television in a proxy node indefinitely, and that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung's Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components.

Responding to questions about Spur's research, LG Senior Vice President John Taylor told KrebsOnSecurity the company was working with app developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform. Developers that fail to comply, he said, will find their apps suspended. "A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform," Taylor said. "If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended." Taylor said LG is committed to keeping residential proxy networks out of its smart TV apps going forward, and that the company's review of those apps is "well underway now."

"As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance platform quality and the user experience, LG will continue to strengthen our evaluation process for developer-submitted apps, including those that incorporate residential proxy SDKs," Taylor wrote in an emailed statement. [...] "A one-time consent prompt buried in a TV app is not a substitute for meaningful transparency, ongoing control, and platform oversight," Spur's Trevor Sutter wrote. "The risk is amplified when consent comes from individuals within the household who use the device but shouldn't give consent, such as minors." LG is also facing criticism for monitors that automatically install software promoting paid McAfee subscriptions through Windows Update without user approval.

Moonshot AI has temporarily paused new subscriptions for its Kimi K3 model after demand surged beyond the company's current capacity within days of the launch. The open-source Chinese AI model, described as one of the largest of its kind at 2.8 trillion parameters, has rattled U.S. rivals by beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests. The Associated Press reports: "Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected," Moonshot AI, which is Beijing-based, wrote in a X post late on Sunday. "Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity." Moonshot said that it's prioritizing existing subscribers and would be temporarily pausing new ones. "We're adding capacity as fast as we can and will reopen new subscription spots in batches," it added. The AI startup also posted a similar message on Chinese social media.

"New model releases generally trigger massive interest, which can strain existing compute infrastructure," said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at the technology research and advisory group Omdia. "This does show Moonshot AI does not have sufficient compute chips to serve the current surge in demand." Su said that the key reason was more likely due to Moonshot not fully anticipating the surge in K3's popularity. K3 is "very demanding" in terms of compute requirements, he said, making compute allocation challenging and expensive.

VideoCardz reports that connecting certain LG monitors to Windows PCs can trigger Windows Update to automatically install the LG Monitor App Installer, which runs at startup and repeatedly displays McAfee trial promotions. From the report: Gamers Nexus reproduced the behavior with an LG UltraGear 34GX900A-B after receiving reports from monitor owners. Windows Update first installed LG extension and software component packages. Windows Reliability Monitor showed that LG Monitor App Installer appeared one minute later. The installation did not display a consent prompt or require the user to approve the download.

Gamers Nexus tested the application across 32 consecutive system boots. It displayed a McAfee promotion during 31 of them. On the remaining boot, it promoted one of LG's own monitor utilities. The McAfee popup offered a 30-day trial that would convert into a paid subscription. The behavior does not appear to be limited to newly purchased displays. Gamers Nexus also received the popup on an LG UltraFine 32UN880-B purchased three years earlier. User complaints about LG Monitor App Installer date back to at least 2024, although the recent increase in reports suggests that more models may now be receiving it.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware: The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders in June 2024. However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication...

The chip powered the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, MSX machines, Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Master System, the Pac-Man arcade cabinet, and Texas Instruments' graphing calculators, then shipped in industrial controllers for decades after home computing moved on to more powerful successors. Zilog's end-of-life notice, dated April 15, 2024, told customers its wafer foundry was discontinuing support for the Z84C00 family, and last-time-buy orders closed that June.

However, Renaldas Zioma's FOSS Z80 project, launched shortly after the end-of-life notice, now has working silicon. The first version, fabbed on SkyWater's 130nm node through Tiny Tapeout 7 on a die of just 0.064mm(2), has been confirmed as functional via the project's GitHub repository. A QFN64 version with all 40 pins exposed followed on the Efabless CI2406 shuttle, two further runs then went through IHP's 130nm process, and the current run targets the classic DIP40 form factor using chip-on-board assembly on GlobalFoundries' 180nm GF180MCU node via Wafer.Space. The end goal here is to fab a drop-in replacement for machines like the ZX Spectrum and RC2014 kits...

Zilog is trimming the Z80's official successor line as well. A product change notification from last October put the eZ80L92, along with several Z8F-series microcontrollers, on end-of-life, citing "little to no demand..." [T]he pipelined eZ80 architecture, introduced in 2001 and still inside TI's current TI-84 Plus CE calculators, otherwise remains in Zilog's catalog.
In 1999 Slashdot was calling Zilog's updated eZ80 "one of the fastest 8-bit CPUs available today, executing code 4 times faster than a standard Z80 operating at the same clock speed."

Slashdot headline from 2001: Zilog To File For Chapter 11.

"A humanoid robot lost its head," reports Newsweek, "during the world's first free-combat tournament for full-sized humanoid robots."

The Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend competition began Thursday in Shenzhen, China, according to the article, with local robotics company EngineAI providing $40,000 of their "T800" robots (yes, named after The Terminator) to 32 participating teams from around the world: A video shared of the combat on YouTube by local news outlet Shenzhen Story, showed that even after one of the robots had its head practically knocked off its shoulders, it continued to fight, throwing punches at its opponent and kicking into the air... [White humanoid robot "White Eagle"] landed a high kick to the head of its black opponent, "Matador," which made the robot's head rock precariously in its socket before rolling completely out of place. The two continued to spar as Matador's head was swinging from its socket until eventually the robot fell, crushing its head underneath its body.

Matador tried to scramble back to its feet, but its head flew off and the robot then collapsed back down. The White Eagle did a celebratory dance for the crowd as the fight concluded, and did a move that mimicked that of someone flexing their biceps. The White Eagle waited in the ring, fists still up, as Matador was carried away, occasionally doing a few more dance moves...

Per a report by Global Times, the winning team will be awarded a gold championship belt worth $1.44 million (10 million yuan) by the event organizer.
It's a strange fight. The robots sometimes seem unaware of where their opponent is, facing the wrong direction or throwing kicks and punches in the air. In the first round White Eagle just knocks over Matador, who then isn't able to stand back up. (And White Eagle again appears to do a victorious dance.)

EngineAI's site says they aim to "promote the development of robot combat events toward greater professionalism, scale, and industrialization," while fostering innovation and global collaboration.

Thanks to Slashdot reader pbahra for sharing the news.

Solar car maker Aptera has "officially announced a repair network partnership which will give owners of its upcoming solar electric car access to thousands of repair shops nationwide," reports Electrek: We recently got a chance to drive the Aptera solar EV and tour the company's factory, and came away both impressed at the progress that has been made, but cognizant of the long road ahead for the company. One question that often gets raised in reference to EV startups is how owners get service on their vehicles, especially those from a small company... So to waylay those fears, Aptera announced a partnership today that unlocks access to 4,300 service shops across the US, through a company called RepairPal. Aptera had been working on this partnership when we saw them at our factory tour, but today they're ready to officially announce it.

RepairPal doesn't own its own shops, but instead certifies local shops to work on particular models of car... All shops will get access to Aptera-specific service procedures.

"Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's Woz Ed foundation is partnering with Realbotix, best known for their RealDoll-branded artificial companions, to deploy AI-powered robotic tutors in classrooms," writes Slashdot reader Hentes. "The doll will serve as a sort of artificial teaching assistant, helping students who get stuck or generating lessons. Students will be assigned an ID code, allowing the robot to provide personalized mentoring." NYS Focus reports: "This deployment in a working school district represents a landmark moment for both AI and humanoid robotics," said Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Realbotix, which is currently building the robot. "[Salamanca City Central School District in Western New York] marks the beginning of a new era where humanoid robots and intelligent AI assistants become standard tools in STEM education."

The female robot, named Sally, will have a "lifelike appearance" with silicone skin and long brown hair, Kiguel said in an interview with New York Focus. It will be stationary in a seated position but have a wide range of upper-body movements and facial expressions. [...]

Salamanca plans to introduce the robot and avatar in its high school AI and robotics courses, which use curriculum developed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to prepare students for high-demand tech jobs. The district plans to expand it to high school students in other classes if the pilot is successful. Realbotix's classroom robot has drawn scrutiny because the company is connected to RealDoll, the longtime maker of hyperrealistic sex dolls and sex robots. Realbotix acquired RealDoll's parent company in 2024 but says the education-focused operation has separate employees, payroll, facilities, and technology, with plans to formally separate the businesses at the ownership level.

The "companion robots" are different from sex robots and intended to address what it's described as a "loneliness epidemic." Kiguel has previously said the company's goal is to produce robots and AI that are "indistinguishable from humans."

Anthropic is reportedly in very early talks to lease computing power from Meta in a potential deal worth around $10 billion. The discussions follow Anthropic's recent compute deal with SpaceX and come as Meta explores selling excess AI capacity as part of a broader push to turn its massive infrastructure spending into a cloud business. CNBC reports: Access to enough AI chips remains a challenge for firms like Anthropic, which places usage limits on its most advanced models like Fable. [...] Meta could spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures, including for AI infrastructure, in 2026. Last October, Zuckerberg said that companies are regularly "asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."

India's Competition Commission has fined HP India and its partners about 1.4 billion rupees ($14.4 million), alleging the company colluded with resellers to rig government PC bids and fix prices for ink cartridges, toner, and other printing supplies. "It said that HP was aiming to outcompete other OEMs and discourage resellers from selling 'counterfeit' ink and toner," adds Ars Technica. From the report: In an order, the CCI said that HP India worked with five resellers to coordinate their bid prices for government contracts to increase the chances of an HP partner winning the contracts. The company was fined 1.3 billion rupees (about $13.1 million). [...] HP was also fined 119.8 million rupees (about $1.2 million) for "indulging in cartelization in sale and supply of supplies products comprising of toner, cartridges, and other consumable used with print hardware products," CCI said in its announcement. The agency also fined 21 HP resellers 35.2 million rupees (about $365,335).

In a separate order, the CCI said that WhatsApp records showed that HP and 16 of its Tier-2 reseller partners operated "in a collusive arrangement" and that the messages show the companies engaging in "bid rigging, including cover bidding, price fixation, and customer allocation during 2017-2020." HP India played a central role, the regulator said.

Per the order, HP India said that high printing supply prices led some resellers to threaten to "shift to low-cost counterfeit products to compete on price." "HP India was commercially forced into a position where it had to support the collusive arrangement adopted by the Tier-2 resellers," the order reads. For its part, the order said that HP India "humbly objects to HP India's role being characterized as a 'kingpin' of the entire collusive arrangement." [...] The CCI also ordered HP India and its channel partners to "cease and desist from anti-competitive conduct" and to hold competition compliance training programs within 60 days.