Air conditioning will contribute more to rising global energy demand than data centers through 2030, according to an International Energy Agency. While attention has focused on computing power consumption, the IEA projects data centers will account for less than 10% of increased energy demand by 2030, significantly less than space cooling requirements. Global cooling degree days, a measure of air conditioning need, were 6% higher in 2024 than 2023 and 20% above the long-term average for the first two decades of the century.

China, India and the United States saw particularly sharp increases. Air conditioning represented 7% of global electricity consumption in 2022, with some U.S. regions reporting that cooling can comprise over 70% of residential energy use during peak periods. The number of air conditioning units worldwide could nearly triple from fewer than 2 billion in 2016 to approximately 6 billion by 2050, creating a growing challenge for power grids.

Robotics and machine learning engineer Naveen Kul developed WattWise, a lightweight open-source CLI tool that monitors power usage via smart plugs and throttles system performance based on electricity pricing and peak hours. Tom's Hardware reports: The simple program, called WattWise, came about when Naveen built a dual-socket EPYC workstation with plans to add four GPUs. It's a power-intensive setup, so he wanted a way to monitor its power consumption using a Kasa smart plug. The enthusiast has released the monitoring portion of the project to the public now, but the portion that manages clocks and power will be released later. Unfortunately, the Kasa Smart app and the Home Assistant dashboard was inconvenient and couldn't do everything he desired. He already had a terminal window running monitoring tools like htop, nvtop, and nload, and decided to take matters into his own hands rather than dealing with yet another app.

Naveen built a terminal-based UI that shows power consumption data through Home Assistant and the TP-Link integration. The app monitors real-time power use, showing wattage and current, as well as providing historical consumption charts. More importantly, it is designed to automatically throttle CPU and GPU performance. Naveen's power provider uses Time-of-Use (ToU) pricing, so using a lot of power during peak hours can cost significantly more. The workstation can draw as much as 1400 watts at full load, but by reducing the CPU frequency from 3.7 GHz to 1.5 GHz, he's able to reduce consumption by about 225 watts. (No mention is made of GPU throttling, which could potentially allow for even higher power savings with a quad-GPU setup.)

Results will vary based on the hardware being used, naturally, and servers can pull far more power than a typical desktop -- even one designed and used for gaming. WattWise optimizes the system's clock speed based on the current system load, power consumption as reported by the smart plug, and the time -- with the latter factoring in peak pricing. From there, it uses a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller to manage the power and adapts system parameters based on the three variables. A blog post with more information is available here.

WattWise is also available on GitHub.

With the signing of HB25-1040 on Monday, Colorado now defines nuclear as a "clean energy resource" since it doesn't release large amounts of climate-warming emissions. "The category was previously reserved for renewables like wind, solar and geothermal, which don't carry the radioactive stigma that's hobbled fission power plants following disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima," notes Colorado Public Radio. From the report: In an emailed statement, Ally Sullivan, a spokesperson for the governor's office, said the law doesn't advance any specific nuclear energy project, and no utility has proposed building a nuclear power plant in Colorado. It does, however, allow nuclear energy to potentially serve as one piece of the state's plan to tackle climate change. "If nuclear energy becomes sufficiently cost-competitive, it could potentially become part of Colorado's clean energy future. However, it must be conducted safely, without harming communities, depleting other natural resources or replacing other clean energy sources," Sullivan said.

By redefining nuclear energy as "clean," the law would let future fission-based power plants obtain local grants previously reserved for other carbon-free energy sources, and it would allow those projects to contribute to Colorado's renewable energy goals. It also aligns state law with a push to reshape public opinion of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy proponents promise new reactor designs are smaller and safer than hulking power plants built in the 20th century. By embracing those systems, bill supporters claimed Colorado could meet rising energy demand without abandoning its ambitious climate goals.

California has 11.3% of America's population — but bought 30% of America's new zero-emission vehicles. That's according to figures from the California Air Resources Board, which also reports 1 in 4 Californians have chosen a zero-emission car over a gas-powered one... for the last two years in a row.

But what about chargers? It turns out that California now has 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than the number of gasoline nozzles. (California has 178,000 public and "shared" private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.) And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission.

Of the 178,000 public/"shared" private chargers, "Over 162,000 are Level 2 chargers," according to an announcement from the governor's office, while nearly 17,000 are fast chargers. (A chart shows a 41% jump in 2024 — though the EV news site Electrek notes that of the 73,537 chargers added in 2024, nearly 38,000 are newly installed, while the other 35,554 were already plugged in before 2024 but just recently identified.) California approved a $1.4 billion investment plan in December to expand zero-emission transportation infrastructure. The plan funds projects like the Fast Charge California Project, which has earmarked $55 million of funding to install DC fast chargers at businesses and publicly accessible locations.

The U.S. and China "are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker," the Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday, adding that "Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries."

"The time has come for robots," Nvidia's chief executive said at a conference in March, adding "This could very well be the largest industry of all." China's government has said it wants the country to be a world leader in humanoid robots by 2027. "Embodied" AI is listed as a priority of a new $138 billion state venture investment fund, encouraging private-sector investors and companies to pile into the business. It looks like the beginning of a familiar tale. Chinese companies make most of the world's EVs, ships and solar panels — in each case, propelled by government subsidies and friendly regulations. "They have more companies developing humanoids and more government support than anyone else. So, right now, they may have an edge," said Jeff Burnstein [president of the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group in Ann Arbor, Michigan]....

Humanoid robots need three-dimensional data to understand physics, and much of it has to be created from scratch. That is where China has a distinct edge: The country is home to an immense number of factories where humanoid robots can absorb data about the world while performing tasks. "The reason why China is making rapid progress today is because we are combining it with actual applications and iterating and improving rapidly in real scenarios," said Cheng Yuhang, a sales director with Deep Robotics, one of China's robot startups. "This is something the U.S. can't match." UBTech, the startup that is training humanoid robots to sort and carry auto parts, has partnerships with top Chinese automakers including Geely... "A problem can be solved in a month in the lab, but it may only take days in a real environment," said a manager at UBTech...

With China's manufacturing prowess, a locally built robot could eventually cost less than half as much as one built elsewhere, said Ming Hsun Lee, a Bank of America analyst. He said he based his estimates on China's electric-vehicle industry, which has grown rapidly to account for roughly 70% of global EV production. "I think humanoid robots will be another EV industry for China," he said. The UBTech robot system, called Walker S, currently costs hundreds of thousands of dollars including software, according to people close to the company. UBTech plans to deliver 500 to 1,000 of its Walker S robots to clients this year, including the Apple supplier Foxconn. It hopes to increase deliveries to more than 10,000 in 2027.

Few companies outside China have started selling AI-powered humanoid robots. Industry insiders expect the competition to play out over decades, as the robots tackle more-complicated environments, such as private homes.
The article notes "several" U.S. humanoid robot producers, including the startup Figure. And robots from Amazon's Agility Robotics have been tested in Amazon warehouses since 2023. "The U.S. still has advantages in semiconductors, software and some precision components," the article points out.

But "Some lawmakers have urged the White House to ban Chinese humanoids from the U.S. and further restrict Chinese robot makers' access to American technology, citing national-security concerns..."

"I've been dreaming of this moment for 20 years," says Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro. Aptera's solar-powered electric car just drove 300 miles on a single charge.

"We're one step closer to a future where every journey is powered by the sun," Aptera says in their announcement.

"This go around, Aptera took to the highway for the first time ever..." writes the EV blog Electrek. "At one point, Aptera's video noted that its solar EV was pulling over 545 watts of solar input, even though it was overcast."

"Less time searching for chargers," Aptera says in their announcement, adding that their "production-intent" car proved "that a solar EV isn't just a concept for the future, but a real-world solution ready for the present" — while turning Route 66 into "a test bed for a vehicle built to thrive independently..." "The panoramic windshield gives you this incredible view of the landscape," Steve said [in a video accompanying the announcement], describing the drive. "It's like a big picture window into the future."

The final stretch took the team back into California, where they reflected on the journey, the data, and the excited reactions from drivers who caught a glimpse of the vehicle on the road. "Almost everyone we passed had their phones out filming us," Steve laughed. "It's clear that Aptera's design stops traffic — without needing to stop for a charge."
"I was struck by how normal this trip seemed, except for all the gawking from fellow travelers," writes long-time Slashdot reader AirHog. "Best of luck to Aptera to reach their funding and production goals this year for this remarkable vehicle."

They drove on highways to Lake Havasu, and then to California's Imperial Valley — starting in Flagstaff, Arizona on symbolic Route 66. It was 100 years ago that Route 66 was proposed to link Chicago and Los Angeles, which Fambro credits to a visionary who believed in "something bigger than the road itself — believing in what it could unlock for the world." "And they did it. Route 66 became one of the most iconic highways in America, proving that what once seemed improbable could become inevitable.

"I think about that alot with Aptera. We're building something people say can't be done. History shows us the boldest ideas, the ones that challenge that status quo are the ones that truly change the world.
They take their futuristic, tear-dropped shaped "Jetsons" car to a drive-through wildlife refuge named Bearizona. They stop at a general store for some beef jerky. "We're just having a fun time seeing all the sights."

"I've been dreaming of this moment for 20 years," says Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro. "Driving in the most efficient vehicle on the road. Watching the sights go by. I got emotional just taking it all in." "This company. This idea. It's real. It's visceral. And I'm just so proud of each and every person who helped make this dream a reality.

"We have the chance to make a real change in how the world moves. The road hasn't been easy. It's been painful, difficult. And it's brought me to my breaking point sometimes. But being in this moment right now? I can say it's all been worth it...

"I feel we're at the forefront of something truly revolutionary. We're not fighting an uphill battle any more. We're standing at the edge of something incredible. Ready to break through.

"To all of you who supported us, my commitment is this. We're not stopping. We're moving forward with more energy and more passion than ever. The road ahead is an open highway. And the future is ours to shape."
To celebrate Aptera is holding a giveaway for a camping kit, a $100 gift card to their online store, and a free Aptera pre-order to a winner chosen at random from those who subscribe/watch/comment on their new video...

Last week an Air France flight to the Caribbean had to turn around and return to Paris, reports the Washington Post, "after a passenger could not locate their cellphone."

Because of fears that an unattended cellphone could overheat — and because the passenger and crew couldn't find the phone — the Boeing 777 turned around off the coast of France "and returned to the airport, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. It landed back where it started a little more than two hours after taking off, with 375 passengers, 12 cabin crew and two pilots on board..." It was the airline's second Caribbean-bound flight to turn around because of a phone since early February as the aviation industry grapples with the risk of fires sparked by lithium batteries... Air France did not say where on the plane the phone was lost — or where it was ultimately located. "After checks by the maintenance teams, the device was found and the aircraft was able to take off again quickly," the airline said in an unsigned statement. "Air France regrets this situation and reminds that the safety of its customers and crew members is its absolute priority." The plane made it to Guadeloupe, a French overseas territory, about four hours later than scheduled...
The articles notes that U.S. air passengers "are required to keep vape pens and spare lithium batteries, such as portable chargers, in the cabin at all times, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The items are not allowed in checked bags..."

The agency — which handles about 16.4 million flights per year — "says it is aware of 85 lithium battery air incidents involving smoke, fire or extreme heat last year."

Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes: No more burning fossil fuels, playing with fissile material, damming rivers, erecting wind mills, or making solar panels. All of our energy needs could potentially be supplied by the angular kinetic energy of the Earth — and because of the mass of the planet, doing so would slow its rotation down by a mere 7ms per century. [Which is similar to speed changes caused by natural phenomena such as the Moon's pull and changing dynamics inside the planet's core."]

Normally this would be considered impossible as the Earth's large and uniform field does not induce a current in conductors, but researchers believe that a hollow cylinder of manganese, zinc and iron can alter the interaction with our planetary magnetic field and allow the extraction of energy from it. So far, the results are positive but still below the level where they cannot be explained by multiple possible causes of experimental error. Further research is required to confirm the effect.
"The effect was identified only in a carefully crafted device and generated just 17 microvolts," reports Scientific American, "a fraction of the voltage released when a single neuron fires — making it hard to verify that some other effect isn't causing the observations."

But if another group can verify the results, the experiment's lead says the next logical step is trying to scale up the device to generate a useful amount of energy.

U.S. robotics companies, including Tesla and Boston Dynamics, are urging lawmakers to establish a national robotics strategy to keep pace with China's aggressive investment in AI-driven robotics. The Associated Press reports: Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of humanoid startup Apptronik, of Austin, Texas, pointed out to lawmakers that it was American carmaker General Motors that deployed the first industrial robot at a New Jersey assembly plant in 1961. But the U.S. then ceded its early lead to Japan, which remains a powerhouse of industrial robotics, along with Europe. The next robotics race will be powered by artificial intelligence and will be "anybody's to win," Cardenas said in an interview after the closed-door meeting. "I think the U.S. has a great chance of winning. We're leading in AI, and I think we're building some of the best robots in the world. But we need a national strategy if we're going to continue to build and stay ahead."

The Association for Advancing Automation said a national strategy would help U.S. companies scale production and drive the adoption of robots as the "physical manifestation" of AI. The group made it clear that China and several other countries already have a plan in place. Without that leadership, "the U.S. will not only lose the robotics race but also the AI race," the association said in a statement. The group also suggested tax incentives to help drive adoption, along with federally-funded training programs and funding for both academic research and commercial innovation. A new federal robotics office, the association argued, is necessary partly because of "the increasing global competition in the space" as well as the "growing sophistication" of the technology.

MojoKid writes: Similar to Nvidia's recent desktop graphics launches, there are four initial GeForce RTX 50 series laptop GPUs coming to market, starting this month. At the top of the stack is the GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU, which is equipped with 10,496 CUDA cores and is paired to 24GB of memory. Boost clocks top out around 2,160MHz and GPU power can range from 95-150 watts, depending on the particular laptop model. GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs for both laptops and desktops feature updated shader cores with support for neural shading, in addition to 4th gen ray tracing cores and 5th gen Tensor cores with support for DLSS 4. The GeForce RTX 50 series features a native PCIe gen 5 interface, in addition to support for DisplayPort 2.1b (up to UHBR20). These GPUs are also fed by the latest high speed GDDR7 memory, which offers efficiency benefits that are pertinent to laptop designs as well. Performance-wise, NVIDIA's mobile GeForce RTX 5090 is the new king of the hill in gaming laptops, and it easily bests all other discrete mobile graphics options on the market currently.

The U.S. has added 80 entities to its export blacklist to prevent China from acquiring advanced American chips for military development, including AI, quantum tech, and hypersonic weapons. The Verge reports: More than 50 of the new entities added to the list are based in China, with others located in Iran, Taiwan, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. BIS says the restrictions have been applied to entities that acted "contrary to US national security and foreign policy," and are intended to hinder China's ability to develop high-performance computing capabilities, quantum technologies, advanced artificial intelligence, and hypersonic weapons.

Six of the newly blacklisted entities are subsidiaries of Inspur Group -- China's leading cloud computing service provider and a major customer for US chip makers such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel -- which BIS alleges had contributed to projects developing supercomputers for the Chinese military. The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence is another addition to the list, which has criticized its inclusion. "American technology should never be used against the American people," said Jeffrey Kessler, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. "BIS is sending a clear, resounding message that the Trump administration will work tirelessly to safeguard our national security by preventing U.S. technologies and goods from being misused for high performance computing, hypersonic missiles, military aircraft training, and UAVs that threaten our national security."

"In a conversation with Tony Yu from Asus China, AMD CEO Lisa Su shared that the Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards have quickly become a huge hit, breaking records as AMD's top-selling GPUs within just a week of release," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. TechSpot reports: AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed that the company's new Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards have been a massive success, selling 10 times more units than their predecessors in just one week on the market. Su also stated that more RDNA 4 cards are on the way, but did not confirm whether the lineup will include the rumored Radeon RX 9060. When asked about the limited availability of the new cards, Su said that AMD is ramping up production to ensure greater supply at retailers worldwide. She also expressed hope that increased availability would help stabilize pricing by discouraging scalping and price gouging.

"China is considering trying to blunt greater U.S. tariffs and other trade barriers," reports the Wall Street Journal, "by offering to curb the quantity of certain goods exported to the U.S., according to advisers to the Chinese government." Tokyo's adoption of so-called voluntary export restraints, or VERs, to limit its auto shipments to the U.S. in the 1980s helped prevent Washington from imposing higher import duties. A similar move from Beijing, especially in sectors of key concern to Washington, like electric vehicles and batteries, would mitigate criticism from the U.S. and others over China's "economic imbalances": heavily subsidized companies making stuff for slim profits but saturating global markets, to the detriment of other countries' manufacturers...

The Xi leadership has indicated a desire to cut a deal with the Trump administration to head off greater trade attacks... Similar to Japan, the Chinese advisers say, Beijing may also consider negotiating export restraints on EVs and batteries in return for investment opportunities in those sectors in the U.S. In some officials' views, they say, that might be an attractive offer to Trump, who at times has indicated an openness to more Chinese investment in the U.S. even though members of his administration firmly oppose it.
The article notes agreements like this are also hard to enforce, "particularly when Chinese companies export to the U.S. from third countries including Mexico and Vietnam."

A United States District Court judge has approved a settlement between HP and customers who sued the company for firmware updates that prevented printers from working with non-HP ink cartridges.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in December 2020, alleged HP "wrongfully compels users" to buy only HP ink by issuing updates that block competitors' cartridges. Under the settlement, HP admits no wrongdoing and won't pay monetary damages to affected customers, though it will pay $5,000 each to the three plaintiffs and $725,000 in attorneys' fees.

HP has agreed to allow users of specific printer models impacted by the November 2020 update to decline firmware updates containing "Dynamic Security" features -- HP's term for technology that blocks cartridges using non-HP chips. The settlement applies only to 21 specific printer models, leaving numerous other HP printers subject to Dynamic Security restrictions. HP has previously paid millions in similar cases in Europe, Australia, and California related to printer bricking.

During the company's GTC 2025 keynote today, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced Isaac GR00T N1 -- the company's first open-source, pre-trained yet customizable foundation model designed to accelerate the development and capabilities of humanoid robots. "The age of generalist robotics is here," said Huang. "With Nvidia Isaac GR00T N1 and new data-generation and robot-learning frameworks, robotics developers everywhere will open the next frontier in the age of AI." The Verge reports: Huang demonstrated 1X's NEO Gamma humanoid robot performing autonomous tidying jobs using a post-trained policy built on the GR00T N1 model. [...] Other companies developing humanoid robots who have had early access to the GR00T N1 model include Boston Dynamics, the creators of Atlas; Agility Robotics; Mentee Robotics; and Neura Robotics. Originally announced as Project GR00T a year ago, the GR00T N1 foundation model utilizes a dual-system architecture inspired by human cognition.

System 1, as Nvidia calls it, is described as a "fast-thinking action model" that behaves similarly to human reflexes and intuition. It was trained on data collected through human demonstrations and synthetic data generated by Nvidia's Omniverse platform. System 2, which is powered by a vision language model, is a "slow-thinking model" that "reasons about its environment and the instructions it has received to plan actions." Those plans are passed along to System 1, which translates them into "precise, continuous robot movements" that include grasping, moving objects with one or two arms, as well as more complex multistep tasks that involve combinations of basic skills.

While the GR00T N1 foundation model is pretrained with generalized humanoid reasoning and skills, developers can customize its behavior and capabilities for specific needs by post-training it with data gathered from human demonstrations or simulations. Nvidia has made GR00T N1 training data and task evaluation scenarios available for download through Hugging Face and GitHub.