An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Solar generated more U.S. electricity than coal for the first month on record in May 2026, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember. Solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity during the month, while coal dropped to 12.2%. That's a dramatic shift in the U.S. power mix. Just five years ago, coal generated 19.7% of U.S. electricity in May, while solar accounted for only 5.4%. U.S. solar generation hit a record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May 2026, up 17% from May 2025 and higher than the previous record set last July. Ember says another record could be broken again this summer.

Solar output usually peaks in June or July, but its share of the electricity mix is often highest in spring, when strong sunshine lines up with milder temperatures before summer cooling demand ramps up. May was also the first time solar became the third-largest individual source of electricity in the U.S., behind only natural gas and nuclear. (If solar is included with all other renewables, then they're the second-largest source of electricity as an overall category of electricity.) Meanwhile, coal keeps sliding (and will continue to slide). Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Output rose slightly in May to 43.4 TWh, but it was still 11% lower than May 2025 levels. Even with that small rebound, coal couldn't keep pace with solar's rapid growth.

BYD plans to install 3,000 ultra-fast "Flash Chargers" across Europe by the end of 2027, with the first stations already appearing in Germany and the UK. The Verge reports: At an estimated cost of 580,000 euros (about $670,000) per charger according to the Financial Times, that would mean a total spend of roughly $2 billion to install the network. The 1,500kW charging stations are significantly more powerful than Tesla's 500kW V4 Superchargers, though Tesla already has 20,000 chargers installed in Europe. BYD, which has been steadily overtaking Tesla in global sales, says its chargers shouldn't add undue strain to the energy grid, as they'll charge cars from batteries which can be topped up overnight.

Any car with a standard CCS charge port can use the Flash Chargers, though only BYD cars equipped with the company's new Blade Battery can hit the top speeds. Right now there's only one of those in Europe, the 115,000 euros ($133,000) Denza Z9 GT -- it charges to 70 percent in five minutes on the new chargers.

Commonwealth Fusion has published five peer-reviewed papers laying out the physics case for ARC, its planned 400 MW fusion power plant, which would follow the company's smaller SPARC tokamak now under construction. The papers suggest ARC could produce more energy than it consumes using high-temperature superconducting magnets, molten-salt heat extraction, and 15-minute fusion pulses. Ars Technica reports: ARC will be a tokamak that hosts fusion between hydrogen's two heavier isotopes, deuterium and tritium. This reaction results in a helium nucleus and releases a neutron and radiation. The helium transfers heat to the plasma, maintaining the conditions needed for fusion, but it is otherwise a waste product, referred to as "ash" in the fusion context. The neutron and radiation, however, are put to use. Part of that use is simply imparting energy into a blanket of molten salt that surrounds the fusion chamber. That energy, in the form of heat, will be used to drive a turbine that produces the electricity. The molten salt includes lithium ions; when one lithium isotope absorbs a neutron, it decays into more helium, plus tritium that can be used as fuel for the reactor. There are isotopes present that will also release additional neutrons, allowing this process to generate sufficient fuel.

Overall, the present design of ARC is expected to produce about 1.13 GW of fusion power, with 500 MW of that extracted as electricity. Some of that (100 MW) will be needed to power the plant's operations, leaving 400 MW to be sent to the grid. The rest of the energy is either kept in the tokamak to maintain the fusion reactions or lost due to inefficiencies in the heat and energy transfer of the system. There's a lot of uncertainty about these numbers; the 1.13 GW is just the center of a range of potential values running from 900 MW to 1.3 GW, so the 400 MW output may need to be adjusted up or down accordingly.

Some of that 400 MW comes during periods where fusion is not occurring. The nuclear reactions will occur within 15-minute-long periods that will be interspersed with one minute resets. The resets are meant to be kept short enough that nothing has much of a chance to cool down before it gets heated up again -- thermal inertia will let it continue generating power. That will be one of the key differentiators with SPARC, which doesn't have the heat extraction needed to maintain stable fusion for these long time periods, and so can't maintain the near constant temperatures needed for reliable power generation.

It's inevitable that parts of the device will be exposed to radiation and perhaps fusion plasma. The inner walls of the reactor will be shielded by tungsten, which will limit erosion by the conditions. Meanwhile, the vacuum vessel is designed to be replaced every one to two years. The papers note that this flexibility will allow them to make some design changes even after ARC is built. To enable this, the whole tokamak is meant to split in half for maintenance.

A battery researcher's investigation, backed by more than 20 independent experts, claims Donut Lab's much-hyped "solid-state" battery is actually a conventional lithium-ion cell, with voltage curves and expansion data matching high-nickel NCM chemistry rather than the promised sodium-ion solid-state design. Electrek reports the company raised about $25 million from more than 1,300 mostly small investors on claims of 400 Wh/kg energy density, 100,000-cycle life, and 5-minute charging that now appear unsupported. From the report: The investigation consulted over 20 independent battery experts, including Julian Zanau from the Fraunhofer Research Institute, Dr. Yahim San from Justus-Liebig University, Tom Bicha from Leona, and Dr. Yuo Hesca from Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences. Every single one confirmed the tested cell is lithium-ion. There are two key pieces of evidence. First, the voltage curves from VTT testing match high-nickel lithium-ion cells (NCM chemistry). The cell sits at 3.7-3.8 volts at 50% state of charge -- right where lithium-ion cells operate. Sodium-ion cells don't go significantly past 3.5 volts at 50% SOC.

The second piece of evidence is even more damning: VTT's cell expansion data. When a battery charges, ions squeeze into the anode material, causing it to expand in a predictable pattern. A graphite anode produces a distinctive "kink" in the expansion curve around 50-70% state of charge, caused by how ions reorder themselves in graphite's layered structure. The Donut Lab cell shows exactly that kink.

This is critical because sodium ions are physically too large to fit into graphite layers. The graphite anode signature proves the cell uses lithium ions. The investigation puts it well: "it's like we have a slightly noisy fingerprint and a picture of the suspect's face. And yet again, it's a match." The calculated energy density? About 298 Wh/kg -- what you'd expect from a good lithium-ion cell, not the 400 Wh/kg claimed.

The investigation reveals that the battery technology traces back to CT Coatings, a German company with an "eclectic" array of patents -- including inventions for screen-printed paving slabs, menu folders, and warning triangles. CT Coatings promised Nordic Nano and Donut Lab a screen-printed sodium-ion solid-state battery. What it delivered was a lithium-ion pouch cell.

Reuters reports: Several large data centers and crypto facilities planning to connect to the Texas power grid ahead of peak summer demand have failed key reliability tests, raising the risk of power outages just as electricity use hits its seasonal high, according to the state grid operator... Unlike traditional industrial customers, which tend to draw electricity steadily and predictably, data centers are engineered to cut their connection to the grid at the first sign of trouble to protect their equipment and keep services running. That makes them an unpredictable and potentially destabilizing force on grids already under pressure from rising demand. Four groups of unnamed large electricity users, including data centers, abruptly disconnected from the Texas grid during a test of how they would handle routine voltage disturbances, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said in a report dated May 21.

When large customers abruptly cut their power use, it can knock the grid off balance and trigger wider outages. ERCOT, which manages electricity for most of Texas, said it reviewed about 20 gigawatts of large customers seeking to connect to the system, including eight projects totaling roughly 3.9 gigawatts aiming to start up before July 1. It said it identified four groups of large power users that could each trigger more than 5,000 megawatts of demand tripping under certain fault conditions, based on simulations of transmission system disturbances. Those abrupt drops in demand were equivalent to the electricity consumption of a large city such as Boston.

Sales have increased for Hyundai's under-$35,000 IONIQ 5, totalling 18,395 for the first five months of 2026, reports Electrek, "up 16% from the same period last year."

But meanwhile BYD's overseas sales surpassed 160,000 for the first time last month, "up 80% from May 2025 and 19% from the previous record of 135,098 set in April." Through the first five months of 2026, BYD sold 616,263 vehicles overseas. In May, overseas sales accounted for over 41% of BYD's total sales. In several major markets, including the UK, BYD surpassed Tesla and Kia to become the best-selling EV brand through April. "With fuel prices remaining high, more drivers are turning to electric vehicles as a smarter and more economical choice," Bono Ge, BYD UK's Country Manager, said last month.
Elsewhere Electrek notes that Toyota's bZ (starting at under $35,000) was the third-best-selling EV in the U.S. in the first three months of 2026, behind only the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y. "Last month, bZ sales doubled from May 2025, with 2,646 units sold."

And meanwhile the first Volkswagen ID. Polo and Cupra Raval models "rolled off the production line at the Group's Martorell plant in Spain, the first of several new affordable, mass-market EVs." Starting at €24,995 ($29,000) and €26,000 ($30,100), the ID. Polo and Cupra Raval are the first models from the Group's Electric Urban Car Family...

[T]he first customer deliveries are scheduled to begin later this summer and into the fall. Following the ID. Polo and Cupra Raval, Volkswagen will introduce new members to the Electric Urban Car Family, including the ID. Cross, an electric version of the T-Cross, later this year. According to Volkswagen, the ID. Cross will start at around €28,000 ($32,500).

From Android Authority: Singapore-based BMX has announced that its SolidSafe magnetic power bank lineup, first showcased at CES 2026, is now available for purchase through its website and Amazon US, with prices starting at $59. What sets these power banks apart is their use of semi-solid-state batteries. Traditional lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries rely on liquid electrolytes to move energy between electrodes. Semi-solid-state batteries significantly reduce the amount of flammable liquid inside the cell, improving thermal stability and lowering the risk of overheating, swelling, or fire...

BMX says the power banks are designed to remain stable under extreme conditions and show greater resistance to physical damage and thermal stress than conventional battery packs. The company has also launched the SolidSafe Air, a 5,000mAh magnetic power bank that it claims is the world's thinnest semi-solid-state Qi2 power bank... BMX is positioning the device as a travel-friendly alternative for users who want added safety and the convenience of a magnetic battery pack without the bulk.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just over a year ago, the Trump Administration issued an executive order meant to accelerate the development of nuclear power in the US. While an entire startup ecosystem has developed around the use of different -- and typically smaller -- reactor designs, only one of them has been fully licensed so far, and there are no plans to actually build any instances of that design.

The executive order directed the Department of Energy to have three different reactor designs reach criticality in a bit over a year. On Thursday, a startup called Antares announced that a test reactor it had placed at the Idaho National Laboratory had reached criticality, making it the first new design to cross this threshold. Criticality means that the nuclear reactions inside the hardware had become self sustaining; it does not mean the reactor had started to generate power. [...]

At the moment, Antares is just testing what it calls a Mark 0 reactor, which is not connected to the power-generation portion. Instead, it's being used to validate the company's modeling of the physical conditions in its reactors and generate safety data that can be used during licensing applications. Attempts to run the entire system, including electrical generation, are expected to happen next year. While the work was done at a Department of Energy Lab, the company is working with the Department of Defense's Project Pele program for developing a mobile nuclear reactor. The company has also received support from NASA.

Ahead of its upcoming IPO, SpaceX announced that Google will pay the company $920 million per month for access to roughly 110,000 Nvidia GPUs and related compute infrastructure. Google says the agreement is short-term "bridge capacity" to meet stronger-than-expected demand for Gemini Enterprise, while SpaceX is using deals like this and its Anthropic contract to bolster its pitch for a historic public offering. TechCrunch reports: The deal is similar in length and scope to the one SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May. As part of that deal, Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through 2029 to rent all the available compute from its Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee that xAI -- now part of SpaceX -- originally built for its own artificial intelligence efforts.

Google's deal appears to be paying for roughly half the amount of compute that Anthropic has access to at Colossus 1. SpaceX didn't say which specific data center Google would be using. CEO Elon Musk has previously suggested his company would reserve the Colossus 2 data center for xAI. Anthropic was significantly limited in its compute capacity prior to its deal with SpaceX, raising usage limits on the same day the deal was announced. Google is in a very different position, with some estimates naming it as the world's largest single owner of AI compute.

[...] Also like the Anthropic deal, the agreement with Google includes a cancellation clause. Both SpaceX and Google have the option to terminate the agreement with 90 days notice after December 31, 2026. Google's access to the data center will ramp up "through September at a reduced fee," according to the filing. "If we fail to deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, then following a one-month grace period, Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided" with a reduction in the monthly fees, it reads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you're not aware, not very good for the public interest. Four months later and Nieman Lab now notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has soared to around 340 organizations:

"Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive's ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the "vulture hedge fund" Alden Global Capital."

[...] Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab: "I cover news within a larger news desert in New York's Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets," wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent petition signed by over 200 journalists. "Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do." The Internet Archive says it is listening to the concerns raised by local news outlets, while also partnering with journalism groups to train hundreds of newsrooms on archival preservation: "In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The initiative, funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive's services by the end of 2027."

Valve says its long-awaited Steam Machine and Steam Frame are both "shipping this summer." The company is also expanding its Verified program beyond Steam Deck to cover the new hardware. "Steam Verified is a developer-focused program where game makers ensure that their titles are capable of running on the Deck (meaning they'll run fine under Linux), that the UI elements and text are readable at standard resolutions, and that sensible default graphics settings are used," notes Tom's Hardware. From the report: The news should ease the worries of many an expecting gamer, given today's constant worries about AI servers slurping every RAM and NAND chip on the face of the earth, as well as Valve's own statements about component scarcity delaying the release. Plus, the company always works on its own schedule, so much so that Valve Time is a term.

The release of the Machine has been taking flak, given that while Valve was initially hoping for an estimated $600 to $800 price -- in the ballpark of the higher-end consoles -- the rumored pricing is climbing around or over $1000. This fact is somewhat corroborated by a February statement from a Valve executive who, like most anyone in the world, stated the price revision was due to the AI-driven component shortage.

Waymo and B2U Storage Solutions have struck a "strategic supply agreement" to repurpose used batteries from Waymo's electric robotaxi fleet into stationary storage for California and Texas power grids. The arrangement could give robotaxi batteries a second life storing renewable energy after they're no longer suitable for vehicle use. It will also "support B2U projects in regions where Waymo's autonomous robotaxis operate -- meaning the used Waymo batteries could bolster the local power grids that Waymo vehicles rely upon for charging," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Waymo's "proactive maintenance" for its autonomous vehicles includes identifying opportunities to "refresh the battery to improve efficiency overall for our fleet," Adam Lenz, head of sustainability and environment at Waymo, told Ars. "That's when we look to these second-life applications, because there's still a lot of life left in the battery," he said.

Waymo did not specify the average mileage at which it swaps out batteries or retires vehicles from service. But Waymo robotaxis drive around much more each day than the typical EV, which means the Waymo fleet is likely to experience faster usage-related degradation of battery capacity over time. The company confirmed to Ars that "some of these vehicles have now been serving riders for years and have mileage beyond what a normal consumer drives."

[...] "Put a little haircut on that in terms of degradation and the effective capacity that would be left in those batteries when they're suitable for repurposing, and we're still talking about pretty significant capacity per battery," Hall said. The growing Waymo robotaxi fleet could lead to "pretty large numbers in terms of megawatt hours of capacity that can be deployed pretty quickly" for stationary energy storage supporting power grids, he suggested.

The agreement gives Waymo discretion over when and how many used batteries will be turned over to B2U. But the companies confirmed that B2U has "already started receiving smaller initial quantities of batteries" from the Waymo fleet. Over time, the agreement could give B2U "hundreds of megawatt-hours" of additional storage capacity from Waymo's thousands of electric vehicles, Lenz said.

According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has reportedly doubled 2026 MacBook Neo production from 5 million to 10 million units after stronger-than-expected demand for its $599 budget laptop. MacRumors reports: On an earnings call in late April, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said that customer response to the MacBook Neo was "off the charts," and the popularity of the laptop has reportedly led the company to significantly boost production. [...] Apple was very optimistic about the MacBook Neo before announcing it, but the company still "undercalled" the level of enthusiasm that the laptop would generate, according to Cook. He said that MacBook Neo demand exceeded Apple's expectations and helped to drive a record number of first-time Mac buyers last quarter.

New figures from market research firm IDC support Apple's claim that the MacBook Neo is selling well, and the Windows PC industry has taken notice. For example, Dell recently introduced a redesigned XPS 13 laptop from $699 and said it has features "you won't find on a MacBook Neo," such as a touch screen and a backlit keyboard. "Apple's MacBook Neo is a capable machine, and its arrival confirms that there's real appetite for premium quality at accessible prices," admitted Dell.

Google has launched Gemma 4 12B, a 12-billion-parameter open AI model designed to run locally on your laptop without depending entirely on cloud infrastructure. WION reports: According to Google, the new model delivers performance close to much larger AI systems while requiring significantly less memory. The company says Gemma 4 12B can run locally on devices equipped with just 16GB of VRAM, making advanced AI more accessible to developers, researchers and businesses. The launch highlights a growing trend across the AI industry: bringing powerful AI models directly to personal computers instead of relying solely on remote data centers.

Gemma is Google's family of open AI models built using technology and research from its Gemini program. The new Gemma 4 12B model contains 12 billion parameters and has been designed to handle multiple types of information, including text, images and audio. Unlike traditional AI systems that focus only on text, Gemma 4 12B can understand visual content, process audio inputs and perform advanced reasoning tasks. This makes it suitable for a wider range of applications, from software development and content creation to research and automation. Google says the model is available under the Apache 2.0 licence, allowing developers and organizations to use, modify and deploy it with relatively few restrictions.

[...] One of the most significant technical changes in Gemma 4 12B is its new unified architecture. Traditionally, multimodal AI systems use separate components known as encoders to process images, audio and text before combining the information. Google says Gemma 4 12B removes the need for separate multimodal encoders. Instead, the model processes different types of information through a unified architecture. According to the company, this helps improve efficiency while reducing memory requirements and computational overhead. The result is a model that can deliver advanced multimodal capabilities while remaining small enough to run locally on modern hardware.

Google has released (PDF) technical specs and 2D CAD drawings for the Fitbit Air to encourage users to make their own accessories. "These CAD drawings include crucial mating dimensions, tolerances, and mating force specifications -- including attach and detach force -- to help you build a high-quality accessory band," Google says on a store page listing. 9to5Google reports: Noting how the "community has already come up with innovative and creative new ideas to make the Fitbit Air [their] own" since launch last month, Google is "officially releasing the hardware specifications and accessory design guidelines for the Fitbit Air tracker to the public." For example, owners have already found their own bicep band solutions. This information would typically just be available for third-party accessory companies, but Google wants to open things up to "independent designers and artisan makers." The Google Store page also lists other things developers should keep in mind, such as sensor clearance, sensor pressure, secure retention, and skin-friendly materials.