According to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), solar, wind and other green technologies now provide more than one-third of the world's power, marking another record. The Guardian reports: Fossil fuel power plants are in decline in Europe and the U.S., with more decommissioned than built in 2019. But the number of coal and gas plants grew in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In the Middle East, which owns half the world's oil reserves, just 26% of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 was renewable. The world has invested about $3 trillion in renewables over the past decade, according to Irena, but annual investments must double by 2030 to tackle the climate emergency.

The Irena data shows the increase in new renewable energy capacity slowed slightly in 2019 - from 179GW to 176GW -- but that new fossil fuel power also fell. The total green energy installed to date around the world grew by 7.6%, with the UK's total rising 6.1%. The UK is now 11th in the world for installed renewables. New solar power provided 55% of the new capacity, most of which was installed in Asia, with China, India, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam leading the way. Other major increases were seen in the U.S., Australia, Spain, Germany and Ukraine. Wind power made up 34% of the total, with almost half in China and significant additions in the U.S. Global wind power capacity remains just ahead of solar, with 95% being onshore turbines. Other green technologies -- hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal and marine energy -- all grew modestly year-on-year. While small compared with solar and wind power, geothermal energy -- tapping the heat of deep rocks -- is growing, with Turkey, Indonesia and Kenya leading the way.

NVIDIA is using its background in AI and optimizing supercomputer throughput to the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium group, which plans to support researchers by giving them time with 30 supercomputers offering a combined 400 petaflops of performance. Engadget reports: NVIDIA will add to this by providing expertise in AI, biology and large-scale computing optimizations. The company likened the Consortium's efforts to the Moon race. Ideally, this will speed up work for scientists who need modelling and other demanding tasks that would otherwise take a long time. NVIDIA has a number of existing contributions to coronavirus research, including the 27,000 GPUs inside the Summit supercomputer and those inside many of the computers from the crowdsourced Folding@Home project. This is still a significant step forward, though, and might prove lifesaving if it leads to a vaccine or more effective containment.

"From face-shields to respirator valves, 3-D printer owners pitch in to the efforts to provide PPE to Australian hospitals," writes davecb (Slashdot reader #6,526).

It's not only happening in Australia. But the Guardian talked to Mat Bowtell, a former Toyota engineer in Australia who's using fourteen 3D printers to manufacture thousands of face shields for healthcare workers. And citing 3D printing, the director of a not-for-profit working with the government says the country has an "incredible onshore capability" to respond to the pandemic: "The 3D printing capability onshore is a massive distinguisher for Australia to step up to the crisis," he said. When asked how else 3D printing might be deployed in practice, Goennemann points to the supply of ventilators, which are needed to assist breathing in the most seriously ill Covid-19 patients... Goennemann says Resmed, the main ventilator manufacturer, could struggle to get parts due to the disruption of global supply chains. That's where 3D printing can help. "I don't want to speak on behalf of Resmed, but that's an area where we have critical supply, and parts can be 3D printed onshore rather than being procured offshore," he said...

For Bowtell, the decision to shift his production to face shields had nothing to do with profit. It was about doing what he could in the most extraordinary of times. "It's about survival at the moment," Bowtell said. "Just helping people to get through this together."
Reuters also reported that one Italian company used its 3D printers to manufacture valves for respirators for its local hospital. And a paywalled article at Fortune also describes the team building an open source ventilator, while also noting that more than 4,800 people with 3D printers "have, via a public Google Doc, signed up to help print everything from face shields to ventilator parts for their local hospitals."

They also highlight Budmen Industries, an upstate New York company selling 3D printers that has now also printed 1,492 face shields for New York medical workers. And finally there's the CoVent-19 Challenge, "an open innovation 8-week Grand Challenge for engineers, innovators, designers, and makers" on the GrabCAD Challenges platform, to create "a rapidly deployable, minimum viable mechanical ventilator for patients with COVID-19 related ventilator-dependent lung injury."

Honda has done what no other car maker is doing, and returned to analogue controls for some functions on the new Honda Jazz. Autocar reports: While most manufacturers are moving to touchscreen controls, identifying smartphone use as their inspiration - most recently seen in Audi's latest A3 - Honda has decided to reintroduce heating and air conditioning controls via a dial rather than touchscreen, as in the previous-generation Jazz.

Jazz project leader Takeki Tanaka explained: "The reason is quite simple -- we wanted to minimize driver disruption for operation, in particular, for the heater and air conditioning. We changed it from touchscreen to dial operation, as we received customer feedback that it was difficult to operate intuitively. You had to look at the screen to change the heater seating, therefore, we changed it so one can operate it without looking, giving more confidence while driving."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: D-Wave today made its quantum computers available for free to researchers and developers working on responses to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. D-Wave partners and customers Cineca, Denso, Forschungszentrum Julich, Kyocera, MDR, Menten AI, NEC, OTI Lumionics, QAR Lab at LMU Munich, Sigma-i, Tohoku University, and Volkswagen are also offering to help. They will provide access to their engineering teams with expertise on how to use quantum computers, formulate problems, and develop solutions.

Quantum computing leverages qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave was the first company to sell commercial quantum computers, which are built to use quantum annealing. D-Wave says the move to make access free is a response to a cross-industry request from the Canadian government for solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Free and unlimited commercial contract-level access to D-Wave's quantum computers is available in 35 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia via Leap, the company's quantum cloud service. Just last month, D-Wave debuted Leap 2, which includes a hybrid solver service and solves problems of up to 10,000 variables.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: South Korean panel maker Samsung Display has decided to end all of its production of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in South Korea and China by end of this year, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. Samsung Display, a unit of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, said in October that it suspended one of its two LCD production lines at home amid falling demand for LCD panels and a supply glut. 'We will supply LCD orders to our customers by end of this year without any issues', the company said in a statement.

Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: This weekend, Microsoft has given an insight into the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on its services. The company says that there has been a huge increase in Teams usage, and there are now over 44 million daily users. In regions where there are isolation and home sheltering orders in place, Microsoft says that there has been a colossal 775 percent increase in usage of its cloud services. While there have not yet been any significant service disruptions, Microsoft says it has plans to increase capacity: "We are expediting the addition of significant new capacity that will be available in the weeks ahead. Concurrently, we monitor support requests and, if needed, encourage customers to consider alternative regions or alternative resource types, depending on their timeline and requirements. If the implementation of these efforts to alleviate demand is not sufficient, customers may experience intermittent deployment related issues. When this does happen, impacted customers will be informed via Azure Service Health."

The Global Wind Energy Council, an industry trade organization, released its review of the market in 2019. During the past year, wind power saw its second-largest amount of new installed capacity ever, with over 60GW going in. From a report: But the news going forward is a bit more uncertain, with the report predicting that after years of double-digit growth, the industry would see things tail off into steady-but-unspectacular territory. And that prediction was made before many key markets started dealing with the coronavirus. Wind power is now one of the cheapest options for generating electricity. In many areas of the globe, building and maintaining wind power is cheaper per unit of power than it is to fuel a previously constructed fossil fuel plant. While offshore wind remains more expensive, its prices have dropped dramatically over the last several years, and it is rapidly approaching price parity with fossil fuels.

In the journal Science Robotics, an international group of robotic experts wrote an editorial arguing COVID-19 "may drive further research in robotics to address risks of infectious diseases," and urging more funding.

The Washington Post reports: Robots already have been enlisted in the fight against the virus. In Hong Kong, a fleet of miniature robots disinfects the city's subways; in China, an entire field hospital was staffed by robots designed to relieve overworked health-care workers. In the United States, robots played a role in the country's first known case of covid-19. One outfitted with a stethoscope and a microphone was used with a 35-year-old man in Everett, Washington, who was confined to an isolated unit after showing symptoms of the coronavirus. He later made a full recovery. "Already, we have seen robots being deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring vital signs, and assisting border controls," the researchers write.

They identify plenty of other ways to use robots in the pandemic response. Robots could assist with testing and screening; already, researchers have created a device that can identify a suitable vein and perform a blood draw. Or they could take over hospital disinfection entirely, providing continuous sterilization of high-touch areas with UV light.

The researchers hope covid-19 will catalyze robotics research for the sake of public health.

"Gisele Huff is convinced universal basic income is finally having its moment," reports the Bay Area newsgroup, describing the 84-year-old president of a nonprofit promoting universal basic incomes to honor their recently-deceased son, a Tesla software engineer: While Huff's organization is only a few years old, it has already made its mark in the Bay Area. Santa Clara County's Board of Supervisors is considering a pilot program that would provide youth exiting foster care with a basic $1,000 monthly income. If approved later this year, the program would likely be the first of its kind in the nation...

Q: Different people have different ideas about what exactly UBI should look like. What's yours?

A: It would be $1,000 a month and it runs like social security. It's an automatic system. All you need is a bank account. So UBI is a direct payment to your bank account on a monthly basis. It has no requirements. When you're 18 it starts and it goes on until you die.

Q: And everyone would get the same amount? Including the wealthiest households?

A: Yes. For the people who are wealthy, it will disappear because $1,000 doesn't mean anything. But it will mean the world for the people who are so marginalized now, like foster kids or abused women who can't leave a situation because they don't have a dime to their name. It is a huge incentive for people to move on, to do things, take risks that they would not do before.

Q: Some critics of UBI say that it could incentivize people not to work, because no matter what they do they will get a monthly paycheck. What is your response?

A: If you have a job, you're not going to stop working for $1,000 a month. What you're going to do is you're going to tell your boss: "No, I'm not doing this because it's not acceptable and I have $1,000 dollars that I can use for the next two months until I find a better job." So if you want that job done as a boss, you're going to have to improve the conditions or the pay...."

Q: And your son was concerned about those same issues? How did he come to his perspective on UBI?

A: Gerald was the software engineer for the Model 3 Tesla. So he has been a techie all of his life and what really spurred him on to look into this in a deeper way was his fear of technological unemployment. The robots are coming. And the potential of that technology is what Gerald was aware of — it's immense.

"Averaged over the globe, electric vehicles (EVs) already represent about a 31-percent emissions savings" writes Ars Technica, noting results from a study which also found similar savings from energy-efficient home-heating pumps. "Even in the scenario where these technologies are promoted but the grid isn't cleaned up much, there's a substantial benefit through 2050."

But the researchers also separated the world into 59 regions, then used data on the "greenness" of each country's electricity grids, considering the full range of available vehicle types and home-heating methods as well as their predicted "uptake" of green technologies from 2015 to 2050. And this did identify a handful exceptions, Ars Technica reports: Compare, for example, Switzerland's exceptionally low-carbon grid to Estonia's, which runs primarily on oil shale. Swapping an internal combustion vehicle for an electric one in Switzerland cuts emissions by 70 percent, and a heat pump will cut them by about 88 percent. But in Estonia, an electric vehicle would increase emissions by 40 percent and a heat pump pushes that to an eye-watering 120 percent. A more significant exception can be found in Japan. In the scenarios with little progress on grid emissions, a decade from now, the combination of Japan's dirtier grid and preference for hybrid vehicles means that swapping in EVs doesn't quite pay...

As time goes on, emissions from manufacturing electric vehicles accounts for a larger share of their total life cycle emissions, the researchers note. You can make the vehicle efficient and the grid clean, but you'll also have to clean up industry to keep shrinking that carbon footprint.
The article notes that the researchers also predict continued improvements in the efficiency of electric vehicles -- with an unintended side effect. "As time goes on, emissions from manufacturing electric vehicles accounts for a larger share of their total life cycle emissions, the researchers note.

"You can make the vehicle efficient and the grid clean, but you'll also have to clean up industry to keep shrinking that carbon footprint."

Senior U.S. government officials have agreed to new rules to cut off Huawei from global chip suppliers, according to a Reuters report Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. CNET reports: Under the new measures, foreign companies that use American chipmaking equipment would first need to secure a license before supplying some chips to Huawei, the report says. The focus of the new rules is to restrict the sale of more sophisticated chips to the Chinese telecom giant rather than generic, more widely available chips. Trump hasn't signed off on the proposed new measures yet, but if he does, a slew of US tech companies stand to lose, like Apple and Qualcomm along with Huawei. It could also negatively impact the world's largest chipmaker, Taiwan's TSMC, the report says.

Most 5G phones offer big batteries owing to the increased power consumption of early 5G modems and connectivity. But just how much more power does a 5G phone need over a 4G device? From a report: Redmi general manager Lu Weibing has taken to Weibo to answer this question, claiming that 5G phones consume ~20% more power than a 4G phone. This suggests that a 20% increase in battery size is needed for a 5G phone to achieve the same endurance as a 4G variant (assuming everything else is equal). The Redmi executive adds that Qualcomm's flagship 800-series processors consume 20% more juice than an upper mid-range Snapdragon 700-series chipset. So when taken together, this means a 5G flagship will consume significantly more power compared to a mid-range 4G phone, which means battery capacity and optimizations are key for high-end 5G phones.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Virginia has become the first among the Southern US states to take on a goal for 100 percent carbon-free electricity. State governor Ralph Northam, an Army veteran and pediatric neurologist, issued Executive Order 43. The executive order detailed the state's plans to reach a zero CO2 energy goal by 2050. In September 2019, Northam also brought Virginia into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is a carbon trading network that spans nine states. Before then, Northam's efforts to take these initiatives and to join the RGGI were thwarted. However, following the 2019 election, voters in the state changed the political climate in the state. This opened the opportunity to move forward with renewable energy-based efforts. Earlier this month, the state General Assembly passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which brought Northam's previously failed efforts into law. The House voted in favor 51 to 45 and the Senate voted 22 to 17.

Among the VCEA goals are to gradually reduce the use of fossil fuels until they are no longer a part of the state's electricity production. Instead, it will use 100 percent clean energy to power the state. In order to achieve this goal, Virginia has a four-part plan:

1. Join the RGGI and develop a cap-and-trade system. The states that are already using similar strategies and that are a part of the RGGI have experienced healthy economic effects overall. Moreover, the hope is that the addition of Virginia to a heavily supplied market will only boost competition. This is meant to drive the clean energy transition forward even faster.
2. Achieve 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
3. Keep power costs low and protect vulnerable and low-income communities.
4. Build rooftop solar, offshore wind, and power storage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's wind power capacity grew by almost a fifth in 2019 after a year of record growth for offshore windfarms and a boom in onshore projects in the US and China. The Global Wind Energy Council found that wind power capacity grew by 60.4 gigawatts, or 19%, compared with 2018, in one of the strongest years on record for the global wind power industry. The growth was powered by a record year for offshore wind, which grew by 6.1GW to make up a tenth of new windfarm installations for the first time. The council's annual report found that the US and China remain the world's largest markets for onshore wind power development. Together the two countries make up almost two-thirds of global growth in wind power. GWEC had expected 2020 to emerge as a record year for the rollout of wind energy projects, and forecast growth of 20% in the year ahead, but it said the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic was as yet unknown.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Researchers at the Center for Translational Atomaterials (CTAM) at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new graphene-based film that can absorb sunlight with an efficiency of over 90 percent, while simultaneously eliminating most IR thermal emission loss -- the first time such a feat has been reported. The result is an efficient solar heating metamaterial that can heat up rapidly to 83 degrees C (181 degrees F) in an open environment with minimal heat loss. Proposed applications for the film include thermal energy harvesting and storage, thermoelectricity generation, and seawater desalination.

The 3D structured graphene metamaterial (SGM) is composed of a 30-nanometer-thick film of alternating graphene and dielectric layers deposited on a trench-like nanostructure that does double duty as a copper substrate to enhance absorption. More importantly, the substrate is patterned in a matrix arrangement to enable flexible tunability of wavelength-selective absorption. The graphene film is designed to absorb light between 0.28- to 2.5-micrometer wavelengths. And the copper substrate is structured so that it can act as a selective bandpass filter that suppresses the normal emission of internally generated blackbody energy. This retained heat then serves to further raise the metamaterial's temperature. Hence, the SGM can rapidly heat up to 83 degrees C. Should a different temperature be required for a particular application, a new trench nanostructure can be fabricated and tuned to match that specific blackbody wavelength. "The new material also uses less graphene by significantly reducing the film thickness to one third, and its thinness aids in transferring the absorbed heat more efficiently to other media such as water," the report adds. "Additionally, the film is hydrophobic, which fosters self-cleaning, while the graphene layer effectively protects the copper layer from corrosion, helping to extend the metamaterial's lifetime."

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

iFixit tore apart the updated MacBook Air and found that Apple made a few changes making for a more repairable notebook than the last generation. All in all, the new 2020 MacBook Air got a 4/10 repairability score from iFixit, which is one point higher than the previous-gen model which scored 3/10. 9to5Mac reports: iFixit highlights in its full teardown that the update to the reliable Magic Keyboard only added 0.5mm to the thick end of the new MacBook Air... a more than worth it trade-off: "More than anything, that 0.5 mm illustrates the sheer unnecessary-ness of the five painful years that Mac fans spent smashing on unresponsive butterfly keyboards. Knowing that Apple's thinnest-and-lightest notebook accommodates a scissor-switch keyboard so gracefully makes us wonder what it was all for. We understand as well as anyone the urge to fix things, but Apple's insistence on reworking and re-reworking the troubled butterfly design came at such a high cost -- financially, environmentally, and to the Mac's reputation -- and for what? We'll probably never know all the factors that led to the creation and persistence of the butterfly keyboard, but this Magic keyboard is a reminder that sometimes the difference between usable and unusable, or repairable and unrepairable, can be as small as half a millimeter."

Past the keyboard update, iFixit found a nice improvement to how Apple has implemented the trackpad cable: "Where last year the trackpad cables were trapped under the logic board, they are now free to be disconnected anytime -- meaning trackpad removal can happen as soon as the back cover comes off. And since the battery rests under these same cables, this new configuration also greatly speeds up battery removal by leaving the logic board in place. That's two very tasty birds, one stone, for those of you counting. This is one of those happy (but all too rare) occasions where we can identify a hardware change from Apple that's squarely aimed at improving serviceability in the existing design. Sometimes they do listen!"

An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a security advisory last week warning customers about a bug in the firmware of some SAS SSDs (Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives) that will fail after reaching 40,000 hours of operation -- which is 4 years, 206 days, and 16 hours after the SSD has been put into operation. HPE says that based on when affected SSDs have been manufactured and sold, the earliest failures are expected to occur starting with October this year. The company has released firmware updates last week to address the issue. HPE warns that if companies fail to install the update, they risk losing both the SSD and the data. "After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered," the company explained.

Google and South Korean tech major LG are likely to skip the top tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 platform this year for their smartphones as the cost of the chipset is too high, a report claimed. From a report: The Pixel 5 and Pixel 5 XL don't actually use Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 865 as per the Android code base. Both are running the Snapdragon 765G, a chip that's one step down from the 865 in Qualcomm's lineup. There isn't actually a Snapdragon 865 Google phone in the Android repository, ArsTechnica reported on Monday. LG is taking a similar approach to its 2020 flagship, the LG G9 ThinQ: instead of shipping the Snapdragon 865, the company is also opting for the cheaper 765G, according to website Naver.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Modern capitalism has never seen anything quite like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In a matter of months, the deadly contagious bug has spread around the world, hobbling any economy in its path. [...] This economic catastrophe is blowing up the myth of the worker robot and AI takeover. We've been led to believe that a new wave of automation is here, made possible by smarter AI and more sophisticated robots. San Francisco has even considered a tax on robots -- replace a human with a machine, and pay a price. The problem will get so bad, argue folks like former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, we'll need a universal basic income to support our displaced human workers.

Yet our economy still craters without human workers, because the machines are far, far away from matching our intelligence and dexterity. You're more likely to have a machine automate part of your job, not destroy your job entirely. Moving from typewriters to word processors made workers more efficient. Increasingly sophisticated and sensitive robotic arms can now work side-by-side on assembly lines with people without flinging our puny bodies across the room, doing the heavy lifting and leaving the fine manipulation of parts to us. The machines have their strengths -- literally in this case -- and the humans have theirs. While robots can do the labor we don't want to do or can't do, such as lifting car doors on an assembly line, they're not very good at problem-solving. "Think about how you would pick up a piece of paper that's lying flat on a table. You can't grip it like you would an apple -- you have to either pinch it to get it to lift off the surface, or drag it to hang over the edge of the table," writes Matt Simon via Wired. "As a kid, you learn to do that through trial and error, whereas you'd have to program a robot with explicit instructions to do the same."

In closing, Simon writes: "Overestimating robots and AI underestimates the very people who can save us from this pandemic: Doctors, nurses, and other health workers, who will likely never be replaced by machines outright. They're just too beautifully human for that."

NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn't realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data. The Register reports: The data in question will come from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) program, which collects information from the many missions that observe our planet. NASA makes those readings available through the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). To store all the data and run EOSDIS, NASA operates a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that provide pleasing redundancy. But NASA is tired of managing all that infrastructure, so in 2019, it picked AWS to host it all, and started migrating its records to the Amazon cloud as part of a project dubbed Earthdata Cloud. The first cut-over from on-premises storage to the cloud was planned for Q1 2020, with more to follow. The agency expects to transfer data off-premises for years to come.

NASA also knows that a torrent of petabytes is on the way. Some 15 imminent missions, such as the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites, are predicted to deliver more than 100 terabytes a day of data. We mention SWOT and NISAR because they'll be the first missions to dump data directly into Earthdata Cloud. The agency therefore projects that by 2025 it will have 247 petabytes to handle, rather more than the 32 it currently wrangles. NASA thinks this is all a great idea. And it will -- if NASA can afford to operate it. And that's a live question because a March audit report [PDF] from NASA's Inspector General noticed EOSDIS hadn't properly modeled what data egress charges would do to its cloudy plan. NASA "has not yet determined which data sets will transition to Earthdata Cloud nor has it developed cost models based on operational experience and metrics for usage and egress," the Inspector General's Office wrote. "As a result, current cost projections may be lower than what will actually be necessary to cover future expenses and cloud adoption may become more expensive and difficult to manage."

"Collectively, this presents potential risks that scientific data may become less available to end users if NASA imposes limitations on the amount of data egress for cost control reasons."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two years ago, the eCascadia [the electric version of the Freightliner Cascadia] was nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation -- a virtual rendering to expedite a diesel stalwart into a zero-emissions future for goods movement. Now it's one of several competing models, from start-ups as well as established truck makers, that are gearing up for production next year with real-world testing. Orders have poured in, from companies eager to shave operating costs and curb emissions, for trucks that won't see roads for months or even years. Volvo Trucks North America announced this year that it would test 23 of its VNR battery-electric heavy-duty trucks in and out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The Washington-based truck maker Kenworth is already there, operating the beginnings of Project Portal, a 10-truck fleet of semis powered with hydrogen fuel cells. And Daimler Trucks North America is making deliveries in 20 of its preproduction eCascadias with two partner companies, Penske Truck Leasing and NFI.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are responsible for about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Electrics not only reduce tailpipe emissions to zero, they cost less to operate. With fewer moving parts, they are also easier to maintain. On average, it costs about $1.38 per mile to operate a diesel truck, according to the trucking information website TruckInfo.net; $70,000 of the $180,000 annual operating cost is fuel, and $15,000 goes toward maintenance. Tesla, by comparison, estimates its electric Semi will cost $1.26 per mile. Electric trucks do, however, cost more to buy upfront. While most manufacturers have yet to set pricing, the longer a truck's range, the more batteries it needs and the more it will cost.Tesla plans to sell its 300-mile-range Semi for $150,000 and 500-mile Semi for $180,000. The price of a new diesel tractor and trailer is about $150,000. [...] The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a great example of what can happen when smart, technically-oriented people come together in a time of need, an open-source hardware project started by a group including Irish entrepreneur Colin Keogh and Breeze Automation CEO and co-founder Gui Calavanti has produced a prototype ventilator using 3D-printed parts and readily available, inexpensive material. The ventilator prototype was designed and produced in just seven days, after the project spun up on Facebook and attracted participation from over 300 engineers, medical professionals and researchers.

The prototype will now enter into a validation process by the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), the country's health regulatory body. This will technically only validate it for use in Ireland, which ironically looks relatively well-stocked for ventilator hardware, but it will be a key stamp of approval that could pave the way for its deployment across countries where there are shortages, including low-income nations. The group behind the ventilator also recently changed the focus of their Facebook community, renaming the group from the Open Source Ventilator Project to the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies community. They're looking at expanding their focus to finding ways to cheaply and effectively build and validate other needed equipment, including protective gear like masks, sanitizer and protective face guards for front-line healthcare workers.

One of the biggest new additions to Apple's new iPad Pro is a new "Light Detection and Ranging" (LIDAR) system on the rear camera, which Apple argued was the missing piece for revolutionary augmented reality applications. "It claims that by combining the depth information from the LIDAR scanner with camera data, motion sensors, and computer vision algorithms, the new iPad Pro will be faster and better at placing AR objects and tracking the location of people," reports The Verge. "But it doesn't change the fact that, right now, there still aren't a lot of compelling reasons to actually use augmented reality apps on a mobile device beyond the cool, tech-demo-y purposes that already exist." From the report: R apps on iOS today are a thing you try out once, marvel at how novel of an idea it is, and move on -- they're not essential parts of how we use our phones. And nearly three years into Apple's push for AR, there's still no killer app that makes the case for why customers -- or developers -- should care. Maybe the LIDAR sensor really is the missing piece of the puzzle. Apple certainly has a few impressive tech demos showing off applications of the LIDAR sensor, like its Apple Arcade Hot Lava game, which can use the data to more quickly and accurately model a living room to generate the gameplay surface. There's a CAD app that can scan and make a 3D model of the room to see how additions will look. Another demo promises accurate determinations of the range of motion of your arm.

The fact that Apple is debuting the iPad for AR doesn't help the case, either. While Apple has been rumored to be working on a proper augmented reality headset or glasses for years -- a kind of product that could make augmented digital overlays a seamless part of your day-to-day life -- the iPad (in 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes) is effectively the opposite of that idea. It's the same awkwardness of the man who holds up an iPad to film an entire concert; holding a hardcover book-sized display in front of your face for the entire time you're using it just isn't a very natural use case.

It's possible that Apple is just laying the groundwork here, and more portable LIDAR-equipped AR devices (like a new iPhone or even a head-mounted display) are on their way in the future. Maybe the LIDAR sensor is the key to making more immersive, faster, and better augmented apps. Apple might be right, and the next wave of AR apps really will turn the gimmicks into a critical part of day-to-day life. But right now, it's hard not to look at Apple's LIDAR-based AR push as another hardware feature looking for the software to justify it.

Researchers from Intel and Cornell University trained a neuromorphic chip to learn and recognize the scents of 10 hazardous chemicals. Engadget reports: Using Intel's Loihi, a neuromorphic chip, the team designed an algorithm based on the brain's olfactory circuit. When you take a whiff of something, molecules stimulate olfactory cells in your nose. Those cells send signals to the brain's olfactory system, which then fires off electrical pulses. The researchers were able to mimic that circuitry in Loihi's silicon circuits. According to Intel, the chip can identify 10 smells, including acetone, ammonia and methane, even when other strong smells are present. And, Loihi learned each odor with just a single sample. That's especially impressive, the researchers say, because other deep learning techniques can require 3,000 times more training samples to reach the same level of accuracy. The work has been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: NFC is usually only used to for quick text transfers, like a tap-and-pay transaction at a register or a quick data transfer from an NFC sticker. A company called "Waveshare" is really pushing the limits of NFC, though, with a 7.5-inch e-ink display that gets its data, and its power, from an NFC transfer. The $70 display doesn't have a battery and doesn't need a wired power connection. E-paper (or e-ink) displays have the unique property of not needing power to maintain an image. Once a charge blasts across the display and correctly aligns pixels full of black and white balls, everything will stay where it is when the power turns off, so the image will stick around. You might not have thought about it before, but in addition to data, NFC comes with a tiny wireless power transfer. This display is designed so that NFC provides just enough power to refresh the display during a data transfer, and the e-ink display will hold onto the image afterward.

NFC data transfers max out at a whopping 424 kbit/s. While that's enough for an instant transfer of credit card data or a URL, the 800x400 image the display needs will take several seconds. Waveshare says the display takes five seconds just to refresh, and that doesn't count the data transfer, which will vary depending on how complex your image is. The video shows a start-to-finish refresh that takes 10 seconds. If you want to use a phone, an Android app will convert your image into several different black-and-white styles and beam it to the display. Sadly, there's no iOS app yet. iOS apps didn't have the ability to write to NFC devices for the longest time. Writing to NFC was added with the launch of iOS 13, which only happened a few months ago.

Now that Microsoft and Sony have published the technical specifications of their respective next-gen gaming consoles, we can compare them head-to-head to see which one has the edge. While Sony appears to lag behind Microsoft when it comes to specs, the PS5's speedy custom SSD may be its secret weapon. Engadget reports: Sony's lead PlayStation architect, Mark Cerny, finally gave us an in-depth look at the PS5 in a livestream event, in lieu of a major GDC keynote. [...] Cerny confirms that the PlayStation 5's graphics processor will feature 36 compute units and up to 10.28 teraflops worth of compute performance. That's a bit less than the Xbox Series X's 12-teraflop GPU, but realistically you might not see many differences in performance. There are plenty of other system optimizations, like the company's focus on a custom 825GB SSD, that'll be a huge leap over the PlayStation 4. That SSD will push 5.5 gigabytes per second compared to a mere 50 to 100 MB/s, meaning it can fill the system's 16GB of GDDR6 RAM in two seconds. And on the plus side, Sony will let you plug in a standard NVMe SSD to expand storage while Microsoft will rely on specialized 1TB SSD expansion cards.

Cerny was quick to point out that teraflop numbers are a "dangerous" way to measure absolute levels of performance. A teraflop from the PlayStation 5 translates to much more gaming performance than a teraflop from the PlayStation 4, thanks to the new console's more-efficient architecture. Still, it's not exactly unfair to compare the PS5 to the Xbox Series X, since both systems will be based on AMD's CPUs and GPUs. It's interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft devices take advantage of AMD's hardware. The PS5's eight-core Zen 2 CPU will run up to 3.5GHz with variable frequencies, so it can slow down when necessary. The Xbox Series X, meanwhile, will lock its Zen 2 processor at 3.8GHz, and devs can also choose to run their games at 3.6GHz with hyper threading. Sony also chose to use 36 RDNA 2 compute units running at up to 2.23GHz with a variable frequency while Microsoft stuffed its system with 52 compute units running at 1.825GHz. Cerny argues that running fewer cores at a higher frequency rate is more beneficial than running more cores at a lower rate, since it will lead to a speed bump across many GPU tasks.

Sony definitely has the lead with its custom SSD with 5GB/s of raw bandwidth and 8 to 9GB/s of compressed throughput. The Xbox Series X's SSD will be limited to 2.4GB/s of raw data and 4.8GB/s compressed. Again, while the numbers are significantly different, it's unclear how the performance will vary in real-world use. Microsoft also has a slightly higher GDDR6 memory bandwidth -- 10GB at 560GB/s and 6GB at 336GB/s -- than Sony's 448GB/s, which could make up for the slower storage. As for backwards compatibility, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will support PS4 and PS4 Pro games, but the company made no mention of retro PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles. Microsoft, on the other hand, stated that the Xbox Series X will support all games playable on the Xbox One, including those Xbox 360 and original Xbox console titles currently supported through backwards compatibility on the Xbox One.

According to The Associated Press and confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler will shut down their factories for at least two weeks. "Meanwhile, Tesla appears to be defying officials in Alameda County, California -- the site of its only North American factory, in Freemont -- who have ordered Tesla to stop operations," reports Ars Technica. From the report: TechCrunch reports that a Wednesday email from the company's human resources department instructed employees to come to work. "We still do not have final word from the city, county, state and federal government on the status of our operations," the email said. "We have had conflicting guidance from different levels of government."

In an email published Tuesday by Eletrek, Tesla's head of HR argued that Tesla didn't need to shut down because the company counts as National Critical Infrastructure, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security. The category "includes auto manufacturing and energy infrastructure," according to Tesla. "People need access to transportation and energy, and we are essential to providing it," the email said. Tesla evidently believes that its interpretation of this DHS guidance supersedes the instructions of Alameda County officials to shut down. It remains to be seen if Alameda County officials agree. UPDATE: BuzzFeed News is reporting that Tesla will drop from around 10,000 employees to 2,500, following a shelter-in-place order announced on Monday in six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's unclear when the scaleback will take place, or what the company is doing to prevent those workers from being infected with or spreading the virus.

Today, we get another diminutive desktop option, but this one is designed for Linux and privacy. From a report: Yes, Purism is finally launching a tiny desktop, and it will come pre-installed with the Debian-based PureOS. Called "Librem Mini," the cute bugger has 4 USB-A ports on the front, along with a 3.5mm audio jack, and the power button. On the rear, there are two more USB-A ports, a single USB-C port, Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, and the power port. "Announcing the Purism Librem Mini. Our small form-factor mini-PC that puts freedom, privacy and security first. We're really excited about the Librem Mini, it's a device our community have wanted and we've wanted to offer for some time. The Librem Mini is accessible, small, light and powerful featuring a new 8th gen quad core i7 processor, up to 64 GB of fast DDR4 memory and 4k 60 fps video playback. It's a desktop for your home or oïfce, a media center for your entertainment, or an expandable home server for your files and applications," says Purism.

An anonymous reader shares a report from TechCrunch, written by Devin Coldewey: It's no secret I'm a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that's focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better. Designed for the creation and consumption of monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface. The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round. One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.

The most obvious change is to the design. It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet's main use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties. The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony's competing Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm. Let's be honest -- at these levels of thinness it's getting hard to tell the difference, but it's an accomplishment nevertheless. [...] The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on. But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web. The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great. The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a folio case.

As countries affected by the coronavirus pandemic expect to run out of ventilators and other equipment, makers are desperately trying to fill the gap with proposals for open-source, do-it-yourself devices. From a report: Most cases of COVID-19 -- the disease caused by the novel coronavirus -- do not require hospitalization. But for people hospitalized with severe infections, coronavirus damages their lungs and makes it hard to breathe in and circulate the amount of oxygen that their bodies need. Ventilators, machines that provide the lungs with oxygen, are proving to be key to treating these people, who seem to comprise around 10 percent of cases. Governments are already preparing for what a shortage of ventilators could do to their health care systems.

In a call to U.S. governors on Monday that was shared with The New York Times, President Donald Trump told states not to rely fully on the federal government for equipment. "Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment -- try getting it yourselves," he said, according to The Times. "We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself." Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN that the U.S. has stockpiled 12,700 ventilators, but in a worst-case scenario that number might not be enough. In Italy, he added, physicians are having to make "very tough decisions" about whom to treat.

MojoKid writes: Though Ryzen 4000 Series laptop processors aren't available just yet, some of AMD's partners are going to begin taking pre-orders for notebooks soon. As such, AMD is lifting the veil on additional details and the architectural enhancements that make Ryzen 4000 Series AMD's strongest mobile processor line-up to date. AMD Ryzen 4000 series CPUs are based on the Zen 2 architecture, similar to the current Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors. AMD is touting an approximate 25% IPC increase versus Zen 1-based mobile parts, but there are additional benefits that boost performance and efficiency throughout the chips as well. These are monolithic SoCs, with up to 8-cores / 16-threads, that are manufactured on TSMC's 7nm node. AMD is claiming 20% lower SoC power, 2X the perf-per-watt, 5X faster state switching, and an approximate 3.4X improvement in relative power efficiency, in comparison to its mobile platform from 2015. AMD is claiming superior single-thread CPU performance versus current-generation Intel mobile processors and significantly better multi-threaded and graphics performance versus Intel, thanks to the increased core / thread counts and integrated Vega-based GPU of its Ryzen 4000 series. Battery life performance is claimed be strong as well, due to architectural enhancements for power optimization throughout the Ryzen 4000 design. AMD Ryzen 4000 Series laptops should be shipping in market sometime in the next month or so.

Apple's A14 processor that's expected to debut this fall in Apple's iPhone 12 models is rumored to have a frequency reaching 3.1GHz. "This would be 400MHz higher than Apple's current A13 Bionic chip with a frequency of 2.7GHz," reports MacRumors. From the report: At such a frequency, the chip's Geekbench 5 running points have surged. The report mentions that the A14's single-core performance shows a score of 1658 (up 25% from the A13), and a multi-core score of 4612 points (up 33% from the A13). The extra processing power will be helpful in running simultaneous workflows, navigating through apps, and more. Apple chipmaker TSMC is expected to ramp up production of Apple's 5nm-based A14 chipsets in as early as April of this year. Also, according to 9to5Mac, Apple is reportedly planning to launch a new 5.5-inch entry-level iPhone with a solid state home button, Touch ID, and support for Apple Pay's Express Transit feature.

The 5.5-inch iPhone is expected to be priced $100 more than the 4.7-inch model that will start at $399, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. It's slated to launch at the end of March, but it's possible the launch will be delayed due to the coronavirus.

Volkswagen's chief strategist Michael Jost predicts their vehicle-to-grid electric car batteries could open up a new business opportunity: selling their electricity back to the power grid during peak demand. Reuters reports: "By 2025 we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt hours worth of storage," Jost told journalists in Berlin. "That's more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world. We can guarantee that energy will be used and stored and this will be a new area of business."

The German carmaker is not alone in looking into this field. German utility E.ON has been working with Japanese carmaker Nissan to develop so-called vehicle-to-grid services.

"We don't often talk about power supplies, but Intel's new ATX12VO spec — that's an 'O' for 'Oscar,' not a zero — will start appearing soon in pre-built PCs from OEMs and system integrators, and it represents a major change in PSU design," reports PC World.

"The ATX12VO spec removes voltage rails from the power supply, all in a bid to improve efficiency standards on the PC and meet stringent government regulations. But while the spec essentially removes +3.3-volt, +5-volt and -12-volt and +5-volt standby power from the PSU, they aren't going away — they're just moving to the motherboard. That's the other big change..."

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool explains: If those voltages are required, the motherboard is expected to supply it by converting 12V power. Removing those two rails will shrink the connector from 24 pin to 10 pin.

One of the main reasons is increased flexibility for future needs. That dependence on these separate rails has been reduced over time but current power supplies must dedicate a fixed amount to those rails. The example given is that a current 600W PS may only need 15% (90W) of total power dedicated to those rails but a decade ago may require 25% (150W). Switching to the MB supplying the power means more 12V power.

A benefit is power supplies will be cheaper to make and also more power efficient. With two fewer rails, there is fewer connectors and parts and power supply makers can focus on efficiency of just one rail.

After years of civil war, South Sudan is beginning to build the nation's electric sector from the ground up. "With only a handful of oil-fired power plants and crumbling poles and wires in place, the country is striving for a system that runs primarily on renewable energy and reaches more homes and businesses," reports IEEE Spectrum. From the report: Today, only about 1 percent of South Sudan's 12.5 million people can access the electric grid, according to the state-run utility. Many people use rooftop solar arrays or noisy, polluting diesel generators to keep the lights on; still many more are left in the dark. Those who can access the grid must pay some of the highest electricity rates in the world for a spotty and unreliable service. Recently, development banks and foreign companies have started backing projects to revitalize infrastructure and boost power generation amid a relatively tranquil time for the eight-year-old country. Most of the new investment has focused in and around Juba -- the nation's capital and largest city, with some 403,000 residents.

The work to restore South Sudan's electric sector began in earnest in late 2018, after South Sudan's President Salva Kiir reached a peace deal with rebel leader Riek Machar. (Earlier this year, Kiir appointed Machar as vice president.) Last November, South Sudan Electricity Corporation began operating the first section of Juba's rehabilitated distribution network. Power Construction Corporation of China strung up new 33-kilovolt lines, replacing the city's 11-kilovolt lines, a network that will eventually supply 20,000 additional customers in the capital city. The Chinese firm is also producing 13,450 prestressed concrete poles from a new facility in Juba. The African Development Bank has approved a US $14.6 million loan for the grid project. For now, however, most of Juba's residents are still using their own power supplies to run refrigerators or charge computers. The utility dismantled the old grid, and the upgraded system is proceeding slowly in phases.

A team of scientists led by Yi Cui, a materials scientist at Stanford, have created a new "fireproof" solid-state electrolyte for use in lithium-ion batteries. IEEE Spectrum reports: They used a flame-retardant material called decabromodiphenyl ethane, or DBDPE for short. To make their new solid-state electrolyte, the team first created a thin film by combining DBDPE with polyimide, a mechanical enforcer. Using polyimide has many advantages, says Wan. Apart from being "mechanically really strong," it boasts a high melting point (making it less likely that a short circuit will occur), a solutions-based manufacturing process (that's compatible with how batteries are made today), and it's inexpensive (3M even has film tapes made from it). The hitch, however, is that polyimide can't conduct ions. To get around this snag, Wan and his colleagues added two different polymers, polyethylene oxide (PEO) and lithium bistrifluoromethanesulfonylimide (LiTFSI), to the mix. "It's innovative -- they've smartly used co-polymers, which is a new way to solve the flammable polymer electrolyte battery problem," says Chunsheng Wang, a researcher who studies new battery technologies at the University of Maryland. The paper has been published in the journal Nano Letters.

Europe and Russia have decided to push back the launch of their joint robotic rover to Mars until 2022, rather than launch this year as originally planned. More testing is needed on the vehicle's parachutes ahead of the launch, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and there isn't enough time to get all of that work done before the launch window in July and August. The Verge reports: This is the second major delay for the rover, which is a critical piece of the ExoMars mission -- a partnership program between ESA and Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos aimed at figuring out if Mars ever hosted life. Originally, the rover, named after the famous chemist Rosalind Franklin, was meant to launch in 2018, but it was pushed until 2020 due to delays in delivering the scientific payloads. Now, the parachutes needed to land the vehicle on Mars are to blame. Last year, two high-altitude drop tests here on Earth damaged the parachutes, with some even tearing while they inflated. ESA wants to do two additional parachute tests ahead of the mission, but they won't occur in time to allow a summer launch to happen.

Additionally, some of the electronics inside the vehicle that carries the rover down to the surface need to be returned to their suppliers for troubleshooting. The final software for the mission is also delayed, and engineers don't have enough time to test it out before the summer. And if that wasn't enough, Jan Worner, the director general of ESA, admitted that the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic is playing a role in the delay. [...] Now, the earliest option to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover is 2022, thanks to how Earth and Mars orbit the Sun. The two planets only skim close by one another every 26 months, giving scientists a limited window to launch spacecraft to the Red Planet. With a launch window opening up this summer, multiple countries including the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates are launching spacecraft to Mars. But since ExoMars cannot make the deadline, the next opportunity to launch is between August and October 2022.

While ESA and Roscosmos wait for 2022, the rover will go into storage, and engineers will lubricate the vehicle over the next two years to maintain all of its components. In the meantime, the Russian Proton rocket that will launch the rover and the vehicle's European carrier spacecraft are all ready to go and have no issues. So the Rosalind Franklin rover should be ready to go by 2022 if the upcoming tests go well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Following D-Wave's announcement of Leap 2, a new version of its quantum cloud service for building and deploying quantum computing applications, VentureBeat had the opportunity to sit down with Murray Thom, D-Wave's VP of software and cloud services. We naturally talked about Leap 2, including the improvements the company hopes it will bring for businesses and developers. But we also discussed the business applications D-Wave has already seen to date. Thom explained that D-Wave has seen success particularly with optimization and machine learning use cases. And he has the data to back it up: D-Wave's customer applications are about 50% optimization, 20% AI and ML, 10% materials science, and 20% other. Thom believes quantum computing and machine learning are "extremely well matched. The features the technology has and the needs of the field are very close."

"It's something I think is going to be a very productive use of the technology in the future because there's so many aspects of what the quantum computers can do in terms of the probabilistic sampling," Thom continued. "For optimization, the probabilistic sampling is like 'oh, I can do robust optimization with that.' But for machine learning it's essential for what you need to do. It's very hard to reproduce that with a classical computer and you get it natively from the quantum computer. So those features can't be accidental. It's just that it's going to take time for the community to find the right methods for incorporating it and then for the technology to insert into that space productively."

Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will launch MacBook models with an all-new design in the second or third quarter of 2021, but did not indicate whether these will be Pro or Air models. As MacRumors points out, "The last significant redesign of the MacBook Pro occurred in October 2016, while the MacBook Air received a major redesign in October 2018." From the report: In a research note today, obtained by MacRumors, Kuo said Apple plans to launch MacBook models with its own custom processors in the fourth quarter of 2020 or the first quarter of 2021. Kuo did not indicate whether these will be MacBook Pro or MacBook Air models, or both, nor did he share any further details. Rumors have suggested that Apple is working on custom Arm-based processors that would allow it to transition away from its current MacBook processor supplier Intel, which has occasionally experienced delays with its chips. The company is also planning to launch new MacBooks with scissor keyboards in the second quarter of 2020.

According to 9to5Google, Google is working on a native Chrome OS app for printing and scanning documents. From the report: While there are many ways to start printing on Chrome OS, there's no real way to see what you've currently got queued to print, when not using Cloud Print [which is shutting down at the end of the year]. This is particularly frustrating if you've accidentally printed a long document as there's no way to cancel. [...] Late last month, work began on a new "Print Management app," starting with a Chrome OS specific flag in chrome://flags. Print Management is still in the early stages of development but we know that, like many Chrome OS apps, it'll be a web-based System Web App (SWA), which you can launch from the printers section of the main Settings app. Inside, you'll see a list of your recent printing attempts, including useful information like the job's name, what time it started, whether it succeeded, and which printer it was sent to.

And then, of course, on the flip side of working with paper documents is scanning, which is by no means easy to do on Chrome OS. Thankfully, Print Management will also include a UI for scanning documents and photos. The Chromium team is already working on this behind yet another flag.

According to research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, permanent magnets akin to those used on refrigerators could speed the development of fusion energy. Phys.Org reports: In principle, such magnets can greatly simplify the design and production of twisty fusion facilities called stellarators, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. PPPL founder Lyman Spitzer Jr. invented the stellarator in the early 1950s. Most stellarators use a set of complex twisted coils that spiral like stripes on a candy cane to produce magnetic fields that shape and control the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Refrigerator-like permanent magnets could produce the hard part of these essential fields, the researchers say, allowing simple, non-twisted coils to produce the remaining part in place of the complex coils.

Rare earth magnets have surprising and useful properties. They generate quite powerful fields for the magnets' small size, and these are "hard" fields that are almost unaffected by other fields nearby. These magnets could thus provide what physicists call the "poloidal" part of a spiraling stellarator field, while simple round coils could provide the "toroidal" part that makes up the rest of the field. Permanent magnets are always "on" in sharp contrast to the standard electromagnetic coils that stellarators and tokamaks use. Such coils create magnetic fields when an electric current runs through them -- current that requires power supplies that permanent magnets do not need. Other advantages of the use of permanent magnets to simplify stellarator coils include: Lower cost than hand-crafted electromagnets; Creation of ample space between the simplified coils to facilitate maintenance; Ability to reposition the magnets to create a variety of shapes for the magnetic fields; and Reduced engineering and manufacturing risks. Permanent magnets have disadvantages, too. "You can't turn them off," physicist Per Helander said, which means they can pull in anything they can attract within range. They also produce limited maximum field strength, he said. Nonetheless, such magnets "can be great for creating experiments on the way to a reactor," he added, "and stronger permanent magnets may become available."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: More than two years after winning an electricity bet, Elon Musk's resulting Australian solar and wind farm is an almost total success. The facility powers rural South Australia, whose population density falls between Wyoming and Alaska, the two least dense U.S. states. In 2016, South Australia experienced a near total blackout after "an apocalyptic storm -- involving 80,000 lightning strikes and at least two tornadoes," Vox explains. In the aftermath, a Conservative politician blamed the push for renewable energy for the extent of the blackouts. For those even passingly familiar with Musk and Tesla's online presence, the rest won't be surprising. The head of batteries at Tesla said he was sure the company could do better, an Australian billionaire asked if he was serious, and Musk jumped in to promise his team was. The rest is history. Musk reached his goal 40 days early, and the Australian billionaire funded the project as promised. We can argue about whether or not private citizens should have to rely on a billionaire angel investor to get a steady supply of power or make the shift to renewable energy, but in this case, the bet benefited a shortchanged rural population beginning almost immediately.
[...]
Just 1.7 million people live in South Australia, which is a nice size to consider a test market for technology like this. Rural grids tend to be left behind, because the ratio of required hardware and infrastructure is still so high per consumer -- much more-so than in a big city, where the same short length of wiring could power thousands of homes. And building a facility that acts as a battery can help smooth out the natural ebbs and flows that come both from renewable energy technology and from the spread out, failure-prone nature of more rural grid sections. This smoothing has saved South Australians a ton of money, already much more than the $50 million cost that Tesla passed on to its Australian investor. The battery facility "reduced network costs by about $76 million in 2019," Bloomberg explains, "savings [Garth] Heron, [Neoen's head of development in Australia] said would be passed on to businesses and households in the state. The battery's introduction also slashed the cost to regulate South Australia's grid by 91 [percent], bringing it in line with other regions in the nation."

Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla has produced one million electric cars. The Verge reports: Musk made the announcement by sharing a picture of the car, a red Model Y, and congratulated the Tesla team on hitting the milestone. It's a significant moment for an automaker that was only founded in 2003. Tesla released its first consumer car, the Roadster, back in 2008, meaning it's taken a little over twelve years to hit this million-car milestone. However, it could end up hitting the two million mark a lot sooner based on current targets.

In its January earnings report, the company said it hopes to ship over 500,000 cars worldwide in 2020. Established automakers like Toyota or the Volkswagen Group each produce over ten million vehicles a year. Nevertheless, Tesla's milestone is a tremendous accomplishment for an automotive startup that only produces electric vehicles.

News outlet 9to5Mac, which tracks Apple news, has gotten hold of an iOS 14 build that uncovers a range of hardware details and software features that Apple intends to reveal later this year. The devices are: 1. An upcoming iPad Pro will include three cameras -- like the iPhone Pro -- plus an additional time-of-flight sensor for help with AR.
2. An iPhone with Touch ID is in the works. This is presumably the lower-end iPhone 9 or iPhone SE 2.
3. A new Apple TV box is in the works along with a new Apple TV remote.
4. AirTags, Apple's rumored Tile-like item tracker, will have user-replaceable batteries. Software features: 1. The iOS home screen will get a new list view, letting you more easily find and filter through your apps. It's not clear exactly where this screen will appear, but it'd offer a major change from the grid.
2. A new AR app will let you point your phone's camera at objects in the real world and have the phone display more information about what you're seeing. At an Apple store, for instance, it could display pricing information and product features. Apple is reportedly working with Starbucks to support the feature, too.
3. Third-party apps will be able to integrate wallpapers into the wallpapers section of the Settings app. This should make it easier to switch wallpapers and could finally open dynamic wallpapers up to outside developers.
4. HomeKit will be able to change the color temperature of lights throughout a day to match the sunlight.
5. An accessibility feature will let phones identify sounds like alarms and doorbells for people with hearing loss.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: AMD processors manufactured between 2011 and 2019 (the time of testing) are vulnerable to two new attacks, research published this week has revealed (PDF). The two new attacks impact the security of the data processed inside the CPU and allow the theft of sensitive information or the downgrade of security features. The research team said it notified AMD of the two issues in August 2019, however, the company has not released microcode (CPU firmware) updates, claiming these "are not new speculation-based attacks," a statement that the research team disagrees with.

The two new attacks target a feature of AMD CPUs known as the L1D cache way predictor. Introduced in AMD processors in 2011 with the Bulldozer microarchitecture, the L1D cache way predictor is a performance-centric feature that reduces power consumption by improving the way the CPU handles cached data inside its memory. A high-level explanation is available below: "The predictor computes a uTag using an undocumented hash function on the virtual address. This uTag is used to look up the L1D cache way in a prediction table. Hence, the CPU has to compare the cache tag in only oneway instead of all possible ways, reducing the power consumption." The two new attacks were discovered after a team of six academics [...] reverse-engineered this "undocumented hashing function" that AMD processors were using to handle uTag entries inside the L1D cache way predictor mechanism. Knowing these functions, allowed the researchers to recreate a map of what was going on inside the L1D cache way predictor and probe if the mechanism was leaking data or clues about what that data may be. While the attacks can be patched, AMD denies that these two new attacks are a concern, claiming they "are not new speculation-based attacks" and that they should be mitigated through previous patches for speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities.

The research team says AMD's response is "rather misleading," and that the attacks still work on fully-updated operating systems, firmware, and software even today.

According to a report Green Car Reports, Honda said it discontinued the company's Clarity Electric and has no plans for the model to return. CNET reports: The battery-electric version of the Clarity rounded out a diverse lineup of alternative-fuel options housed in the nameplate. Honda still sells a plug-in hybrid version of the Clarity and introduced modest updates to the Clarity Fuel Cell for 2020. Honda only offered the EV version in Oregon and California, however. Ditto for the fuel cell version as well. The Clarity Plug-In Hybrid was originally offered in numerous states, though low demand drove the car out of the Northeast last summer. At the time, Honda told Roadshow California will be the PHEV's main focus, though the car remains available to order at any Honda dealer nationwide.

"At its Financial Analyst Day, AMD disclosed additional details regarding its next generation CPU and GPU architectures," writes Slashdot reader MojoKid: - While the company isn't ready to disclose concrete details yet, AMD is promising that Navi 2X will arrive this year and deliver "enthusiast-class" performance, excellent power efficiency, and "top-of-stack" GPUs with "uncompromising 4K gaming".

- While AMD has RDNA for its gaming-centric consumer GPUs, the company is shifting to a new GPU compute architecture, dubbed CDNA, for its High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Machine Learning (ML) accelerators. CDNA has been designed from the ground-up for ML/HPC applications, and will leverage what AMD calls its second-generation Infinity Architecture interconnects.

- AMD also reiterated that its first Zen 3-based products will be rolling out later this year. On the server side, this means EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors, but the company also revealed that Zen 3 client processors would also arrive by the end of 2020.

"A nonprofit startup is offering an open-source nuclear plant plan," reports Popular Mechanics: A mechanical engineer-turned-tech entrepreneur has plans to, well, empower people around the world to build their own 100-megawatt nuclear power reactors. That's much larger than some of the modular reactors designed by nuclear startups, but still much smaller than operating nuclear power plants in the U.S.

The Energy Impact Center (EIC) is an energy nonprofit that engineer Bret Kugelmass founded in 2017. The organization's goals are similar to other groups working toward carbon neutrality or negativity, except Kugelmass has decided "cheap nuclear" is the only avenue he wants to pursue. By doing that, he's essentially operating a startup model, and for his technology to take hold, a new paradigm for nuclear power plants will have to be installed.

"Today, we offer reference plant schematics and a platform to compile ongoing design work. With the help of our partners and the National Labs, these drawings will evolve into a fully detailed, ready-to-build blueprint," the project website says. It seems like EIC exists to feed new technology into the nuclear startup development pipeline... Kugelmass writes that "It is detailed enough for any utility to begin early site studies with +/- 20 [percent] cost predictability. It is abstract enough to allow for site-specific engineering details to be added, with a $50 million budget allocated per plant for such efforts."

A year ago, we started to see the first wave of foldable devices and they were ... disappointing. But companies are not backing down. TCL is already looking ahead with a pair of foldable and rollable prototypes that imagines what the future of phones could look like. From a report: One is a trifold variant with two hinges, while the other is even crazier -- it is rollable! Yes, TCL has designed a phone that gets larger by utilizing a flexible display that rolls and unrolls -- it looks to be quite genius, actually. "At just 9mm in thickness, this portable concept re-imagines the standard smartphone design, with a rollable AMOLED display that uses internal motors to extend the 6.75-inch screen to a 7.8-inch display size with the press of a button. This allows for an entirely new device user experience that includes split screen and multi-tasking UI enhancements customized by TCL. Thanks to a larger axis and rolled display, the device has no wrinkles or creases which are commonly found with foldable AMOLEDs. When not in use, a motor-driven sliding panel utilizes advanced mechanics to conceal the flexible display," says TCL.