×
Censorship

Leaked Emails Show Hugo Awards Self-Censoring To Appease China (404media.co) 89

samleecole shares a report from 404 Media: A trove of leaked emails shows how administrators of one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction censored themselves because the awards ceremony was being held in China. Earlier this month, the Hugo Awards came under fire with accusations of censorship when several authors were excluded from the awards, including Neil Gaiman, R. F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao, and Paul Weimer. These authors' works had earned enough votes to make them finalists, but were deemed "ineligible" for reasons not disclosed by Hugo administrators. The Hugo Awards are one of the largest and most important science fiction awards. [...]

The emails, which show the process of compiling spreadsheets of the top 10 works in each category and checking them for "sensitive political nature" to see if they were "an issue in China," were obtained by fan writer Chris M. Barkley and author Jason Sanford, and published on fandom news site File 770 and Sanford's Patreon, where they uploaded the full PDF of the emails. They were provided to them by Hugo Awards administrator Diane Lacey. Lacey confirmed in an email to 404 Media that she was the source of the emails. "In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different...we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work," Dave McCarty, head of the 2023 awards jury, directed administrators in an email. "It's not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China, taiwan, tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China...that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot of if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it."

The email replies to this directive show administrators combing through authors' social media presences and public travel histories, including from before they were nominated for the 2023 awards, and their writing and bodies of work beyond just what they were nominated for. Among dozens of other posts and writings, they note Weimer's negative comments about the Chinese government in a Patreon post and misspell Zhao's name and work (calling their novel Iron Widow "The Iron Giant"). About author Naseem Jamnia, an administrator allegedly wrote, "Author openly describes themselves as queer, nonbinary, trans, (And again, good for them), and frequently writes about gender, particularly non-binary. The cited work also relies on these themes. I include them because I don't know how that will play in China. (I suspect less than well.)"

"As far as our investigation is concerned there was no reason to exclude the works of Kuang, Gaiman, Weimer or Xiran Jay Zhao, save for being viewed as being undesirable in the view of the Hugo Award admins which had the effect of being the proxies Chinese government," Sanford and Barkley wrote. In conjunction with the email trove, Sanford and Barkley also released an apology letter from Lacey, in which she explains some of her role in the awards vetting process and also blames McCarty for his role in the debacle. McCarty, along with board chair Kevin Standlee, resigned earlier this month.

Games

8-Year-Old Chess Prodigy Wins Title At European Championships (bbc.com) 10

Eight-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan from London has been crowned best female chess player at the European blitz championships, scoring 8.5/13 at the event and drawing with a grandmaster in a result described as "unbelievable." The BBC reports: The chess prodigy, who began playing aged five, said she was "proud" of her performance over the weekend. The tournament was held at the blitz time control -- a quick form of chess where players have just minutes on their clocks for their moves. Bodhana's opponents included grandmasters - the highest title given to the world's strongest players -- international masters and experts.

"I always try my best to win, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't," Bodhana told BBC Radio 4's Today program. "I was very proud of myself when I got top girl in the European blitz." Asked if she gets nervous, she replied: "No, I just play the board."

British International Master and commentator Lawrence Trent described Bodhana as "one of the greatest talents I've witnessed in recent memory." "The maturity of her play, her sublime touch, it's truly breath taking," he wrote on X. "I have no doubt she will be England's greatest player and most likely one of the greatest the game has ever seen," Mr Trent added. Bodhana will next compete at the International Chess Congress in Hastings, one of the world's longest running tournaments, on December 28.

United States

US Expects To Make Multi-Billion Chips Awards Within the Next Year (reuters.com) 13

David Shepardson reports via Reuters: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she expects to make around a dozen semiconductor chips funding awards within the next year, including multi-billion dollar announcements that could drastically reshape U.S. chip production. She announced the first award on Monday -- $35 million to a BAE Systems facility in Hampshire to produce chips for fighter planes from the "Chips for America" semiconductor manufacturing and research subsidy program approved by Congress in August 2022.

"Next year we'll get into some of the bigger ones with leading-edge fabs," Raimondo told reporters. "A year from now I think we will have made 10 or 12 similar announcements, some of them multi-billion dollar announcements." In an interview with Reuters, Raimondo said that the number of awards could go higher than 12. She said she wants the percentage of semiconductors produced in the United States to rise from about 12% to closer to 20% -- though that is still down from 40% in 1990 -- and to have at least two "leading-edge" U.S. manufacturing clusters. In addition, she wants the U.S. to have cutting-edge memory and packaging production and to "meet the military's needs for current and mature" chips. Raimondo noted that the U.S. currently does not have any cutting-edge manufacturing production and wants to get that to about 10%.

The 2000 Beanies

Baldur's Gate 3 Wins Game of the Year (nytimes.com) 24

The role-playing adventure game Baldur's Gate 3 won game of the year last night at The Game Awards 2023 in Los Angeles. The New York Times reports: It was the crowning achievement for a game based on Dungeons & Dragons that largely stayed under the radar during its six years in development by the Belgian company Larian Studios. But its summer release -- 23 years after its predecessor -- captivated gamers, who celebrated a robust character creator, deep narrative and branching paths that made it seem as though anything was possible in its fictional universe of vampires and elves. Baldur's Gate 3, which is available on the PC, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, also went home with several other awards, including those for best role-playing game, best performance and best multiplayer.

The other nominees for game of the year were Alan Wake 2, by Remedy Entertainment; Marvel's Spider-Man 2, by Insomniac Games; Resident Evil 4, by Capcom; Super Mario Bros. Wonder, by Nintendo; and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, by Nintendo.

Intel

Intel's 14th Gen 'Raptor Lake Refresh' CPUs Nail a Total of 50 World Records (tomshardware.com) 40

Velcroman1 writes: Overclocking master Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch surfaced on Tom's Hardware to detail his work with liquid nitrogen to set a slew of new world records with Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs. They include 15 world records with the Core i7-14700K and eight records with the Core i5-14600K, along with four records with the Core i9-14900K, spanning benchmarks from Cinebench to wPrime and H265.

"My top speeds were 7,730.11 MHz on all cores on the 14900K, 7,859.05 MHz on the 14600K and 7,600 MHz on the 14700K," writes Splave. "All of these achieved in Cinebench R23 while using Liquid Nitrogen cooling."
"At the end of a week of playing around, I broke the 8-core Cinebench record at a crazy 7.73 GHz on all cores," concludes Splave. "Overall, these CPUs potentially OC better than their predecessors and cost the same. It was a rather refreshing refresh, I would say."
The 2000 Beanies

OpenAI Chief Sam Altman Becomes the First To Get Indonesia's 'Golden Visa' (cnbc.com) 23

Indonesia has awarded OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman its first "Golden Visa" -- a week after the program was launched to attract foreign investment to Southeast Asia's largest economy. CNBC reports: "There are several categories of golden visas apart from those based on investment/capital investment, one of which is the golden visa which is given to figures who have an international reputation and can provide benefits for Indonesia," Silmy Karim, Indonesia's director general of immigration, said in a statement. "With this golden visa, the hope is that Altman can contribute towards the development and use of AI in Indonesia," Karim said.

Altman's Golden Visa is for 10 years. As a holder of the visa, the American entrepreneur will get to enjoy priority screening at airports across the country's vast archipelago, along with longer periods of stay, and ease of entry and exit.

United States

Magnus Carlsen Becomes Chess World Cup Champion (chess.com) 12

Five-time world champion, Magnus Carlsen, has defeated Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu in a tiebreak to become Chess World Cup champion. Chess.com reports: The five-time world champion won his first World Cup crown by defeating GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu 1.5-0.5 in the rapid tiebreaks of the 2023 FIDE World Cup for a match victory of 2.5-1.5. In the third-place playoffs, GM Fabiano Caruana convincingly defeated GM Nijat Abasov in both rapid tiebreaks for a 3-1 victory and third place. It was a heartbreaking defeat for the Indian youngster, who had the initiative in the first game until Carlsen fought back and won in a tense endgame. In the second game, the world number-one allowed no chances, and Praggnanandhaa's impressive World Cup run came to an end as hundreds of thousands of fans watched the tense battle. You can watch the 2023 FIDE World Cup broadcast on Twitch and YouTube.
Piracy

Sci-Hub's Alexandra Elbakyan Receives EFF Award For Providing Access To Scientific Knowledge (torrentfreak.com) 14

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Electronic Frontier Foundation will award Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of the 'pirate' library Sci-Hub, for her efforts to provide access to scientific knowledge. According to EFF, Elbakyan's site is a vital resource for millions of students and researchers. Some medical professionals have even argued that the site helped to save lives. [...] "When I was working on my research project, I found out that all research papers I needed for work were paywalled. I was a student in Kazakhstan at the time and our university was not subscribed to anything," Alexandra told TorrentFreak years ago. Today, Sci-Hub continues to tear down academic paywalls but that comes at a cost. Sci-Hub has been sued several times and owes millions in damages to major publishers. In addition, Elbakyan also drew the attention of the FBI. Instead of throwing in the towel, Sci-Hub's founder continues to defend her ideals. They're a thorn in the side of major publishers, but on the other side of the debate, Elbakyan reaps praise.

This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that Sci-Hub's founder will receive an award for her accomplishments in advancing access to scientific knowledge. EFF's awards are presented to people who have taken a leading role in the fight for freedom and innovation online. The previous winners include Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. According to EFF, Elbakyan deserves the award as her life's work enables millions of people to access scientific knowledge that would otherwise exist beyond their financial reach. EFF also highlights that Elbakyan's work helps to challenge the current academic publishing system, where researchers are used as unpaid workhorses.
"Sci-Hub is used by millions of students, researchers, medical professionals, journalists, inventors, and curious people all over the world, many of whom provide feedback saying they are grateful for this access to knowledge," said the EFF.

"Some medical professionals have said Sci-Hub helps save human lives; some students have said they wouldn't be able to complete their education without Sci-Hub's help."
Music

New Grammy Award Rules Require Human Input, Curb AI Use 38

The Recording Academy on Friday updated its rulebook for the Grammy Awards, banning work produced entirely by artificial intelligence. Some music created with AI help may still qualify, however. Reuters reports: Music creators must now contribute to at least 20% of an album to earn a nomination. "A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any categories." In the past, any producer, songwriter, engineer or featured artist on an album could earn a nomination for album of the year, even if the person had a small input.
Games

The 2023 Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees (museumofplay.org) 44

Slashdot reader Dave Knott shares the four class of 2023 inductees into the Video Game Hall Of Fame. They were announced today at The Strong National Museum of Play. From the press release: Barbie Fashion Designer : "The 1996 hit Barbie Fashion Designer emerged at a time when many games were marketed to male players. Published by Digital Domain/Mattel Media, it proved that a computer game targeted to girls could succeed, selling more than 500,000 copies in two months. The game helped greatly expanded the market for video games and in the process opened important -- and ongoing -- discussions about gender and stereotypes in gaming. Barbie Fashion Designer was also innovative in bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, allowing players to design clothes for their Barbie dolls and print them on special fabric."

Computer Space : "Nutting Associate's Computer Space appeared in 1971 and was the first commercial video game. Inspired by the early minicomputer and previous World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee -- Spacewar! (1962) -- the coin-operated Computer Space proved that video games could reach an audience outside of computer labs. While not a best-seller, it was a trailblazer in the video game world and inspired its creators to go on to establish Atari Inc., a video game giant in the 1970s and 1980s."

The Last of Us : "Released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, The Last of Us jumped into an oversaturated field of post-apocalyptic zombie games and quickly stood out among the rest with its in-depth storytelling, intimate exploration of humanity, thrilling game jumps and cutscenes, and its memorable characters. More than 200 publications named it the game of the year in 2013. Its story has since made the jump to Hollywood, inspiring an HBO adaptation in 2023 watched weekly by millions."

Wii Sports : "Wii Sports launched with the Nintendo Wii home video game system in 2006 and introduced motion-based technology to living rooms across the world. With a simple swipe of the controller, players could serve a tennis ball, hurl a bowling bowl, throw a left hook, or drive a golf ball. The simple mechanics made the game accessible to almost anyone -- allowing it to be played by young children and seniors alike -- and helped to redefine the idea of who is a "gamer." Ultimately, the game helped Nintendo to sell more than 100 million Wii consoles worldwide."
These titles managed to beat out several other incredibly popular titles, including Angry Birds, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GoldenEye 007, NBA 2K, FIFA International Soccer, Quake, and Wizardry.
Television

YouTube TV Nabs Its First Technical Emmy Win For 'Views' Feature (techcrunch.com) 15

YouTube TV just won its first Technical Emmy award for its "Views" suite of features, which lets users access sports highlights, key plays, player stats and game scores. TechCrunch reports: At the 74th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards last night, YouTube TV was declared the winner for the category "AI-ML Curation of Sports Highlights." The tech company also announced today that Key Plays reached a notable milestone -- the feature was used in over 10 million watch sessions on the platform. Last year, viewers used key plays the most during the World Cup, regular season NFL games and Premier League matches.

The Key Plays view tracks important plays in a game. Users can tap on the plays to rewatch when it occurs in the game. This is helpful for users that missed a live game and want to catch up on key moments. When YouTube TV launched Views in 2018, it was only available for baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Soccer and golf were added later on. The suite of features was also initially limited to phones and tablets. Today, the feature is available within the YouTube TV app across smart TVs and mobile devices.

In addition to Stats, Key Plays and Scores View, there's also Fantasy Football View, which is a mobile-only feature and lets users link their existing fantasy football account. That way, when a user is watching NFL games on YouTube TV, the feature allows them to see how their team is performing in real time. Plus, there's a "Jump to" function for users to quickly access a segment they want to view, which is especially handy for tennis fans and for users watching the Olympics.
"Views came out of a team brainstorm about five years ago and launched about a year after YouTube TV," said Kathryn Cochrane, YouTube TV's group project manager, in a company blog post. "A lot of our viewers are devoted sports fans, and we found that when they watch sports, they aren't just looking at what's on the big screen. They were also actively on their phones, finding more details such as stats for their fantasy football league, updates from other games, and more, all to enhance what they were already watching."
AI

Nvidia AI Plays Minecraft, Wins AI Conference Award (arstechnica.com) 17

A paper describing MineDojo, Nvidia's generalist AI agent that can perform actions from written prompts in Minecraft, won an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper Award at the 2022 NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference, Nvidia revealed on Monday. Ars Technica reports: To train the MineDojo framework to play Minecraft, researchers fed it 730,000 Minecraft YouTube videos (with more than 2.2 billion words transcribed), 7,000 scraped webpages from the Minecraft wiki, and 340,000 Reddit posts and 6.6 million Reddit comments describing Minecraft gameplay. From this data, the researchers created a custom transformer model called MineCLIP that associates video clips with specific in-game Minecraft activities. As a result, someone can tell a MineDojo agent what to do in the game using high-level natural language, such as "find a desert pyramid" or "build a nether portal and enter it," and MineDojo will execute the series of steps necessary to make it happen in the game.

MineDojo aims to create a flexible agent that can generalize learned actions and apply them to different behaviors in the game. As Nvidia writes, "While researchers have long trained autonomous AI agents in video-game environments such as StarCraft, Dota, and Go, these agents are usually specialists in only a few tasks. So Nvidia researchers turned to Minecraft, the world's most popular game, to develop a scalable training framework for a generalist agent "one that can successfully execute a wide variety of open-ended tasks."
The award-winning paper debuted in June.

You can see examples of MineDojo in action on its official website, and the code for MineDojo and MineCLIP is available on GitHub.
The 2000 Beanies

Steve Jobs Awarded Posthumous Medal of Freedom By President Biden (theverge.com) 143

Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has been awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden, the White House announced Friday. The Verge reports: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest US honor that can be given to a civilian, and it's presented to "individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," the White House said in a statement. Jobs founded Apple in April 1976, and it's since become one of the biggest companies in the world. He helped launch many tech products that have gone on to become cultural touchstones, including the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. He died on October 5th, 2011.

In its statement, the White House praised Jobs's creative approach to his various endeavors. "Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chief executive, and chair of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar and held a leading role at the Walt Disney Company," the White House wrote. "His vision, imagination and creativity led to inventions that have, and continue to, change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film and wireless industries." The award will be presented on July 7th.
The full list of this year's Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients can be viewed here.
Power

Solar-Powered Desalination Device Wins MIT $100K Competition (mit.edu) 77

The winner of this year's MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. MIT News reports: Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small solar panel. The traditional approach for water desalination relies on a power-intensive process called reverse osmosis. In contrast, Nona uses a technology developed in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics that removes salt and bacteria from seawater using an electrical current.

"Because we can do all this at super low pressure, we don't need the high-pressure pump [used in reverse osmosis], so we don't need a lot of electricity," says Crawford, who co-founded the company with MIT Research Scientist Junghyo Yoon. "Our device runs on less power than a cell phone charger." The company has already developed a small prototype that produces clean drinking water. With its winnings, Nona will build more prototypes to give to early customers. The company plans to sell its first units to sailors before moving into the emergency preparedness space in the U.S., which it estimates to be a $5 billion industry. From there, it hopes to scale globally to help with disaster relief. The technology could also possibly be used for hydrogen production, oil and gas separation, and more.

E3

E3 2022 Has Officially Been Canceled (ign.com) 22

After previously canceling its in-person E3 2022 event, the ESA has now informed its partners that there will be no digital event equivalent this year either - meaning E3 2022 has fully been canceled. IGN reports: The news broke via a tweet from Razer PR lead Will Powers, who said that an email had been sent out announcing the cancellation of a digital E3 event. IGN has independently verified the contents of the email as well. The ESA had initially planned for an in-person E3 event this year after having no event in 2020 due to COVID-19 and a digital one in 2021. "We will devote all our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer," said the Entertainment Software Association in an official statement to IGN. "Whether enjoyed from the show floor or your favorite devices, the 2023 showcase will bring the community, media, and industry back together in an all-new format and interactive experience."

"We look forward to presenting E3 to fans around the world live from Los Angeles in 2023."
Privacy

Winter Olympics: Athletes Advised To Use Burner Phones In Beijing (bbc.com) 54

New submitter sperm shares a report from the BBC: The Beijing Winter Olympics app that all Games attendees must use contains security weaknesses that leave users exposed to data breaches, analysts say. The My2022 app will be used by athletes, audience members and media for daily Covid monitoring. The app will also offer voice chats, file transfers and Olympic news.

But cybersecurity group Citizen Lab says the app fails to provide encryption on many of its files. China has dismissed the concerns. Questions about the app come amid a rise in warnings about visitors' tech security ahead of the Games, which begin on 4 February. People attending the Beijing Olympics should bring burner phones and create email accounts for their time in China, cyber security firm Internet 2.0 said on Tuesday. Several countries have also reportedly told athletes to leave their main devices at home.
The report also says that it's found a "censorship keywords" list built into the app, and a feature that allows people to flag other "politically sensitive" expressions.
Movies

Netflix Gets Its First Golden Globe For Best Motion Picture (Drama) (techcrunch.com) 36

Last night, Netflix's "The Power of the Dog" became the streamer's first-ever movie to take home a Golden Globe for best motion picture (drama). The movie also won for best director (Jane Campion) and best supporting actor (Kodi Smit-McPhee). As TechCrunch points out, "NBC announced in May 2021 it wouldn't broadcast the awards show this year after an investigation by The L.A. Times revealed the lack of diversity within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the organization that hosts the annual event, as well as evidence of some members receiving gifts that amounted to bribes. [...] Instead, the event's winners were live-tweeted in an often bizarre fashion." From the report: In addition to being an overall quieter year as the HFPA tries to reform its organization following the controversies, the winning networks also aren't touting their victories as they would normally, despite some seeing some notable firsts and upsets. In prior years, HBO would be happily promoting its sweep over rivals. The network led the night with six wins, including four for HBO and two for HBO Max. Several of these were for its TV series "Succession," which won for best TV drama, TV drama actor (Jeremy Strong) and supporting actress (Sarah Snook.) HBO Max's comedy "Hacks" also notably beat out Emmy winner "Ted Lasso" (Apple TV+) as best comedy, and saw its lead, Jean Smart, win for best actress in a comedy. And Kate Winslet won best TV actress in a limited series for HBO's "Mare of Easttown."

Meanwhile, though Netflix led the year by nominations -- including for best dramatic film "The Power of the Dog" and drama series "Squid Game" -- it had said it wouldn't participate in the event until the HFPA institutes changes. That decision means it's also now not bragging about a couple of notable firsts that resulted from last night's awards. [...] In addition, Netflix's runaway hit TV series "Squid Game" received three nominations this year, leading to the first-ever win for South Korea, as South Korean actor O Yeong-su won for his role in the series, beating out "Succession's" Kieran Culkin (HBO) and "The Morning Show's" Billy Crudup (Apple TV+). Netflix also won for "tick, tick... BOOM!" when Andrew Garfield took the trophy for best actor in a motion picture (musical or comedy), though the tweet had forgotten to credit the project by name.

Apple TV+ took home one win last night, as "Ted Lasso's" Jason Sudeikis won best actor in a TV series (comedy). Hulu also got one Globe, as "Dopesick's" Michael Keaton won best actor in a TV limited series or motion picture made for television, while Amazon Prime Video's "The Underground Railroad" won the category. Amazon Prime Video's "Being the Ricardos" was highlighted with Nicole Kidman's win as best actress in a motion picture. In another milestone, the first trans actress to win a Golden Globe, FX's "Pose" star Michaela Jae Rodriguez, took home the trophy for best actress in a drama. 20th Century Studio/Disney's "West Side Story" won best picture (musical or comedy) and its stars, Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose, won best actress and supporting actress, respectively. Disney's "Encanto," which streamed on Disney+ just a month after hitting theaters, won best animated picture. Warner Bros.' "Dune" got the trophy for best score (Hans Zimmer), and Will Smith was named best actor in a motion picture (drama) for "King Richard." The best non-English language picture award went to the Japanese film "Drive My Car."
You can view the full list of winners here.
Transportation

Lucid Air Named MotorTrend Car of the Year (cnn.com) 143

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The Lucid Air, the first model from California-based electric car start-up company Lucid Motors, has been named MotorTrend's 2022 Car of the Year. It's the first time any automaker has won the award with its first car. MotorTrend's panel of judges lauded the Lucid Air for its extraordinary range and efficiency -- some versions can go up to 520 miles on a single charge -- as well as its performance and luxurious interior. In its announcement, MotorTrend called the Air "the new [electric vehicle] benchmark." While the judges generally liked the Air's interior design, they did criticize what they saw as an over-reliance on touch screens for many basic controls. The judges praised the car's Lucid-designed stereo-system.

It's not the first time a start-up automaker has won the award. The Tesla Model S won it in 2012. But the Model S was Tesla's second car, after the Tesla Roadster. The Air is Lucid's first car, and it only recently went into production. Despite its high cost, MotorTrend's judges thought the Lucid Air represented a strong value. They tested the Grand Touring version with a starting price around $140,000. Less expensive versions, with prices starting around $77,000, will be available later, but they won't have the driving range and power of the pricier cars. Lucid's CEO, Peter Rawlinson, once worked at Tesla and helped engineer the Model S. In creating the Lucid Air, he has said, efficiency has been a primary focus. The Lucid is actually the most energy efficient electric car sold in America, according to EPA estimates.

The Almighty Buck

Elon Musk To Offer $100 Million Prize For 'Best' Carbon Capture Tech (reuters.com) 153

Elon Musk on Thursday took to Twitter to promise a $100 million prize for development of the "best" technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions. He said more details would be coming "next week." Reuters reports: Capturing planet-warming emissions is becoming a critical part of many plans to keep climate change in check, but very little progress has been made on the technology to date, with efforts focused on cutting emissions rather than taking carbon out of the air. The International Energy Agency said late last year that a sharp rise in the deployment of carbon capture technology was needed if countries are to meet net-zero emissions targets.

Newly-sworn-in U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to accelerate the development of carbon capture technology as part of his sweeping plan to tackle climate change. On Thursday, he named Jennifer Wilcox, an expert in carbon removal technologies, as the principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Almighty Buck

Australian 'Super Seaweed' Supplement To Reduce Cattle Gas Emissions Wins $1 Million International Prize (abc.net.au) 72

SpamSlapper shares a report from The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A company commercializing a CSIRO-developed, seaweed feed product, which slashes the amount of greenhouse gases cattle burp and fart into the atmosphere, has won a $1 million international prize for its work reshaping the food system. CSIRO-affiliated company Future Feed said it would use its Food Planet Prize winnings to create an international commercial fund to help First Nations communities generate income from cultivating and selling the seaweed.

Methane emissions from livestock make up around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and one cow produces on average as much gas emission as one car. "As a greenhouse gas, methane is about 28 times more potent in terms of global warming potential than carbon dioxide and lasts much longer in the atmosphere," the CSIRO said on its website. Future Feed director and CSIRO scientist Michael Battaglia said that when added to cattle feed, the product, which contains Australian "super seaweed" Asparagopsis, virtually eliminated methane from the animals' bodily emissions. "We know that just a handful [of the product] per animal per day, or 0.2 percent of their diet can virtually eliminate 99.9 percent of methane," Dr Battaglia said.

Slashdot Top Deals