Factory construction in the United States has experienced significant growth, with construction spending by manufacturers more than doubling over the past year. Insider reports: For April 2023, the annual rate reached nearly $190 billion compared with $90 billion in June 2022, with manufacturing accounting for around 13% of non-government construction. [...] Factories are being constructed everywhere from deserts to resort towns as the US tries to bring back manufacturing of goods commonly imported from lower-cost countries. Many battery and electric vehicle factories have popped up in the Rust Belt, while solar panel and renewable energy factories now span much of the South and Southeast. The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers per the May Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report (PDF). However, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, the manufacturing skills gap -- caused by the labor market's struggle to find workers with highly technical and manual expertise -- could lead to 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.

Manufacturing, though, has accelerated its move back to the US from other countries over the past year. According to Kearney's 2022 Reshoring Index, 96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations -- a spike from 78% in the 2021 index. The sudden rise in factory construction corresponds with passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in July 2022, which provided $280 billion in funding to boost manufacturing of semiconductors, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The IRA has sought to create new jobs in manufacturing, construction, and renewable energy, estimated to create up to 1.5 million jobs by 2030. Construction spending in most areas of the US economy has fallen in contrast, including office, health care, and educational construction. Residential construction has also declined amid a big cooldown from the pandemic housing market boom. Census Bureau data reveals manufacturing construction spending has escalated from January 2020 until April 2023 in every region except New England and the Mid Atlantic.

The Indian government will not consider any proposals for new coal plants for the next five years and focus on growing its renewables sector, according to an updated national electricity plan released Wednesday evening. From a report: The temporary pause in the growth of the dirty fuel was hailed by energy experts as a positive step for a country that is currently reliant on coal for around 75% of its electricity. Updated every five years, the plan serves as a guideline for India's priorities in its electricity sector.

India is the world's third highest emitter and most populous country. It plans to reach net zero emissions by 2070, which would mean significantly slashing coal use and ramping up renewable energy. In a draft of the plan released in September, the Central Electricity Authority, which is in charge of planning for India's electricity needs, projected that nearly 8,000 megawatts of new coal capacity was required by 2027. But Wednesday's strategy proposes the build out of more than 8,600 megawatts of battery energy storage systems instead. Battery storage is crucial for round-the-clock use of renewable energy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg doesn't seem fazed by Apple's introduction of the Vision Pro. In a companywide meeting with Meta employees today that The Verge watched, the CEO said Apple's device didn't present any major breakthroughs in technology that Meta hadn't "already explored" and that its vision for how people will use the device is "not the one that I want." He also pointed to the fact that Meta's upcoming Quest 3 headset will be much cheaper, at $499 compared to the Vision Pro's $3,499 price tag, giving Meta the opening to reach a wider user base.

"I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important," Zuckerberg told employees, who were gathered at the company's Menlo Park, California, headquarters for its first all-hands meeting since 2020. Zuckerberg said that the Quest is about "people interacting in new ways and feeling closer" while also "about being active and doing things." "By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself," he said of Apple's WWDC keynote earlier this week. "I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it's not the one that I want."

At WWDC today, Apple debuted iOS 17. "Highlights include new safety features, a built-in journaling app, a new nightstand mode, redesigned contact cards, better auto-correct and voice transcription, and live voicemail," reports The Verge. "And you'll be able to drop the 'hey' from 'Hey Siri.'" From the report: Your contact book is getting an update with a new feature called posters, which turns contact cards into flashy marquee-like images that show up full-screen on your recipient's iPhone when you call them. They use a similar design language as the redesigned lock screens, with bold typography options and the ability to add Memoji, and will work with third-party VoIP apps. There's also a new live transcription feature for voicemail that lets you view a transcript of the message a caller is leaving in real time. You can choose to ride it out or pick up the call, and it's all handled on-device. You'll also be able to leave a message on FaceTime, too.

Some updates to messages include the ability to filter searches with additional terms, a feature that jumps to the most recent message so you can catch up more easily, transcriptions of voice messages -- similar to what the Pixel 7 series introduced -- and a series of new features called Check In that shares your live location and status with someone else. It can automatically send a message to a friend when you've arrived home, and it can share your phone's battery and cell service status to help avoid confusion if you're in a dead zone. Stickers are getting an overhaul, too, with the ability to add any emoji or photo cutout as a "sticker" positioned on iMessages or anywhere within the system. Live photos can be turned into animated stickers, too, and you can now add effects to stickers.

AirDrop gets an update to send contact information -- cleverly called NameDrop -- which will send your selected email addresses and phone numbers (and your poster) just by bringing two iPhones near each other. It also works between an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Photos can be shared the same way, and if the file is a big one, it's now possible to move out of range while continuing the download. iOS 17 also includes keyboard updates, including enhancements to autocorrect. It now relies on a new language model for better accuracy, plus an easier shortcut to revert to the original word you wrote if necessary. There's now in-line predictive typing and sentence-level autocorrections to correct more grammatical mistakes. It'll finally learn your favorite cuss words, too; Apple's Craig Federighi even made a "ducking" joke onstage. Dictation uses a new AI model, too, that's more accurate.

A new app called Journal automatically suggests moments that you might want to commemorate in a journal entry. Your entries can include photos, music, and activities, and you can schedule reminders for yourself to start writing. It's end-to-end encrypted, too, to keep things private. StandBy is a new mode for charging that turns the screen into a status display with the date and time. It can show information from Live Activities, widgets, and smart stacks and automatically turns on when your phone is in landscape mode while charging. You can swipe to the right to see some of your highlighted photos, and it comes with customizable clockfaces. Siri will surface visual results in StandBy, and the display shifts to a red tone at night to avoid disrupting sleep. Last but not least, Siri gets a boost, too, and finally lets you drop the "hey" from "Hey Siri." It will also recognize back-to-back commands. iOS 17 is available to developers today, with a public beta released next month.

Apple has announced an augmented reality headset called Apple Vision Pro that "seamlessly" blends the real and digital world. "It's the first Apple product you look through, and not at," CEO Tim Cook said of the device, which looks like a pair of ski goggles. From a report: As rumored, it features a separate battery pack and is controlled with eyes, hands, and voice. Vision Pro is positioned as primarily an AR device, but it can switch between augmented and full virtual reality using a dial. The device is controller-free, and you browse rows of app icons by looking at them. You can tap to select and flick to scroll, and you can also give voice commands.

On top of that, the headset supports Bluetooth accessories and lets you connect your Mac to use inside the headset. You're also not, Apple promises, isolated from people around you. The headset will display your eyes with a system called EyeSight, and if you're in full VR, a glowing screen will obscure them to suggest you're not available. The device uses passthrough video that lets you see the real world in full color, but you can also project 3D objects into real space, including pulling objects out of a message thread into the real world. Starting price: $3,499.

Apple has unveiled a new 15-inch MacBook Air at its 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference. The new model is 11.5mm thick, which Apple says makes it the world's thinnest 15-inch laptop. From a report: It has two USB-C Thunderbolt ports, a MagSafe charging connector, and a headphone jack. Its 15.3-inch screen has 500 nits of brightness, a 1080p webcam, and gets a quoted 18 hours of battery life. It'll come with Apple's M2 chip.

The new model starts at $1,299 and will be available next week. Meanwhile, Apple is updating the price on its smaller model. The 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 now starts at $1,099. The new laptop represents a midrange release for Apple, which previously had a fairly large price gap between its 13-inch MacBook offerings and larger premium-priced models. The 15-inch Air will likely serve an audience that wants a large screen but doesn't need the extra computing power (and cost) of 14-inch and 16-inch Pro models.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After endless leaks, Motorola made its fourth-generation lineup of foldables official today. The flagship is the Moto Razr+, which will launch in the US on June 23 for $999. There's also a cheaper phone called only the "Moto Razr" with a smaller outside screen, slower SoC, and no clear US price or release date. Internationally, these phones are called the Moto Razr 40 Ultra and Moto Razr 40. The Ultra model's SoC is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 -- that's not the best you can get from Qualcomm, which would be the 8 Gen 2 -- this is a year-old mid-cycle upgrade chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 3800 mAh battery with 30 W quick charging. The leaked display specs have been all over the place, but officially, the interior display is a 6.9-inch, 2640x1080 OLED that runs at a smoking 165 Hz. The exterior display is super big on the Ultra model and is a 3.6-inch, 144 Hz OLED at a nearly square 1066x1056. Motorola has the phone's dust and water ingress protection rated at IP52, which typically only protects from "direct sprays of water up to 15 degrees from the vertical" and is far from qualifying the Razr as a water-resistant phone.

The design has been better. The original foldable Moto Razr reboot from 2020 had beautiful throwback looks that screamed "Moto Razr." It looked just like the old-school flip phone from the early 2000s but modernized. This fourth foldable generation tones things down a lot and is more of a generic rectangle. You could easily confuse it for Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip. This fourth generation seems more mature, though. Motorola will now let you run any app you want on the ultra's giant front screen, complete with the option of a super tiny Android navigation bar tucked away in the bottom left corner, to the left of the two front cameras. You can peruse the app drawer, use Google Pay, or play media on the front display. You can even type on the keyboard: Google GBoard has a special full-screen mode that will show a single line of input text.

Those front cameras give this font display one of the strangest display shapes on the market. With two big dead spots in the bottom right corner, the workable display area is kind of an upside-down L shape. By default, apps will stay out of the non-rectangular part of the screen, but it's possible to enable a "full screen" mode for the front apps. This will force apps to use the lower part of the display, and you just have to hope that they will somehow deal with that. Android has APIs to identify dead areas of the display for apps to work around, but usually, that's for a top camera notch. Not many apps are built for this, but you're apparently welcome to try to make them work with the feature. [...] If you're interested in the Razr+, preorders start June 16.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Smithsonian: With a new technique, scientists have essentially figured out how to create power from thin air. Their tiny device generates electricity from the air's humidity, and it can be made from nearly any substance, scientists reported this month in the journal Advanced Materials. The invention involves two electrodes and a thin layer of material, which must be covered with tiny holes less than 100 nanometers in diameter -- thinner than one-thousandth the width of a human hair, according to a statement from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where the researchers work.

As water molecules pass through the device, from an upper chamber to a lower chamber, they knock against the tiny holes' edges, creating an electric charge imbalance between the layered chambers. In effect, it makes the device run like a battery. The whole process resembles the way clouds make electricity, which we see in the form of lightning bolts, according to Inverse's Molly Glick. [...] Currently, the fingernail-sized device can only create continuous electricity equivalent to a fraction of a volt, writes Vice's Becky Ferreira. But the researchers hope it can someday become a practical, sustainable source of power.

Scientists have previously tried harnessing humidity to generate electricity, but their attempts have often only worked for a short amount of time or relied on expensive materials, per Vice. In 2020, Yao and other researchers found a way to continuously collect electricity from humidity using a material grown from bacteria. But now, the new paper shows that such a specific material isn't necessary -- just about any material works, such as wood or silicon, as long as it can be punctured with the ultra-small holes. This finding makes the device much more practical; it "turns an initially narrow window to a wide-open door for broad potential," Yao tells Vice.

North America has emerged as the fastest-growing market for new battery cell manufacturing factories, driven by incentives provided by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to a report by Clean Energy Associates. Electrek reports: CEA says that China is still the leading battery cell manufacturing hub, but its share will decline in "coming years." Europe has seen delays and cancellations of several planned battery factories, mostly due to high energy prices and other countries' pro-clean energy and EV manufacturing policies luring projects away. Global EV battery usage increased by 72% in just a year, from 2021 to 2022. And going forward, CEA forecasts an impressive two-year 186% growth rate on the 1,706 GWh of batteries produced in 2022.

The reason is obvious for the rapid increase in battery factories: The International Energy Agency's "Global EV Outlook 2023" reports that EV sales exceeded 10 million in 2022, and 14% of all new cars sold were electric in 2022 -- up from around 9% in 2021 and less than 5% in 2020. And battery and EV manufacturing are only going to continue to experience huge growth.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution. The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores...

The air-powered generator, known as an "Air-gen," would offer continuous clean electricity since it uses the energy from humidity, which is always present, rather than depending on the sun or wind... The device, the size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair, is dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores. The holes have a diameter smaller than 100 nanometers, or less than a thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair. The tiny holes allow the water in the air to pass through in a way that would create a charge imbalance in the upper and lower parts of the device, effectively creating a battery that runs continuously. "We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air," Xiaomeng Liu, another author and a UMass engineering graduate student, said in a statement.

While one prototype only produces a small amount of energy — almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen — because of its size, Yao said Air-gens can be stacked on top of each other, potentially with spaces of air in between. Storing the electricity is a separate issue, he added. Yao estimated that roughly 1 billion Air-gens, stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt and partly power a home in ideal conditions. The team hopes to lower both the number of devices needed and the space they take up by making the tool more efficient...

It could be embedded in wall paint in a home, made at a larger scale in unused space in a city or littered throughout an office's hard-to-get-to spaces. And because it can use nearly any material, it could extract less from the environment than other renewable forms of energy. "The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity," Yao said. "It's an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that."
More information from the Boston Globe.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.

Hyundai Motor and LG Energy have announced they will build a $4.3 billion electric battery plant as part of Hyundai's new electric vehicle assembly plant in southeast Georgia. From a report: The companies will split the investment, starting production as soon as late 2025. Hyundai Motor CEO Jaehoon Chang said in a statement that the battery plant would "create a strong foundation to lead the global EV transition," explaining the company wants to speed up efforts to produce electrified Hyundai and Kia vehicles in North America. "Hyundai Motor Group is focusing on its electrification efforts to secure a leadership position in the global auto industry," Chang said. The South Korean automaker said in 2022 it would invest $5.5 billion to assemble electric vehicles and batteries in Ellabell, just west of Savannah. The site is supposed to have 8,100 employees and is slated to begin producing vehicles in 2025.

IBM has announced its goal to build a 100,000-qubit quantum computing machine within the next 10 years in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago. MIT Technology Review reports: Late last year, IBM took the record for the largest quantum computing system with a processor that contained 433 quantum bits, or qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum information processing. Now, the company has set its sights on a much bigger target: a 100,000-qubit machine that it aims to build within 10 years. IBM made the announcement on May 22 at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The company will partner with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago in a $100 million dollar initiative to push quantum computing into the realm of full-scale operation, where the technology could potentially tackle pressing problems that no standard supercomputer can solve.

Or at least it can't solve them alone. The idea is that the 100,000 qubits will work alongside the best "classical" supercomputers to achieve new breakthroughs in drug discovery, fertilizer production, battery performance, and a host of other applications. "I call this quantum-centric supercomputing," IBM's VP of quantum, Jay Gambetta, told MIT Technology Review in an in-person interview in London last week. [...] IBM has already done proof-of-principle experiments (PDF) showing that integrated circuits based on "complementary metal oxide semiconductor" (CMOS) technology can be installed next to the cold qubits to control them with just tens of milliwatts. Beyond that, he admits, the technology required for quantum-centric supercomputing does not yet exist: that is why academic research is a vital part of the project.

The qubits will exist on a type of modular chip that is only just beginning to take shape in IBM labs. Modularity, essential when it will be impossible to put enough qubits on a single chip, requires interconnects that transfer quantum information between modules. IBM's "Kookaburra," a 1,386-qubit multichip processor with a quantum communication link, is under development and slated for release in 2025. Other necessary innovations are where the universities come in. Researchers at Tokyo and Chicago have already made significant strides in areas such as components and communication innovations that could be vital parts of the final product, Gambetta says. He thinks there will likely be many more industry-academic collaborations to come over the next decade. "We have to help the universities do what they do best," he says.

"Multiple lines of Android devices came with preinstalled malware," reports Ars Technica, "that couldn't be removed without users taking heroic measures."

Their article cites two reports released Thursday — one from Trend Micro and one from TechCrunch: Trend Micro researchers following up on a presentation delivered at the Black Hat security conference in Singapore reported that as many as 8.9 million phones comprising as many as 50 different brands were infected with malware... ["It's highly likely that more devices have been preinfected," the report clarified, "but have not exchanged communication with the Command & Control server, have not been used or activated by the threat actor, or have yet to be distributed to the targeted country or market... The threat actor has spread this malware over the last five years. "]

"Guerrilla" opens a backdoor that causes infected devices to regularly communicate with a remote command-and-control server to check if there are any new malicious updates for them to install. These malicious updates collect data about the users that the threat actor, which Trend Micro calls the Lemon Group, can sell to advertisers. Guerrilla then surreptitiously installs aggressive ad platforms that can deplete battery reserves and degrade the user experience... Guerrilla is a massive platform with nearly a dozen plugins that can hijack users' WhatsApp sessions to send unwanted messages, establish a reverse proxy from an infected phone to use the network resources of the affected mobile device, and inject ads into legitimate apps...

TechCrunch detailed several lines of Android-based TV boxes sold through Amazon that are laced with malware. The TV boxes, reported to be T95 models with an h616, report to a command-and-control server that, just like the Guerrilla servers, can install any application the malware creators want. The default malware preinstalled on the boxes is known as a clickbot. It generates advertising revenue by surreptitiously tapping on ads in the background...

Android devices that come with malware straight out of the factory box are, unfortunately, nothing new. Ars has reported on such incidents at least five times in recent years (here, here, here, here, and here). All the affected models were in the budget tier.

People in the market for an Android phone should steer toward known brands like Samsung, Asus, or OnePlus, which generally have much more reliable quality assurance controls on their inventory. To date, there have never been reports of higher-end Android devices coming with malware preinstalled. There are similarly no such reports for iPhones.

About 80 percent of new cars sold in Norway are battery-powered. As a result, the air is cleaner, the streets are quieter and the grid hasn't collapsed. The New York Times: Last year, 80 percent of new-car sales in Norway were electric, putting the country at the vanguard of the shift to battery-powered mobility. It has also turned Norway into an observatory for figuring out what the electric vehicle revolution might mean for the environment, workers and life in general. The country will end the sales of internal combustion engine cars in 2025. Norway's experience suggests that electric vehicles bring benefits without the dire consequences predicted by some critics. There are problems, of course, including unreliable chargers and long waits during periods of high demand. Auto dealers and retailers have had to adapt. The switch has reordered the auto industry, making Tesla the best-selling brand and marginalizing established carmakers like Renault and Fiat.

But the air in Oslo, Norway's capital, is measurably cleaner. The city is also quieter as noisier gasoline and diesel vehicles are scrapped. Oslo's greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 30 percent since 2009, yet there has not been mass unemployment among gas station workers and the electrical grid has not collapsed. Some lawmakers and corporate executives portray the fight against climate change as requiring grim sacrifice. "With E.V.s, it's not like that," said Christina Bu, secretary general of the Norwegian E.V. Association, which represents owners. "It's actually something that people embrace." Norway began promoting electric vehicles in the 1990s to support Think, a homegrown electric vehicle start-up that Ford Motor owned for a few years. Battery-powered vehicles were exempted from value-added and import taxes and from highway tolls. The government also subsidized the construction of fast charging stations, crucial in a country nearly as big as California with just 5.5 million people. The combination of incentives and ubiquitous charging "took away all the friction factors," said Jim Rowan, the chief executive of Volvo Cars, based in neighboring Sweden. The policies put Norway more than a decade ahead of the United States. The Biden administration aims for 50 percent of new-vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, a milestone Norway passed in 2019.

According to S&P Global Mobility, the average age of light vehicles on the road in the U.S. is now at an all-time high of 12.5 years, up three months from 2022. Two decades ago, their average was 9.7 years. Axios reports: The impact: The transition from gas to electric cars will take decades.

It'll likely take until at least 2050 -- and possibly longer -- before most gas-powered cars are off the road, Campau says.

Of note: EV longevity is going in the opposite direction. Their average age fell from 3.7 years in 2022 to 3.6 years in 2023, in part due to an upswing in new purchases.

By the numbers: About 6.6% of battery-powered EVs bought between 2013-2022 have left the passenger fleet, compared with 5.2% of non-EVs -- but [...] it's too early to know why. EVs generally come with an 8-year, 100,000-mile warranty -- but early evidence suggests they last longer than that, according to an analysis by Recurrent, which tracks battery data. Carmakers say electric cars should last 15 to 20 years, but modern EVs haven't been around long enough to validate that claim. The report projects that there will be fewer than 100 million passenger cars on the road within the next 18-24 months -- a low not seen since 1978. By 2028, at least 7 in 10 vehicles on the road will be pickups, SUVs or crossovers.

Hasselblad is discontinuing its H-series medium format DSLRs to focus exclusively on mirrorless models. "The move leaves Pentax and Ricoh as the biggest remaining names in the rapidly diminishing DSLR space," notes Engadget. "Hasselblad's last H series launch was the H6D system in 2016." From the report: "While we have been feeling this sting for over the last 18 months with lack of product, today we received official notice that the full product line of the Hasselblad H system has been officially discontinued," Capture Integration wrote. "All [H system] products are now officially out of stock and Hasselblad will no longer take orders for anything in the H line." The article continued, "The H system is still very strong and working in so many studios today. However, it's time to look at replacements. We can't even order new battery grips today." The vendor notes that future repairs will likely take longer and grow in difficulty.

One cellphone owner reports their Pixel 6 Pro "has recently been overheating and excessively draining its battery," reports Endgadget.

"They suspect the culprit is the Google app and an update that began rolling out on May 12th..." And they're not the only ones, judging by comments left in the Reddit and Google support forums. "It just started yesterday. Massive battery usage from Google app and to a lesser degree Android System Intelligence...." one Reddit user wrote. Beyond the battery not lasting the phone is getting really warm so I know it's harming the battery and potentially the CPU."

Those who have tried contacting Google report the company's support staff haven't been very helpful. Some users say rolling back to an older version of the Google app hasn't fixed the problem for them. "Actually ended up with an even older version from May 10, still draining the battery," writes one Redditor. The reader who contacted us suspects the problem may be server-side. "Google app keeps wrecking the battery regardless of version, and I've rolled all the way back to May 1st," they write. "I don't know how to see if the app is trying to call home or on a loop with something like that, but the symptoms remain the same."

Google did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request.

"Pagliacci Pizza is partnering with drone company Zipline to begin drone delivery to customers in the Seattle area," reports the Seattle Times, citing a statement this week from Zipline.

"If all goes well, the company expects to deliver pizzas in 2024," reports local news outlet KUOW, noting that Zipline has battery-powered drones that hover above a customer's location "and lowers the delivery on a tethered droid." "Obviously, it seems pretty sci-fi and a lot of customers think this is totally insane when they first hear about it," said Keller Cliffton, cofounder and CEO of Zipline, a delivery drone company. "But what has really struck us is that there are about seven days of sci-fi magical amazement, and then on day eight people are basically bored of it — bored of it in the way that there's no way they're ever going back to the old way of receiving things... Anybody can pull out a phone, press a button on that phone, and place an order that can then be delivered autonomously to the home in a way that is 10 times as fast, half the cost, and fully zero emission compared to the way we do instant delivery today."

Scenes of hot pizzas lowering out the sky onto Seattle porches are contingent on Zipline receiving approval from the FAA for an operations and safety plan. That plan is in the works but not yet submitted to the agency. The FAA may impose restrictions tailored to Seattle's busy airspace such as on flight altitudes, hours of operation and places to avoid...

The plans don't end with pizzas. Last year, Zipline announced a separate effort to deliver medical products and lab samples for the MultiCare Health System around Tacoma... As with the pizza proposal, the earliest estimates for medical deliveries around Tacoma are sometime in 2024. Zipline has also made delivery deals with supplement retailer GNC in Salt Lake City, and with Associated Couriers in Long Island, New York to deliver medications... [Zipline] has already been delivering some products for Walmart to customers in the Bentonville, Arkansas area and prescription drugs for some health care providers in parts of North Carolina and Utah. But the Washington state plans would involve newer types of drones, which the company calls Platform 2 Zips.
Pagliacci Pizza's co-owner told the news outlet that the drones "will enable us to scale our deliveries sustainably with up to 97% fewer emissions than cars." They told CNET drones would deliver pizzas "while they're still hot," and told the Seattle Times that drone deliveries will make it possible to deliver pizzas to further away or difficult-to-reach locations. ("The Zipline drones can deliver goods to customers in a 10-mile service radius," according to the newspaper, with drones flying more than 300 feet above the ground while remaining 'nearly silent, designed to sound like rustling leaves in the wind,' according to Zipline.)

Local news station KIRO notes that Zipline's current system uses larger drones and small parachutes "for Walmart and other customers around the world." And Pagliacci Pizza told them that since there's no driver, tips offered during drone delivery would go to the kitchen staff.

Wednesday Zipline also announced a deal with wellness brand GNC, according to CNET, which "will begin with customers in Salt Lake City, with other cities to follow... Zipline is also announcing a partnership with Associated Couriers to begin delivering prescription medications to patients at long-term care facilities in Long Island, New York. Associated Couriers plans to expand the service across the US and then internationally. The delivery company has already completed more than 600,000 deliveries to customers since 2016 using its previous iteration of drones....

Zipline is far from being the only company experimenting with drone delivery — Walmart, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and startups like Flyby Robotics and Manna have also run trials and performed delivery services.

As smoke began filling the cabin, an airplane passenger saw sparks and fire bursting from a bag in the seat directly behind her — which turned out to be a "smoky flashing lithium battery, which had begun smoldering in a carry-on bag," according to CBS News.

The flight crew contained the situation, and "Airport fire trucks met the plane on the runway and everyone evacuated safely." But a CBS News Investigation "has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United States." The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more 42% in the last five years. A CBS News analysis of the FAA's data found that since 2021 there's been at least one lithium battery incident on a passenger plane somewhere in the U.S., on average, once every week...

Some airlines are taking action to control the growing number of fires. They are using specialized "thermal containment" bags designed for flight crews to use if a lithium battery starts heating up to the point where it's smoking or burning. Mechanical engineers at the University of Texas at Austin say the bags can effectively contain fire and keep it from spreading, but don't extinguish it.
In a video accompanying the article, an engineering professor at the university's Fire Research Group even showed a lithium-ion battery fire that continued burning undewater. "You can't put it out. It's a fire within the cell. So, you've got fuel, oxygen, heat in the cell, all." (The article also notes a startup called Pure Lithium is working on a new kind of non-flammable battery using lithium metal cells instead of lithium ion).

Guidelines from America's Federal Aviation Administration require spare lithium-ion batteries be kept with passengers (and not checked) — and prohibits passengers from bringing onboard damaged or recalled batteries and battery-powered devices.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader khb for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After the release of Apple's AirTags, Google suddenly has interest in the Bluetooth tracker market. The company has already quietly rolled out what must be the world's largest Bluetooth tracking network via Android's 3 billion active devices, and now trackers are starting to plug in to that network. Google is taking the ecosystem approach and letting various companies plug in to the Android Bluetooth tracking network, which has the very derivative name of "Find My Device." While these Bluetooth trackers are great for finding your lost car keys on a messy desk, they can also work as worldwide GPS trackers and locate items much farther away, even though they don't have GPS. The IDs of Bluetooth devices are public, so Tile started this whole idea of crowdsourced Bluetooth tracker location, called the "Tile Network." Every phone with the Tile app installed scans Bluetooth devices in the background and, using the phone GPS, uploads their last seen location to the cloud. This location data is only available to the person who owns the Tile, but every Tile user works to scan the environment and upload any Tiles the app can see. [...]

Now, third-party Bluetooth trackers for Android's network are starting to arrive. The two companies that have announced products are Chipolo and Pebblebee, both of which seem to be cloning the Tile line of products. Both offer normal keychain tracker tags and slim credit card format trackers. The worst habits of Tile include making completely disposable products because the batteries can't be changed, but it looks like our clones have mostly avoided that. All of Pebblebee's Find My Device products are rechargeable, which is great, while the Chipolo keychain tracker has a replaceable CR2032 battery. Only the Chipolo wallet tracker is disposable (boo!). All these tags will show up in the Find My Device app, right alongside your Android phones, headphones, and whatever else you have that plugs in to the network. They also have a speaker, like normal, so you can make them ring when you're near them. Both sets of products are up for preorder now.