Intel shares surged 8% after announcing plans to make its foundry business an independent unit with its own board and potential for outside capital, part of CEO Pat Gelsinger's strategy to restructure the company amid financial challenges. The company is also exploring the possibility of spinning off the foundry business, pausing some European manufacturing projects, and expanding its AI chip production partnership with Amazon Web Services to regain market share in the growing AI server chip industry. CNBC reports: As part of CEO Pat Gelsinger's effort to turn around the struggling chipmaker, Intel said in a memo to employees that it will also sell off part of its stake in Altera. Gelsinger said the restructuring would allow the foundry business to "evaluate independent sources of funding,â and comes days after Intel's board met to assess the direction and future of the company. The foundry business, which Intel plans to use to manufacture chips for other customers, has been a big drag on its bottom line, with the company spending roughly $25 billion on it in each of the last two years. Beyond just considering outside funding, Intel is weighing whether to spin off the foundry business, possibly into a separate publicly traded company, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named in order to discuss confidential information. With a standalone "operating board" and a cleaner corporate structure, the mechanics of a separation become far easier than trying to turn a fully integrated unit into a separate company. [...] Intel will also pause its fabrication efforts in Poland and Germany "by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand," Gelsinger said, and pull back on its plans for its Malaysian factory. U.S. manufacturing projects will remain unaffected, the company said.

In addition to the foundry announcement, Intel said it entered into a deal with Amazon Web Services to produce custom chips for AI, extending a long-running partnership between the two companies. Amazon is a big customer of Intel chips to power its AWS servers, and will buy a custom Xeon processor from Intel as well, Intel said. The move will potentially give Intel a new foothold in the growing industry for AI server chips. While Intel has several products that can be used for AI, including Gaudi 3, Nvidia has largely taken control of the market. Amazon has been developing its own AI chips, including one called Trainium, for over five years. Microsoft and Google have also invested heavily in custom chips to run AI, aiming to offer less expensive processors than Nvidia's general-purpose graphics processing units. Intel said that it would carry out its most advanced manufacturing, including the AI chip for AWS, at its plant in Ohio that's currently under construction. "All eyes will remain on us," Gelsinger said. "We need to fight for every inch and execute better than ever before. Because that's the only way to quiet our critics and deliver the results we know we're capable of achieving."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Postal Service's new delivery vehicles aren't going to win a beauty contest. They're tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous. "You can tell that (the designers) didn't have appearance in mind," postal worker Avis Stonum said. Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down -- and even catching fire.

Within a few years, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service's primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii. Once fully deployed, they'll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency's 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who's also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes. The current postal vehicles -- the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, dating to 1987 -- have made good on their name, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. But they're well overdue for replacement. Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are costly to maintain. They're scalding hot in the summer, with only an old-school electric fan to circulate air. They have mirrors mounted on them that -- when perfectly aligned -- allow the driver to see around the vehicle, but the mirrors constantly get knocked out of alignment. Alarmingly, nearly 100 of the vehicles caught fire last year, imperiling carriers and mail alike.

The new trucks are being built with comfort, safety and utility in mind by Oshkosh Defense in South Carolina. Even tall postal carriers can stand up without bonking their heads and walk from front to back to retrieve packages. For safety, the vehicles have airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors and anti-lock brakes -- all of which are missing on the Grummans. The new trucks also feature something common in most cars for more than six decades: air conditioning. And that's key for drivers in the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with scorching summers. [...] Brian Renfroe, president of the National Letter Carriers Association, said union members are enthusiastic about the new vehicles, just as they were when the Grummans marked a leap forward from the previous old-school Jeeps. He credited DeJoy with bringing a sense of urgency to get them into production. "We're excited now to be at the point where they're starting to hit the streets," Renfroe said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft executives have been thinking lately about the end of the world. In a white paper published late last year, Brad Smith, the company's vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a "planetary crisis" that AI could help solve. Imagine an AI-assisted tool that helps reduce food waste, to name one example from the document, or some future technology that could "expedite decarbonization" by using AI to invent new designs for green tech.

But as Microsoft attempts to buoy its reputation as an AI leader in climate innovation, the company is also selling its AI to fossil-fuel companies. Hundreds of pages of internal documents I've obtained, plus interviews I've conducted over the past year with 15 current and former employees and executives, show that the tech giant has sought to market the technology to companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron as a powerful tool for finding and developing new oil and gas reserves and maximizing their production -- all while publicly committing to dramatically reduce emissions.

Although tech companies have long done business with the fossil-fuel industry, Microsoft's case is notable. It demonstrates how the AI boom contributes to one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today -- despite the fact that the technology is often lauded for its supposed potential to improve our world, as when Sam Altman testified to Congress that it could address issues such as "climate change and curing cancer." These deals also show how Microsoft can use the vagaries of AI to talk out of both sides of its mouth, courting the fossil-fuel industry while asserting its environmental bona fides. (Many of the documents I viewed have been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a whistleblower complaint alleging that the company has omitted from public disclosures "the serious climate and environmental harms caused by the technology it provides to the fossil fuel industry," arguing that the information is of material and financial importance to investors.

Nvidia is banking on its software expertise and broad GPU ecosystem to stay ahead in the fiercely competitive AI chip market, CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with Goldman Sachs Wednesday. Huang pointed to NVIDIA's large base of installed GPUs and their software compatibility as key strengths.

Huang highlighted three key elements of Nvidia's competitive moat: a large installed base of GPUs across multiple platforms, the ability to enhance hardware with software like domain-specific libraries, and expertise in building rack-level systems. The CEO said Nvidia's chip design prowess, noting the company has developed seven different chips for its upcoming Blackwell platform.

These comments come as Nvidia faces increasing competition from rivals. Addressing supply chain concerns, Huang said NVIDIA has sufficient in-house intellectual property to shift manufacturing if necessary without significant disruption. The company plans to begin shipping Blackwell-based products in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, with volume production ramping up in fiscal 2026, according to Huang.

From the note that Goldman Sachs sent to its clients: 1) Accelerated Computing: Mr. Huang highlighted his long-held view that Moore's Law was no longer delivering the rate of innovation it had in the past and, as such, was driving computation inflation in Data Centers. Further, he noted that the densification and acceleration of the $1 trillion data center infrastructure installed base alone would drive growth over the next 10 years, as it would deliver material performance improvement and/or cost savings.

2) Customer ROI: Mr. Huang noted that we have hit the end of transistor scaling that enabled better utilization rates and cost reductions in the previous virtualization and cloud computing cycles. He explained that, while using a GPU to augment a CPU will drive an increase in cost in absolute terms (~2x) in the case of Spark (distributed processing system and analytics engine for big data), the net cost benefit could be as large as ~10x for an application like Spark given the speed up of ~20x. From a revenue generation perspective, Mr. Huang shared that hyperscale customers can generate $5 in rental revenue for every $1 spent on Nvidia's infrastructure, given sustained strength in the demand for accelerated computing.

Ars Technica's Benj Edwards writes: In an age when you can get just about anything online, it's probably no surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven't been paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward democratizing diamond production -- a process that began decades ago and continues to evolve. [...] Today, there are two primary methods for creating lab-grown diamonds: the HPHT process and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Both types of machines are now listed on Alibaba, with prices starting at around $200,000, as pointed out in a Hacker News comment by engineer John Nagle (who goes by "Animats" on Hacker News). A CVD machine we found is more pricey, at around $450,000.

While the idea of purchasing a diamond-making machine on Alibaba might be intriguing, it's important to note that operating one isn't as simple as plugging it in and watching diamonds form. According to Lakha's article, these machines require significant expertise and additional resources to operate effectively. For an HPHT press, you'd need a reliable source of high-quality graphite, metal catalysts like iron or cobalt, and precise temperature and pressure control systems. CVD machines require a steady supply of methane and hydrogen gases, as well as the ability to generate and control microwaves or hot filaments. Both methods need diamond seed crystals to start the growth process. Moreover, you'd need specialized knowledge to manage the growth parameters, handle potentially hazardous materials and high-pressure equipment safely, and process the resulting raw diamonds into usable gems or industrial components. The machines also use considerable amounts of energy and require regular maintenance. Those factors may make the process subject to some regulations that are far beyond the scope of this piece. In short, while these machines are more accessible than ever, turning one into a productive diamond-making operation would still require significant investment in equipment, materials, expertise, and safety measures. But hey, a guy can dream, right?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Within the next several months, Nevada plans to launch a generative AI system powered by Google that will analyze transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings and issue recommendations to human referees about whether or not claimants should receive benefits. The system will be the first of its kind in the country and represents a significant experiment by state officials and Google in allowing generative AI to influence a high-stakes government decision -- one that could put thousands of dollars in unemployed Nevadans' pockets or take it away. Nevada officials say the Google system will speed up the appeals process -- cutting the time it takes referees to write a determination from several hours to just five minutes, in some cases -- helping the state work through a stubborn backlog of cases that have been pending since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tool will generate recommendations based on hearing transcripts and evidentiary documents, supplying its own analysis of whether a person's unemployment claim should be approved, denied, or modified. At least one human referee will then review each recommendation, said Christopher Sewell, director of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation (DETR). If the referee agrees with the recommendation, they will sign and issue the decision. If they don't agree, the referee will revise the document and DETR will investigate the discrepancy. "There's no AI [written decisions] that are going out without having human interaction and that human review," Sewell said. "We can get decisions out quicker so that it actually helps the claimant."

Judicial scholars, a former U.S. Department of Labor official, and lawyers who represent Nevadans in appeal hearings told Gizmodo they worry the emphasis on speed could undermine any human guardrails Nevada puts in place. "The time savings they're looking for only happens if the review is very cursory," said Morgan Shah, director of community engagement for Nevada Legal Services. "If someone is reviewing something thoroughly and properly, they're really not saving that much time. At what point are you creating an environment where people are sort of being encouraged to take a shortcut?" Michele Evermore, a former deputy director for unemployment modernization policy at the Department of Labor, shared similar concerns. "If a robot's just handed you a recommendation and you just have to check a box and there's pressure to clear out a backlog, that's a little bit concerning," she said. In response to those fears about automation bias Google spokesperson Ashley Simms said "we work with our customers to identify and address any potential bias, and help them comply with federal and state requirements." "There's a level of risk we have to be willing to accept with humans and with AI," added Amy Perez, who oversaw unemployment modernization efforts in Colorado and at the U.S. Department of Labor. "We should only be putting these tools out into production if we've established it's as good as or better than a human."

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully 3D printed the first metal part aboard the International Space Station. This achievement marks a significant advancement in in-orbit manufacturing that could enable the production of essential spare parts and tools for future long-duration space missions. "The first metal shape was produced in August, and three more are planned as part of the experiment," notes The Register. "All four will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis -- two to ESA's technical center, ESTEC, in the Netherlands, one to the agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, and the last sample to the Technical University of Denmark." From the report: During a panel discussion following the UK premiere of Fortitude, a film about the emerging commercial space industry, Advenit Makaya, Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at ESA, remarked on the potential for recycling space debris in the process rather than having to rely on raw materials launched to the ISS. Rob Postema, ESA Project Manager for Metal 3D, told The Register that the agency was indeed looking at "circular" solutions in its drive for greater sustainability. However, don't hold your breath for putting bits of space garbage into one end and getting shiny metal parts out of the other: "A timeline is difficult to indicate, some early results are achieved with ground activities, ready to evaluate solutions in space."

The printer is overseen from the ground and operated for around four hours per day. The ground team has to check each layer via images and a scan of the surface area; printing a sample can take 10-25 days. However, Postema said: "Through automated control of the printing process as well as continuous operations, this can be substantially reduced." Knick-knacks from orbits are all well and good, but could something more substantial be produced? Yes, although not with this demonstrator, which can print to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. Postema noted that while the demonstrator could manage smaller parts, either as a single unit or as part of larger structures, "there are definitely opportunities to create 3D shapes and parts with this technology larger than what we have done with this Technology Demonstrator."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: You might have a hard time stretching your memory to the Obama era, but back in 2013, Panasonic's plasma TVs were the critical darlings of the US market. They far outperformed their LED/LCD counterparts at a time when OLED was little more than a pipe dream for most. Then suddenly, under enormous pressure from ever-cheaper LED panels, Panasonic halted all plasma TV production. By 2016, the company had left the US TV space entirely. Now, over 10 years after its plasma models reigned supreme in the US, Panasonic TVs are back, baby.

Outside the US, Panasonic has remained a global leader in the OLED era. Rumors about a stateside return have been swirling for nearly as long as the brand has been away, but a global partnership with Amazon announced at CES 2024 kicked things into high gear. Today, Panasonic officially revealed the US launch of three premium TVs powered by Amazon's Fire TV smart interface: the flagship Z95A and "core" Z85A OLED TVs, and the W95A flagship mini LED TV. All three models are available now in limited sizes, as Panasonic begins its slow walk back to competing against LG, Samsung, and Sony. There are three models now available in the US: 55- and 65-inch OLED options and a Mini LED TV that measures up to 85 inches.

The Z95A is Panasonic's top OLED model featuring advanced gaming features, a 144-Hz refresh rate on select inputs, HDR10+, Dolby Vision support, and AI-powered picture modes. According to Wired, it boasts an impressive sound system developed with hi-fi audio brand Technics and employs Panasonic's proprietary microlens array technology for optimized brightness and heat management.

The Z85A is a step-down model offering similar gaming specs and smart home integration at a lower price, lacking the Z95A's specialized brightness and sound enhancements. It includes a game mode, HDR10+, Dolby Vision support, and a Mark II processor but only supports up to 120 Hz and doesn't have a built-in microphone for Alexa.

Last but not least is Panasonic's W95A flagship miniLED model, offering gaming-ready features like a 144-Hz refresh rate on two HDMI inputs and local dimming for deep contrast and high brightness. It includes the same smart-home integration as other models but features a more standard sound system, and Alexa control is available only through the remote.

Europe's food and farming lobbies have recognized the need to eat less meat after hammering out a shared vision for the future of agriculture with green groups and other stakeholders. From a report: The wide-ranging report calls for "urgent, ambitious and feasible" change in farm and food systems and acknowledges that Europeans eat more animal protein than scientists recommend. It says support is needed to rebalance diets toward plant-based proteins such as better education, stricter marketing and voluntary buyouts of farms in regions that intensively rear livestock. The stakeholders also agreed on the need for a major rethink of subsidies, calling for a "just transition fund" to help farmers adopt sustainable practices, and targeted financial support to those who need it most.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who commissioned the report to quell furious farmer protests at the start of the year, said the results would feed into a planned vision for agriculture that she will present in the first 100 days of her new mandate. "We share the same goal," said Von der Leyen. "Only if farmers can live off their land will they invest in more sustainable practices. And only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue making a living." Animal agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of climate breakdown and the destruction of natural habitats, but European leaders have made little effort to steer diets heavy in meat and milk to whole grains and plant-based sources of protein. The report did not set targets for meat production, such as culling herds, but called for support to help shift dietary habits, such as free school meals, more detailed labels, and tax reductions on healthy and sustainable food products.

1.9 million solar panels began operating this year in California — at a Mortenson facility with 120,000 installed batteries that give it a storage capacity of 3,280 megawatts. An article in El Pais notes that this helped California pass 10,000 megawatts of photovoltaic storage in April — enough to meet 20% of demand — for the first time ever. (In 2019, the state had just 770 megawatts of storage capacity.)

Mark Rothleder, the vice president of the independent grid operator, California ISO (CAISO), said earlier this year that they will add another 1,134 megawatts in the first eight months of 2024. This is growth on top of the leap made last year. "In 2023 alone, the ISO successfully onboarded 5,660 megawatts of new power to the grid," Rothleder said at a conference in San Diego...

Renewable production was enough to supply the grid on 40 out of 48 days this spring, compared to seven days in the whole of last year. Lithium batteries appear to be undercutting the use of fossil fuels. Gas accounts for 40% of California's grid. However, its use in April registered its lowest proportion in seven years. "The data clearly shows that batteries are displacing natural gas when solar generation is ramping up and down each day in CAISO," notes an analysis by Grid Status, a firm specializing in energy issues. Natural gas was king on the grid in April 2021, 2022 and 2023. CAISO was sending between 9,000 and 10,000 megawatts produced from gas to the grid once solar ran out. Last April, however, it amounted to only 5,000 megawatts... [California's goal: run on 100% renewable energy by 2045.]

Arizona and Georgia have followed California's lead. But it is Texas, the other major U.S. giant in this industry, that is snapping at its heels. At the end of April, batteries supplied 4% of the grid's electricity, enough to power several million homes. Batteries are beginning to look like an alternative to a system heavily dependent on gas and coal.

The Washington Post writes that Telegram's "anything-goes approach" to its 950 million users "has also made it one of the internet's largest havens for child predators, experts say...."

"Durov's critics say his public idealism masks an opportunistic business model that allows Telegram to profit from the worst the internet has to offer, including child sexual abuse material, or CSAM... " [Telegram is] an app of choice for political organizing, including by dissidents under repressive regimes. But it is equally appealing for terrorist groups, criminal organizations and sexual predators, who use it as a hub to share and consume nonconsensual pornography, AI "deepfake" nudes, and illegal sexual images and videos of exploited minors, said Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. "Due to their advertised policy of not cooperating with law enforcement, and the fact that they are known not to scan for CSAM, Telegram has attracted large groups of pedophiles trading and selling child abuse materials," Stamos said.

That reach comes even though many Telegram exchanges don't actually use the strong forms of encryption available on true private messaging apps, he added. Telegram is used for private messaging, public posts and group chats. Only one-to-one conversations can be encrypted in a way that even Telegram can't access them. And that occurs only if users choose the option, meaning the company could turn over everything else to governments if it wanted to... French prosecutors argue that Durov is in fact responsible for Telegram's emergence as a global haven for illegal content, including CSAM, because of his reluctance to moderate it and his refusal to help authorities police it, among other allegations...

David Kaye, a professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law and former U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression... said that while Telegram has at times banned groups and taken down [CSAM] content in response to law enforcement, its refusal to share data with investigators sets it apart from most other major tech companies. Unlike U.S.-based platforms, Telegram is not required by U.S. law to report instances of CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. Many online platforms based overseas do so anyway — but not Telegram. "NCMEC has tried to get them to report, but they have no interest and are known for not wanting to work with [law enforcement agencies] or anyone in this space," a NCMEC spokesperson said.
The Post also writes that Telegram "has repeatedly been revealed to serve as a tool to store, distribute and share child sexual imagery." (They cite several examples, including two different men convicted to minimum sentences of at least 10 years for using the service to purchase CSAM and solicit explicit photos from minors.)

Remember when a door-sized panel blew off a Boeing aircraft back in January? The Seattle Times reports that the "door plug" incident "was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews" in a Boeing assembly plant in Renton, Washington last fall. (And that Boeing's quality control system "failed to catch the faulty work.")

But the details tell a larger story. The newspaper bases their conclusion on "transcripts of federal investigators' interviews of a dozen Boeing workers, synchronized with an internal Boeing document obtained by The Seattle Times," tracing the whole history of that panel's production. Within a day of its fuselage arriving at the factory, "a small defect was discovered: Five rivets installed by Spirit on the door frame next to the door plug were damaged." That day, the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, repair of those rivets was handed to Spirit, which has contract mechanics on-site in Renton to do any rework on its fuselage. In the meantime, inspectors gave mechanics the OK to install insulation blankets, which covered the door plug. By the following Thursday, a Spirit mechanic had logged an entry in the official Federal Aviation Administration-required record of this aircraft's assembly — the Common Manufacturing Execution System or CMES, pronounced "sea-mass" by the mechanics — that the rivet repair was complete: "removed and replaced rivets." But that day, a Boeing inspector responded with a scathing rebuttal, stating that the rivets had not been replaced but just painted over. "Not acceptable," read the work order. On Sept. 10, records show Spirit was ordered a second time to remove and replace the rivets...

["Shipside Action Tracker"] entries show that after several days, the still-unfinished work order was elevated to higher-level Boeing managers. On Sept. 15, Boeing cabin interiors manager Phally Meas, who needed the work finished so he could get his crew to install cabin walls and seats, texted on-site Spirit manager Tran Nguyen to ask why the rivet work hadn't been done, NTSB interview transcripts show. Spirit mechanics couldn't get to the rivets unless the plug door was opened, Nguyen responded. He sent Meas a photo from his phone showing it was closed, according to the transcripts. It wasn't Spirit's job to open the sealed door plug. Boeing's door team would have to do that, the records show. "He kept asking me how come there wasn't work yet," Nguyen told the NTSB. "The door was not open. That's why there wasn't work yet."

By Sept. 17, the door was still closed, the rivets still unrepaired. The job was elevated again, to the next level of managers. On that day, according to the SAT record, senior managers worked with Ken McElhaney, the door crew manager in Renton, "to determine if the door can just merely be opened or if it needs removal...." [On September 18] at 6:48 a.m., a Boeing mechanic identified as a Door Master Lead texted a young Trainee mechanic on his team to come to the Alaska jet and open the door. The NTSB interviewed but did not name the Trainee or the Door Master Lead, who had almost 16 years at Boeing.

Filling in for the veteran mechanic on vacation, the Trainee was perhaps the least equipped to do this atypical job. He'd been at Boeing for about 17 months, his only previous jobs being at KFC and Taco Bell. "He's just a young kid," the Door Master Lead said...
More key quotes from the article:

• Boeing put both employees on paid administrative leave.

• "A company investigator accused one of them of lying. That employee told the NTSB that Boeing has set the pair up as scapegoats."

• "A 35-year veteran on the door team told NTSB investigators that he is 'the only one that can work on all the doors' and he was typically the only mechanic who would work on door plugs. That mechanic was on vacation on the two critical days, September 18 and 19 last year, when the door plug on the Alaska MAX 9 had to be opened and closed..."

• "No quality inspection of the door plug was conducted, since no record of its opening and closing was ever entered in the system, documents show."

• The FBI ís investigating Boeing "for potential criminal negligence," according to the article, "and has issued subpoenas using a Seattle grand jury."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Lego plans to make half of its bricks from renewable or recycled materials by 2026, with a goal of fully transitioning by 2032. While the company cites higher production costs and challenges with existing materials, it says it's committed to not passing these costs onto consumers. The Guardian reports: The Danish company last year ditched efforts to make bricks entirely from recycled bottles because of cost and production issues. At the moment, 22% of the material in its colourful bricks is not made from fossil fuels. The toymaker hopes gradually to bring down the amount of oil-based plastic it uses by paying up to 70% more for certified renewable resin, the raw plastic used to manufacture the bricks, in an attempt to encourage manufacturers to increase production. [...] Lego has also expanded its brick takeback programme, Replay -- where consumers can donate old bricks to the company through free shipping -- into the UK and continued to test similar models in the US and Europe.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: While solar power is growing at an extremely rapid clip, in absolute terms, the use of natural gas for electricity production has continued to outpace renewables. But that looks set to change in 2024, as the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has run the numbers on the first half of the year and found that wind, solar, and batteries were each installed at a pace that dwarfs new natural gas generators. And the gap is expected to get dramatically larger before the year is over.

According to the EIA's numbers, about 20 GW of new capacity was added in the first half of this year, and solar accounts for 60 percent of it. Over a third of the solar additions occurred in just two states, Texas and Florida. There were two projects that went live that were rated at over 600 MW of capacity, one in Texas, the other in Nevada. Next up is batteries: The US saw 4.2 additional gigawatts of battery capacity during this period, meaning over 20 percent of the total new capacity. (Batteries are treated as the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA since they can dispatch electricity to the grid on demand, even if they can't do so continuously.) Texas and California alone accounted for over 60 percent of these additions; throw in Arizona and Nevada, and you're at 93 percent of the installed capacity.

The clear pattern here is that batteries are going where the solar is, allowing the power generated during the peak of the day to be used to meet demand after the sun sets. This will help existing solar plants avoid curtailing power production during the lower-demand periods in the spring and fall. In turn, this will improve the economic case for installing additional solar in states where its production can already regularly exceed demand. Wind power, by contrast, is running at a more sedate pace, with only 2.5 GW of new capacity during the first six months of 2024. And for likely the last time this decade, additional nuclear power was placed on the grid, at the fourth 1.1 GW reactor (and second recent build) at the Vogtle site in Georgia. The only other additions came from natural gas-powered facilities, but these totaled just 400 MW, or just 2 percent of the total of new capacity.

The EIA expects a bit over 60 GW of new capacity to be installed by the end of the year, with 37 GW of that coming in the form of solar power. Battery growth continues at a torrid pace, with 15 GW expected, or roughly a quarter of the total capacity additions for the year. Wind will account for 7.1 GW of new capacity, and natural gas 2.6 GW. Throw in the contribution from nuclear, and 96 percent of the capacity additions of 2024 are expected to operate without any carbon emissions. Even if you choose to ignore the battery additions, the fraction of carbon-emitting capacity added remains extremely small, at only 6 percent."

A type of genetically modified wheat developed by Argentina's Bioceres may be safely grown and bred in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. From a report: Bioceres must still complete additional steps, including field trials, that will take years before it can commercialize HB4 wheat, modified to tolerate drought, industry group U.S. Wheat Associates said. Still, USDA's finding moves genetically modified wheat closer to production in the U.S. in a potential win for farmers grappling with drought and more severe weather, despite concerns among some consumers.

"Wherever wheat is grown in the world, drought takes its toll on yields and quality, so an innovation like HB4 holds a lot of interest for growers like me," said Michael Peters, an Oklahoma wheat farmer and past chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates. Genetic modification involves altering a plant's makeup by transferring DNA from one organism to another and is common in crops such as corn, used for livestock feed. Some consumer groups oppose genetic modification of wheat over concerns about human health since it is widely used to make bread and pasta, and therefore consumed directly by people. USDA's decision on HB4 wheat is farther than the agency has ever gone with genetically modified wheat, U.S. Wheat Associates said.

This weekend NASA said they'd turn to SpaceX to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, notes the Associated Press, "rather than risk using the Boeing Starliner capsule that delivered them." (They add that Boeing's capsule "has been plagued by problems with its propulsion system.")

But Reuters reported that even before the setback, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were "in talks to sell their rocket-launching joint venture United Launch Alliance to Sierra Space, two people familiar with the discussions said." A deal to sell ULA, a major provider of launch services to the U.S. government and a top rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, would mark a significant shift in the U.S. space launch industry as ULA separates from two of the largest defense contractors to a smaller, privately held firm.

The potential sale comes after years of speculation about ULA's future and failed attempts to divest the joint venture over the past decade. In 2019, Boeing and Lockheed Martin reportedly explored selling ULA but couldn't agree on terms with potential buyers... Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Cerberus Capital Management had placed bids in early 2023 for the company, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Rocket Lab had also expressed interest, two people said. None of those discussions led to a deal...

A potential deal could accelerate deployment of [Sierra Space's] crewed spaceflight business, analysts said. A ULA acquisition, they said, would give the company in-house access to launch vehicles that could send its spaceplane and space-station components into Earth's orbit, rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars for those launches as a customer...

ULA has faced challenges in scaling Vulcan production and upping its launch rate to meet commercial demand and fulfill contract obligations with the Space Force, which in 2021 picked Vulcan for a sizable chunk of national security missions alongside SpaceX's Falcon fleet. A sale of ULA would unshackle the company from Boeing and Lockheed, whose boards have long resisted ideas from ULA to expand the business beyond rockets and into new competitive markets such as lunar habitats or maneuverable spacecraft, according to former executives.
While Reuters's sources say the negotiations could still end without a deal, they also said ULA could be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion, giving Boeing some cash while shifting its focus to its core businesses of aerospace and defense.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

America's Department of Energy has three R&D labs, according to Wikipedia, one of which is Sandia National Labs. And that New Mexico-based lab has just announced that "A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation." with research into "a motion sensor so precise it could minimize the nation's reliance on global positioning satellites." Until recently, such a sensor — a thousand times more sensitive than today's navigation-grade devices — would have filled a moving truck. But advancements are dramatically shrinking the size and cost of this technology. For the first time, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have used silicon photonic microchip components to perform a quantum sensing technique called atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration. It is the latest milestone toward developing a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are unavailable. The team published its findings and introduced a new high-performance silicon photonic modulator — a device that controls light on a microchip — as the cover story in the journal Science Advances... The new modulator is the centerpiece of a laser system on a microchip. Rugged enough to handle heavy vibrations, it would replace a conventional laser system typically the size of a refrigerator...

Besides size, cost has been a major obstacle to deploying quantum navigation devices. Every atom interferometer needs a laser system, and laser systems need modulators. "Just one full-size single-sideband modulator, a commercially available one, is more than $10,000," said Sandia scientist Jongmin Lee. Miniaturizing bulky, expensive components into silicon photonic chips helps drive down these costs. "We can make hundreds of modulators on a single 8-inch wafer and even more on a 12-inch wafer," Kodigala said. And since they can be manufactured using the same process as virtually all computer chips, "This sophisticated four-channel component, including additional custom features, can be mass-produced at a much lower cost compared to today's commercial alternatives, enabling the production of quantum inertial measurement units at a reduced cost," Lee said.

As the technology gets closer to field deployment, the team is exploring other uses beyond navigation. Researchers are investigating whether it could help locate underground cavities and resources by detecting the tiny changes these make to Earth's gravitational force. They also see potential for the optical components they invented, including the modulator, in LIDAR, quantum computing, and optical communications.
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Volkswagen said this week it would wait to see where EV demand goes before building out the last three of its six planned battery factories. And now Ford has also cancelled its planned electric SUV and delayed production of an all-new electric pickup, according to CNBC, moves Ford now believes could cost up to $1.9 billion.

But Ford isn't giving up. Ford's COO told CNBC Thursday that "We're quite convinced that the highest adoption rates for electric vehicles will be in the affordable segment on the lower size-end of the range." Instead of the three-row SUV or large pickup, the company's first new EV is expected to be a commercial van in 2026, followed the next year by a midsized pickup and then the T3 full-size pickup... And the midsize pickup is scheduled to be the first vehicle from a specialized "skunkworks" team in California. The company had tasked the team two years ago with developing a new small EV platform... "In ICE, a business we've been in for 120 years, the bigger the vehicle, the higher the margin. But it's exactly the opposite for EVs...."

Ford's current EVs — the Mustang Mach-E crossover, F-150 Lightning and a commercial van in the U.S. — are not profitable overall. The Model e operations have lost nearly $2.5 billion during the first half of this year and lost $4.7 billion in 2023. The losses, as well as changing market conditions and business plans, caused Ford earlier this year to withdraw an ambitious 8% profit margin for its EV unit by 2026.

Investors and Wall Street analysts have largely supported the EV changes, most recently sending the company's shares up about 2.3% since the announcement earlier this week, despite the expected costs. "Overall, these changes will position Ford to benefit from growing demand for EVs, while also focusing on areas in which it has a Core competitive advantage," BofA's John Murphy wrote Wednesday in an investor note... The updates are the latest for Ford's electrification plans, which now include a heavy focus on hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, to assist in meeting tightening fuel economy regulations in addition to all-electric vehicles. Ford CFO John Lawler said Wednesday that the company's future capital expenditure plans will shift from spending about 40% on all-electric vehicles to spending 30%... "What we saw in '21 and '22 was a temporary market spike where the demand for EVs really took off," Gjaja told CNBC during an interview earlier this year. "It's still growing but not nearly at the rate we thought it might have in '21, '22."
The article also points out that while Ford is discontinuing its giant electric SUV, Ford's rival GM is doing exactly the opposite: America's largest automaker has pulled back spending and delayed many of its EVs, but it has several large all-electric vehicles on sale coming soon... As recently as last month, GM reconfirmed expectations for its EVs to be profitable on a production, or contribution-margin basis, once it reaches output of 200,000 units by the fourth quarter. A GM spokesman Thursday said the automaker continues "to work to reach variable profit positive during the fourth quarter."
The article also notes "an industrywide fear that Chinese automakers could be able to flood markets with cheaper, more profitable EVs," with Chinese automakers like BYD "quickly growing exports of vehicles to Europe and other countries..."

"It's going to be violent," warns the creator of Terminator Zero, an eight-episode anime series premiering Thursday August 29th on Netflix. "It's going to be dark, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting."

And the Netflix blog has now shared the first six minutes online: In the world of Terminator, the future is never set, yet some things are guaranteed: The Terminator is still a cyborg that feels no remorse, pity, or fear. The anime series TERMINATOR ZERO, landing on Netflix on Aug. 29 — known to fans as Judgment Day — looks different from any incarnation of the Terminator franchise we've seen before, but you can tell from these opening six minutes that the brutal, sophisticated action will remain.

"I realized the first minutes of the show have to declare what it is," creator and executive producer Mattson Tomlin tells Tudum. A joint production between Skydance and the Japanese animation studio Production I.G, TERMINATOR ZERO has the challenge of drawing in both anime fans and fans of the Terminator series. "The way to do that was to have a sequence that had no dialogue, that was really planting a flag in letting everybody know this is going to be violent, it's going to be dark, it's going to be action-driven, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting," says Tomlin, who previously wrote Project Power for Netflix and is currently writing The Batman Part II. "That's just what it has to be."
The series follows "a new batch of characters who live in Japan in 1997," writes CBR — and in an interview the show's director said "There's a balance" when representing Japan's actual culture while keeping the show futuristic: One of the things that I really took for granted was guns. [Points to self] Dumb American over here had to write a scene where Eiko gets into a parking lot and smashes the window of a car, goes to the glove box, takes out a revolver, and it instantly gets flagged. [Other people working on the series] were like, "No, we don't have guns. What you are describing, that's over there. We're over here in civilization where that can't happen." That triggered a really fruitful and creatively challenging discussion about weapons. The military has guns and the police have guns. That's kind of it. So these characters have to arm themselves. How are they going to do it? What could we do? And that's why the Terminator has a crossbow. Eiko has all of these different weapons that she concocted from a hardware store. It was all born out of that.

After a couple of years of regular use, Samsung's $400 Galaxy Ring will end up contributing to the growing e-waste problem. "The Galaxy Ring -- and all smart rings like it -- comes with a huge string attached," writes iFixit in a blog post. "It's 100% disposable, just like the AirPod-style Buds3 that Samsung just released. The culprit? The lithium ion batteries." ZDNet reports: The problem is the battery, and how they have a finite lifespan. Usually that's about 400 recharge cycles, and after that the batteries are finished. And if you can't replace it, then it's the end of the line for the gadget, and it's tossed onto the e-waste pile. [...]

iFixit is damning about this sort of tech. "There's nothing wrong with simple but there is something wrong with unrepairable. Just like the Galaxy Buds3, the Galaxy Ring is a disposable tech accessory that isn't designed to last more than two years." And the bottom line is simple: "We can't recommend buying disposable tech like this." Here's what iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari had to say about the Galaxy Ring's battery, after putting it through a CT scanner: On the right hand side of the ring is the faint outline of a lithium polymer battery pouch. There's an inductive coil sitting right on top of the battery (the lines that look like a rectangular track) and another very similar inductive coil that's parallel and slightly separated from the first. That second inductive coil is inside the charging case and works together with the inductive coil in the ring to recharge the battery inside the Galaxy Ring. Inductive charging is the only practical way to deliver power to a device that doesn't have any ports. But there's something else here that sticks out like a sore thumb ... that is a press connector joining the battery to the rest of the board! This is a surprising use of space, why isn't this directly soldered? Nobody is getting back in there to disconnect this thing!

We love press connectors, they're easy to work with and make replacing batteries a sight easier than desoldering a half dozen wires. But this one is sealed into the device and serves no purpose in replacement or repair. Our best guess as to why it's in the Galaxy Ring: The battery and wireless charging coil were made in one place, the circuit board somewhere else, and it all comes to a production line somewhere where the two need to be connected together quickly and cheaply. Hence the press connector. It's not for your benefit, it's for the manufacturers.