Phoronix's Michael Larabel writes: With patches pending for creating an Acer Aspire 1 embedded controller driver, this Qualcomm Snapdragon powered ARM laptop has "almost full support" with the upstream Linux kernel. The Acer Aspire 1 (A114-61) is an aging ARM laptop design built on the Snapdragon 7c Gen1. It's no longer the latest and greatest with it being a two year old device, but for those wanting a low-power and long-battery-life laptop, the Acer Aspire 1 still has some potential for Linux enthusiasts.

Over the course of this year this eight-core ARM laptop has been seeing work on mainline Linux kernel support. Since Linux 6.5 much of that support has been in place while some bits remain. Sent out recently was this patch series creating an embedded controller (EC) driver for the Acer Aspire 1. This EC driver gets battery and charger monitoring working along with USB Type-C DP Alt Mode HPD monitoring, lid status detection, and some keyboard configuration. The EC functionality on the Acer Aspire 1 is implemented in ACPI but sadly ACPI cant be used to boot Linux on these Qualcomm devices -- thus leading to this new "acer-aspire1-ec" driver being created.

The next version of Android could give you an estimate of your battery's remaining capacity, which naturally degrades over time. "Android 14 laid the initial groundwork for the OS to track battery health information, but Android 15 could actually bring that information in front of users," reports Android Authority. It could also tell you whether your device's battery has been replaced. From the report: The manufacture date and cycle count aren't the only battery-related statistics that Android 14 exposes to apps through new APIs, though. Other battery health details like the date of first use, charging policy, charging status, and state of health are also available. The state of health is particularly interesting because it's an estimate of the battery's current full charge capacity, expressed as a percentage relative to the battery's rated capacity. For example, if your Pixel 8 battery's state of health is measured at 90%, that means its remaining full charge capacity is estimated to be about 4118mAh (compared to the rated 4575mAh).

The Settings app currently doesn't show the battery state of health, but that's set to change in the future, as the latest version of the Settings Services app (an extension to the Settings app on Pixel and other devices) found within Android 14 QPR2 Beta 2 has a new "battery health" page that is set to show the state of health. [...] Strings within the APK suggest this page will show you the "estimated percentage of charge the battery can currently hold compared to when it was new" (i.e. the state of health) before and after "recalibration" of the battery. We don't have the exact details on what "recalibration" entails, but given that one string suggests the "process may take a few weeks," we're guessing that it's simply the system collecting data over a longer period to provide a more accurate estimate of the battery capacity. Meanwhile, the "initial battery health values" are "based on lab results" and hence "may vary from your actual battery state."

[...] We also learned that the Settings app itself will surface "tips" to the user when either the battery capacity is degraded or can't be detected, so the user doesn't have to manually check the "battery health" page. Lastly, we learned that Google is working on exposing more battery-related information to the OS, such as the part status and the serial number. [...] At the very least, we do know that Android will support reading the battery's part status and serial number, provided the battery exposes that information to the OS, and the vendor implements the new version of the Android health HAL. The health HAL is the software responsible for bridging the gap between the OS APIs that read battery/charging information (i.e. everything we talked about before) with the software that controls the battery/charging chips. Version 2.0 of the health HAL needs to be implemented to support all the new Android 14 battery health APIs like state of health, which is why so few devices support that right now.

"EVs mandates are coming to Canada whether you like it or not," writes Slashdot reader Major_Disorder, sharing a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "Here is what my Canadian brothers and sisters need to know." From the report: New regulations being published this week by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will effectively end sales of new passenger vehicles powered only by gasoline or diesel in 2035. Guilbeault said the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard will encourage automakers to make more battery-powered cars and trucks available in Canada. "There's no mistaking it. We are at a tipping point," he said, noting sizable growth in EV sales in Canada and demand that has previously outstripped the available supply.

Automakers will have the next 12 years to phase out combustion engine cars, trucks and SUVs with a requirement to gradually increase the proportion of electric models they offer for sale each year. The electric-vehicle sales mandate regulations will be published later this week. They are setting up a system in which every automaker will have to show that a minimum percentage of vehicles they offer for sale are fully electric or longer-range plug-in hybrids. It will start with 20 per cent in 2026 and rise slightly to 23 per cent in 2027. After that, the share of EVs will begin to increase much faster, so that by 2028, 34 per cent of all vehicles sold will need to be electric -- 43 per cent by 2029 and 60 per cent by 2030. That number keeps rising until it hits 100 per cent in 2035.

Guilbeault said the government is working to revise the national building code to encourage the spread of charging stations. The updated code would ensure that residential buildings constructed after 2025 have the electrical capacity to accommodate the charging stations. [...] The policy will be regulated under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and will issue credits to automakers for the EVs they sell. Generally, a fully electric model will generate one credit, with plug-in hybrids getting partial or full credit depending on how far they can go on a single charge. Manufacturers that sell more EVs than they need to meet each year's target can either bank those credits to meet their targets in future years, or sell them to companies that didn't sell enough. They can also cover up to 10 per cent of the credits they need each year by investing in public fast-charging stations. Every $20,000 spent on DC fast chargers that are operating before 2027 can earn the equivalent of one credit. Automakers that come up short for their sales requirements will be able to cover the difference by buying credits from others who exceed their targets, or by investing in charging stations. Automakers can start earning some credits toward their 2026 and 2027 targets over the next two years -- a bid by the government to encourage a faster transition.

Some text-to-image generators "have been trained by indiscriminately scraping online images," reports the Conversation, "many of which may be under copyright.

"Researchers who want to empower individual artists have recently created a tool named 'Nightshade' to fight back against unauthorised image scraping." The tool works by subtly altering an image's pixels in a way that wreaks havoc to computer vision but leaves the image unaltered to a human's eyes.... This can result in the algorithm mistakenly learning to classify an image as something a human would visually know to be untrue. As a result, the generator can start returning unpredictable and unintended results... [A] balloon might become an egg. A request for an image in the style of Monet might instead return an image in the style of Picasso... The models could also introduce other odd and illogical features to images — think six-legged dogs or deformed couches. The higher the number of "poisoned" images in the training data, the greater the disruption.

Because of how generative AI works, the damage from "poisoned" images also affects related prompt keywords. For example, if a "poisoned" image of a Ferrari is used in training data, prompt results for other car brands and for other related terms, such as vehicle and automobile, can also be affected. Nightshade's developer hopes the tool will make big tech companies more respectful of copyright, but it's also possible users could abuse the tool and intentionally upload "poisoned" images to generators to try and disrupt their services... [Technological fixes] include the use of "ensemble modeling" where different models are trained on many different subsets of data and compared to locate specific outliers. This approach can be used not only for training but also to detect and discard suspected "poisoned" images. Audits are another option. One audit approach involves developing a "test battery" — a small, highly curated, and well-labelled dataset — using "hold-out" data that are never used for training. This dataset can then be used to examine the model's accuracy.
The article adds that the most obvious fix "is paying greater attention to where input data are coming from and how they can be used.

"Doing so would result in less indiscriminate data harvesting. This approach does challenge a common belief among computer scientists: that data found online can be used for any purpose they see fit."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: "(The rocks) in the box right now are about 1,600 degrees Celsius," Andrew Ponec said, standing next to a thermal battery the size of a small building. That is nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, "Hotter than the melting point of steel," he explained.

But what makes his box of white-hot rocks so significant is they were not heated by burning tons of coal or gas, but by catching sunlight with the thousands of photovoltaic solar panels that surround his prototype west of Fresno. If successful, Ponec and his start-up Antora Energy could be part of a new, multi-trillion-dollar energy storage sector that simply uses sun or wind to make boxes of rocks hot enough to run the world's biggest factories. "People sometimes feel like they're insulting us by saying, 'Hey, that sounds really simple," Ponec laughed. "And we say, 'No, that's exactly the point'... The problem is you can't shut down your factory when the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind stops blowing, and that's exactly the problem that we focused on."

While the word "battery" most likely evokes the chemical kind found in cars and electronics in 2023, hot rocks currently store ten times as much energy as lithium ion around the world, thanks to an invention from the 1800s known as Cowper stoves. Often found in smelting plants, these massive towers of stacked bricks absorb the wasted heat of a blast furnace until it heats to nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then provides over 100 megawatts of heat energy for about 20 minutes. The process can be repeated 24 times a day for 30 years, and Antora is among the startups experimenting with different kinds of rocks in insulated boxes or molten salt in cylinders to find the most efficient combination...

Antora has managed to raise $80 million in seed money from investors that include Bill Gates, but their main competitor is another Bay Area startup called Rondo that uses abundant refractory brick, which is cheaper than carbon by weight but not as energy dense. Rondo has attracted even more funding than Antora and its first battery is producing commercial power for an ethanol plant in California... Tesla recently predicted a carbon-free world will need an astonishing 240 terawatt-hours of energy storage — more than 340 times the amount of storage built with lithium-ion batteries in 2022. Rondo CEO John O'Donnell predicts more than half of all that new capacity will come in the form of heat batteries, simply because the raw ingredients are so readily available.

By plugging their factories into as many thermal batteries as they need, manufacturers won't have to wait in a years-long line for grid connections and upgrades.
Ponec tells CNN that when it comes to de-carbonizing today, "we have the tools we need. We just need to deploy them.

"The transition is inevitable. It's going to happen. And if you talk behind closed doors to most of the people in the fossil fuel industry, they'll say the same thing."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Stellantis struck a deal with California-based EV battery swapping company Ample to power a fleet of shared Fiat 500e vehicles in Spain. But the company says the deal could eventually expand to include personally owned EVs in Europe and the US as well. By becoming one of the first Western automakers to embrace battery swapping technology, Stellantis is betting that EV charging infrastructure in Europe and the US will remain a barrier to adoption in the near future, necessitating other solutions. Battery swapping could theoretically help EV owners power up and get moving without having to wait for long stretches at a charging station.

Stellantis will work with Ample to launch a battery swapping system for a fleet of Fiat 500e vehicles as part of a car-sharing service through its Free2move subsidiary. The service will first appear in Madrid in 2024, where the Fiat 500e is already available. (The tiny EV won't come to North America until next year.) Ample has four stations already in operation in the city and plans to build an additional nine stations in the months to come. Stellantis will need to install modular batteries in the Fiat 500e in order to be compatible with Ample's swapping system. The process works by driving the vehicle into a station, where it gets raised slightly. Ample's robot arms remove the spent battery from underneath the vehicle, replace it with a fully charged one, and then lower the vehicle. The company says the whole process can take as little as five minutes. "Our system knows how many batteries are in the Fiat 500e, knows how to extract each one of those modules, and put them back in the same arrangement," Khaled Hassounah, CEO of Ample, said in a briefing with reporters.

Starting with a small fleet of shared vehicles in one city will help Stellantis see how well Ample's system works and whether it can be scaled to new markets and to include privately owned vehicles. If the company does decide to expand its partnership with Ample, the Fiat 500e will likely be the first vehicle to support the technology, said Ricardo Stamatti, senior VP for charging and energy at Stellantis. Customers who buy cars that are compatible with Ample's swapping system would then just subscribe to a battery, opening up a possible new line of revenue for Stellantis. "We believe that this is actually an infrastructure play that can and will scale," Stamatti added.

The iFixit team pulled apart the newest Fairphone 5 smartphone and awarded its highest score for repairability: 10 out of 10. With the exception of one or two compromises, the Fairphone 5 is just as repairable as its predecessors. The Register reports: As before, opening the phone is a simple matter of popping off the back of the case. The beefier battery -- 4200 mAh instead of the previous 3905 mAh -- remains easy to remove, although the bigger size has implications elsewhere in the device. Replacing the USB-C port remains simple thanks to a metal lip that allows it to be removed easily. Individual cameras can also be replaced, a nice upgrade from the all-in-one unit of the preceding phone.

However, rather than something along the lines of the Core Module of the previous phone, the iFixit team found a motherboard and daughterboard more akin to other Android handsets. According to Fairphone, the bigger battery made the change necessary, but it's still a little disappointing. Still, the teardown team noted clear labeling to stop cables from being accidentally plugged into the wrong places. It said: "That's what intuitive repair design is all about: it should be easy to do the right thing and complicated to do the wrong thing." According to iFixit co-founder and CEO Kyle Wiens: "Fairphone's promise of five Android version upgrades and over eight years of security updates with the Fairphone 5 is a bold statement in an industry that leans towards fleeting product life cycles. This is a significant stride towards sustainability and sets a new benchmark for smartphone lifespan."

"At iFixit, we believe in tech that lasts, and Fairphone is making that belief a reality. Fairphone's effort to attain a 10-year lifespan is not just impressive; it's unparalleled."

"As of this year, all new Mac computers are powered by Apple's own silicon, ending the company's 15-plus years of reliance on Intel," according to a new report from CNBC.

"Apple's silicon team has grown to thousands of engineers working across labs all over the world, including in Israel, Germany, Austria, the U.K. and Japan. Within the U.S., the company has facilities in Silicon Valley, San Diego and Austin, Texas..." The latest A17 Pro announced in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in September enables major leaps in features like computational photography and advanced rendering for gaming. "It was actually the biggest redesign in GPU architecture and Apple silicon history," said Kaiann Drance, who leads marketing for the iPhone. "We have hardware accelerated ray tracing for the first time. And we have mesh shading acceleration, which allows game developers to create some really stunning visual effects." That's led to the development of iPhone-native versions from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Mirage, The Division Resurgence and Capcom's Resident Evil 4.

Apple says the A17 Pro is the first 3-nanometer chip to ship at high volume. "The reason we use 3-nanometer is it gives us the ability to pack more transistors in a given dimension. That is important for the product and much better power efficiency," said the head of Apple silicon, Johny Srouji . "Even though we're not a chip company, we are leading the industry for a reason." Apple's leap to 3-nanometer continued with the M3 chips for Mac computers, announced in October. Apple says the M3 enables features like 22-hour battery life and, similar to the A17 Pro, boosted graphics performance...

In a major shift for the semiconductor industry, Apple turned away from using Intel's PC processors in 2020, switching to its own M1 chip inside the MacBook Air and other Macs. "It was almost like the laws of physics had changed," Ternus said. "All of a sudden we could build a MacBook Air that's incredibly thin and light, has no fan, 18 hours of battery life, and outperformed the MacBook Pro that we had just been shipping." He said the newest MacBook Pro with Apple's most advanced chip, the M3 Max, "is 11 times faster than the fastest Intel MacBook Pro we were making. And we were shipping that just two years ago." Intel processors are based on x86 architecture, the traditional choice for PC makers, with a lot of software developed for it. Apple bases its processors on rival Arm architecture, known for using less power and helping laptop batteries last longer.

Apple's M1 in 2020 was a proving point for Arm-based processors in high-end computers, with other big names like Qualcomm — and reportedly AMD and Nvidia — also developing Arm-based PC processors. In September, Apple extended its deal with Arm through at least 2040.
Since Apple first debuted its homegrown semiconductors in 2010 in the iPhone 4, other companies started pursuing their own custom semiconductor development, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.

CNBC reports that Apple is also reportedly working on its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip. Apple's Srouji wouldn't comment on "future technologies and products" but told CNBC "we care about cellular, and we have teams enabling that."

Consumer Reports awarded a "recommended" rating to Tesla's Modey Y this year, "with owners reporting fewer issues with its suspension, in-car electronics and general build quality than in previous years". Tesla's Model 3 also earned a "recommended" rating.

"Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y are now the sweet spot in the automotive industry when it comes to building electric cars," says Jake Fisher, the senior director of auto testing for Consumer Reports. "While Tesla is still a relatively new car company, it has more experience producing EVs than any other automaker."

But how about the larger universe of all automakers? Electric vehicle owners continue to report far more problems with their vehicles than owners of conventional cars or hybrids, according to Consumer Reports' newly released annual car reliability survey. The survey reveals that, on average, EVs from the past three model years had 79 percent more problems than conventional cars...

"Most electric cars today are being manufactured by either legacy automakers that are new to EV technology, or by companies like Rivian that are new to making cars," says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. "It's not surprising that they're having growing pains and need some time to work out the bugs." Fisher says some of the most common problems EV owners report are issues with electric drive motors, charging, and EV batteries...

This year's survey data show that hybrids continue to be among the most reliable vehicle type: Hybrids have 26 percent fewer problems than conventional models, even though they have both a conventional powertrain and an electric motor and therefore more potential problem spots than conventional cars. "It might not seem that long ago, but Toyota launched the Prius hybrid about 25 years ago," Elek says. "Automakers have been making hybrids long enough that they've gotten really good at it. Plus, many hybrids are also made by manufacturers that tend to produce reliable vehicles overall, such as Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia." Hybrids also are not typically loaded with high-tech features like multiple customizable displays that can be problem-prone, which is why Fisher says they are great options for drivers who are more interested in getting ideal fuel mileage than they are in bells and whistles. "These vehicles are not necessarily a tour de force of technology, so there's just less that can go wrong with them," he says.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which have both a battery for short-range electric driving and an internal combustion engine for long-range driving, are the least reliable category — 146 percent more problems than conventional cars. "PHEVs are sort of like an EV and a conventional car rolled into one, so by their nature they have more things that can go wrong with them," Fisher says.
There are exceptions, notes the auto testing director. Toyota's RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid "is one of the most reliable models in our survey this year. Similarly, the Ford F-150 hybrid has transmission and other issues that buck the trend of strong hybrid reliability."

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

Tuesday the New York Times reported that while hosting the global climate summit, the United Arab Emirates also hoped to lobby for oil and gas deals around the world.

But Friday the United Arab Emirates announced that they'd also started a $30 billion climate fund, reports Reuters, and that fund "aims to attract $250 billion of investment by the end of the decade."

The New York Times notes the fund started just months ago, and "at least 20 percent of the funds, would be earmarked for projects in the developing world, where it is especially difficult to finance clean energy projects because interest rates are high and lenders shy away from what they perceive as risky investments."

The Washington Post notes that "It immediately becomes one of the world's largest climate-focused investment funds." "This is a big deal," said Mona Dajani, global head of renewables, energy and infrastructure at the law firm Shearman and Sterling. "We have seen other programs previously, but not at this level. They were too scattered, too small, not aligned to the broader financial sector."

The lack of cash feeds into other challenges that can make it impossible to scale up clean energy in some countries. Without a steady pipeline of projects, there are no established supply chains, and nations find themselves locked out of markets for key components that are in high demand elsewhere, such as solar cells and critical minerals used to make giant batteries that store renewable power. The Global South will need an immense amount of such battery storage by the end of the decade, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, enough to store about as much power as is produced by 90 large nuclear plants. The storage is used to bottle wind and solar power and distribute it back into grids after dark and when the wind dies down.
The Post also reports that "the money to fund the projects will come largely from oil revenue." While the UAE framed its initiative as a call to global action, it is at least partly geared toward generating returns. It is one of several forays the UAE is making into clean-energy finance as it seeks to diversify its economy amid predictions the demand for oil will slump in coming years... The new initiative puts a spotlight on the UAE's evolving role in the fight against climate change. The country is at once one of the world's biggest contributors to warming, pumping massive amounts of oil into the global economy, while also using its fossil fuel wealth to put itself on the vanguard of energy innovation.

Tesla's new Cybertruck is more than their first new model since 2020, reports the Verge: Tesla announced a new "Powershare" vehicle-to-load charging capability, only available on the new Cybertruck. The feature will allow Cybertruck owners to power their camping equipment, power tools, or even their entire home during a blackout, just by using their electric truck as a mobile generator.

The truck also features a 240-volt outlet in the rear bed that can be used to charge other EVs. An image on Tesla's website shows the Cybertruck charging a Model Y.

The Cybertruck can put out as much as 11.5kW, which is more than the Ford F-150 Lightning's 9.6kW of onboard power or the GMC Sierra Denali EV's 10.2kW. Tesla has been talking about manufacturing vehicles with bidirectional charging capabilities for several years now, first teasing the feature at its Battery Day event in 2020. Since then, many of its competitors have adopted the feature for their EVs, including Ford, GM, Hyundai, Kia, and others...

In essence, it treats high-capacity lithium-ion batteries not only as tools to power EVs but also as backup storage cells to charge other electric devices, an entire home, or even to send power to the electrical grid for possible energy savings... Customers who want to take advantage of the Powershare feature in their homes will need a Tesla Powerwall (of course) and a Wall Connector for the most seamless connection.
Tesla held a launch event for the vehicle on Thursday, and demand appears to be high. Jalopnik reports Tesla is now offering people who'd reserved a Cybertruck a $1,000 discount if they'll instead order another Tesla model.

The first wireless charging public roadway in the United States has been installed in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood. Electrek reports: Wireless charging provider Electreon provided inductive-charging copper coils that were installed below the road's surface. The coils will charge EVs equipped with Electreon receivers as they drive over the road. The road's charging segments transfer electricity wirelessly through a magnetic field, which is then transferred as energy to the vehicle's battery, charging it. Detroit's wireless charging roadway is a pilot that will test and aim to perfect the wireless charging technology in a real-world environment. Researchers are using a Ford E-Transit equipped with an Electreon receiver.

The plan is to open it up to the public in the next few years. MDOT and Electreon have entered a five-year commitment to develop and pilot the electric road system on Michigan roads. The pilot is on a quarter-mile stretch on 14th Street between Marantette and Dalzelle Streets in Detroit's historic Corktown. It runs alongside the Newlab at Michigan Central Building, home to more than 60 tech and mobility startups, where the wireless charging tech will be further tested and developed beginning in early 2024. In 2024, MDOT will begin seeking bids to rebuild part of Michigan Avenue (US-12) and will install additional inductive charging.

A modern-day rush prospecting frenzy for lithium, a crucial battery metal, is unfolding across remote Western Australian deserts. The arid outback that previously supplied gold, nickel and iron now hosts fierce competition between miners racing to stake claims on lithium resources needed for the global green energy transition. Lithium giants U.S.'s Albemarle and Chile's SQM have sparred with Australian billionaires Gina Rinehart and Chris Ellison over contested acquisitions of unproven explorers there. With demand surging, the harsh outback has become the modern El Dorado as pioneers and corporations scramble to tap into lithium, the "white gold," before rivals beat them to the punch. The deal frenzy has also come at a time when the lithium price has crashed as much as 70% compared with highs seen last year, as expectations of electric vehicle demand in key markets such as China have been lowered, Financial Times adds. The report adds: Western Australia already supplies about half of the world's raw lithium and is seen as a stable place to invest compared with parts of Africa, where there has been political instability, and Chile, where the state has moved to take control of lithium projects. Local expectations are high. A report by Australia's chief economist said lithium product exports should exceed A$20bn in the year to June 2023, up from A$5bn in the previous year. The report added that by 2028, the value of lithium exports should exceed those of coal, a staple of Australia's economy for decades. Australia has ambitions to step up its efforts to refine spodumene to keep more of the value onshore rather than shipping all of its resources to China, which has a commanding share of the refining process.

"The abolition of third-party cookies will make it possible to protect privacy-related data such as what sites users visit and what pages they view from advertising companies," notes the Japan-based site Gigazine.

And this month "Google has confirmed that it is on track to start disabling third-party cookies across its Chrome browser in a matter of weeks," writes TechRadar: An internal email published online sees Google software engineer Johann Hofmann share with colleagues the company's plan to switch off third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users from Q1 2024 — a plan that was shared months ago and that, surprisingly, remains on track, given the considerable pushbacks so far... Hofmann explains that Google is still awaiting a UK Competition and Markets Authority consultation in order to address any final concerns before "Privacy Sandbox" gets the go-ahead.
The Register explores Google's "Privacy Sandbox" idea: Since 2019 — after it became clear that European data protection rules would require rethinking how online ads work — Google has been building a set of ostensibly privacy-preserving ad tech APIs known as the Privacy Sandbox... One element of the sandbox is the Topics API: that allows websites to ask Chrome directly what the user is interested in, based on their browser history, so that targeted ads can be shown. Thus, no need for any tracking cookies set by marketers following you around, though it means Chrome squealing on you unless you tell it not to...

Peter Snyder, VP of privacy engineering at Brave Software, which makes the Brave browser, told The Register in an email that the cookie cutoff and Privacy Sandbox remains problematic as far as Brave is concerned. "Replacing third-party cookies with Privacy Sandbox won't change the fact that Google Chrome has the worst privacy protections of any major browser, and we're very concerned about their upcoming plans," he said. "Google's turtle-paced removal of third-party cookies comes along with a large number of other changes, which when taken together, seriously harm the progress other browsers are making towards a user-first, privacy-protecting Web.

"Recent Google Chrome changes restrict the ability for users to modify, make private, and harden their Web experience (Manifest v3), broadcasting users' interests to websites they visit (Topics), dissolving privacy boundaries on the Web (Related Sites), offloading the battery-draining costs of ad auctions on users (FLEDGE/Protected Audience API), and reducing user control and Web transparency (Signed Exchange/WebBundles)," Snyder explained. "And this is only a small list of examples from a much longer list of harmful changes being shipped in Chrome."

Snyder said Google has characterized the removal of third-party cookies as getting serious about privacy, but he argued the truth is the opposite. "Other browsers have shown that a more private, more user-serving Web is possible," he said. "Google removing third-party cookies should be more accurately understood as the smallest possible change it can make without harming Google's true priority: its own advertising business."
The Register notes that other browser makers such as Apple, Brave, and Mozilla have already begun blocking third-party cookies by default, while Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge "provide that option, just not out of the box."

EFF senior staff technologist Jacob Hoffman-Andrews told The Register that "When Google Chrome finishes the project on some unspecified date in the future, it will be a great day for privacy on the web. According to the announcement, the actual phased rollout is slated to begin in Q3 2024, with no stated deadline to reach 100 percent. Let's hope Google's advertising wing does not excessively delay these critical privacy improvements."

TechRadar points out that after the initial testing period in 2024, Google will begin its phased rollout of the cookie replacement program — starting in June.

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

America passed a climate bill in August of 2022 with incentives to build wind and solar energy in regions that historically relied on fossil fuels. And sure enough, since then "a disproportionate amount of wind, solar, battery and manufacturing investment is going to areas that used to host fossil fuel plants," reports the Washington Post.

They cite a new analysis of investment trends from independent research firm Rhodium Group and MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research: In Carbon County, Wyo. — a county named for its coal deposits — a power company is building hundreds of wind turbines. In Mingo County, W.Va., where many small towns were once coal towns, the Adams Fork Energy plant will sit on a former coal mining site and produce low-carbon ammonia... While communities that once hosted coal, oil or gas infrastructure make up only 18.6 percent of the population, they received 36.8 percent of the clean energy investment in the year after the Inflation Reduction Act's passage. "We're talking about in total $100 billion in investment in these categories," said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group. "So $37 billion investment in a year for energy communities — that's a lot of money...."

Most significantly, 56.6 percent of investment in U.S. wind power in the past year has gone to energy communities, as well as 45.5 percent of the storage and battery investment... The analysis also found that significant amounts of clean energy investment were going to disadvantaged communities, defined as communities with environmental or climate burdens, and low-income communities. Many of the states benefiting are solidly Republican...

Josh Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at the center-left think tank Third Way, is not sure whether the clean energy investments will make a difference for next year's election. But in the long term, he argues, rural Republican areas will become more dependent on clean energy — potentially shifting party alliances and shifting the position of the Republican Party itself. "It's going to change these fossil fuel communities," he said.

Batteries used to store power produced by renewables are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation worldwide. Reuters reports: The long-term economics of gas-fired plants, used in Europe and some parts of the United States primarily to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, are changing quickly, according to Reuters' interviews with more than a dozen power plant developers, project finance bankers, analysts and consultants. They said some battery operators are already supplying back-up power to grids at a price competitive with gas power plants, meaning gas will be used less. The shift challenges assumptions about long-term gas demand and could mean natural gas has a smaller role in the energy transition than posited by the biggest, listed energy majors.

In the first half of the year, 68 gas power plant projects were put on hold or cancelled globally, according to data provided exclusively to Reuters by U.S.-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor. [...] "In the early 1990s, we were running gas plants baseload, now they are shifting to probably 40% of the time and that's going to drop off to 11%-15% in the next eight to 10 years," Keith Clarke, chief executive at Carlton Power, told Reuters. Developers can no longer use financial modelling that assumes gas power plants are used constantly throughout their 20-year-plus lifetime, analysts said. Instead, modellers need to predict how much gas generation is needed during times of peak demand and to compensate for the intermittency of renewable sources that are hard to anticipate.

The cost of lithium-ion batteries has more than halved from 2016 to 2022 to $151 per kilowatt hour of battery storage, according to BloombergNEF. At the same time, renewable generation has reached record levels. Wind and solar powered 22% of the EU's electricity last year, almost doubling their share from 2016, and surpassing the share of gas generation for the first time, according to think tank Ember's European Electricity Review. "In the early years, capacity markets were dominated by fossil fuel power stations providing the flexible electricity supply," said Simon Virley, head of energy at KPMG. Now batteries, interconnectors and consumers shifting their electricity use are also providing that flexibility, Virley added.

There's been predictions that a transition to electric vehicles would hurt autoworkers. But this week U.S. autoworkers ended their strike after winning "significant gains in pay and benefits," reports the Associated Press: The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, that along with a similar deal with General Motors will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles...

The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028. Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers.

They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.
In October the union's president criticized what had been the original trajectory of the auto industry. "The plan was to draw down engine and transmission plants, and permanently replace them with low-wage battery jobs. We had a different plan. And our plan is winning."

And this week the union's president said they had not only "raised wages dramatically for over a hundred thousand workers" — and improved their retirement security. "We took a major step towards ensuring a just transition to electric vehicles."

In Belvidere, Illinois, the union "won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant," the Associated Press notes.

"The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW," their article adds — and perhaps even for other autoworkers. After the UAW's president announced plans to try unionizing other plants, three foreign automakers in the U.S. — Honda, Toyota and Hyundai — "quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers."

ExxonMobil is venturing into lithium production, targeting a significant market share by initiating its first operation in southern Arkansas. With lithium's rising demand in the tech and electric vehicle sectors, ExxonMobil aims to begin production by 2027. By 2030, the company anticipates producing enough lithium to power over 1 million electric vehicles annually. From a report: Earlier this year, ExxonMobil purchased 120,000 acres of lithium-rich land spanning a geologic formation -- called the Smackover Formation -- in Arkansas. To access the lithium, the company will first drill 10,000 feet below the surface using gas and oil machinery. From there, it will then use direct lithium extraction (DLE) to separate the lithium from the saltwater it's mixed with. Once that's done, ExxonMobil will inject the saltwater back into the ground.

ExxonMobil says the DLE process "produces fewer carbon emissions than hard rock mining and requires significantly less land." The company will produce the battery-grade lithium on-site, which it will call Mobil Lithium. This technically isn't the first time ExxonMobil is getting involved in the battery business, as the company manufactured the first lithium-ion battery in the 1970s.

Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say the company has sold "multiple millions" Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs. The Verge reports: The Steam Deck has been a hit for Valve right from its launch; when the device first went up for preorders in July 2021 (has it really been that long?), the demand created some major issues for Valve's Steam store. And the handheld gaming PC is often at or near the top of Steam's top-selling chart -- even just two months after the device's official February 2022 launch, it was clear that the Steam Deck was not a flop. The company apparently even made a cake to celebrate selling 1 million units. The company is probably set to sell a lot more after recently unveiling a new revision with an OLED screen, longer battery life, and faster Wi-Fi.

Smartphones and electric cars are both powered by lithium-ion batteries, notes the Economist. These "Li-ion" batteries "form the guts of a growing number of grid-storage systems that smooth the flow of electricity from wind and solar power stations. Without them, the electrification needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming would be unimaginable." But unfortunately, building them requires scarce metals.

"A clutch of companies, though, think they have an alternative: making batteries with sodium instead..." And the idea of building "Na-ion" batteries at scale is "gaining traction." Engineers are tweaking designs. Factories, particularly in China, are springing up. For the first time since the Li-ion revolution began, lithium's place on the electrochemical pedestal is being challenged... [A]ccording to Rory McNulty, a research analyst at Benchmark, Chinese firms have 34 Na-ion-battery factories built, being built or announced inside the country, and one planned in Malaysia. Established battery-makers in other places, by contrast, are not yet showing much interest. Even without a five-year plan to guide them, though, some non-Chinese startups are seeking to steal a march by developing alternatives to layered oxides, in the hope of improving the technology, reducing its cost, or both.

One of the most intriguing of these neophytes is Natron Energy, of Santa Clara, California... Natron claims that its cells can endure 50,000 cycles of charging and discharging — between ten and 100 times more than commercial Li-ion batteries can manage. The firm has built a factory in Michigan, which it says will begin production later this year. Other non-Chinese firms are less far advanced, but full of hope. Altris, in Sweden, which is also building a factory, employs a material called Prussian white that substitutes some of the iron in Prussian blue with sodium. Tiamat, in France, uses a polyanionic design involving vanadium. And Faradion, in Britain (now owned by Reliance, an Indian firm), intends to stick with a layered-metal-oxide system.
Thanks to Slashdot reader echo123 for sharing the article.