181738064
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Windows has limited FAT32 partitions to a maximum of 32GB for decades now. When memory cards and USB drives exceeded 32GB in size, the only options were exFAT or NTFS. Neither option was well supported on other platforms at first, although exFAT support is fairly widespread now.
In their latest blog post, Microsoft announced that the limit for FAT32 partitions is being increased to 2TB. Of course, that doesn't mean that every device that supports FAT32 will work flawlessly with a 2TB partition size, but at least there is a decent chance that older devices with don't support exFAT will now be usable with memory cards over 32GB.
181708820
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Households will be called on to boost their consumption of Great Britain’s record renewable energy this summer to help balance the power grid and lower energy bills.
Under the new plans, people could be encouraged to run dishwashers and washing machines or charge up their electric vehicles when there is more wind and solar power than the electricity grid needs.
The plan will be delivered with the help of energy suppliers, which may choose to offer heavily discounted or free electricity to their customers during specific periods when the energy system operator predicts there will be a surplus of electricity.
Many suppliers already offer more than 2m households the opportunity to pay lower rates for electricity used during off-peak hours but this will be the first time that the system operator will use this tool to help balance the grid.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) hopes that by issuing a market notice to call on energy users to increase their consumption it can avoid making hefty payments to turn wind and solar farms off when demand for electricity is low, which are ultimately paid for through energy bills.
181705620
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Seven countries now generate nearly all of their electricity from renewable energy sources, according to newly compiled figures.
Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power.
Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) also revealed that a further 40 countries generated at least 50 per cent of the electricity they consumed from renewable energy technologies in 2021 and 2022 – including 11 European countries.
“We don’t need miracle technologies,” said Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson, who published the data.
“We need to stop emissions by electrifying everything and providing the electricity with Wind, Water and Solar (WWS), which includes onshore wind, solar photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, geothermal electricity, small hydroelectricity, and large hydroelectricity.”
Professor Jacobson also noted that other countries like Germany were also capable of running off 100 per cent renewable-generated electricity for short periods of time.
Figures released by the IEA in January show that the UK generated 41.5 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2022 – up 10.5 per cent from the year before.
In Scotland, renewable energy technologies generated the equivalent of 113 per cent of the country’s overall electricity consumption in 2022.
181207094
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options.
The 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 was announced at $83.75 USD for those not needing quite 4GB of RAM and looking to save some memory given the ongoing price increases.
181087068
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Throughout the 20th Century, humanity demanded more and more land leading to the loss of vast areas of natural forest and grassland. Today, around half the world's land is farmed, used to grow crops or graze animals. However, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been slowly falling ever since. Around the world, farmland is being replaced by grasslands, trees and bush. Wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands in areas they had once dominated.
Reaching "peak agricultural land" does not mean the problem of deforestation is solved. Growing demand for products like beef, soy, cocoa and palm oil has put increasing pressure on land across South America, South East Asia and Africa. In the last decade, the world lost an area of tropical forest twice the size of Spain. Still, acre-for-acre across the world there has been yet more farmland abandonment, driven by reforestation in Europe and North America and the abandonment of pastures in Australia and Central Asia.
181057486
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Scientists have used lab-grown microbes to bind loose desert sand into a thin, stable layer that wind cannot easily blow away. That stronger surface gives restoration teams time to plant shrubs and grasses before harsh winds and heat wipe out young plants.
On straw checkerboards laid across northwest China, a dark film spread over treated sand and stayed after seasonal dust storms.
Tracking those plots through heat and frost, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) documented how fast the film hardened. In trials near the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang in northwest China, CAS teams saw crusts stabilize sand within 10 to 16 months. Even with that speed, planners focused on building the soil base first, so later plants could survive without constant replanting.
181055032
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
The co-founder of Super Micro Computer and two others were charged with diverting $2.5 billion worth of servers with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips to China, in violation of US laws barring exports to that country without a license.
Yih-Shyan Liaw, known as Wally; Ruei-Tsang Chang, known as Steven; and Ting-Wei Sun, known as Willy, were charged with conspiring to violate export control laws, smuggling goods from the US and conspiring to defraud the US.
Liaw, who co-founded Super Micro Computer and served on its board of directors, was arrested Thursday in California and released on bail. Sun, a contractor, is held awaiting a detention hearing. Chang, who worked in the Taiwan office of Super Micro, remains at large.
180928372
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
In China, the world’s leading carbon emitter, a massive buildout of solar power is beginning to push coal into decline. Last year China saw its fossil fuel emissions drop, even as demand for energy rose.
Emissions from energy and industry dropped by 0.3 percent in 2025, while consumption of energy rose by 3.5 percent, according to official statistics. Last year, renewables supplied 40 percent of power in China, up from 37 percent the previous year, with solar accounting for most of the growth. The added renewable power more than met the uptick in demand, and as a result, coal power fell slightly.
“This is an encouraging signal, as it suggests that the sort of large-scale energy transition which China has been investing heavily in has begun to translate into measurable outcomes,” said Duo Chan, a climate scientist at the University of Southampton. “Whilst one year of lower emissions does not mean that the climate challenge is solved, the scale of China’s deployment of renewables can lead us to hope that this may be the start of a sustained decline in its emissions.”
180918294
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media.
The records provide insight into the sort of data that Proton Mail, which prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption and that it is only governed by Swiss privacy law, can and does provide to third parties. In this case, the Proton Mail account was affiliated with the Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF) group and Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which authorities were investigating for their connection to arson, vandalism and doxing. Broadly, members were protesting the building of a large police training center next to the Intrenchment Creek Park in Atlanta, and actions also included camping in the forest and lawsuits. Charges against more than 60 people have since been dropped.
180867366
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
2000 m above ground level (AGL), winds are stronger and much, much more consistent than they are at surface. Even if the Earth were a perfect sphere, there’d be a sluggish boundry layer at the surface, but since it’s got all these interesting bumps and bits and bobs, it’s not just sluggish but horribly turbulent, too. Getting above that, as much as possible, is why wind turbines are on big towers. Rather than build really big tower, Beijing Lanyi Yunchuan Energy Technology Co. has gone for a more ambitious approach: an aerostat to take power from the steady winds found at high altitude. Ambitiously called the Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System (SAWES), the megawatt-scale prototype has recently begun feeding into the grid in Yibin, Sichuan Province.
180845450
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
New research published Thursday bolsters growing concerns that a handful of companies and countries are using the global atmospheric commons as a dumping ground for potentially toxic and climate-altering industrial waste byproducts from loosely regulated commercial space flights.
The new study analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper atmosphere on Feb. 19, 2025, after SpaceX lost control of its reentry. The rocket was launched earlier that month, carrying 20 to 22 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The authors said it is the first time debris from a specific spacecraft disintegration has been traced and measured in the near-space region about 80 to 110 kilometers above Earth. Changes there can affect the stratosphere, where ozone and climate processes operate. Until recent years, human activities had little impact in that region.
Element-specific monitoring could be part of a broader effort to track how re-entry emissions spread and accumulate, the researchers noted, giving policymakers a chance to understand and manage the growing atmospheric footprint of spaceflight.
“I was surprised how big the event was, visually,” lead author Robin Wing, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said via email. He said people across northern Europe captured images of the burning debris, which was concentrated enough to enable high-resolution observations and to use atmospheric models to trace the lithium to its source.
180841964
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
NASA says it will likely postpone until April or later a mission to send astronauts around the moon, citing a newly discovered technical issue. The agency had initially targeted a February launch, later pushed to March 6 at the earliest because of fuel leaks.
The mission is part of the US-led Artemis lunar exploration program, which includes Japan and several European partners.
NASA announced the latest delay on Saturday, attributing it to an interruption in the flow of helium needed to maintain the proper environmental conditions for the engine in the rocket's upper stage.
Officials say an April launch remains possible if the repairs proceed smoothly.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman acknowledged the repeated delays have disappointed many, and expressed determination to push the program forward.
180838246
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling ordering Google to pay an extraordinary 91.5 quintillion rubles (about $1.2 quintillion)—a figure roughly one million times larger than the global gross domestic product, according to court materials, The Moscow Times reported on February 18. The Moscow Arbitration Court set the final penalty of 91.5 quintillion rubles ($1.2 quintillion) in spring 2025. For comparison, the World Bank estimates total global GDP at roughly $100 trillion, making the court-ordered sum vastly larger than the value of the entire world economy.
The legal dispute dates back to 2020, when pro-Kremlin media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN sued Google entities—including Google LLC, Google Ireland, and the Russian subsidiary “Google”—demanding restoration of their blocked YouTube accounts.
Russian courts sided with the plaintiffs, but Google did not comply with the ruling. Judges then imposed a progressive daily penalty that began at 100,000 rubles (about $1,315) and doubled each week the decision remained unenforced.
180821608
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Dancing humanoid robots took centre stage on Monday during the annual China Media Group’s Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched official television broadcast. They lunged and backflipped (landing on their knees), they spun around and jumped. Not one fell over.
The display was impressive, but prompted some to wonder: if robots can now dance and perform martial arts, what else can they do?
Experts have mixed opinions, with some saying the robots had limitations and that the display should be viewed through a lens of state propaganda.
Kyle Chan, an expert in China’s technology development at Brookings Institution, a policy organisation in Washington DC, said Beijing uses these public robot performances to “dazzle domestic and international audiences with China’s technological prowess”. Pointing to intensifying competition in the tech space between China and the US, Chan added: “While China and the US are neck-and-neck on AI, humanoid robots are an area where China can claim to be ahead of the US, particularly in terms of scaling up production.”
Georg Stieler, the head of robotics and automation at the global technology consulting firm Stieler Technology and Marketing, also emphasised the symbolism of China’s prime time broadcast.
“What distinguishes the gala from comparable events elsewhere is the directness of the pipeline from industrial policy to prime-time spectacle,” Stieler said in a statement.
Comparing this year’s performances with last year’s – when viewers saw “fundamentally a single choreographic mode” with limited motions including walking, twisting and kicking – Stieler said one key signal of China’s robot progress is “the ability to run large numbers of near-identical humanoids in synchronised motion with stable gaits and consistent joint behaviour”.
180676624
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Fully electric car sales in December overtook petrol for the first time in the European Union, even as policymakers proposed to loosen emissions regulations, data showed on Tuesday. U.S. battery-electric brand Tesla continued to lose market share to competitors including China's BYD and Europe's best-selling group Volkswagen, data from the European auto lobby ACEA showed. Car sales throughout Europe sustained a sixth straight month of year-on-year growth, with overall registrations, a proxy for sales, hitting their highest volumes in five years in Europe in 2025, though they remained well below pre-pandemic levels.
December registrations of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric cars were up 51%, 36.7% and 5.8%, respectively, to account collectively for 67% of the bloc's registrations, up from 57.8% in December 2024.
