An anonymous reader writes: Boston Dynamics today opened commercial sales of Spot, its quadruped robot that can climb stairs and traverse rough terrain. Businesses can purchase the Spot Explorer developer kit for $74,500 at shop.bostondynamics.com. Spot Explorer includes the robot, two batteries, the battery charger, the tablet controller, a robot case, a power case, and Python client packages for Spot APIs. Boston Dynamics will also be selling Spot payloads, and customers will get software updates "when available." The company is offering free shipping for a limited time -- the website currently states that Spot Explorer ships in six to eight weeks.

The announcement marks a couple of milestones for the company founded in 1992. It's the first time businesses can purchase a Boston Dynamics robot directly. It's also the company's first online sales offering. Spot is only for sale in the U.S. for commercial and industrial use, but the company hopes to expand internationally this year. "We plan to manufacture around a thousand Spots in the next year but can increase that based on the demand," a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told VentureBeat. "We are exploring opportunities for enabling sales overseas this year." The company was originally planning to finish building 1,000 Spots by mid-2020, but the coronavirus pandemic disrupted that timeline.

After seven years, Lego has finally unveiled a new Mindstorms kit, reports PC Magazine -- the Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor, available this fall for $359: The Robot Inventor kit lets kids (or adults) build five different robot models out of 949 pieces, ranging from a four-legged walker to a bipedal wheeled robot that can give high-fives. All of these robots can be programmed to perform different tricks, like grabbing items, firing plastic projectiles, avoiding obstacles, and playing various sports with a ball.

The kit includes four low-profile, medium-angular motors; a color and light sensor; and a distance sensor, which work together with the Intelligent Hub block to power these robots and execute commands. Of course, like all Mindstorms kits, you can build your own robotic creations with the tools at hand, and add Lego Technic and System pieces for more complex projects.

The Intelligent Hub serves as the brain of Lego Mindstorms, and the block that houses the Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit is the most advanced one yet. It features six input/output ports for sensors and motors, a six-axis gyro/accelerometer, a speaker, and a five-by-five LED matrix. The Intelligent Hub and all robots built with it can be controlled wirelessly over Bluetooth with the Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor app for Android, iOS, Windows 10, and macOS. The app supports programming in both the tile-based Scratch language and in Python, for more complex projects that require the precision of written code.

"Chemical engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed new technology that helps convert harmful carbon dioxide emissions into chemical building blocks to make useful industrial products like fuel and plastics," reports Phys.org: The researchers, who carried out their work in the Particles and Catalysis Research Laboratory led by Scientia Professor Rose Amal, show that by making zinc oxide at very high temperatures using a technique called flame spray pyrolysis (FSP), they can create nanoparticles which act as the catalyst for turning carbon dioxide into 'syngas' — a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide used in the manufacture of industrial products. The researchers say this method is cheaper and more scalable to the requirements of heavy industry than what is available today...

"Syngas is often considered the chemical equivalent of Lego because the two building blocks — hydrogen and carbon monoxide — can be used in different ratios to make things like synthetic diesel, methanol, alcohol or plastics, which are very important industrial precursors," says Dr. Lovell, co-author of a paper published this week in Advanced Energy Materials. "So essentially what we're doing is converting CO2 into these precursors that can be used to make all these vital industrial chemicals..."

The researchers say in effect, they are closing the carbon loop in industrial processes that create harmful greenhouse gases... "The idea is that we can take a point source of CO2, such as a coal fired power plant, a gas power plant, or even a natural gas mine where you liberate a huge amount of pure CO2 and we can essentially retrofit this technology at the back end of these plants. Then you could capture that produced CO2 and convert it into something that is hugely valuable to industry," says Dr. Lovell.

Windows 10 received its monthly host of security patches earlier this week, and the latest cumulative updates are causing serious problems with printers -- particularly Ricoh devices, but also other models. TechRadar reports: The so-called 'Patch Tuesday' fixes released earlier in the week which are causing chaos are KB4557957 and KB4560960, which are for the May 2020 Update and the November 2019 Update. (Note that in one case, KB4561608, for the October 2018 Update, is also mentioned). As one Ricoh owner observed on Reddit: "Has anyone had issues today with printing and the latest Windows update [KB4560960]? We're seeing problems with Ricoh printers that were previously stable. Changing the print driver seems to help but that's going to be a pain if I have to roll it out to too many clients." Other folks with Ricoh printers have chimed in on that thread with similar issues in terms of breaking printer functionality completely, or elements of it, such as causing wireless printing to fail.

Further reports of printer failures include Brother and Canon devices, as well as some Kyocera, HP, Toshiba and Panasonic models. A network technician for a mainly Ricoh dealership also contributed to that Reddit thread, and noted: "After an abundance of service calls these last 2 days, I can confidently say PCL5 [driver] does not work at all, regardless of driver age. Installing the newest version of the PCL6 universal driver *does* seem to work. Not a realistic approach to servicing hundreds of clients, but at least new clients setup before the new patch should be okay." Another solution is to simply uninstall the cumulative update. Thankfully, Microsoft is already working on a fix.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday evening, ZFS founding developer Matthew Ahrens submitted what should have been a simple, non-controversial pull request to the OpenZFS project: wherever possible without causing technical issues, the patch removed references to "slaves" and replaced them with "dependents." This patch in question doesn't change the way the code functions -- it simply changes variable names in a way that brings them in conformance with Linux upstream device-mapper terminology, in 48 total lines of code (42 removed and 48 added; with one comment block expanded slightly to be more descriptive). But this being the Internet, unfortunately, outraged naysayers descended on the pull request, and the comments were quickly closed to non-contributors. I first became aware of this as the moderator of the r/zfs subreddit where the overflow spilled once comments on the PR itself were no longer possible. "The horrible effects of human slavery continue to impact society," writes Ahrens in his pull request. "The casual use of the term 'slave' in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience." Ahrens' pull request has been reviewed by fellow lead developers Brian Behlendorf and Ryan Moeller and merged into the OpenZFS project repository.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and other Big Tech companies have stepped up their comments on the need for racial justice amid the Black Lives Matter protests that have gripped the US for the past two weeks. Now, a growing group of technologists say the language of the industry itself needs to change in order to fight racism. From a report: The terms "master" and "slave," used to describe the relationships between two computer hard drives and or between two camera flashes, have come under scrutiny because of their association with America's history of slavery. Similarly, "whitelist" and "blacklist," terms for allowing and denying access to a service, are being revisited because of their potentially racial overtones.

"I refuse to use 'whitelist'/'blacklist' or 'master'/'slave' terminology for computers. Join me. Words matter," tweeted Leah Culver, co-founder of the Breaker podcast app and a co-author of the widely used OAuth signon technology. More than 16,000 people liked her tweet. Photographer Theresa Bear expressed a similar sentiment on the PetaPixel photo site, writing that it's time to "make way for our black community" by banishing the use of "master" and "slave" to refer to how flashes are controlled. "Can you imagine being on set with a black human and the photographer yells to the assistant, 'Hey, can you put it on slave mode?'" Bear asked. Other terms proposed for sunsetting include "white hat" and "black hat," with "ethical" and "unethical" suggested as replacements.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Flat solar panels still face big limitations when it comes to making the most of the available sunlight each day. A new spherical solar cell design aims to boost solar power harvesting potential from nearly every angle without requiring expensive moving parts to keep tracking the sun's apparent movement across the sky. The spherical solar cell prototype designed by Saudi researchers is a tiny blue sphere that a person can easily hold in one hand like a ping pong ball. Indoor experiments with a solar simulator lamp have already shown that it can achieve between 15 percent and 100 percent more power output compared with a flat solar cell with the same total surface area, depending on the background materials reflecting sunlight into the solar cells. The research group hopes its nature-inspired design can fare similarly well in future field tests in many different locations around the world.

Testing with the solar simulator lamp showed that the spherical solar cell provided 24 percent more power output over a traditional flat solar cell upon immediate exposure to sunlight. That power advantage jumped to 39 percent after both types of solar cells had begun to heat up and suffered some loss in power efficiency -- an indication that the spherical shape may have some advantages in dissipating heat. The spherical solar cell also delivered about 60 percent more power output than its flat counterpart when both could collect only scattered sunlight under a simulated roof rather than receiving direct sunlight. Additional experiments with different reflective backgrounds -- including an aluminum cup, aluminum paper, white paper, and sand -- showed that the hexagonal aluminum cup background helped the spherical solar cell outperform the flat solar cell by 100 percent in terms of power output. The new work is detailed in a paper submitted for review to the journal MRS Communications.

The Chinese behemoth that makes electric-car batteries for Tesla and Volkswagen developed a power pack that lasts more than a million miles -- an industry landmark and a potential boon for automakers trying to sway drivers to their EV models. From a report: Contemporary Amperex Technology is ready to produce a battery that lasts 16 years and 2 million kilometers (1.24 million miles), Chairman Zeng Yuqun said in an interview at company headquarters in Ningde, southeastern China. Warranties on batteries currently used in electric cars cover about 150,000 miles or eight years, according to BloombergNEF. Extending that lifespan is viewed as a key advance because the pack could be reused in a second vehicle. That would lower the expense of owning an electric vehicle, a positive for an industry that's seeking to recover sales momentum lost to the coronavirus outbreak and the slumping oil prices that made gas guzzlers more competitive.

Apple is preparing to announce a shift to its own main processors in Mac computers, replacing chips from Intel, as early as this month at its annual developer conference, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the plans. From the report: The company is holding WWDC the week of June 22. Unveiling the initiative, codenamed Kalamata, at the event would give outside developers time to adjust before new Macs roll out in 2021, the people said. Since the hardware transition is still months away, the timing of the announcement could change, they added, while asking not to be identified discussing private plans. The new processors will be based on the same technology used in Apple-designed iPhone and iPad chips. However, future Macs will still run the macOS operating system rather than the iOS software on mobile devices from the company. Bloomberg News reported on Apple's effort to move away from Intel earlier this year, and in 2018.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Researchers at MIT have published a new paper that describes a new type of artificial brain synapse that offers performance improvements versus other existing versions, and which can be combined in volumes of tens of thousands on a chip that's smaller physically than a single piece of confetti. The results could help create devices that can handle complex AI computing locally, while remaining small and power-efficient, and without having to connect to a data center. The research team created what are known as "memristors" -- essentially simulated brain synapses created using silicon, but also using alloys of silver and copper in their construction. The result was a chip that could effectively "remember" and recall images in very high detail, repeatedly, with much crisper and more detailed "remembered" images than in other types of simulated brain circuits that have come before. What the team wants to ultimately do is recreate large, complex artificial neural networks that are currently based in software that require significant GPU computing power to run -- but as dedicated hardware, so that it can be localized in small devices, including potentially your phone, or a camera.

Unlike traditional transistors, which can switch between only two states (0 or 1) and which form the basis of modern computers, memsistors offer a gradient of values, much more like your brain, the original analog computer. They also can "remember" these states so they can easily recreate the same signal for the same received current multiple times over. What the researchers did here was borrow a concept from metallurgy: When metallurgists want to change the properties of a metal, they combine it with another that has that desired property, to create an alloy. Similarly, the researchers here found an element they could combine with the silver they use as the memristor's positive electrode, in order to make it better able to consistently and reliably transfer ions along even a very thin conduction channel. That's what enabled the team to create super small chips that contain tens of thousands of memristors that can nonetheless not only reliably recreate images from "memory," but also perform inference tasks like improving the detail of, or blurring the original image on command, better than other, previous memristors created by other scientists.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Western Digital has been receiving a storm of bad press -- and even lawsuits -- concerning their attempt to sneak SMR disk technology into their "Red" line of NAS disks. To get a better handle on the situation, ArsTechnica purchased a Western Digital 4TB Red EFAX model SMR drive and put it to the test ourselves. [...] Recently, the well-known tech enthusiast site Servethehome tested one of the SMR-based 4TB Red disks with ZFS and found it sorely lacking. The disk performed adequately -- if underwhelmingly -- in generic performance tests. But when Servethehome used it to replace a disk in a degraded RAIDz1 vdev, it required more than nine days to complete the operation -- when all competing NAS drives performed the same task in around sixteen hours.

[...] We want to be very clear: we agree with Seagate's Greg Belloni, who stated on the company's behalf that they "do not recommend SMR for NAS applications." At absolute best, SMR disks underperform significantly in comparison to CMR disks; at their worst, they can fall flat on their face so badly that they may be mistakenly detected as failed hardware. With that said, we can see why Western Digital believed, after what we assume was a considerable amount of laboratory testing, that their disks would be "OK" for typical NAS usage. Although obviously slower than their Ironwolf competitors, they performed adequately both for conventional RAID rebuilds and for typical day-to-day NAS file-sharing workloads. We were genuinely impressed with how well the firmware adapted itself to most workloads -- this is a clear example of RFC 1925 2.(3) in action, but the thrust does appear sufficient to the purpose. Unfortunately, it would appear that Western Digital did not test ZFS, which a substantial minority of their customer base depends upon.

Battery-powered bikes "have become a compelling alternative for commuters who are being discouraged from taking public transportation and Ubers," according to the New York Times' lead consumer tech writer. In March, sales of e-bikes jumped 85% from a year earlier, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. Amazon, Walmart and Specialized are sold out of most models. Even smaller brands like Ride1Up and VanMoof have waiting lists. That's a remarkable shift. For many years, e-bikes carried the stigma of being vehicles for lazy pedalers and seniors... "I was convinced that e-bikes would completely change cities all over the world in the next 10 years, but it seems like because of this crisis, suddenly it's all happening in the next three or four months," said Taco Carlier, the chief executive of VanMoof, which is based in Amsterdam.
The Times' writer notes that e-bikes are at least twice as heavy as a road bike, make an attractive target for burglar, and may need manufacturer assistance for major repairs. But he ultimately concludes that "Despite some misgivings, my experience with e-bikes made me realize the benefits are far greater than the downsides." Most important, e-bikes kept me out of my car. Whenever I had a reason to go outside — like making a trip to the grocery store or dropping off baked goods at a friend's — I preferred riding an e-bike. This will become increasingly important in the coming months. As businesses reopen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised commuters to drive in cars alone. An e-bike may become crucial for squeezing through nightmare traffic.
And the Times' reporter also claims another benefit for e-bikes: joy. "On an e-bike, I saw more of the outdoors than I normally would, while keeping a safe distance from people."

"It's the middle of 2020 and the USB-C standards are confusing even for the most technical person," writes Slashdot reader mprindle. Robert Triggs writes via Android Authority: USB-C is billed as the solution for all our future cable needs, unifying power, and data delivery with display and audio connectivity. Ushering in an age of the one-size-fits-all cable. Despite the USB-C connector supplied as default in modern smartphones, the standard has, unfortunately, failed to live up to its early promises. Even the seemingly most basic function of USB-C -- powering devices -- continues to be a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions. The data speeds available over USB-C have also become increasingly convoluted. The problem is that the features supported by different USB-C devices aren't clear, yet the defining principle of the USB-C standard makes consumers think everything should just work... The article goes on to discuss the charging speed and data transfer speed disparities, USB-C port shortages, and compatibility issues with USB 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1 cables.

"Unfortunately, the USB-C ecosystem is more, not less convoluted in 2020 than it was when I first looked at this issue back in 2018," writes Robert Triggs in closing. "The announcement of USB 3.2 and USB 4 makes the standard more complex without giving the end-user clear information about what's supported. While the growth in USB Power Delivery support is a good sign, the introduction of PPS has already hampered any hopes that the industry might soon coalesce around a single charging standard. The USB spec changes every year, making it impossible for consumers to keep up. Years later, I still don't see a clear way out of this confusing mess."

The Apple Watch's Fall Detection feature is being credited as helping save an unresponsive man in Chandler, Arizona. AppleInsider reports: Fall Detection, introduced on the Apple Watch Series 4, can detect if a user takes a hard fall and will alert local emergency services if they don't respond within 60 seconds. The potentially life-saving capabilities of that feature were on display on April 23, when police dispatchers in Chandler received a 911 call from an automated voice, according to local media outlet KTAR. The auto-generated message indicated that an Apple Watch wearer had fallen and was not responding, and also provided authorities with the exact latitude and longitude of the man's location. When officers and the Chandler Fire Department showed up, they found that the man had fainted and collapsed.

Maddie Stone, writing for OneZero: For the past eight years, I've been working mainly on a late 2012 iMac. I'm no Luddite, but the computer has held up well over the years, and I've never felt the need to replace it. Recently, though, my iMac developed its first serious tic: The fan has started to power on loudly every time the computer goes to sleep. While the computer is long past warranty, I decided to call up Apple to see if the company could offer any help. When I did, I learned my iMac is considered "vintage" and was told Apple won't touch it. [...] According to Apple, "vintage" devices are those that the company discontinued selling more than five and less than seven years ago. Once Apple hasn't sold a product for seven years, it's considered "obsolete," meaning the company won't offer any repair services. But vintage products exist in a liminal space: Despite what I learned when I called Apple Support, Apple Stores as well as AASPs (Apple Authorized Service Provide) can, in theory, repair them for you "subject to availability of inventory, or as required by law," according to Apple.

In practice, people in the repair community told me Apple isn't particularly interested in fixing vintage tech. "The AASPs I've spoken to in the past have told me they don't bother with customers looking to repair older devices," said Rob Link, a right-to-repair advocate who owns a company that sells repair parts for older devices including iPhones, iPods, and iPads. In the past, Link said, he would call up AASPs to see if they had older parts to sell "but I would stop when no one did." "If you're taking in a vintage piece of equipment [to an AASP], outside of them still having something sitting on the shelf from years before, you're not going to be able to get service," said Adrian Avery-Johnson, the owner of Bridgetown Electronics Repair, an independent repair shop located in Portland, Oregon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: France and Germany threw their weight on Thursday behind plans to create a cloud computing ecosystem that seeks to reduce Europe's dependence on Silicon Valley giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The project, dubbed Gaia-X, will establish common standards for storing and processing data on servers that are sited locally and comply with the European Union's strict laws on data privacy. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, speaking in Berlin, described Gaia-X as a "moonshot" that would help reassert Europe's technological sovereignty, and invited other countries and companies to join. "We are not China, we are not the United States, we are European countries with our own values and with our own economic interest that we want to defend," his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire said in Paris in a joint video news conference.

In an initial step, 22 French and German companies will set up a non-profit foundation to run Gaia-X, which is not conceived as a direct rival to the "hyperscale" U.S. cloud providers but would instead referee a common set of European rules. "Building a European-based alternative is possible only if we play collectively," said Michel Paulin, CEO of independent French cloud service provider OVHcloud. One important concept underpinning Gaia-X is "reversibility," a principle that would allow users to easily switch providers. First services are due to be offered in 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new study published in Scientific Reports reveals that crystalline rocks, such as granite, have a natural self-sealing mechanism, capable of keeping fluids locked away for millions of years. Careful analysis of the chemistry and structure of granites from Japan and the UK revealed that when fluid did enter the rock (via fractures), it travelled a few centimeters at most. The scientists believe that calcium in the rock reacted with carbonate in the fluid to create tiny crystals of calcite that plugged all the gaps and prevented further flow. "This amount of calcite would never be expected in a granite, and the distribution of it indicates it almost certainly formed from small quantities of fluid trying to move through the rock," says Roy Wogelius from the University of Manchester. Greater understanding is needed before we finalize our radioactive waste disposal strategies, but this is a promising step forward.

Dyson has revealed new photos and information about their failed electric SUV, which the company canceled last October due to high costs. The Verge reports: In a new blog post on his company's website, Dyson shows off some of the first images and videos of the real prototype it made before the project was killed last October, as well as a few more computer renderings. He describes the SUV as "a radical car which was loaded with technology," and says his company "solved lots of problems that are traditionally associated with electric vehicles," though the project was ultimately abandoned for not being "commercially viable." Missing from the post is any substantive explanation of what those problems were, though, or how the company was going to solve them. Dyson touts a "spoke, integrated and highly efficient Electric Drive Unit (EDU) comprising Dyson digital electric motor, single speed transmission and state of the art power inverter," though there's no explanation about what sets those technologies apart from the ones developed by other companies in the electric vehicle space.

Other listed design benefits (like a flexible battery pack design, improved interior space, longer wheelbase) and features (like a heads-up display or handle-free doors) are also far from unique. And while Autocar reports that the SUV was supposed to offer somewhere around 600 miles of range using a 150kWh battery, Dyson never got close enough to put that claim to the test. One of the few standout parts of the SUV is the steering wheel, which looks more like a video game controller than anything.

Following the rioting and looting from the death of George Floyd, Apple has a message for those who power on a stolen iPhone: "This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted." Forbes reports: Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a message to his employees as those protests escalated, saying that "there is a pain deeply etched in the soul of our nation and in the hearts of millions. To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and recognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the senseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of racism." Cook went on to say that "at Apple, our mission has and always will be to create technology that empowers people to change the world for the better. We've always drawn strength from our diversity, welcomed people from every walk of life to our stores around the world, and strived to build an Apple that is inclusive of everyone."

These words were being digested as the tech giant made the decision to close the majority of its U.S. stores for the safety of those staff and its customers, stores that had only just reopened after the COVID-19 shutdown. Apple has unsurprisingly become a favored target of looters, given the likely spoils on offer, and the decision was taken to remove stock from shop floors and shutter locations. It has long been known that Apple operates some form of proximity software that disables a device when it is taken illegally from a store. Until now, though, little had been seen of that technology in action. Well, thanks to social media, we can now see the message that greets a looter powering up their new device: "This device has been disabled and is being tracked," it says. "Local authorities will be alerted."

MojoKid writes: AI and Machine Learning performance benchmarks have been well explored in the data center, but are fairly new and unestablished for edge devices like smartphones. While AI implementations on phones are typically limited to inferencing tasks like speech-to-text transcription and camera image optimization, there are real-world neural network models employed on mobile devices and accelerated by their dedicated processing engines. A deep dive look at HotHardware of three popular AI benchmarking apps for Android shows that not all platforms are created equal, but also that performance results can vary wildly, depending on the app used for benchmarking.

Generally speaking, it all hinges on what neural networks (NNs) the benchmarks are testing and what precision is being tested and weighted. Most mobile apps that currently employ some level of AI make use of INT8 (quantized). While INT8 offers less precision than FP16 (Floating Point), it's also more power-efficient and offers enough precision for most consumer applications. Typically, Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 powered devices offer the best INT8 performance, while Huawei's Kirin 990 in the P40 Pro 5G offers superior FP16 performance. Since INT8 precision for NN processing is more common in today's mobile apps, it could be said that Qualcomm has the upper hand, but the landscape in this area is ever-evolving to be sure.