MojoKid writes: AMD unveiled two new Ryzen 3 processors recently, designed to drive its Zen 2 CPU microarchitecture into more affordable price points. The new Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X are entry-level 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs that will run in any socket AM4 motherboard, with price points of only $99 (Ryzen 3 3100) and $120 (Ryzen 3 3300X). They are both quad-core/eight-thread chips, with similar cache configurations (2MB L2 + 16MB L3), and they both include basic Wraith Stealth coolers in their retail boxes. Internally, however, these two processors are somewhat different. The Ryzen 3 3100 is setup in a 2+2 configuration with two cores active per CCX (CPU Core Complex). The Ryzen 3 3300X, however, has a 4+0 configuration, with all of its active cores residing on a single CCX. These differences should result in better overall performance for the Ryzen 3 3300X, over and above just having a higher peek clock speed of 4.3GHz, versus 3.90Ghz for the Ryzen 3 3100. In the benchmarks, these new AMD quad-core chips offer similar or better performance versus competitive Intel Core i5 chips, but at significantly lower price points.

Ammalgam shares a report from Redmond Pie: Microsoft has officially announced the Surface Book 3. Not much has changed for the device in terms of external design, but internal circuitry is where it's at. This newest addition to the Surface family was formally unveiled alongside the Surface Go 2 today. And the detachable PC finally got the long overdue refresh. Microsoft decided to go with the latest Intel 10th generation CPUs, codenamed Ice Lake. There was talk that the company might opt for the Comet Lake processors. Both are 10th generation chips, but Ice Lake is made on a 10nm process, while Comet Lake is 14nm. [...] As for the CPU options, we have the Core i5-1035G7 and Core i7-1065G7 available. The Core i5 models don't offer dedicated graphics, while the 15-inch variant of the Surface Book 3 only comes in the Core i7 flavor. GPU got a real look, too. The 13.5-inch Surface Book 3 gets you the 4GB Max-Q variant of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, while the 15-inch one comes with a GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q with 6GB.

On the display side, we have a 3000 x 2000 screen on the 13.5-inch model, while the 15-inch one offers a resolution of 3240 x 2160. Microsoft also claims that the Surface Book 3 has the best battery life of any device it has made up until now. It's rated at 17.5 hours on the 15-inch model and 15.5 hours on the 13.5-inch variant. Some neat improvements when it comes to port selection, with both the USB Type-A and Type-C ports now being USB 3.1 Gen 2, meaning you get 10Gbps instead of 5Gbps. There is also a Surface Connect port on both the base and the tablet, to go with the 3.5mm audio jack in the tablet. All these enhancements mean that the starting price of the Surface Book 3 is a bit higher at $1,599. It will be available on May 21.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Electricity generated by renewable sources like solar, wind and hydro has exceeded coal-fired power in the United States for a record 40 straight days, according to a report based on U.S. government data released on Monday. The boost for renewables is due to a seasonal increase in low-cost solar and hydro power generation, alongside an overall slump in electricity demand caused by coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Coal tends to be the first power source to be cut by utilities when demand falls because subsidized renewable sources are cheaper to operate and often backed by state clean-energy mandates.

Every day between March 25 and May 3, solar, wind and hydro plants together produced more electricity than the nation's coal-fired plants -- accounting for about a fifth of the grid's power, IEEFA said. The longest back-to-back stretch previously was nine days in 2019. In total in 2019, renewables beat coal on just 38 days, IEEFA said. IEEFA added it is possible that renewable energy in the United States could exceed coal on an annual basis for the first time this year, a year earlier than it initially forecast, if the power consumption trends caused by the health crisis continue. The report says overall U.S. electricity consumption is projected to fall 3% this year, with coal-fired power demand falling 20%. Meanwhile, EIA forecasts renewable energy generation will grow 11% because it is dispatched by grid operators whenever it is available because of its low operating cost.

Researchers from Rice University have created an efficient, low-cost device that splits water to produce hydrogen fuel. "The platform developed by the Brown School of Engineering lab of Rice materials scientist Jun Lou integrates catalytic electrodes and perovskite solar cells that, when triggered by sunlight, produce electricity," reports Phys.Org. "The current flows to the catalysts that turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a sunlight-to-hydrogen efficiency as high as 6.7%." From the report: This sort of catalysis isn't new, but the lab packaged a perovskite layer and the electrodes into a single module that, when dropped into water and placed in sunlight, produces hydrogen with no further input. The platform introduced by Lou, lead author and Rice postdoctoral fellow Jia Liang and their colleagues in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano is a self-sustaining producer of fuel that, they say, should be simple to produce in bulk.

"The concept is broadly similar to an artificial leaf," Lou said. "What we have is an integrated module that turns sunlight into electricity that drives an electrochemical reaction. It utilizes water and sunlight to get chemical fuels." Perovskites are crystals with cubelike lattices that are known to harvest light. The most efficient perovskite solar cells produced so far achieve an efficiency above 25%, but the materials are expensive and tend to be stressed by light, humidity and heat. "Jia has replaced the more expensive components, like platinum, in perovskite solar cells with alternatives like carbon," Lou said. "That lowers the entry barrier for commercial adoption. Integrated devices like this are promising because they create a system that is sustainable. This does not require any external power to keep the module running." The research has been published in the journal ACS Nano.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook's Oculus division is building a new version of its Quest standalone virtual reality headset, but the device is facing potential delays due to the impact of Covid-19 on product development and the global supply chain. The social-networking giant is working on multiple potential successors to the Quest. Some models in advanced testing are smaller, lighter, and have a faster image refresh rate for more realistic content, according to people familiar with the matter. These headsets also have redesigned controllers, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced products.

The company hasn't finalized which new version of the Quest it will release, and the final product may have different features. Facebook originally planned to launch the new model at the end of 2020, around its annual Oculus Connect conference, but the coronavirus pandemic could delay the headset from shipping until 2021, the people said. Some versions in testing are 10% to 15% smaller than the current Quest. That, in addition to being lighter, makes them more comfortable to wear, one of the people said. The existing model weighs about 1.25 pounds, which is too heavy for some users wearing the device for extended periods. The models in testing are closer to a pound, the person said. The company could sell the new model alongside the current Quest, or choose to fully replace it.

As predicted, the proprietary locking system Apple rolled out with its 2018 MacBook Pros is hurting independent repair stores, refurbishers, and electronics recyclers. A combination of secure software locks, diagnostic requirements, and Apple's new T2 security chip are making it hard to breathe new life into old MacBook Pros that have been recycled but could be easily repaired and used for years were it not for these locks. From a report: It's a problem that highlights Apple's combative attitude towards the secondhand market and the need for national right to repair legislation. "The irony is that I'd like to do the responsible thing and wipe user data from these machines, but Apple won't let me," John Bumstead, a MacBook refurbisher and owner of the RDKL INC repair store, said in a tweet with an attached picture of two "bricked" MacBook Pros. "Literally the only option is to destroy these beautiful $3,000 MacBooks and recover the $12/ea they are worth as scrap."

As Motherboard has reported previously, without official Apple diagnostic software, newer MacBooks cannot be repaired or reset. "By default you can't get to recovery mode and wipe the machine without a user password, and you can't boot to an external drive and wipe that way because it's prohibited by default," Bumstead told Motherboard in an email. "Because T2 machines have no removable hard drive, and the drive is simply chips on the board, this default setting means that a recycler (or anyone) can't wipe or reinstall a T2 machine that has default settings unless they have the user password."

An anonymous reader quotes Techcrunch: Arm — the U.K. company behind the designs of chips for everyone from Apple to Qualcomm to Samsung — is hoping to kickstart developing by offering up access to around 75% of its chip portfolio for free to qualified startups.

The move marks an expansion of the company's Flexible Access program. With it, Arm will open access to its IP for early-stage startups. While some of the biggest companies pay the chip designer big bucks for that information, the cost can be prohibitive for those just starting out...

Interested parties can access the full list of available IP here.

New submitter jsicolo shares a report: Nvidia Chief Scientist Bill Dally has released an open-source ventilator hardware design he developed in order to address the shortage resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic. The mechanical ventilator design developed by Dally can be assembled quickly, using off-the-shelf parts with a total cost of around $400 -- making it an accessible and affordable alternative to traditional, dedicated ventilators, which can cost $20,000 or more. The design created by Dally strives for simplicity, and basically includes just two central components -- a solenoid valve and a microcontroller. The design is called the OP-Vent, and in this video you can see how bare-bones it is in terms of hardware compared to existing alternatives, including some of the other more complex emergency-use ventilator designs developed in response to COVID-19.

UnknowingFool writes: Intel released more information about their next generation CPUs, codenamed Comet Lake. Overall, CPUs will get more cores and threads and slight speed boosts. Price wise, Intel is cutting prices to be more competitive with AMD's Rzyen processors. Some of the downsides include requiring new socket (thus new MBs), LGA 1200 and lack of PCIE 4.0 compatibility. No specific benchmarks were released, however Intel claims to have the fastest gaming CPUs. "[T]he top Comet Lake chip is the same price as the top Coffee Lake at $488, and the cheapest Core i3 is $122," reports PC Gamer. They expect the release date to be sometime in May, though no official date has been confirmed.

VESA has announced that USB 4 will fully support the massive bandwidth available for the DisplayPort 2.0 standard, including support for 8K 60Hz HDR or even 16K 60Hz monitors. Engadget reports: Since USB 4 works at 40Gbps and DisplayPort 2.0 supports 80Gbps speeds, how will this work? USB 4 can actually send and receive at 40Gbps at the same time, so VESA took advantage of that with a new spec called DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0. Since DisplayPort is primarily used for video, which only sends data one way from your PC to a monitor, the Alt Mode 2.0 standard remaps USB-C's data pins to work in one direction only -- giving you double the speeds.

According to Anandtech, Alt Mode 2.0 will support regular USB 4 cables. At the same time, monitors won't need to have USB 4 controllers, which should simplify display designs. Since it also supports the Thunderbolt 3 standard, USB 4 will become a universal connection standard for both smartphones and PCs, supporting things like "docking, gaming, AR/VR HMDs, and professional HDR displays," VESA said.

"Toshiba has just published a full list of all the consumer HDDs in their lineup that use SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology," writes Slashdot reader williamyf. "This comes after the whole submarine consumer SMR HDDs fiasco, and fresh on the heels of Western Digital publishing a full list of all their consumer HDDs using SMR. With this, Seagate is the only HDD vendor which has not yet published a full list of their consumer HDDs using SMR." Blocks and Files reports: Toshiba uses SMR technology -- previously undocumented -- in several desktop drives and in some video surveillance HDDs: P300 6TB, P300 4TB, DT02 6TB, DT02 4TB, DT02-V 6TB and DT02-V 4TB. Certain notebook PC, game consoles, and external consumer drives also use SMR: L200 2TB, L200 1TB, MQ04 2TB and MQ04 1TB. The company does not use SMR in the N300, a NAS drive intended for the consumer market -- unlike Western Digital which uses SMR in some low-end WD Red NAS devices.

Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln have canceled an all-electric SUV that was going to be powered by technology provided by EV startup Rivian, the companies told Automotive News on Tuesday. The Verge reports: Lincoln says it is still working closely with Rivian, including an "alternative vehicle" that will also be based on Rivian's electric vehicle skateboard platform. "Given the current environment, Lincoln and Rivian have decided not to pursue the development of a fully electric vehicle based on Rivian's skateboard platform. Our strategic commitment to Lincoln, Rivian and electrification remains unchanged and Lincoln's future plans will include an all-electric vehicle," a spokesperson from Lincoln told The Verge in a statement.

Lincoln declined to say what specifically about the pandemic led to the cancellation. "This was a decision that was mutually made by Lincoln and Rivian given the rapidly changing environment and after a review of product plans," the spokesperson said. "As we moved through the development cycle, we determined that it would be better to pivot from the Rivian's skateboard platform and focus our development efforts on Lincoln's own fully-electric vehicle." This is a pretty big blow, considering Ford invested $500 million in Rivian last year, just two months after Amazon led a $700 million investment in the Michigan-based startup.

CNBC reports that Ford "lost $632 million during the first quarter and warned investors that it expects an adjusted pretax loss of $5 billion during the second quarter as the company grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic that's shuttered factories and devastated sales."

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is delaying the production ramp-up of its 2020 flagship smartphones by about a month, "as the coronavirus pandemic weakens global consumer demand and disrupts manufacturing across Asia, the heart of the consumer electronics supply chain." From the report: Apple is forging ahead with plans to release four new iPhone models later this year, people familiar with its plans say. The phones, some with 5G connectivity, will vary in price and come in three sizes -- 5.4 inches, two measuring 6.1 inches, and one at 6.7 inches, all featuring organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screens, the people said. Apple's annual product refresh fuels the majority of iPhone sales for an entire year, making new phones the linchpin of a business segment that accounts for more than half of the company's total revenue.

Apple usually unveils new iPhone models in mid-September and begins selling them before the end of the month. To do so, it usually ramps up mass-production in the early summer, building up inventory around August. This year, while Apple would still be building some of the new phones in the July-to-September period, the mass-production ramp-up will slide back by about a month, the people said. Apple is slashing the number of handsets that it plans to make in the second half of this year by as much as 20%, one of the people said. It isn't clear whether the slashed amount for 2020 would be pushed back into 2021 for manufacturing.

News emerged last week that WD, Seagate and Toshiba are all shipping hard drives using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), a slower form of HDD technology that can result in reduced performance in some types of workloads, but without disclosing that critical bit of information in marketing materials or specification sheets. The backlash has been swift, and now WD is striking a conciliatory tone with its customers in an update to its blog. The company also divulged that it is also shipping SMR technology in some of its WD Blue and WD Black hard drives for desktop PCs and laptops. Tom's Hardware reports: The new disclosure comes on the heels of WD's blog post yesterday that outlined its stance on using SMR drives. The company contends that SMR technology is adequate for the applications the drives are designed for, but that is certainly an open matter of debate with many users claiming the drives cause problems in RAID arrays. The issues purportedly stem from the slow random write speeds, which do cause a measurable reduction in performance, and background activities that are purportedly responsible for the drives dropping from RAID arrays. In either case, The WD blog advised users they should step up to more expensive models designed for heavier workloads if they have more demanding needs.

Today the company updated its blog with a more conciliatory tone, and also disclosed all of its drive models that are shipping with SMR tech. In addition to the WD Red NAS drives that the company previously admitted used SMR tech, WD is also shipping the tech into its 2.5"and 3.5" WD Blue and 2.5" WD Black lineups. Both models are designed for desktop PCs and laptops, with the former coming as a value drive while the latter is designed for high-performance users. WD acknowledged the recent brouhaha surrounding the fact it was shipping drives without disclosing they use the slower recording technology, stating: "The past week has been eventful, to say the least. As a team, it was important that we listened carefully and understood your feedback about our WD Red NAS drives, specifically how we communicated which recording technologies are used. Your concerns were heard loud and clear..." Importantly, the blog states, "...Thank you for letting us know how we can do better. We will update our marketing materials, as well as provide more information about SMR technology, including benchmarks and ideal use cases." WD also said that they will share further data in the future, including benchmarks that might prove otherwise.

watha2020 writes: Spot, the four-legged robot made famous by its YouTube dance video, is being tested as a remote triage system at Boston's Brigham Women's Hospital. A Spot robot carrying an iPad allows doctors to interview possibly infected patients at a safe distance. [Spot is also carrying a pouch near the robot's "tail," which allows it to deliver small items such as bottled water to infected patients, without the need to send in a nurse. The report adds that an upgraded model will add cameras that can measure a patient's respiration rate and body temperature, with no need to make physical contact.] An anonymous Slashdot reader also shares news that Boston Dynamics today open-sourced its health care robotics toolkit on GitHub. "The company hopes that existing Boston Dynamics customers and other mobile robot providers can use the toolkit, which includes documentation and CAD files of enclosures and mounts, to help health care workers and essential personnel and ultimately save lives," reports VentureBeat. "The mobile robot provider outlined four use cases for its toolkit: telemedicine (which it has already deployed), remote vitals inspection, disinfection, and delivery."

Babu Mohan writes via Android Central: In an editorial published on the company's website, Yongin Park, who heads the Sensor Business Team at Samsung's LSI division, has revealed that his team is working on a camera sensor that will be able to capture more detail than the human eye. As noted in the article, the human eye is said to match a resolution of around 500 megapixels. Samsung, however, is working on bringing a 600MP camera sensor to the market, which could be used in various fields such as smartphones, autonomous vehicles, drones, and IoT. As you would expect, however, it will take a long time for the company to actually launch a camera sensor with such a high resolution.

A 600MP sensor would be massive in size, making it nearly impossible to fit inside a modern smartphone. In order to shrink the sensor, Samsung will have to reduce the pixel size, which would require the use of pixel binning tech to ensure the smaller pixels don't result in dull pictures. Samsung's 108MP ISOCELL Bright HM1 sensor uses its proprietary 'Nonacell technology,' which boasts a 3x3 pixel structure. This allows nine 0.8um pixels to function as one large 2.4um pixel to deliver impressive low-light performance.

On its way to being net-zero carbon neutral by 2050, General Motors announced today that some of its southeast Michigan facilities will be fully powered by renewable energy by 2023. CNET reports: The carmaker said on Monday it will strengthen a partnership with DTE Energy to buy another 500,000 megawatt-hours worth of energy in the next few years. That's on top of 300,000 mWh already purchased, making a total of 800,000 mWh, or enough clean energy to take C02 from 63 million gallons of gasoline burned out of the air.

Facilities first targeted for fully renewable energy include GM's downtown Detroit-based Renaissance Center headquarters and two assembly plants: Orion and Detroit-Hamtramck. The Warren Technical Center is also on the shortlist for 100% green energy in fewer than three years. Clean energy powering Orion and Detroit-Hamtramck suits the plants, too. Orion builds the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Detroit-Hamtramck will build the GMC Hummer EV along with future electric cars. GM's investment will help fund two new solar parks DTE plans to build, which the company said will create 1,500 jobs during the construction period.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As many as a billion mobile phone owners around the world will be unable to use the smartphone-based system proposed by Apple and Google to track whether they have come into contact with people infected with the coronavirus, industry researchers estimate. The figure includes many poorer and older people -- who are also among the most vulnerable to COVID-19 -- demonstrating a "digital divide" within a system that the two tech firms have designed to reach the largest possible number of people while also protecting individuals' privacy.

The particular kind of Bluetooth "low energy" chips that are used to detect proximity between devices without running down the phone's battery are absent from a quarter of smartphones in active use globally today, according to analysts at Counterpoint Research. A further 1.5 billion people still use basic or "feature" phones that do not run iOS or Android at all. "In all, close to 2 billion [mobile users] will not be benefiting from this initiative globally," said Neil Shah, analyst at Counterpoint. "And most of these users with the incompatible devices hail from the lower-income segment or from the senior segment which actually are more vulnerable to the virus." Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, estimates that only around two-thirds of adults would have a compatible phone. "And that's the UK, which is an extremely advanced smartphone market," he said. "In India, you could have 60-70 percent of the population that is ruled out immediately."

The report adds: "Counterpoint Research is more optimistic, estimating that 88 percent compatibility in developed markets such as the US, UK, and Japan, while about half of people in India would own the necessary handset."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The Milton R. Young Station, close to the town of Center in North Dakota, is as unremarkable as coal-fired power plants come. But if its owner Minnkota Power Cooperative has its way, the plant could soon be famous the world over. The Grand Forks-based electric cooperative has launched Project Tundra, an initiative to build the largest power plant-based carbon capture facility in the world, with construction commencing as early as 2022. If Minnkota Power raises the US $1 billion the project requires, it plans to retrofit the station with technology the cooperative claims will capture more than 90 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the plant's larger generator, a 455-megawatt unit. The effect will be the equivalent of taking 600,000 gasoline-fueled cars off the road.

To sequester CO2 from the Young station, Project Tundra will make use of technology similar to that employed at the only two other existing carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities operating at power plants in the world -- Petra Nova in Texas and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. The CO2-removal process begins by passing the flue gas through a scrubber to remove impurities and lower its temperature. The gas then enters an absorber, which contains a liquid-based amine solution that binds to CO2. Heat is applied to release the gas from the amines and the extracted CO2 is then compressed. Project Tundra plans to pump the liquid CO2 into sandstone rocks that lie just over a mile beneath the nearby lignite coal mine, where it will be stored permanently.

"Storage vendors, including but reportedly not limited to Western Digital, have quietly begun shipping SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) disks in place of earlier CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) disks..." writes Ars Technica.

"In addition to higher capacities, SMR is associated with much lower random I/O performance than CMR disks offer."

Long-time Slashdot reader castrox shares their detailed report: Shingled Magnetic Recording is a technology that allows vendors to eke out higher storage densities, netting more TB capacity on the same number of platters — or fewer platters, for the same amount of TB. Until recently, the technology has only been seen in very large disks, which were typically clearly marked as "archival"...

Storage vendors appear to be getting much bolder about deploying the new technology into ever-smaller formats, presumably to save a bit on manufacturing costs... [S]everal users have reported that these disks cannot be successfully used in their NAS systems — despite the fact that the name of the actual product is WD Red NAS Hard Drive.
Citing a statement from Western Digital, the article concludes that "The writing on the wall here seems clear. Yes, Western Digital slid SMR drives into traditional, non-enterprise channels — and no, the company doesn't feel bad about it, and you shouldn't expect it to stop...

"Western Digital doesn't appear to be the only hard drive manufacturer doing this," they write, noting that the storage-news web site Blocksandfiles.com "has confirmed quiet, undocumented use of SMR in small retail drives from Seagate and Toshiba as well."