An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: D-Wave today made its quantum computers available for free to researchers and developers working on responses to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. D-Wave partners and customers Cineca, Denso, Forschungszentrum Julich, Kyocera, MDR, Menten AI, NEC, OTI Lumionics, QAR Lab at LMU Munich, Sigma-i, Tohoku University, and Volkswagen are also offering to help. They will provide access to their engineering teams with expertise on how to use quantum computers, formulate problems, and develop solutions.

Quantum computing leverages qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave was the first company to sell commercial quantum computers, which are built to use quantum annealing. D-Wave says the move to make access free is a response to a cross-industry request from the Canadian government for solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Free and unlimited commercial contract-level access to D-Wave's quantum computers is available in 35 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia via Leap, the company's quantum cloud service. Just last month, D-Wave debuted Leap 2, which includes a hybrid solver service and solves problems of up to 10,000 variables.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: South Korean panel maker Samsung Display has decided to end all of its production of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in South Korea and China by end of this year, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. Samsung Display, a unit of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, said in October that it suspended one of its two LCD production lines at home amid falling demand for LCD panels and a supply glut. 'We will supply LCD orders to our customers by end of this year without any issues', the company said in a statement.

Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: This weekend, Microsoft has given an insight into the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on its services. The company says that there has been a huge increase in Teams usage, and there are now over 44 million daily users. In regions where there are isolation and home sheltering orders in place, Microsoft says that there has been a colossal 775 percent increase in usage of its cloud services. While there have not yet been any significant service disruptions, Microsoft says it has plans to increase capacity: "We are expediting the addition of significant new capacity that will be available in the weeks ahead. Concurrently, we monitor support requests and, if needed, encourage customers to consider alternative regions or alternative resource types, depending on their timeline and requirements. If the implementation of these efforts to alleviate demand is not sufficient, customers may experience intermittent deployment related issues. When this does happen, impacted customers will be informed via Azure Service Health."

The Global Wind Energy Council, an industry trade organization, released its review of the market in 2019. During the past year, wind power saw its second-largest amount of new installed capacity ever, with over 60GW going in. From a report: But the news going forward is a bit more uncertain, with the report predicting that after years of double-digit growth, the industry would see things tail off into steady-but-unspectacular territory. And that prediction was made before many key markets started dealing with the coronavirus. Wind power is now one of the cheapest options for generating electricity. In many areas of the globe, building and maintaining wind power is cheaper per unit of power than it is to fuel a previously constructed fossil fuel plant. While offshore wind remains more expensive, its prices have dropped dramatically over the last several years, and it is rapidly approaching price parity with fossil fuels.

In the journal Science Robotics, an international group of robotic experts wrote an editorial arguing COVID-19 "may drive further research in robotics to address risks of infectious diseases," and urging more funding.

The Washington Post reports: Robots already have been enlisted in the fight against the virus. In Hong Kong, a fleet of miniature robots disinfects the city's subways; in China, an entire field hospital was staffed by robots designed to relieve overworked health-care workers. In the United States, robots played a role in the country's first known case of covid-19. One outfitted with a stethoscope and a microphone was used with a 35-year-old man in Everett, Washington, who was confined to an isolated unit after showing symptoms of the coronavirus. He later made a full recovery. "Already, we have seen robots being deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring vital signs, and assisting border controls," the researchers write.

They identify plenty of other ways to use robots in the pandemic response. Robots could assist with testing and screening; already, researchers have created a device that can identify a suitable vein and perform a blood draw. Or they could take over hospital disinfection entirely, providing continuous sterilization of high-touch areas with UV light.

The researchers hope covid-19 will catalyze robotics research for the sake of public health.

"Gisele Huff is convinced universal basic income is finally having its moment," reports the Bay Area newsgroup, describing the 84-year-old president of a nonprofit promoting universal basic incomes to honor their recently-deceased son, a Tesla software engineer: While Huff's organization is only a few years old, it has already made its mark in the Bay Area. Santa Clara County's Board of Supervisors is considering a pilot program that would provide youth exiting foster care with a basic $1,000 monthly income. If approved later this year, the program would likely be the first of its kind in the nation...

Q: Different people have different ideas about what exactly UBI should look like. What's yours?

A: It would be $1,000 a month and it runs like social security. It's an automatic system. All you need is a bank account. So UBI is a direct payment to your bank account on a monthly basis. It has no requirements. When you're 18 it starts and it goes on until you die.

Q: And everyone would get the same amount? Including the wealthiest households?

A: Yes. For the people who are wealthy, it will disappear because $1,000 doesn't mean anything. But it will mean the world for the people who are so marginalized now, like foster kids or abused women who can't leave a situation because they don't have a dime to their name. It is a huge incentive for people to move on, to do things, take risks that they would not do before.

Q: Some critics of UBI say that it could incentivize people not to work, because no matter what they do they will get a monthly paycheck. What is your response?

A: If you have a job, you're not going to stop working for $1,000 a month. What you're going to do is you're going to tell your boss: "No, I'm not doing this because it's not acceptable and I have $1,000 dollars that I can use for the next two months until I find a better job." So if you want that job done as a boss, you're going to have to improve the conditions or the pay...."

Q: And your son was concerned about those same issues? How did he come to his perspective on UBI?

A: Gerald was the software engineer for the Model 3 Tesla. So he has been a techie all of his life and what really spurred him on to look into this in a deeper way was his fear of technological unemployment. The robots are coming. And the potential of that technology is what Gerald was aware of — it's immense.

"Averaged over the globe, electric vehicles (EVs) already represent about a 31-percent emissions savings" writes Ars Technica, noting results from a study which also found similar savings from energy-efficient home-heating pumps. "Even in the scenario where these technologies are promoted but the grid isn't cleaned up much, there's a substantial benefit through 2050."

But the researchers also separated the world into 59 regions, then used data on the "greenness" of each country's electricity grids, considering the full range of available vehicle types and home-heating methods as well as their predicted "uptake" of green technologies from 2015 to 2050. And this did identify a handful exceptions, Ars Technica reports: Compare, for example, Switzerland's exceptionally low-carbon grid to Estonia's, which runs primarily on oil shale. Swapping an internal combustion vehicle for an electric one in Switzerland cuts emissions by 70 percent, and a heat pump will cut them by about 88 percent. But in Estonia, an electric vehicle would increase emissions by 40 percent and a heat pump pushes that to an eye-watering 120 percent. A more significant exception can be found in Japan. In the scenarios with little progress on grid emissions, a decade from now, the combination of Japan's dirtier grid and preference for hybrid vehicles means that swapping in EVs doesn't quite pay...

As time goes on, emissions from manufacturing electric vehicles accounts for a larger share of their total life cycle emissions, the researchers note. You can make the vehicle efficient and the grid clean, but you'll also have to clean up industry to keep shrinking that carbon footprint.
The article notes that the researchers also predict continued improvements in the efficiency of electric vehicles -- with an unintended side effect. "As time goes on, emissions from manufacturing electric vehicles accounts for a larger share of their total life cycle emissions, the researchers note.

"You can make the vehicle efficient and the grid clean, but you'll also have to clean up industry to keep shrinking that carbon footprint."

Senior U.S. government officials have agreed to new rules to cut off Huawei from global chip suppliers, according to a Reuters report Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. CNET reports: Under the new measures, foreign companies that use American chipmaking equipment would first need to secure a license before supplying some chips to Huawei, the report says. The focus of the new rules is to restrict the sale of more sophisticated chips to the Chinese telecom giant rather than generic, more widely available chips. Trump hasn't signed off on the proposed new measures yet, but if he does, a slew of US tech companies stand to lose, like Apple and Qualcomm along with Huawei. It could also negatively impact the world's largest chipmaker, Taiwan's TSMC, the report says.

Most 5G phones offer big batteries owing to the increased power consumption of early 5G modems and connectivity. But just how much more power does a 5G phone need over a 4G device? From a report: Redmi general manager Lu Weibing has taken to Weibo to answer this question, claiming that 5G phones consume ~20% more power than a 4G phone. This suggests that a 20% increase in battery size is needed for a 5G phone to achieve the same endurance as a 4G variant (assuming everything else is equal). The Redmi executive adds that Qualcomm's flagship 800-series processors consume 20% more juice than an upper mid-range Snapdragon 700-series chipset. So when taken together, this means a 5G flagship will consume significantly more power compared to a mid-range 4G phone, which means battery capacity and optimizations are key for high-end 5G phones.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Virginia has become the first among the Southern US states to take on a goal for 100 percent carbon-free electricity. State governor Ralph Northam, an Army veteran and pediatric neurologist, issued Executive Order 43. The executive order detailed the state's plans to reach a zero CO2 energy goal by 2050. In September 2019, Northam also brought Virginia into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is a carbon trading network that spans nine states. Before then, Northam's efforts to take these initiatives and to join the RGGI were thwarted. However, following the 2019 election, voters in the state changed the political climate in the state. This opened the opportunity to move forward with renewable energy-based efforts. Earlier this month, the state General Assembly passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which brought Northam's previously failed efforts into law. The House voted in favor 51 to 45 and the Senate voted 22 to 17.

Among the VCEA goals are to gradually reduce the use of fossil fuels until they are no longer a part of the state's electricity production. Instead, it will use 100 percent clean energy to power the state. In order to achieve this goal, Virginia has a four-part plan:

1. Join the RGGI and develop a cap-and-trade system. The states that are already using similar strategies and that are a part of the RGGI have experienced healthy economic effects overall. Moreover, the hope is that the addition of Virginia to a heavily supplied market will only boost competition. This is meant to drive the clean energy transition forward even faster.
2. Achieve 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
3. Keep power costs low and protect vulnerable and low-income communities.
4. Build rooftop solar, offshore wind, and power storage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's wind power capacity grew by almost a fifth in 2019 after a year of record growth for offshore windfarms and a boom in onshore projects in the US and China. The Global Wind Energy Council found that wind power capacity grew by 60.4 gigawatts, or 19%, compared with 2018, in one of the strongest years on record for the global wind power industry. The growth was powered by a record year for offshore wind, which grew by 6.1GW to make up a tenth of new windfarm installations for the first time. The council's annual report found that the US and China remain the world's largest markets for onshore wind power development. Together the two countries make up almost two-thirds of global growth in wind power. GWEC had expected 2020 to emerge as a record year for the rollout of wind energy projects, and forecast growth of 20% in the year ahead, but it said the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic was as yet unknown.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Researchers at the Center for Translational Atomaterials (CTAM) at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new graphene-based film that can absorb sunlight with an efficiency of over 90 percent, while simultaneously eliminating most IR thermal emission loss -- the first time such a feat has been reported. The result is an efficient solar heating metamaterial that can heat up rapidly to 83 degrees C (181 degrees F) in an open environment with minimal heat loss. Proposed applications for the film include thermal energy harvesting and storage, thermoelectricity generation, and seawater desalination.

The 3D structured graphene metamaterial (SGM) is composed of a 30-nanometer-thick film of alternating graphene and dielectric layers deposited on a trench-like nanostructure that does double duty as a copper substrate to enhance absorption. More importantly, the substrate is patterned in a matrix arrangement to enable flexible tunability of wavelength-selective absorption. The graphene film is designed to absorb light between 0.28- to 2.5-micrometer wavelengths. And the copper substrate is structured so that it can act as a selective bandpass filter that suppresses the normal emission of internally generated blackbody energy. This retained heat then serves to further raise the metamaterial's temperature. Hence, the SGM can rapidly heat up to 83 degrees C. Should a different temperature be required for a particular application, a new trench nanostructure can be fabricated and tuned to match that specific blackbody wavelength. "The new material also uses less graphene by significantly reducing the film thickness to one third, and its thinness aids in transferring the absorbed heat more efficiently to other media such as water," the report adds. "Additionally, the film is hydrophobic, which fosters self-cleaning, while the graphene layer effectively protects the copper layer from corrosion, helping to extend the metamaterial's lifetime."

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

iFixit tore apart the updated MacBook Air and found that Apple made a few changes making for a more repairable notebook than the last generation. All in all, the new 2020 MacBook Air got a 4/10 repairability score from iFixit, which is one point higher than the previous-gen model which scored 3/10. 9to5Mac reports: iFixit highlights in its full teardown that the update to the reliable Magic Keyboard only added 0.5mm to the thick end of the new MacBook Air... a more than worth it trade-off: "More than anything, that 0.5 mm illustrates the sheer unnecessary-ness of the five painful years that Mac fans spent smashing on unresponsive butterfly keyboards. Knowing that Apple's thinnest-and-lightest notebook accommodates a scissor-switch keyboard so gracefully makes us wonder what it was all for. We understand as well as anyone the urge to fix things, but Apple's insistence on reworking and re-reworking the troubled butterfly design came at such a high cost -- financially, environmentally, and to the Mac's reputation -- and for what? We'll probably never know all the factors that led to the creation and persistence of the butterfly keyboard, but this Magic keyboard is a reminder that sometimes the difference between usable and unusable, or repairable and unrepairable, can be as small as half a millimeter."

Past the keyboard update, iFixit found a nice improvement to how Apple has implemented the trackpad cable: "Where last year the trackpad cables were trapped under the logic board, they are now free to be disconnected anytime -- meaning trackpad removal can happen as soon as the back cover comes off. And since the battery rests under these same cables, this new configuration also greatly speeds up battery removal by leaving the logic board in place. That's two very tasty birds, one stone, for those of you counting. This is one of those happy (but all too rare) occasions where we can identify a hardware change from Apple that's squarely aimed at improving serviceability in the existing design. Sometimes they do listen!"

An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a security advisory last week warning customers about a bug in the firmware of some SAS SSDs (Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives) that will fail after reaching 40,000 hours of operation -- which is 4 years, 206 days, and 16 hours after the SSD has been put into operation. HPE says that based on when affected SSDs have been manufactured and sold, the earliest failures are expected to occur starting with October this year. The company has released firmware updates last week to address the issue. HPE warns that if companies fail to install the update, they risk losing both the SSD and the data. "After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered," the company explained.

Google and South Korean tech major LG are likely to skip the top tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 platform this year for their smartphones as the cost of the chipset is too high, a report claimed. From a report: The Pixel 5 and Pixel 5 XL don't actually use Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 865 as per the Android code base. Both are running the Snapdragon 765G, a chip that's one step down from the 865 in Qualcomm's lineup. There isn't actually a Snapdragon 865 Google phone in the Android repository, ArsTechnica reported on Monday. LG is taking a similar approach to its 2020 flagship, the LG G9 ThinQ: instead of shipping the Snapdragon 865, the company is also opting for the cheaper 765G, according to website Naver.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Modern capitalism has never seen anything quite like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In a matter of months, the deadly contagious bug has spread around the world, hobbling any economy in its path. [...] This economic catastrophe is blowing up the myth of the worker robot and AI takeover. We've been led to believe that a new wave of automation is here, made possible by smarter AI and more sophisticated robots. San Francisco has even considered a tax on robots -- replace a human with a machine, and pay a price. The problem will get so bad, argue folks like former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, we'll need a universal basic income to support our displaced human workers.

Yet our economy still craters without human workers, because the machines are far, far away from matching our intelligence and dexterity. You're more likely to have a machine automate part of your job, not destroy your job entirely. Moving from typewriters to word processors made workers more efficient. Increasingly sophisticated and sensitive robotic arms can now work side-by-side on assembly lines with people without flinging our puny bodies across the room, doing the heavy lifting and leaving the fine manipulation of parts to us. The machines have their strengths -- literally in this case -- and the humans have theirs. While robots can do the labor we don't want to do or can't do, such as lifting car doors on an assembly line, they're not very good at problem-solving. "Think about how you would pick up a piece of paper that's lying flat on a table. You can't grip it like you would an apple -- you have to either pinch it to get it to lift off the surface, or drag it to hang over the edge of the table," writes Matt Simon via Wired. "As a kid, you learn to do that through trial and error, whereas you'd have to program a robot with explicit instructions to do the same."

In closing, Simon writes: "Overestimating robots and AI underestimates the very people who can save us from this pandemic: Doctors, nurses, and other health workers, who will likely never be replaced by machines outright. They're just too beautifully human for that."

NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn't realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data. The Register reports: The data in question will come from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) program, which collects information from the many missions that observe our planet. NASA makes those readings available through the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). To store all the data and run EOSDIS, NASA operates a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that provide pleasing redundancy. But NASA is tired of managing all that infrastructure, so in 2019, it picked AWS to host it all, and started migrating its records to the Amazon cloud as part of a project dubbed Earthdata Cloud. The first cut-over from on-premises storage to the cloud was planned for Q1 2020, with more to follow. The agency expects to transfer data off-premises for years to come.

NASA also knows that a torrent of petabytes is on the way. Some 15 imminent missions, such as the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites, are predicted to deliver more than 100 terabytes a day of data. We mention SWOT and NISAR because they'll be the first missions to dump data directly into Earthdata Cloud. The agency therefore projects that by 2025 it will have 247 petabytes to handle, rather more than the 32 it currently wrangles. NASA thinks this is all a great idea. And it will -- if NASA can afford to operate it. And that's a live question because a March audit report [PDF] from NASA's Inspector General noticed EOSDIS hadn't properly modeled what data egress charges would do to its cloudy plan. NASA "has not yet determined which data sets will transition to Earthdata Cloud nor has it developed cost models based on operational experience and metrics for usage and egress," the Inspector General's Office wrote. "As a result, current cost projections may be lower than what will actually be necessary to cover future expenses and cloud adoption may become more expensive and difficult to manage."

"Collectively, this presents potential risks that scientific data may become less available to end users if NASA imposes limitations on the amount of data egress for cost control reasons."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two years ago, the eCascadia [the electric version of the Freightliner Cascadia] was nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation -- a virtual rendering to expedite a diesel stalwart into a zero-emissions future for goods movement. Now it's one of several competing models, from start-ups as well as established truck makers, that are gearing up for production next year with real-world testing. Orders have poured in, from companies eager to shave operating costs and curb emissions, for trucks that won't see roads for months or even years. Volvo Trucks North America announced this year that it would test 23 of its VNR battery-electric heavy-duty trucks in and out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The Washington-based truck maker Kenworth is already there, operating the beginnings of Project Portal, a 10-truck fleet of semis powered with hydrogen fuel cells. And Daimler Trucks North America is making deliveries in 20 of its preproduction eCascadias with two partner companies, Penske Truck Leasing and NFI.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are responsible for about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Electrics not only reduce tailpipe emissions to zero, they cost less to operate. With fewer moving parts, they are also easier to maintain. On average, it costs about $1.38 per mile to operate a diesel truck, according to the trucking information website TruckInfo.net; $70,000 of the $180,000 annual operating cost is fuel, and $15,000 goes toward maintenance. Tesla, by comparison, estimates its electric Semi will cost $1.26 per mile. Electric trucks do, however, cost more to buy upfront. While most manufacturers have yet to set pricing, the longer a truck's range, the more batteries it needs and the more it will cost.Tesla plans to sell its 300-mile-range Semi for $150,000 and 500-mile Semi for $180,000. The price of a new diesel tractor and trailer is about $150,000. [...] The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a great example of what can happen when smart, technically-oriented people come together in a time of need, an open-source hardware project started by a group including Irish entrepreneur Colin Keogh and Breeze Automation CEO and co-founder Gui Calavanti has produced a prototype ventilator using 3D-printed parts and readily available, inexpensive material. The ventilator prototype was designed and produced in just seven days, after the project spun up on Facebook and attracted participation from over 300 engineers, medical professionals and researchers.

The prototype will now enter into a validation process by the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), the country's health regulatory body. This will technically only validate it for use in Ireland, which ironically looks relatively well-stocked for ventilator hardware, but it will be a key stamp of approval that could pave the way for its deployment across countries where there are shortages, including low-income nations. The group behind the ventilator also recently changed the focus of their Facebook community, renaming the group from the Open Source Ventilator Project to the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies community. They're looking at expanding their focus to finding ways to cheaply and effectively build and validate other needed equipment, including protective gear like masks, sanitizer and protective face guards for front-line healthcare workers.

One of the biggest new additions to Apple's new iPad Pro is a new "Light Detection and Ranging" (LIDAR) system on the rear camera, which Apple argued was the missing piece for revolutionary augmented reality applications. "It claims that by combining the depth information from the LIDAR scanner with camera data, motion sensors, and computer vision algorithms, the new iPad Pro will be faster and better at placing AR objects and tracking the location of people," reports The Verge. "But it doesn't change the fact that, right now, there still aren't a lot of compelling reasons to actually use augmented reality apps on a mobile device beyond the cool, tech-demo-y purposes that already exist." From the report: R apps on iOS today are a thing you try out once, marvel at how novel of an idea it is, and move on -- they're not essential parts of how we use our phones. And nearly three years into Apple's push for AR, there's still no killer app that makes the case for why customers -- or developers -- should care. Maybe the LIDAR sensor really is the missing piece of the puzzle. Apple certainly has a few impressive tech demos showing off applications of the LIDAR sensor, like its Apple Arcade Hot Lava game, which can use the data to more quickly and accurately model a living room to generate the gameplay surface. There's a CAD app that can scan and make a 3D model of the room to see how additions will look. Another demo promises accurate determinations of the range of motion of your arm.

The fact that Apple is debuting the iPad for AR doesn't help the case, either. While Apple has been rumored to be working on a proper augmented reality headset or glasses for years -- a kind of product that could make augmented digital overlays a seamless part of your day-to-day life -- the iPad (in 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes) is effectively the opposite of that idea. It's the same awkwardness of the man who holds up an iPad to film an entire concert; holding a hardcover book-sized display in front of your face for the entire time you're using it just isn't a very natural use case.

It's possible that Apple is just laying the groundwork here, and more portable LIDAR-equipped AR devices (like a new iPhone or even a head-mounted display) are on their way in the future. Maybe the LIDAR sensor is the key to making more immersive, faster, and better augmented apps. Apple might be right, and the next wave of AR apps really will turn the gimmicks into a critical part of day-to-day life. But right now, it's hard not to look at Apple's LIDAR-based AR push as another hardware feature looking for the software to justify it.