merbs writes: If the robots are simply "coming," if they just show up and relieve a helpless lot of humans of their livelihoods, then no one is to blame for this techno-elemental phenomenon, and little is to be done about it beyond bracing for impact. Not the executives swayed by consulting firms who insist the future is in AI customer service bots, or the managers who see an opportunity to improve profit margins by adopting automated kiosks that edge out cashiers, or the shipping conglomerate bosses who decide to replace dockworkers with a fleet of automated trucks. These individuals may feel as if they have no choice, with shareholders and boards and bosses of their own to answer to, and an economic system that incentivizes the making of these decisions -- and sometimes the technology will perform obviously superior work to the human -- but they are exactly that: decisions, made by people, to call in or build the job-threatening robots.

Pretending otherwise, that robots in every use case are inevitable, is the very worst form of technological determinism, and leads to a dearth in critical thinking about when and how automation *is* best implemented. Because even the most ardent robot lovers will agree, there are plenty of cases of badly deployed automation; systems that make our lives worse and more inefficient, and that kill jobs en route to worse outcomes. And such automated regression is often implemented under the logic of 'robots are coming,' so better hop aboard. We will be able to make better decisions about embracing effective automation if we understand that, in practice, 'the robots are coming for our jobs' usually means something more like 'a CEO wants to cut his operating budget by 15 percent and was just pitched on enterprise software that promises to do the work currently done by thirty employees in accounts payable.'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: California regulators on Thursday approved allowing utilities to cut off electricity to possibly hundreds of thousands of customers to avoid catastrophic wildfires like the one sparked by power lines last year that killed 85 people and largely destroyed the city of Paradise. Utilities' liability can reach billions of dollars, and after several years of devastating wildfires, they asked regulators to allow them to pull the plug when fire risk is extremely high. That's mainly during periods of excessive winds and low humidity when vegetation is dried out and can easily ignite.

The California Public Utilities Commission gave the green light but said utilities must do a better job educating and notifying the public, particularly those with disabilities and others who are vulnerable, and ramp up preventive efforts, such as clearing brush and installing fire-resistant poles. The plans could inconvenience hundreds of thousands of customers while endangering some who depend on electricity to keep them alive. The precautionary outages could mean multiday blackouts for cities as large as San Francisco and San Jose, Northern California's major power provider warned in a recent filing with the utilities commission.

The Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) today announced PCI Express 5.0, even though PCI Express 4.0 is still a rarity in the PC market. Phoronix reports: PCI Express 5.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 with a promise of 32GT/s transfer rates while maintaining low-power and backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express specifications. PCI Express 5.0 is set to allow 128GB/s bandwidth via PCIe 5.0 x16, improved signal integrity and mechanical performance, a new "CEM" connector for add-in cards, and backwards compatibility back through PCIe 1.x. Additional details can be found via today's PCI-SIG press release.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns world leaders that -- without support for new nuclear power or lifetime extensions for existing nuclear power plants -- the world's climate goals are at risk. "The lack of further lifetime extensions of existing nuclear plants and new projects could result in an additional four billion tonnes of CO2 emissions," a press release from the IEA noted.

The report is the IEA's first report on nuclear power in two decades, and it paints a picture of low-carbon power being lost through attrition (due to the retirement of aging plants) or due to economics (extremely cheap natural gas as well as wind and solar undercutting more expensive nuclear power for years in some regions). Around the world, 452 nuclear reactors provided 2,700 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2018. This makes nuclear a significant source of low-carbon energy on a global level. While 11.2 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power were connected to the grid last year, all of the new capacity was located in China or Russia. "Without additional nuclear, the clean energy transition becomes more difficult and more expensive -- requiring $1.6 trillion of additional investment in advanced economies over the next two decades," IEA says. "Critically, a major clean energy shortfall would emerge by 2040, calling on wind and solar PV to accelerate deployment even further to fill the gap."

MojoKid writes: What do you think graphics cards will look like in the next decade and a half? Intel wanted to know that as well, so it commissioned designer Cristiano Siquiera to give us a taste of what graphics cards might look like in the year 2035. Siquiera, the original talented designer that brought the first set of Intel Odyssey GPU renders not long ago, focused primarily on the fan/shroud designs and what innovations could be fostered in the coming years. He was tasked with thinking far beyond current design conventions, materials and cooling technologies in current-gen graphics cards, and to envision new designs that could employ technologies and materials not even invented yet. One concept, called Gemini, shows an ionic-based cooling system that isn't too far beyond the realm of feasibility. Yet another design, called Prometheus, showcases top edge-mounted display readout that could also be fairly easily employed with flexible OLED display technology. Intel also just launched a new Graphics Command Center driver package today, which offers more customization, better control of power and cooling and one-click game optimization for Intel GPU-enabled systems.

An anonymous reader writes: iRobot today launched two new robots: the Roomba s9+ robot vacuum cleaner and the Braava jet m6 robot mop. The Roomba s9+ robot vacuum with Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal starts at $1,299. The Roomba s9 without the Clean Base starts at $999. The Braava jet m6 robot mop starts at $499. All the robots are available for purchase today in the U.S. and Canada. They will start shipping in select European countries on July 12, 2019. The two robots can use iRobot's Imprint Link Technology to "talk to each other" -- vacuuming and then mopping automatically. The technology also works with the Roomba i7+, which launched in September. iRobot is thus introducing two robots that can clean together "as a team." Owners of the robots can initiate a "Linked clean" in the iRobot Home app.

Samsung on Tuesday announced the launch of two new chips that it says will support secure, fast-charging USB-C power delivery controllers. "One of them, the SE8A, is what the company calls the industry's first solution that combines a power delivery controller and Secure Element in a single chip, offering new protections like security key storage," reports BGR. "Another result of the development of these new power delivery controllers is that Samsung's power chargers will now be able to support up to a 100W capacity: A 10x improvement over the 10W of a general smartphone charger." From the report: Samsung said the MM101 supports a symmetric encryption algorithm called the Advanced Encryption Standard that enables product authentication and includes moisture sensing capabilities to ensure safer charging conditions. The SE8A supports USB Type-C Authentication, the certificate-based authentication program for USB-C chargers and devices. "With enhanced security," Samsung explained in the announcement, "the SE8A opens possibilities for new kinds of content and services that may be exclusive to a certain brand, location or event."

Today's announcement is also significant because Samsung says the new power delivery controllers meet the most recent USB specs for fast-charging which addresses things like compatibility and efficiency challenges across mobile devices and other electronics. Those challenges can have effects like causing a device to, for example, charge slower than usual in addition to compromising the battery's life cycle.

According to a peer-reviewed paper revealed this week, Google is continuing its experiments into the controversial science of cold fusion -- the theory that nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun, can produce energy in a table-top experiment at room temperature. While Google's recent project found no evidence that cold fusion is possible, it did make some advances in measurement and materials-science techniques that the researchers say could benefit energy research. "The team also hopes that its work will inspire others to revisit cold-fusion experiments, even if the phenomenon still fails to materialize," reports Nature. From the report: The Google team explored three experimental set-ups that have been proposed to generate cold fusion -- two involving palladium and hydrogen, and one involving metallic powders and hydrogen. None foundï evidence of fusion. The results have been published across 12 papers over the past 2 years: 9 in peer-reviewed journals and 3ï on the arXiv preprint server.

In March 1989, two U.S.-based chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that they had seen excess heat and fusion-reaction products -- signs of nuclear fusion -- when they ran a current across two palladium plates in water laden with deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. Others quickly pointed out errors in their experimental procedure. Since then, two U.S. Department of Energy reviews have found no evidence of the phenomenon . But cold fusion -- now commonly referred to as low-energy nuclear reactions -- has retained a persistent following that continues to claim evidence of success. Google's $10-million project aimed to test the cold-fusion claims rigorously in a field that lacked credible scientific data, says Matthew Trevithick, a research program manager at Google. Another goal was also to push methods in challenging experimental conditions. But, he adds: "The fact that the pay-out could be huge is definitely a component of our interest.

Apple today released a new iPod Touch with A10 fusion chip that supports group FaceTime chats and improved augmented reality capabilities. From a report: The rest of the device is unchanged, compared to the previous generation iPod Touch, but it's still nice to see it receive updates. The new, more powerful chip will let people play the latest games and use the newest iOS features. It starts at $199. This is the first time Apple's updated the iPod Touch since 2015, and yet, there's no FaceID or TouchID; maybe just to save costs or to avoid cannibalizing its more lucrative iPad lineup.

Qualcomm said today that it's teaming up with Lenovo on "Project Limitless," the first 5G PC. From a report: It's still really early days for the laptop, which was teased at Qualcomm's press conference, and is pegged for an early 2020 release date. The laptop uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx processor paired with a Snapdragon x55 5G modem with 7GBps transfer speeds. In its current form, Project Limitless looks like one of Lenovo's Yoga-series of convertible 2-in-1s, with a bend-back hinge and scallop-shaped chiclet keys. That design is subject to change between now and 2020, I was told.

Nvidia today unveiled the tech behind new RTX Studio laptops, which can provide desktop-level computing performance for laptop users. From a report: Aimed at creators, the machines are targeted at independent artists who are fueling growing fields like social media, digital advertising, and 3D development. Nvidia says these laptops can deliver up to seven times the performance of a MacBook Pro. The 17 new laptop models from seven manufacturers, powered by a range of Nvidia GeForce and Quadro RTX graphics processing units (GPUs). The ultra-long battery life and stability when using newly developed Nvidia Studio Drivers.

The Laptops that meet the highest qualifications for creative capabilities will be badged RTX Studio. That will help creators to easily identify the right hardware to meet their demands. These Quadro and GeForce RTX-based laptops are purpose-built for GPU-accelerated content creation. The laptops feature the new Quadro RTX 5000 mobile GPU and GeForce RTX 2080, 2070 and 2060 GPUs. Quadro RTX 5000-based laptops are the world's first with 16GB of graphics memory, enabling advanced multi-app creative workflows and use of large 3D models that previously were not possible while on the go, Nvidia said. [...] RTX Studio laptops will be available starting in June from top computer makers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Razer. Pricing starts at $1,600 and will vary based on partner designs, features, and region.

"Thomas Parker, sometimes described as the 'Edison of Britain', was a British engineer and electrical technologies inventor working in the 1800s who was also one of the world's first environmentalists," remembers Slashdot reader dryriver.

Parker had been troubled by the pollution in coal-burning cities around London -- and decided to do something about it: Parker was very adept both at inventing new things and at significantly improving technologies that others had invented before him. He improved everything from steam pumps, to electrical batteries, electric motors, alternators and dynamos, invented the award winning "Kyrle Grate," which was designed to allow anthracite coal to be burned inside of it, and was responsible for the electrification of London's "Underground" Subway system and tramways build in other British cities.

There has been attempts at electrical cars before Parker's going back as far as the 1830s, but his was revolutionary in many aspects. The Elwell-Parker car was fitted with Parker's high-capacity rechargeable batteries, and later vehicles had hydraulic brakes on all four wheels, as well as four-wheel steering. These features are even now being described as revolutionary.

While Parker's electrical cars were quite popular in America and Britain for a number of years (read more here), soon improved gas- and diesel-based vehicles caused public interest in electric cars to wane. Parker's company Elwell Parker, which survives to this day, then focused on making electrical speciality vehicles for factories and warehouses -- electric carts for moving equipment and crates around, and precursors of modern forklifts, for example.

While everybody knows electrical inventors like Edison and Tesla today, Thomas Parker is barely known and barely remembered...

Both the SD Association and Wi-Fi Alliance have cut ties with Huawei following President Trump's executive order barring companies from doing business with the Chinese company. PhoneDog reports: First up, Huawei has been removed the from the SD Association, a non-profit group that sets the standards for SD and microSD cards. Huawei's name has been removed from the organization's website, and the SD Association confirmed to Android Authority that it's complying with the recent executive order that placed Huawei on the Entity List. This news won't affect existing Huawei phones' ability to accept microSD cards, but the company declined to comment on the effect that it'll have on future models. It likely means that future Huawei devices won't be able to use microSD cards. Huawei does have its own Nano Memory Card format that it can use in its smartphones, though.

Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi Alliance has confirmed to Nikkei that it's "temporarily restricted" Huawei's participation in its activities. "Huawei values its relationships with all partners and associations around the world and understands the difficult situation they are in," Huawei said in response to this news. "We are hopeful this situation will be resolved and are working to find the best solution." Google and ARM also recently stopped working with Huawei. Earlier this week, ARM told staff it must suspend business with the company. Google also suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products, except those covered by open source licenses.

MojoKid shares a report from HotHardware: Earlier this year, Intel revealed its Project Athena initiative and earlier this month gave us a broad overview on what to expect with future computing designs. Like Centrino (which brought laptops into the Wi-Fi age) and Ultrabooks (which touted the idea of thin and light premium laptops), Project Athena encompasses a collection of technologies and design goals that Intel hopes OEMs will employ when developing new products. At its heart, Intel is looking to help foster the introduction of premium laptops that adhere to specific key tenets, in an effort to enhance the PC user experience.

"One of the things we've learned over the years is that a great PC experience means different things to different people, from gamers to content creators to office workers," said Gregory Bryant, Intel SVP of And GM of Intel's Client Computing Group. "This is where you see us focusing. We want to give our partners everything they need to create incredible and differentiated PCs, purpose-built to what real people want." Powering these systems will be Intel's new 10nm Sunny Cove processor platform. Additional details regarding the use of 5G and harnessing AI to optimize software on the fly for common use cases were also disclosed. Intel noted the first round of Project Athena devices will launch in the latter half of 2019 and we should expect to see production ramp in 2020.

PolygamousRanchKid shares an excerpt from a report via The Economist: Most online fraud involves identity theft, which is why businesses that operate on the web have a keen interest in distinguishing impersonators from genuine customers. Passwords help. But many can be guessed or are jotted down imprudently. Newer phones, tablets, and laptop and desktop computers often have beefed-up security with fingerprint and facial recognition. But these can be spoofed. To overcome these shortcomings the next level of security is likely to identify people using things which are harder to copy, such as the way they walk. Many online security services already use a system called device fingerprinting. This employs software to note things like the model type of a gadget employed by a particular user; its hardware configuration; its operating system; the apps which have been downloaded onto it; and other features, including sometimes the Wi-Fi networks it regularly connects through and devices like headsets it plugs into.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an American analytics firm, has catalogued more than 4 billion phones, tablets and other computers in this way for banks and other clients. Roughly 7% of them have been used for shenanigans of some sort. But device fingerprinting is becoming less useful. Apple, Google and other makers of equipment and operating systems have been steadily restricting the range of attributes that can be observed remotely. That is why a new approach, behavioral biometrics, is gaining ground. It relies on the wealth of measurements made by today's devices. These include data from accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors, that reveal how people hold their phones when using them, how they carry them and even the way they walk. Touchscreens, keyboards and mice can be monitored to show the distinctive ways in which someone's fingers and hands move. Sensors can detect whether a phone has been set down on a hard surface such as a table or dropped lightly on a soft one such as a bed. If the hour is appropriate, this action could be used to assume when a user has retired for the night. These traits can then be used to determine whether someone attempting to make a transaction is likely to be the device's habitual user. If used wisely, the report says behavioral biometrics could be used to authenticate account-holders without badgering them for additional passwords or security questions; it could even be used for unlocking the doors of a vehicle once the gait of the driver, as measured by his phone, is recognized, for example.

"Used unwisely, however, the system could become yet another electronic spy, permitting complete strangers to monitor your actions, from the moment you reach for your phone in the morning, to when you fling it on the floor at night," the report adds.

Razer, the gaming hardware manufacturing company that purchased Ouya's software assets in mid-2015, announced today that the crowdfunded Android console will cease functioning on June 25th. "That date will mark the unremarkable end of what began as a runaway Kickstarter success story: the inexpensive Ouya mini-console was powered by Android and introduced games such as TowerFall," reports The Verge. "But despite being positioned as the indie console, Ouya never quite took off after its $8.5 million crowdfunding campaign. The goal was to move Android's indie gaming scene to TV screens -- with exclusive Ouya-only titles mixed in -- but the execution didn't pan out." From the report: The hardware has been discontinued ever since Razer acquired Ouya's software assets in 2015. So it's somewhat surprising that the platform has continued to plod along for nearly four additional years. But that all ends next month. Accounts will be deactivated on June 25th. After that, Razer says "access to the Discover section will no longer be available. Games downloaded that appear in Play may still function if they do not require a purchase validation upon launch." But by and large, games on the Ouya platform will stop working after the cutoff date.

Razer notes that some developers might choose to help their Ouya customers by activating the same game on some other platform (i.e., Google Play) where available following the shutdown. Razer's own Forge TV device will continue functioning as an Android TV set-top box, but the Forge TV games store is also going offline come the 25th. Part of Razer's thinking behind the Ouya acquisition was to propel its long-term Android TV gaming ambitions. The company has clearly shifted its priorities over the last few years, as indicated by the decision to finally shut down Ouya once and for all.

This week the world's first and only digital circuit breaker was certified for commercial use. The technology, invented by Atom Power, has been listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the global standard for consumer safety. This new breaker makes power easier to manage and 3000 times faster than the fastest mechanical breaker, marking the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas Edison. From a report: Picture the fuse box in your basement, each switch assigned to different electrical components of your home. These switches are designed to break a circuit during an electrical overload to protect your lights and appliances. When this happens, you plod down to your mechanical room and flick the switches on again. Now multiply that simple system in your home to city high rises and industrial buildings, which might have 250 circuit breakers on any given floor, each one ranging from 15 to 4000 amps at higher voltages. At this scale, the limitations and dangers of a manually controlled power system become much more evident -- and costly.

Ryan Kennedy, CEO of Atom Power, has been working to build a better electrical system since he began his career 25 years ago, first as an electrician and then as an engineer and project manager on large, high profile commercial electrical projects. His experienced based inquiry has revolved around a central assertion that analog infrastructure doesn't allow us to control our power the way we should be able to. That idea has led to some pretty critical questions: "What would it take to make power systems controllable?" and "Why shouldn't that control be built in to the circuit breaker itself?"

Apple is refreshing its top laptops again by announcing newly updated specs for its 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pro models. It's bringing faster Intel processors and some slight changes to the much-maligned keyboard that Apple says should reduce issues. From a report: The biggest changes are coming to the 15-inch model, which is getting Intel's 9th Gen Core processors. The base model now starts with a 2.6GHz, 6-core i7 processor, which can turbo boost up to 4.5GHz. The next-step-up model is getting a 2.3GHz, 8-core i9 processor -- the first ever on a MacBook -- which can turbo boost up to 4.8GHz.

And for those of you who want the most power possible, Apple will also offer a custom top configuration of an even more powerful 8-core i9 chip with a 2.4GHz base speed, which can boost all the way up to 5.0GHz for what Apple calls "the fastest Mac notebook ever." The 13-inch Touch Bar models are getting similar (albeit less exciting) processor refreshes: the base model now comes with a 2.4GHz 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor that can boost to 4.1GHz.

Phoronix has conducted a series of tests to show just how much the Spectre and Meltdown patches have impacted the raw performance of Intel and AMD CPUs. While the patches have resulted in performance decreases across the board, ranging from virtually nothing to significant depending on the application, it appears that Intel received the short end of the stick as its CPUs have been hit five times harder than AMD, according to ExtremeTech. From the report: The collective impact of enabling all patches is not a positive for Intel. While the impacts vary tremendously from virtually nothing to significant on an application-by-application level, the collective whack is about 15-16 percent on all Intel CPUs without Hyper-Threading disabled. Disabling increases the overall performance impact to 20 percent (for the 7980XE), 24.8 percent (8700K) and 20.5 percent (6800K).

The AMD CPUs are not tested with HT disabled, because disabling SMT isn't a required fix for the situation on AMD chips, but the cumulative impact of the decline is much smaller. AMD loses ~3 percent with all fixes enabled. The impact of these changes is enough to change the relative performance weighting between the tested solutions. With no fixes applied, across its entire test suite, the CPU performance ranking is (from fastest to slowest): 7980XE (288), 8700K (271), 2990WX (245), 2700X (219), 6800K. (200). With the full suite of mitigations enabled, the CPU performance ranking is (from fastest to slowest): 2990WX (238), 7980XE (231), 2700X (213), 8700K (204), 6800K (159). In closing, ExtremeTech writes: "AMD, in other words, now leads the aggregate performance metrics, moving from 3rd and 4th to 1st and 3rd. This isn't the same as winning every test, and since the degree to which each test responds to these changes varies, you can't claim that the 2990WX is now across-the-board faster than the 7980XE in the Phoronix benchmark suite. It isn't. But the cumulative impact of these patches could result in more tests where Intel and AMD switch rankings as a result of performance impacts that only hit one vendor."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new network of 3D-printed gun advocates is growing in America -- and this time things are different. Unlike previous attempts to popularize 3D-printed guns, this operation is entirely decentralized. There's no headquarters, no trademarks, and no real leader. The people behind it reckon that this means they can't be stopped by governments. Known only by his online moniker, Ivan the Troll is the de facto spokesman of an underground wave of 3D-printing gunsmiths. Ivan says he knows of at least 100 people who are actively developing 3D-printed gun technology, and he claims there are thousands taking part in the network. This loose-knit community spans across the whole world.

They communicate across several digital platforms, including Signal, Twitter, IRC, and Discord. They critique each other's work, exchange 3D gun CAD files, offer advice, talk theory, and collaborate on future blueprints. These 3D-printed gun enthusiasts -- who share similar ideas and political viewpoints on gun control -- mostly found each other online via gun control subreddits and forums. Ivan is just one small part of this network. He says he is from Illinois, and is of "college age," but otherwise he remains mostly anonymous, to lie low. At the same time though, he's launched bombastic PR videos demonstrating the new 3D-printed gun parts he's created in his garage, including a Glock 17 handgun frame. Ivan's group says the legal challenges around Defence Distributed and the company's founder Cody Wilson are irrelevant. According to the report, the group is uploading their files individually on services such as Spee.ch, a media-hosting site underpinned by the LBRY blockchain, "and they aren't waiting for anyone to give them permission." It adds: "They've made their own 3D-printed gun designs, modified old ones, and are keeping all the Defence Distributed ones available for free too."