An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: "(The rocks) in the box right now are about 1,600 degrees Celsius," Andrew Ponec said, standing next to a thermal battery the size of a small building. That is nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, "Hotter than the melting point of steel," he explained.

But what makes his box of white-hot rocks so significant is they were not heated by burning tons of coal or gas, but by catching sunlight with the thousands of photovoltaic solar panels that surround his prototype west of Fresno. If successful, Ponec and his start-up Antora Energy could be part of a new, multi-trillion-dollar energy storage sector that simply uses sun or wind to make boxes of rocks hot enough to run the world's biggest factories. "People sometimes feel like they're insulting us by saying, 'Hey, that sounds really simple," Ponec laughed. "And we say, 'No, that's exactly the point'... The problem is you can't shut down your factory when the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind stops blowing, and that's exactly the problem that we focused on."

While the word "battery" most likely evokes the chemical kind found in cars and electronics in 2023, hot rocks currently store ten times as much energy as lithium ion around the world, thanks to an invention from the 1800s known as Cowper stoves. Often found in smelting plants, these massive towers of stacked bricks absorb the wasted heat of a blast furnace until it heats to nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then provides over 100 megawatts of heat energy for about 20 minutes. The process can be repeated 24 times a day for 30 years, and Antora is among the startups experimenting with different kinds of rocks in insulated boxes or molten salt in cylinders to find the most efficient combination...

Antora has managed to raise $80 million in seed money from investors that include Bill Gates, but their main competitor is another Bay Area startup called Rondo that uses abundant refractory brick, which is cheaper than carbon by weight but not as energy dense. Rondo has attracted even more funding than Antora and its first battery is producing commercial power for an ethanol plant in California... Tesla recently predicted a carbon-free world will need an astonishing 240 terawatt-hours of energy storage — more than 340 times the amount of storage built with lithium-ion batteries in 2022. Rondo CEO John O'Donnell predicts more than half of all that new capacity will come in the form of heat batteries, simply because the raw ingredients are so readily available.

By plugging their factories into as many thermal batteries as they need, manufacturers won't have to wait in a years-long line for grid connections and upgrades.
Ponec tells CNN that when it comes to de-carbonizing today, "we have the tools we need. We just need to deploy them.

"The transition is inevitable. It's going to happen. And if you talk behind closed doors to most of the people in the fossil fuel industry, they'll say the same thing."

"Unlike automobiles, jumbo jets cannot run on batteries," notes the Washington Post.

So Friday the White unveiled a plan for "subsidizing sustainable aviation fuels" — which could also give the U.S. a leg up in a brand new industry: Senior White House officials said the program would make the airline industry cleaner while bringing prosperity to rural America. But environmental groups and some scientists expressed reservations about the plan, which would award subsidies based on a scientific model that has previously been used to justify incentives for corn-based ethanol. Studies have found the gasoline additive is exacerbating climate change.

The new tax credits, created through President Biden's signature climate law, are meant to spur production of jet fuels that create no more than half the emissions of the petroleum-based product. Each gallon of such fuel qualifies for a tax credit up to $1.75 per gallon. "The concern is they will end up subsidizing fuels that take an enormous amount of land to produce," said Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University... Administration officials said on a call with reporters Thursday that they are carefully weighing such concerns. Agencies are in the process of updating the scientific model for gauging climate friendliness of jet fuels, they said, and it will be revised to factor in the emissions impact of cropland converted from food to fuel production. Federal agencies plan to complete their revisions by March 1.

"The sustainable aviation fuel industry is a potential 36 billion gallon industry that for all intents and purposes is just getting started," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on the call. "This is a big, big deal."

Alex Williams reports via The New York Times: Vera Molnar, a Hungarian-born artist who has been called the godmother of generative art for her pioneering digital work, which started with the hulking computers of the 1960s and evolved through the current age of NFTs, died on Dec. 7 in Paris. She was 99. Her death was announced on social media by the Pompidou Center in Paris, which is scheduled to present a major exhibition of her work in February. Ms. Molnar had lived in Paris since 1947. While her computer-aided paintings and drawings, which drew inspiration from geometric works by Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, were eventually exhibited in major museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, her work was not always embraced early in her career.

Ms. Molnar in fact began to employ the principles of computation in her work years before she gained access to an actual computer. In 1959, she began implementing a concept she called "Machine Imaginaire" -- imaginary machine. This analog approach involved using simple algorithms to guide the placement of lines and shapes for works that she produced by hand, on grid paper. She took her first step into the silicon age in 1968, when she got access to a computer at a university research laboratory in Paris. In the days when computers were generally reserved for scientific or military applications, it took a combination of gumption and '60s idealism for an artist to attempt to gain access to a machine that was "very complicated and expensive," she once said, adding, "They were selling calculation time in seconds." [...]

Making art on Apollo-era computers was anything but intuitive. Ms. Molnar had to learn early computer languages like Basic and Fortran and enter her data with punch cards, and she had to wait several days for the results, which were transferred to paper with a plotter printer. One early series, "Interruptions," involved a vast sea of tiny lines on a white background. As ARTNews noted in a recent obituary: "She would set up a series of straight lines, then rotate some, causing her rigorous set of marks to be thrown out of alignment. Then, to inject further chaos, she would randomly erase certain portions, resulting in blank areas amid a sea of lines." Another series, "(Des)Ordres" (1974), involved seemingly orderly patterns of concentric squares, which she tweaked to make them appear slightly disordered, as if they were vibrating.

Over the years, Ms. Molnar continued to explore the tensions between machine-like perfection and the chaos of life itself, as with her 1976 plotter drawing "1% of Disorder," another deconstructed pattern of concentric squares. "I love order, but I can't stand it," she told Mr. Obrist. "I make mistakes, I stutter, I mix up my words." And so, she concluded, "chaos, perhaps, came from this." [...] Her career continued to expand in scope in the 1970s. She began using computers with screens, which allowed her to instantly assess the results of her codes and adjust accordingly. With screens, it was "like a conversation, like a real pictorial process," she said in a recent interview with the generative art creator and entrepreneur Erick Calderon. "You move the 'brush' and you see immediately if it suits you or not." [...] Earlier this year, she cemented her legacy in the world of blockchain with "Themes and Variations," a generative art series of more than 500 works using NFT technology that was created in collaboration with the artist and designer Martin Grasser and sold through Sotheby's. The series fetched $1.2 million in sales.

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: Google is releasing a tool to help users diagnose problems with their Pixel phones. Users can launch the app by entering #*#7287#*# on the dial pad, allowing them to check whether their phone is working correctly before or after a repair. There are a bunch of diagnostic tools available within the app. While users can run a full diagnostic test to detect issues across the entire device, there are also options to run individual tests for physical defects and problems affecting the phone's display, sensors, and connectivity. The new tool is available on all Pixel phones in English.

Aside from the diagnostics app, Google is introducing redesigned repair manuals the company says are "easier for technicians and DIYers to use." Users can download repair manuals from Google's website in English and French, but they're only available for the Pixel Fold, Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 Pro for now. Google says it will add repair manuals for previous and future devices "in the coming months." There's also a new Repair Mode Google introduced earlier this month, which Pixel Phone owners can toggle on when their device is getting repaired. The feature is meant to protect users' private information while their phone is in the hands of a technician [...].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's parent company, Alphabet, is launching a new company called "Renew Home." The new company will pull in some other projects from Nest and the rest of Alphabet to become a supposed one-stop shop for power savings and clean energy usage. The core concept is partnering with power companies to obtain data about the current condition of the power grid and using that data to change consumer habits. The new company is bankrolled by Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), an Alphabet venture capital firm.

The first existing service getting pulled into Renew Home is Nest Renew. This service for Nest Thermostats uses power company data to tell consumers how their electricity is being generated and what it costs. That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner, and shows various reports about the cleanness of the energy you've been using. (Nest's feature that lets utility companies remotely take control of your thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, does not seem to be part of Renew Home.)

Another Alphabet service being pulled into Renew Home is OhmConnect, which is the same basic idea as Nest's grid data-power thermostat adjustments but for more than just your thermostat. OhmConnect is compatible with a very small list of smart devices, like Nest-rival Ecobee and Honeywell thermostats, TL-Link's "Kasa" smart home system, and Tesla vehicles. The backbone of the service appears to be the in-house "OhmPlug" smart outlet, which can monitor the energy usage of anything that plugs into the wall. By seeing that you've turned these smart devices during peak usage times, OhmConnect offers people rewards like gift cards or cash for not using power when the grid is at capacity.

Intel unveiled new computer chips on Thursday, including Gaudi3, an AI chip for generative AI software. Gaudi3 will launch next year and will compete with rival chips from Nvidia and AMD that power big and power-hungry AI models. From a report: The most prominent AI models, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, run on Nvidia GPUs in the cloud. It's one reason Nvidia stock has been up nearly 230% year-to-date while Intel shares are up 68%. And it's why companies like AMD and, now Intel, have announced chips that they hope will attract AI companies away from Nvidia's dominant position in the market.

While the company was light on details, Gaudi3 will compete with Nvidia's H100, the main choice among companies that build huge farms of the chips to power AI applications, and AMD's forthcoming MI300X, when it starts shipping to customers in 2024. Intel has been building Gaudi chips since 2019, when it bought a chip developer called Habana Labs.

Intel launched its Intel Core Ultra processors for AI-powered PCs at its AI Everywhere event today. From a report: The big chip maker said these processors spearhead a new era in computing, offering unparalleled power efficiency, superior compute and graphics performance, and an unprecedented AI PC experience to mobile platforms and edge devices. Available immediately, these processors will be used in over 230 AI PCs coming from renowned partners like Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, and more.

The Intel Core Ultra processors represent an architectural shift for Intel, marking its largest design change in 40 years. These processors harness the Intel 4 process technology and Foveros 3D advanced packaging, leveraging leading-edge processes for optimal performance and capabilities. The processors boast a performance-core (P-core) architecture enhancing instructions per cycle (IPC). Efficient-cores (E-cores) and low-power Efficient-cores (LP E-cores). They deliver up to 11% more compute power compared to competitors, ensuring superior CPU performance for ultrathin PCs.

Features of Intel Core Ultra
Intel Arc GPU: Featuring up to eight Xe-cores, this GPU incorporates AI-based Xe Super Sampling, offering double the graphics performance compared to prior generations. It includes support for modern graphics features like ray tracing, mesh shading, AV1 encode and decode, HDMI 2.1, and DisplayPort 2.1 20G.
AI Boost NPU: Intel's latest NPU, Intel AI Boost, focuses on low-power, long-running AI tasks, augmenting AI processing on the CPU and GPU, offering 2.5x better power efficiency compared to its predecessors.
Advanced Performance Capabilities: With up to 16 cores, 22 threads, and Intel Thread Director for optimized workload scheduling, these processors boast a maximum turbo frequency of 5.1 GHz and support for up to 96 GB DDR5 memory capacity.
Cutting-edge Connectivity: Integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6E and support for discrete Intel Wi-Fi 7 deliver blazing wireless speeds, while Thunderbolt 4 ensures connectivity to multiple 4K monitors and fast storage with speeds of 40 Gbps.
Enhanced AI Performance: OpenVINO toolkits, ONNX, and ONNX Runtime offer streamlined workflow, automatic device detection, and enhanced AI performance.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from REVE News: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects, for the first year on record, combined electricity generation from wind and solar to surpass generation from coal in 2024. EIA expects solar generation in 2024 to increase 39% (228 kilowatthours) from 2023, driven by continued increases in solar capacity. "Renewables, particularly solar photovoltaics, are growing rapidly and making large contributions to electricity generation," DeCarolis said.

EIA expects natural gas prices to be $2.77 per million British thermal units this winter, about 23% lower than previously forecast. The winter season is off to a warmer-than-expected start, so U.S. households are consuming less natural gas for heat than expected. The lower natural gas consumption is also contributing to rising U.S. natural gas inventories, which typically results in lower prices. "We're seeing record domestic natural gas production paired with lower-than-expected natural gas demand, and we expect that is going to push prices lower this winter season," DeCarolis said. EIA will publish its next STEO on January 9, 2024, including the agency's first forecasts for the energy sector through 2025. The full report is available on the EIA website.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft wants to use nuclear energy to power its artificial intelligence operations. And in order to help cut the red tape required to make that happen, Microsoft plans to use AI. From a report: A Microsoft team has spent months building an AI trained on nuclear regulations and licensing requirements to help the tech giant fill out all the applications it needs to build its own power plants. This typically takes years and millions, but Microsoft is urgently looking for more power to bring next-generation AI to life.

That's because the larger the model and the more capable it becomes, the more power it requires. Microsoft today reflects the sensibilities of its founder, Bill Gates, in that the company believes in carbon-neutral energy sources -- and, like Gates who himself invests in nuclear power innovation, the company seems to see more potential in nuclear than other renewable sources of energy.

"If we're going to do that carbon-free, we're going to need all the tools in the tool kit," Michelle Patron, Microsoft's senior director of sustainability policy, told the Journal.

David Shepardson reports via Reuters: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she expects to make around a dozen semiconductor chips funding awards within the next year, including multi-billion dollar announcements that could drastically reshape U.S. chip production. She announced the first award on Monday -- $35 million to a BAE Systems facility in Hampshire to produce chips for fighter planes from the "Chips for America" semiconductor manufacturing and research subsidy program approved by Congress in August 2022.

"Next year we'll get into some of the bigger ones with leading-edge fabs," Raimondo told reporters. "A year from now I think we will have made 10 or 12 similar announcements, some of them multi-billion dollar announcements." In an interview with Reuters, Raimondo said that the number of awards could go higher than 12. She said she wants the percentage of semiconductors produced in the United States to rise from about 12% to closer to 20% -- though that is still down from 40% in 1990 -- and to have at least two "leading-edge" U.S. manufacturing clusters. In addition, she wants the U.S. to have cutting-edge memory and packaging production and to "meet the military's needs for current and mature" chips. Raimondo noted that the U.S. currently does not have any cutting-edge manufacturing production and wants to get that to about 10%.

Five years after founding Atari in 1972, Nolan Bushnell started work on a chain of pizza restaurants with singing animatronic robots and videogames — called Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre. While 600 of the restaurants still operate today, "the company is in the process of remodeling its more than 400 U.S. locations," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and the last 30 or so remaining animatronic bands are being shown the door in favor of interactive dance floors and large screens that feature Chuck E. and pals in animated form." That is, they're being evicted everywhere but Northridge, Los Angeles... The goal — or hope — for the company is to have at least one location that can serve both new generations as well as nostalgia hunters, especially fans of animatronic figures.

Animatronics have long been the stars of themed entertainment, at least as long as Disneyland has been putting mechanical creatures in its rides and shows. In the '80s and '90s, theme parks began switching to screen-based entertainment to mirror blockbuster movies, but today animatronics have been making a comeback. The recent makeover, for instance, of Disneyland's Adventureland Treehouse came with the addition of multiple animatronic figures, and Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World is full of mechanical kinetic energy from an assortment of characters. Additionally, this year's video game-inspired movie "Five Nights at Freddy's" is centered on a haunted pizzeria where the animatronics become sentient. The film is indicative of the cult fandom that has long existed around Chuck E. Cheese and its former competitor Showbizz Pizza Place, as evidenced by the documentary "The Rock-afire Explosion," which charts the pizza and animatronic band wars of the '80s...

Restaurant franchise's CEO David McKillips says the company is acknowledging not just changing technological tastes but the realities of maintaining animatronic groups, which are programmed in Texas but maintained locally. "These are decades old, and we have a dedicated technician at every single location who spends a fair amount of time making sure the animatronics are working properly," McKillips says, adding that "it's a fairly complex issue" to keep the bands up and running.
The animatronic band's final restaurant hopes to become a tourist destination offering "retro glory," according to the article. (The robots are still powered by floppy disks.) And there are fans who still fondly remember the singing robots, judging by an episode of the Simpsons where Homer hunts down the last animatronic robots that sang in a 1970s chain of pizza parlors — titled "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars"

Unfortunately, in the episode Homer has to compete with a reboot-minded J. J. Abrams...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Zotac's ZBox PI430AJ mini PC is the first computer to use Frore System's fanless AirJet cooler, and as tested by HKEPC, it's not a gimmick. Two AirJet coolers were able to keep Intel's N300 CPU below 70 degrees Celsius under load, allowing for an incredibly thin mini PC with impressive performance. AirJet is the only active cooling solution for PCs that doesn't use fans; even so-called liquid coolers still use fans. Instead of using fans to push and pull air, AirJet uses ultrasonic waves, which have a variety of benefits: lower power consumption, near-silent operation, and a much thinner and smaller size. AirJet coolers can also do double duty as both intake and exhaust vents, whereas a fan can only do intake or exhaust, not both.

Equipped with two of the smaller AirJet Mini models, which are rated to cool 5.25 watts of heat each, the ZBox PI430AJ is just 23.7mm thick, or 0.93 inches. The mini PC's processor is Intel's low-end N300 Atom CPU with a TDP of 7 watts, and after HKEPC put the ZBox through a half-hour-long stress test, the N300 only peaked at 67 C. That's all thanks to AirJet being so thin and being able to both intake and exhaust air. For comparison, Beelink's Mini S12 Pro mini PC with the lower-power N100, which has a TDP of 6 watts, is 1.54 inches thick (66% thicker than the ZBox PI430AJ). Traditional fan-equipped coolers just can't match AirJet coolers in size, which is perhaps AirJet's biggest advantage. Last month, engineers from Frore Systems integrated the AirJet into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. "With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor," reports Tom's Hardware.

New York has partnered with chip firms to build $10 billion semiconductor research site at University at Albany, featuring cutting-edge ASML equipment to develop most advanced chips. From a report: Once the machinery is installed, the project and its partners will begin work on next-generation chip manufacturing there, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office. The partners include tech giant IBM, memory manufacturer Micron and chip manufacturing equipment makers Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron.

The expansion could help New York's bid to be designated a research hub under last year's $53 billion Chips Act. That legislation included $11 billion for a National Semiconductor Technology Center to foster domestic chip research and development. Expanding domestic chip manufacturing and research has become a federal and state-level priority in recent years as concern grows in the U.S. over China's expanding grasp over the industry. Chips are increasingly seen as a crux of geopolitical power, underlying advanced weapons for militaries and sophisticated artificial-intelligence systems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Jack Dorsey's Block (the company formerly known as Square) announced today that it is releasing its hardware Bitcoin wallet, Bitkey, in 95 countries. However, users can only preorder the device at the moment, with shipping starting in early 2024. The device will cost $150 USD. Block's pitch to Bitcoin holders is that using a self-custodial crypto wallet is more secure than keeping their crypto assets in custodial wallets or exchanges.

Self-custodial wallets put the onus on users to remember -- or store securely -- passwords or long seed phrases to unlock their accounts. The Proto team at Block, which worked on developing the Bitkey wallet, said that it solved this problem by using a two-of-three authentication mechanism. Two keys lie with the customer: the hardware wallet and a mobile app. Bitkey stores the third key on its server. The company argues that by having access to just one key, it can't access or move customers' Bitcoins.

Block said that it uses its server-side key only to authenticate transactions to move Bitcoin when they just have their phone and to recover their account when their device or phone is lost. The company said the server-side key will also be able to handle the scenario when a customer loses both the phone and the hardware wallet. Recovery was recently detailed in a blog post by the company. [...] Block has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase and the company's own Cash App to help people easily buy or transfer (or both) Bitcoins to the hardware wallet. The company said that the ability to transfer Bitcoin from Coinbase and Cash App will be rolled out immediately with other features coming later.

hackingbear writes: China has started commercial operations at a new generation nuclear reactor that is the first of its kind in the world, state media said on Dec 5. Compared with previous reactors, the fourth generation Shidaowan plant, a modular 200 megawatt (MW) high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGCR) plant developed jointly by state-run utility Huaneng, Tsinghua University and China National Nuclear Corporation, is designed to use fuel more efficiently and improve its economics, safety and environmental footprint as China turns to nuclear power to try to meet carbon emissions goals.

In a related development, Shanghai-based Jiangnan Shipyard has unveiled a design for an innovative new giant container ship -- with a load capacity starting at 24,000 standard containers -- powered by a thorium molten-salt nuclear reactor, an alternative 4th gen design. "The new ship model uses nuclear energy as a clean energy source and adopts an internationally advanced fourth-generation molten salt reactor solution. The proposed design of super-large nuclear container ships will truly achieve 'zero emissions' during the operation cycle of this type of ship," the journal Marine Time China said in its official WeChat account.

Shipbuilders from Japan, the United States, South Korea, and Europe have come up with similar designs but none of these countries has a modern and reliable operating reactor to make the design a reality. But China has carried on and, earlier this year, got the first thorium-based molten salt reactor, which needs little amount of water to cool down, making it safer and more efficient, up and running in the Gobi desert. Further reading: China is Building Nuclear Reactors Faster Than Any Other Country

Laura Dobberstein reports via The Register: Lenovo won't stop making Chromebooks despite the machines scoring poorly when it comes to both sustainability and revenue, according to an exec speaking at Canalys APAC Forum in Bangkok on Wednesday. "I don't know who makes the profit," commented Che Min Tu, Lenovo senior vice president and group operations officer. "Everybody struggled to sell the Chromebook." Tu further remarked that the laptop is not great from an environmental standpoint either -- recycling its material won't be easy, or cheap. "But I think we'll continue to sell the Chromebook because there's a demand," explained Tu, who added that the major driver of that demand is coming from the education sector. [...]

While the number of Chromebooks being sold has dropped since the pandemic, the education market has kept it afloat. In the US, education accounted for 80 percent of Chromebook sales in Q2 this year. IDC estimated that Q2 Chromebook channel sales shrank 1.8 percent to 5.8 million units in that quarter as many customers had refreshed in the previous quarter to avoid a licensing increase in the second half of 2023.

Google Drive recently lost user files, with some reporting missing documents since May 2023. Google said this month that it has posted a fix, but its description of a "syncing issue" doesn't seem to capture the problem based on user reports of web files disappearing, ArsTechnica notes.

The company hasn't fully explained the cause or its recovery solution, which involves desktop app options and command line file recovery, the report asserts. This opaque handling, along with Google shutting down the Drive user forum that allowed people to share fixes, adds to perception that the company prioritizes PR over assisting users, the report adds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Stellantis struck a deal with California-based EV battery swapping company Ample to power a fleet of shared Fiat 500e vehicles in Spain. But the company says the deal could eventually expand to include personally owned EVs in Europe and the US as well. By becoming one of the first Western automakers to embrace battery swapping technology, Stellantis is betting that EV charging infrastructure in Europe and the US will remain a barrier to adoption in the near future, necessitating other solutions. Battery swapping could theoretically help EV owners power up and get moving without having to wait for long stretches at a charging station.

Stellantis will work with Ample to launch a battery swapping system for a fleet of Fiat 500e vehicles as part of a car-sharing service through its Free2move subsidiary. The service will first appear in Madrid in 2024, where the Fiat 500e is already available. (The tiny EV won't come to North America until next year.) Ample has four stations already in operation in the city and plans to build an additional nine stations in the months to come. Stellantis will need to install modular batteries in the Fiat 500e in order to be compatible with Ample's swapping system. The process works by driving the vehicle into a station, where it gets raised slightly. Ample's robot arms remove the spent battery from underneath the vehicle, replace it with a fully charged one, and then lower the vehicle. The company says the whole process can take as little as five minutes. "Our system knows how many batteries are in the Fiat 500e, knows how to extract each one of those modules, and put them back in the same arrangement," Khaled Hassounah, CEO of Ample, said in a briefing with reporters.

Starting with a small fleet of shared vehicles in one city will help Stellantis see how well Ample's system works and whether it can be scaled to new markets and to include privately owned vehicles. If the company does decide to expand its partnership with Ample, the Fiat 500e will likely be the first vehicle to support the technology, said Ricardo Stamatti, senior VP for charging and energy at Stellantis. Customers who buy cars that are compatible with Ample's swapping system would then just subscribe to a battery, opening up a possible new line of revenue for Stellantis. "We believe that this is actually an infrastructure play that can and will scale," Stamatti added.

Launched in the Nordics, BeneLux, Ireland, and the UK, the ads insist that HP printers are "made to be less hated." From a report: Which may come as news to HP's long-suffering users who still, for whatever reason, need to brand mushed-up trees with corporate nonsense despite this alleged digital age. The three ads run touch upon a spectrum of negative emotions that will be highly relatable to those who have ever tried to print something at home or work -- sorrow, anger, despair -- and all end with extreme and cathartic human-on-printer violence.

CNN reports on a new German-based project called WindCORES that operates data centers inside existing wind turbines, making them almost completely carbon neutral. "If you look at the sustainability pyramid, the highest form of sustainability is using things that already exist," said Fiete Dubberke, managing director of windCORES, which was founded in 2018. From the report: The concept uses existing wind turbines to power data centers on site, while fiber optic cables provide a constant internet connection. Planning for a project like this began 10 years ago, Dubberke said, when WestfalenWIND realized the electricity grid was too weak to handle the huge capacities of electricity being produced by its wind turbines during peak wind hours, resulting in their windfarms being switched off due to grid security issues. WindCORES estimates that the unused electricity generated during this period could power one-third of all German data centers.

Its solution was to bypass the "middleman" (the grid) altogether, and instead, power IT servers from directly inside the large concrete wind turbine towers. Each tower is 13 meters wide and could potentially hold server racks up to 150 meters high. As the area is mostly empty space, Dubberke calls the concept a "no-brainer." According to Dubberke, an average of 85-92% of the power needed to sustain a windCORES data center comes directly from the host turbine. When there is no wind, electricity is obtained from other renewable sources, including solar farms and hydroelectric power plants, via the electricity grid. "The German data center average is 430 grams of CO2 released per kilowatt hour," he said. "For windCORES, it is calculated at just 10 grams per kilowatt hour."

Since launching, windCORES has acquired around 150 clients through co-location and cloud solutions, from very small start-up companies to bigger, more established ones, such as Zattoo, a leading carbon-neutral Swiss TV streaming platform with several million monthly users. Zattoo joined windCORES in 2020, when it moved one of its six data centers into a wind turbine in Paderborn. Currently, 218 channels are encoded with windCORES, and by the end of next year, the company hopes to relocate more existing servers to the wind farm, making it Zattoo's main data center location. [...] WindCORES has recently opened a larger, second location called "windCORES II" at the Huser Klee windfarm in Lichtenau, Germany. Built for a new large automotive client from Munich (the name is yet to be revealed), it is over three levels and around 20 meters high.