"Australian design student Alexander Burton has developed a prototype kit for cheaply converting petrol or diesel cars to hybrid electric," reports Dezeen magazine, "winning the country's national James Dyson Award in the process." Titled REVR (Rapid Electric Vehicle Retrofits), the kit is meant to provide a cheaper, easier alternative to current electric car conversion services, which Burton estimates cost AU$50,000 (£26,400) on average and so are often reserved for valuable, classic vehicles.

Usually, the process would involve removing the internal combustion engine and all its associated hardware, like the gearbox and hydraulic brakes, to replace them with batteries and electric motors. With REVR, those components are left untouched. Instead, a flat, compact, power-dense axial flux motor would be mounted between the car's rear wheels and disc brakes, and a battery and controller system placed in the spare wheel well or boot. Some additional off-the-shelf systems — brake and steering boosters, as well as e-heating and air conditioning — would also be added under the hood. By taking this approach, Burton believes he'll be able to offer the product for around AU$5,000 (£2,640) and make it compatible with virtually any car...

With REVR, people should be able to get several more years of life out of their existing cars. The kit would transform the vehicle into a hybrid rather than a fully electric vehicle, with a small battery giving the car 100 kilometres of electric range before the driver has to switch to the internal combustion engine... Borrowing a trick from existing hybrid vehicles, the kit uses a sensor to detect the position of the accelerator pedal to control both acceleration and braking. That means no changes have to be made to the car's hydraulic braking system, which Burton says "you don't want to have to interrupt".
Thanks to Slashdot reader FrankOVD for sharing the news.

"To meet the world's growing hunger for chips, a startup wants to upend the costly semiconductor fabrication plant with a nimbler, cheaper idea..." reports Fast Company, "an AI-enabled chip factory that can be assembled and expanded modularly with prefab pieces, like high-tech Lego bricks."

In other words, they want to enable what is literally a fast company... "We're democratizing the ownership of semiconductor fabs," says Matthew Putman, referring to chip fabrication plants. Putman is the founder and CEO of Nanotronics, a New York City-based industrial AI company that deploys advanced optical solutions for detecting defects in manufacturing procedures. Its new system, called Cubefabs, combines its modular inspection tools and other equipment with AI, allowing the proposed chip factories to monitor themselves and adapt accordingly — part of what Putman calls an "autonomous factory." The bulk of the facility can be preassembled, flat-packed and put in shipping containers so that the facilities can be built "in 80% of the world," says Putman.

Eventually, the company envisions hundreds of the flower-shaped fabs around the world, starting with a prototype in New York or Kuwait that it hopes to start building by the end of the year... Nanotronics says a single Cubefab installation could start at one acre with a single fab, and grow to a four-fab, six-acre footprint. Each fab could be built in under a year, the company says, with a four-fab installation estimated to cost under $100 million. Nanotronics declined to disclose how much it has raised for the project, but Putman says the company has previously raised $170 million from investors, including Peter Thiel and Jann Tallin, the Skype cofounder...

A single automated Cubefab will need only about 30 people to operate, "and they don't have to be semiconductor experts," says Putman. "AI takes away that need for that specialization that you would normally need in a fab." [...] Putman also hopes automation will help further reduce the environmental impact of an industry that's notoriously resource-intensive and produces thousands of tons of waste a year, much of it hazardous. "Because you have the AI fixing the material and the device before it's manufactured, you have less waste of the final material," he says.
Thanks to Slashdot reader tedlistens for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia on Friday to announce the recipients of $7 billion in federal grants across 16 states for the development of seven regional hydrogen hubs, advancing a key part of a plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy. The announcement of the funding to boost manufacturing and blue-collar jobs was held in Pennsylvania -- a state that could decide the 2024 presidential election -- underscoring the power Biden wields as he spends the upcoming months doling out money flowing from his landmark pieces of legislation that remain largely unknown to large swaths of the American public.

The seven proposed hubs involving companies ranging from Exxon Mobil to Amazon were selected, with their projects spanning 16 states from Pennsylvania to California. The program is intended to jump-start the production of "clean hydrogen" along with the infrastructure needed to get it to industrial users like steelmakers and cement plants. "I'm here to announce one of the largest advanced manufacturing investments in the history of this nation," Biden said," He noted that the total investment will reach $50 billion when taking into account additional investments from private companies.

The hub selections will now kick off a long process that includes multiple phases, from design and development to permitting, financing and construction. "It's not guaranteed that someone selected is even going to make it through negotiations and get awarded the money," said Jason Munster, who was involved in analyzing the projects for the Department of Energy and is now a hydrogen consultant at CleanEpic. The hubs selected will serve the Middle Atlantic, Appalachian, Midwest, Minnesota and Plains states, the Gulf Coast, Pacific Northwest and California. The two largest projects include $1.2 billion each for Texas and California -- the former an oil giant and the other a green energy leader.

Keumars Afifi-sabet reports via TechRadar: Lenovo has the green light to see a portfolio of new enterprise-focused devices powered by Esper Foundation -- a custom Android operating system -- and bundled with a complementary mobile device management (MDM) platform. The firm's first device running Esper Foundation is the Lenovo ThinkCentre M70a, an all-in-one desktop PC fitted with an up to 12th-Gen Intel Core i9 CPU, alongside 16GB DDR4 RAM and up to 512GB SSD. It'll be followed by the Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q, M90n-1 IoT, and the ThinkEdge SE30 v2 machines by the end of 2023. Esper Foundation is based on Android 11 and has customizable branding, peripheral compatibility, quarterly security patches, and three years of support. The MDM system, meanwhile, remotely deploys, manages, and updates devices from a single view.

By integrating a custom version of Android in its PCs, Lenovo is banking on the Esper Foundation OS appealing to businesses as an alternative to Windows, as well as Google's own ChromeOS. With platforms like Esper's, there may well be a means to find a rival to compete with Windows in the enterprise, particularly in highly niche industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries -- at which Esper Foundation is directed. "This collaboration is another step forward in Lenovo's drive to meet changing customer demand across retail, hospitality, healthcare, and other industries," said Johanny Payero, Lenovo's director of global advanced solutions marketing and strategy. "Dedicated devices are proliferating across several key industries, and our new joint solution with Esper allows us to deliver the best of Android with the consistency and predictability of Lenovo's x86 devices."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It hasn't been a great time in recent quarters for PC companies, but with IDC, Gartner and Canalys all reporting data for Q3 2023, it shows an improving landscape. While shipments still declined between 7% and 9%, depending on whose data you look at, the decline was slowing. But perhaps the biggest surprise in these numbers was the fact Apple was the biggest loser this quarter, with numbers declining between 23% and 29%.

First, let's look at the overall numbers. IDC found the market dropped 7.6% year over year with 68.2 million PCs shipped, Gartner reported a 9% decline with 64.3 million units shipped and Canalys found the market down 7% with 65.6 million units shipped. In spite of that, the consensus was that the long PC market decline may be over, and we could be headed for better days with the holiday shopping season approaching in the final quarter. "There is evidence that the PC market's decline has finally bottomed out," Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

When you look at individual manufacturers, Apple experienced by far the biggest decline, with IDC reporting -23.1%, Gartner reporting -24.2% and Canalys -29.1%. The only other company with double-digit reductions was Asus, with -10.7%, -11.5% and -10.7%, respectively. If you're looking for the only company in positive territory, that would be HP, with IDC and Gartner reporting an increase of 6.4% and Canalys only slightly different at 6.5%.

A Croatian energy company has discovered an underwater lake of superheated water that meets all the requirements for the construction of a 16MW geothermal power plant. The Next Web reports: The find was the result of a two-year study by state-run power company Bukotermal that sought to find suitable sites for the exploitation of the energy source, generated by heat from the Earth's core. The research verified the presence of a geothermal water source at Lunjkovec -- Kutnjak field, located in the Varazdin County, close to the border with Hungary. The underground lake, located at a depth of 2.4 kilometers, has an average temperature of 142.03 degrees Celsius.

To date, over 2.5 million euros has been invested in the project. However, according to Alen Pozgaj, CEO of Bukotermal, the total cost to build the plant would be around 50 million euros. The news comes just days after the Croatian Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development awarded five licenses for the exploration of geothermal waters to firms from Croatia, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. [...] For now, Bukotermal has a six-month timeframe to propose how it will exploit the newly discovered geothermal pool. The company plans to construct one or more geothermal power plants and heat utilization facilities at the site, with construction expected to start within two years time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB 244, or the Right to Repair Act, into law, making it easier for owners to repair devices themselves or to take them to independent repair shops. Because California is one of the world's largest economies, this iFixit-cosponsored bill may make it easier for people all over the US to repair their devices. The law, which joins similar efforts in New York, Colorado, and Minnesota, is tougher than some of its predecessors.

Manufacturers must make available appropriate tools, parts, software, and documentation for seven years after production for devices priced above $100. (Less expensive devices only have to have these materials available for three years.) [...] The bill is effective on electronics made and sold after July 1st, 2021. Though the bill is fairly sweeping, there are carve-outs for game consoles and alarm systems. Further reading: Cory Doctorow: Apple Sabotages Right-to-Repair Using 'Parts-Pairing' and the DMCA

An anonymous reader shares a report: StorageReview went through the remarkable journey of testing a $3 SSD from AliExpress. The Goldenfir-brand SSD was reportedly given to the storage site by one of its Discord users for testing. The good news is that Goldenfir is actually using an SSD controller for its NAND drive. The controller is a Yeestor YS9083XT, which the Chinese company announced as a SATA3.2 controller in 2019. [...] StorageReview tested the drive by putting it into a Lenovo SR635 1U server with an AMD Epyc 7742 processor and 512GB of DDR4-3200 RAM. StorageReview also decided to, admittedly "unfairly," put it up against Kingston's DC600M entry-level enterprise SATA drive. You can guess what happens next. With a 64GB file and the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, StorageReview reported that the "Kingston drive finished the entire test before this piece of turd [the $3 drive] could even build its test." With the VDBench workload benchmark filling up the entire drive, the $3 drive hit a wall at around 15,500 IOPS when running the 4K random read test, compared to the Kingston drive's approximately 80,000. The cheap SSD ultimately finished the test at 13,000 IOPS and 10,225 ms, compared to the Kingston's 78,000 IOPS and 1,630 ms.

Federal regulators have issued a preliminary "yellow" warning to Dominion Energy after cracks were discovered again in a backup emergency fuel line at their South Carolina nuclear plant. ABC News reports: Small cracks have been found a half-dozen times in the past 20 years in pipes that carry fuel to emergency generators that provide cooling water for a reactor if electricity fails at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is the second most serious category and only seven similar warnings have been issued across the country since 2009, nuclear power expert David Lochbaum told The State newspaper after reviewing records from federal regulators.

A crack first appeared on a diesel fuel pipe in 2003, and similar pipes have had other cracks since then. During a 24-hour test of the system in November, a small diesel fuel leak grew larger, according to NRC records. The agency issued the preliminary yellow warning because of the repeated problems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Many electric utilities are putting up lots of new power lines as they rely more on renewable energy and try to make grids more resilient in bad weather. But a Vermont utility is proposing a very different approach: It wants to install batteries at most homes to make sure its customers never go without electricity. The company, Green Mountain Power, proposed buying batteries, burying power lines and strengthening overhead cables in a filing with state regulators on Monday. It said its plan would be cheaper than building a lot of new lines and power plants. The plan is a big departure from how U.S. utilities normally do business. Most of them make money by building and operating power lines that deliver electricity from natural gas power plants or wind and solar farms to homes and businesses. Green Mountain — a relatively small utility serving 270,000 homes and businesses -- would still use that infrastructure but build less of it by investing in television-size batteries that homeowners usually buy on their own. "Call us the un-utility," Mari McClure, Green Mountain's chief executive, said in an interview before the company's filing. "We're completely flipping the model, decentralizing it."

Green Mountain's plan builds on a program it has run since 2015 to lease Tesla home batteries to customers. Its filing asks the Vermont Public Utility Commission to authorize it to initially spend $280 million to strengthen its grid and buy batteries, which will come from various manufacturers. The company expects to invest an estimated $1.5 billion over the next seven years -- money that it would recoup through electricity rates. The utility said the investment was justified by the growing sum it had to spend on storm recovery and to trim and remove trees around its power lines. The utility said it would continue offering battery leases to customers who want them sooner. It will take until 2030 for the company to install batteries at most homes under its new plan if regulators approve it. Green Mountain says its goal to do away with power outages will be realized by that year, meaning customers would always have enough electricity to use lights, refrigerators and other essentials. Green Mountain would control the batteries, allowing it to program them to soak up energy when wind turbines and solar panels were producing a lot of it. Then, when demand peaked on a hot summer day, say, the batteries could release electricity. Under the proposal, the company would initially focus on delivering batteries to its most vulnerable customers, putting some power lines underground and installing stronger cables to prevent falling trees from causing outages.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: One of the world's most powerful supercomputers will soon be online in Europe, but it's not just the raw speed that will make the Jupiter supercomputer special. Unlike most of the Top 500 list, the exascale Jupiter system will rely on ARM cores instead of x86 parts. Intel and AMD might be disappointed, but Nvidia will get a piece of the Jupiter action. [...] Jupiter is a project of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), which is working with computing firms Eviden and ParTec to assemble the machine. Europe's first exascale computer will be installed at the Julich Supercomputing Centre in Munich, and assembly could start as soon as early 2024.

EuroHPC has opted to go with SiPearl's Rhea processor, which is based on ARM architecture. Most of the top 10 supercomputers in the world are running x86 chips, and only one is running on ARM. While ARM designs were initially popular in mobile devices, the compact, efficient cores have found use in more powerful systems. Apple has recently finished moving all its desktop and laptop computers to the ARM platform, and Qualcomm has new desktop-class chips on its roadmap. Rhea is based on ARM's Neoverse V1 CPU design, which was developed specifically for high-performance computing (HPC) applications with 72 cores. It supports HBM2e high-bandwidth memory, as well as DDR5, and the cache tops out at an impressive 160MB. The report says the Jupiter system "will have Nvidia's Booster Module, which includes GPUs and Mellanox ultra-high bandwidth interconnects," and will likely include the current-gen H100 chips. "When complete, Jupiter will be near the very top of the supercomputer list."

An anonymous reader writes: Amidst a winter marked by scarce gas supplies, the German government has opted to retain its lignite coal power plants on standby for another season. Originally, Germany had planned a phased shutdown of coal plants in exchange for a portion of the government's €40 billion coal phase-out fund. However, last year, disruptions in Russian gas supplies post-Ukraine war prompted an emergency decision to keep coal plants operational. This measure is now extended for the upcoming winter, maintaining 1.9 GWs of lignite capacity alongside the existing 45 GW of coal power plants.

The primary purpose of these lignite plants is to alleviate gas demand during peak times and stabilize prices. Despite the economic benefits, the move raises environmental concerns, given lignite's status as a major climate polluter. The government acknowledges this and plans to assess the additional carbon emissions resulting from keeping coal plants on standby, estimated to be between 2.5 and 5.6 tonnes of CO2.

The German government emphasized the persistence of the goal to ideally complete the coal phase-out by 2030 and meet climate targets.

Long-time Slashdot reader alaskana writes: In late 2022 it was revealed that early samples of what was to be the "Pentium 5" processor, codenamed Tejas and Jayhawk were in development and made it as far as being released to board partners for evaluation. A few of these samples made it (of course) onto Ebay and then — not surprisingly — into the hands of a YouTuber. To be fair, tech site Anandtech arguably got the first scoop on this P4 successor way back in 2004, but that story seemingly never gained much traction at that time.

They wrote that Intel Prescott CPUs "could hit 5GHz+ but had huge power and temperature numbers, but Tejas was expected to clock higher than Prescott — with Intel chasing the huge 10GHz CPU clocks within 10 years between 2000 and 2011 — but it ended up not happening at all."

In what was supposed to be a continuation of the "GHz is king" days of the early aughts, the Pentium 5 was in spirit a continuation of the "faster-is-better" philosophy of the P4 architecture, efficiency be damned. Speeds in excess of 7 GHz(!), and a pipeline upwards of 50 stages were rumored to be targeted by Intel, but reality (and physics) reared their ugly heads as always. WCCF Tech transcribed the remarks of Intel engineer Steve Fischer, who was involved with the project. "The thing had a pipeline depth of around 50 stages and an expected clock target at one point north of 7 GHz. I call the thing "the Death Star of processors" and half-jokingly reasoned that consumer acceptance of liquid-cooled chassis would not be a big deal."

Intel kicked off Project Tejas in 2003, expected in 2004 and later pushed into 2005 after issues forced Intel to redesign the chip. Before the company could do that, the Tejas Project was shelved on May 7, 2004. In the end efficiency and parallelization was to be the rule of future CPU development, but the fact that Intel had (at least briefly) had planned on taking the P4 paradigm just a wee bit further with a true Pentium 5 is a fascinating look into the past of a future that never was to be for the venerable Pentium line.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China — a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders...

RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence... The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V...

Executives from China's Huawei Technologies have embraced RISC-V as a pillar of that nation's progress in developing its own chips. But the United States and its allies also have jumped on the technology, with chip giant Qualcomm working with a group of European automotive firms on RISC-V chips and Alphabet's Google saying it will make Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system, work on RISC-V chips...

Jack Kang, vice president of business development at SiFive, a Santa Clara, California-based startup using RISC-V, said potential U.S. government restrictions on American companies regarding RISC-V would be a "tremendous tragedy." "It would be like banning us from working on the internet," Kang said. "It would be a huge mistake in terms of technology, leadership, innovation and companies and jobs that are being created."
One U.S. Representative said the Chinese Communist Party was "abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips.

"U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws."

In downtown San Francisco two vehicles were stopped at a red light on Monday night, reports the Washington Post — a regular car and a Cruise robotaxi. Both vehicles advanced when the light turned green, according to witness accounts and video recorded by the Cruise vehicle's internal cameras and reviewed by The Post. As the cars moved forward, the pedestrian entered the traffic lanes in front of them, according to the video, and was struck by the regular car. The video shows the victim rolling onto that vehicle's windshield and then being flung into the path of the driverless car, which stopped once it collided with the woman. According to Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow, the autonomous vehicle "braked aggressively to minimize the impact" but was unable to stop before rolling over the woman and coming to a halt. Photos published by the San Francisco Chronicle show the woman's leg sticking out from underneath the car's left rear wheel.
"According to Cruise, police had directed the company to keep the vehicle stationary, apparently with the pedestrian stuck beneath it," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Also from the San Francisco Chronicle: Austin Tutone, a bicycle delivery person, saw the woman trapped underneath the Cruise car and tried to reassure her as they waited for first-responders. "I told her, 'The ambulance is coming' and that she'd be okay. She was just screaming." He shared a photo of the aftermath with The Chronicle that appears to show the car tire on the woman's leg. San Francisco firefighters arrived and used the jaws of life to lift the car off the woman. She was transported to San Francisco General Hospital with "multiple traumatic injuries," said SFFD Capt. Justin Schorr. The victim was in critical condition as of late Tuesday afternoon, according to the hospital.

It appears that once the Cruise car sensed something underneath its rear axle, it came to a halt and turned on its hazard lights, Schorr said. Firefighters obstructed the sensors of the driverless car to alert the Cruise control center. He said representatives from Cruise responded to firefighters and "immediately disabled the car remotely." More from the San Francisco Chronicle: "When it comes to someone pinned beneath a vehicle, the most effective way to unpin them is to lift the vehicle," Sgt. Kathryn Winters, a spokesperson for the department, said in an interview. Were a driver to move a vehicle with a person lying there, "you run the risk of causing more injury." Once the person is freed, the car must stay in place as police gather evidence including "the location of the vehicle and/or vehicles before, during and after the collision," said Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, another spokesperson.
The human driver who struck the pedestrian immediately fled the scene, and has not yet been identified.

Hyundai and Kia said on Thursday that they will adopt Tesla's electric vehicle charging technology in the United States. Reuters reports: Joining their global peers, including Ford Motor, General Motors and Nissan in adopting Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS), Hyundai's and Kia's moves take the Elon Musk-led company's superchargers closer to becoming the industry standard at the expense of the rival Combined Charging System (CCS). Hyundai and Kia's new EVs will come with a NACS port, starting in the fourth quarter of 2024 in the United States, the companies said.

However, in Canada, Hyundai EVs equipped with the NACS port would be available in the first half of 2025, while Kia's EVs with the technology by the end of 2024. The move gives Hyundai and Kia EVs with NACS ports access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the companies said. The South Korean automakers also said that they would offer adapters to owners of existing and future Hyundai and Kia EVs with the current CCS giving them access to Tesla's Supercharging Network in the first quarter of 2025.

Paul Kunert writes via The Register: Talking on stage at the Canalys EMEA Forum 2023, Luca Rossi, senior vice resident at Lenovo and president of its Intelligent Devices Group, said the company has committed to a net zero emission policy by 2050, and analyzing the components used in its hardware is part of the equation. "On repairability, we have a plan that by 2025 more than 80 percent of the repair parts will be repaired again so that they they enter into the circular economy to reduce the impact to the environment." He added: "More than 80 percent of our devices will be able to be repaired at the customer, by the customer or by the channel and we are enabling this with a design for serviceability kind of approach." This means that "batteries, SSD, many things, will not any longer be sealed into the product but will be available for the customer to be to repaired on site and then save a lot of waste."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings' carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources. Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it is also possible to bring in waste heat from other buildings through the sewer system. When installed, these networks can provide efficient, fossil fuel-free heating and cooling to commercial and residential buildings. Thanks to legislative backing and widespread support from utility companies and labor unions they're likely to become an increasingly significant part of the future energy mix in the US.

"Heat is the largest source of waste energy and it's an untapped resource," says Zeyneb Magavi, co-executive director at clean energy nonprofit HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team). "Once we have a thermal energy network, we can tap into that resource by moving it to where we need it." While the projects are still at the planning and regulatory stage in most of the 13 states, construction is already underway in some. [...] The advantages of thermal energy networks extend beyond reducing carbon emissions. Scaling them up from a few buildings to a community or utility level can also help make the grid more resilient and efficient. Magavi says every time a "loop" of thermal energy network is added to the grid, its ability to predict and manage power flow becomes more accurate. This interconnectedness helps the system become more resilient in high-stress situations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Resin printer company Peopoly created quite a buzz with the unveiling of a prototype beltless FDM 3D printer, the Magneto X, at the East Coast RepRap Festival. The new printer is a desk top machine with a huge 400 x 300 x 300 mm build volume and print speeds up to 800mm/s. It borrows a design feature seen on CNC machines: magnetic linear motors. Normally, 3D printers move their components with rotating stepper motors attached to gears and pulleys. The linear motor can be thought of as a flat, unrolled motor with the "rotor" attached to the moving component -- the tool head -- and the stator forming a track along one axis. Dubbed the "MagXY" system, the tool head seems to levitate across the gantry without obvious means. It has a top print speed of 800 mm/s with a max acceleration of 22,000 mm/s, which would make it faster than modern Core XY printers from Bambu Lab.

Peopoly is using and supporting both Klipper firmware and OrcaSlicer, which founder Mark Peng said greatly helped speed up their development time. [...] Peopoly is leaning hard into the Open Source community. Not only have they become backers of Klipper firmware, they are also using -- and supporting -- Open Source OcraSlicer. The Magneto X's nozzles are compatible with the popular E3D's V6 volcano which suggests the machine will be open to modification by users. Peopoly also states its machine can be used without joining a cloud-based system and promises customer data will not be collected.

Alongside the Pixel 8 and Android 14, Google today launched the new Pixel Watch 2 -- a $350 second-gen smartwatch featuring a faster processor, overhauled sensor array, and longer battery life. The Verge reports: At a glance, the main difference is that the screen sits flush with the digital crown, where the original had a slight cutout. Another change imperceptible to the naked eye: the body is now made of 100 percent recycled aluminum instead of stainless steel. The result is a slightly lighter watch, but not by much. The Pixel Watch weighed 36 grams, while the Pixel Watch 2 is 31g. That's a bit disappointing, considering the Watch 2's price remains the same as last year. We're looking at the same 41mm case size and OLED display on top. But flip the watch over, and you'll find a completely different sensor array. Instead of a single line of LEDs, there are now multiple LEDs and photodiodes to take measurements from several angles and positions. That then feeds into an algorithm that Fitbit CEO James Park says is 40 percent more accurate for vigorous activities.

This year, Google also added a skin temperature and continuous electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. Both help enable proactive stress tracking, which Fitbit introduced with its Sense 2. The EDA sensor detects minuscule amounts of sweat, which can help determine bodily stress when combined with metrics like heart rate variability, heart rate, and skin temperature. As with the Sense 2, you're supposed to get a slightly delayed notification when a stressful event has been detected. You're then encouraged to log how that event made you feel. Battery life was a major pain point when the Pixel Watch first launched. Park acknowledges that you couldn't use the always-on display on the first-gen watch if you wanted that 24-hour battery life. This time around, he says that the team has worked hard to make sure the Pixel Watch 2's 306mAh battery can get 24 hours with the always-on display enabled. Users should also be able to get a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes and a full day's worth in 75 minutes. Helping that should be Wear OS 4 -- which Google says ought to extend battery life -- and the new, more power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor. (Speaking of Wear OS 4, Google says that, at first, it'll be exclusive to Pixel Watch 2.) Other features include the ability to automatically record workouts and do heart rate zone training; a new Safety Check feature that will alert your loved ones of your location after a preset timer expires (e.g. taking an Uber across town or going on a late-night walk); and support for Google services like Gmail, Google Wallet, and Calendar.

You can learn more about the Pixel Watch 2 here.