Google is bringing Android's "Nearby Share" feature to the desktop with a new Windows app. Google says the new program will make sharing between Windows and Android easier, letting you send files over in just a few clicks and taps. From a report: Google's Nearby Share has been built into Android for a few years now and allows you to locally transfer files over Wi-Fi, with the initial device-pairing happening over Bluetooth. Nearby share has been kind of tough to use in real life, since most people share files over the Internet. And for personal use, most people only have one Android device, their phone, so there has been nothing to share files with. A ton of Android users have Windows PCs, though, so for many this will be the first time Nearby Share has an actual use. Using the app is easy. Just download it from the Android website and click a few "next" buttons in the installer. You need a 64-bit Windows PC (not ARM, ironically) with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. From there you can easily share by dragging and dropping on Windows or by using the Android "share" button and hitting "Nearby Share." You have the option of signing in to the Windows app or not. If you don't you'll need to manually approve every transaction on both the phone and PC. If you sign in, you can set up auto-accept from yourself, anyone in your contacts, or the probably not advisable "everyone" option.

Data storage giant Western Digital has confirmed that hackers exfiltrated data from its systems during a "network security incident" last week. From a report: The California-based company said in a statement on Monday that an unauthorized third party gained access to "a number" of its internal systems on March 26. Western Digital hasn't confirmed the nature of the incident or revealed how it was compromised, but its statement suggests the incident may be linked to ransomware. [...] Western Digital notes that the incident "has caused and may continue to cause disruption" to the company's business operations.

PINE64 has an update about their Star64 single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor: it will be available on April 4th in two configurations: 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99: Let me just quickly reiterate the Star64 features:


- Quad core 64bit RISC-V
- HDMI video output
- 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates
- i2c touch panel connector
- dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
- dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth
- 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports
- PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus pins (i2c, SPI and UART).
- The board also features 128M QSPI flash and eMMC and microSD card slots.


The board will be available in two different RAM configurations — with 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively. The Star64 store page ought to already be live when you read this, but will be listed as out of stock until the 4th.
Liliputing offers this summary: The Star64 is a single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage (as well as a microSD card reader). Developed by the folks at Pine64, it's designed to be an affordable platform for developers and hobbyists looking to get started with RISC-V architecture. Pine64 first announced it was working on the Star64 last summer...
Meanwhile, PINE64's Linux tablets, the PineTab2 and PineTab-V, will launch one week later on Tuesday, April 11th.

Other highlights from this month's community update: there's now a dedicated Debian with GNOME image with tailored settings for grayscale for their Linux-based "PineNote" e-ink tablets. ("Other OSes and desktop environments are being worked on too.")

And the update also includes photos of one user's cool 3D-printed replacement cases for their PinePhone featuring Tux the penguin.

In the US, heat pump purchases exceeded those of gas furnaces in 2022 -- part of a bigger trend that saw global heat pump sales grow by 11%. Electrek reports: According to analysis released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA), heat pump sales in Europe saw a record year, with sales growing by nearly 40%. And specifically, sales of air-to-water models in Europe that are compatible with typical radiators and underfloor heating systems jumped by almost 50%. In China, the world's largest heat pump market, sales remained stable amid a general slowdown of the economy.

Currently, heat pumps function as a main heating device in around 10% of buildings globally. That's the equivalent of over 100 million households, or 1 in 10 homes. But in order to meet climate goals, heat pumps will have to meet nearly 20% of global heating needs in buildings by 2030. If installations continue at the rate of the last two years, then the world may almost be on track to reach the 2030 goal. The IEA says that global heat pump sales will need to expand by well over 15% per year this decade if the world is to achieve net zero by 2050, and that multistory apartment buildings and commercial spaces in particular should be prioritized.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Like electronics or photonics, magnonics is an engineering subfield that aims to advance information technologies when it comes to speed, device architecture, and energy consumption. A magnon corresponds to the specific amount of energy required to change the magnetization of a material via a collective excitation called a spin wave. Because they interact with magnetic fields, magnons can be used to encode and transport data without electron flows, which involve energy loss through heating (known as Joule heating) of the conductor used. As Dirk Grundler, head of the Lab of Nanoscale Magnetic Materials and Magnonics (LMGN) in the School of Engineering explains, energy losses are an increasingly serious barrier to electronics as data speeds and storage demands soar. "With the advent of AI, the use of computing technology has increased so much that energy consumption threatens its development," Grundler says. "A major issue is traditional computing architecture, which separates processors and memory. The signal conversions involved in moving data between different components slow down computation and waste energy."

This inefficiency, known as the memory wall or Von Neumann bottleneck, has had researchers searching for new computing architectures that can better support the demands of big data. And now, Grundler believes his lab might have stumbled on such a "holy grail". While doing other experiments on a commercial wafer of the ferrimagnetic insulator yttrium iron garnet (YIG) with nanomagnetic strips on its surface, LMGN Ph.D. student Korbinian Baumgaertl was inspired to develop precisely engineered YIG-nanomagnet devices. With the Center of MicroNanoTechnology's support, Baumgaertl was able to excite spin waves in the YIG at specific gigahertz frequencies using radiofrequency signals, and -- crucially -- to reverse the magnetization of the surface nanomagnets. "The two possible orientations of these nanomagnets represent magnetic states 0 and 1, which allows digital information to be encoded and stored," Grundler explains.

The scientists made their discovery using a conventional vector network analyzer, which sent a spin wave through the YIG-nanomagnet device. Nanomagnet reversal happened only when the spin wave hit a certain amplitude, and could then be used to write and read data. "We can now show that the same waves we use for data processing can be used to switch the magnetic nanostructures so that we also have nonvolatile magnetic storage within the very same system," Grundler explains, adding that "nonvolatile" refers to the stable storage of data over long time periods without additional energy consumption. It's this ability to process and store data in the same place that gives the technique its potential to change the current computing architecture paradigm by putting an end to the energy-inefficient separation of processors and memory storage, and achieving what is known as in-memory computation. The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Like in other parts of the world, Canada is working out what the right to repair means for its people. The federal government said in its 2023 budget released Tuesday that it will bring the right to repair to Canada. At the same time, it's considering a universal charging port mandate like the European Union (EU) is implementing with USB-C. The Canadian federal government's 2023 budget introduces the right to repair under the chapter "Making Life More Affordable and Supporting the Middle Class." It says that the "government will work to implement a right to repair, with the aim of introducing a targeted framework for home appliances and electronics in 2024." The government plans to hold consultations on the matter and claimed it will "work closely with provinces and territories" to implement the right to repair in Canada:

"When it comes to broken appliances or devices, high repair fees and a lack of access to specific parts often mean Canadians are pushed to buy new products rather than repairing the ones they have. This is expensive for people and creates harmful waste. Devices and appliances should be easy to repair, spare parts should be readily accessible, and companies should not be able to prevent repairs with complex programming or hard-to-obtain bespoke parts. By cutting down on the number of devices and appliances that are thrown out, we will be able to make life more affordable for Canadians and protect our environment."

The budget also insinuates that right-to-repair legislation can make third-party repairs cheaper than getting a phone, for example, repaired by the manufacturer, where it could cost "far more than it should." Canada's 2023 budget also revealed the government's interest in introducing a standard charging port for electronics. The budget says the government "will work with international partners and other stakeholders to explore implementing a standard charging port in Canada." It says a universal charging port could help residents save money and e-waste. "Every time Canadians purchase new devices, they need to buy new chargers to go along with them, which drives up costs and increases electronic waste," the budget says.

Researchers have developed a novel fuel cell implant for type 1 diabetes that can successfully produce and release insulin when triggered. New Atlas reports: The fuel cell itself, which resembles a teabag that's slightly larger than a fingernail, is covered in a nonwoven fabric and coated with alginate, an algae-derived product used widely in biomedicine because of its high degree of biocompatibility. When implanted under the skin, the cell's alginate soaks up body fluid, allowing glucose to permeate the surface and flow into the power center. Inside the cell, the team developed a copper-based nanoparticle anode that splits glucose into gluconic acid and a proton to generate an electric current. "Many people, especially in the Western industrialized nations, consume more carbohydrates than they need in everyday life," [Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich] said. "This gave us the idea of using this excess metabolic energy to produce electricity to power biomedical devices.

The fuel cell was then coupled with an insulin capsule featuring the team's beta cells, which could be triggered to secrete insulin via electric current from the implant. Overall, the two components provide a self-regulating circuit. When the fuel cell powered by glucose senses excess blood sugar, it powers up. This then stimulates the beta cells to produce and secrete insulin. As blood sugar levels dip, it trips a threshold sensor in the fuel cell, so it powers down, in turn stopping the insulin production and release. This self-sustained circuit could also produce enough power to communicate with a device such as a smartphone, which allows for monitoring and adjusting, and even has potential for remote access for medical intervention. The study was published in the journal Advanced Materials.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: For the first time ever, renewable power generation -- that's wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and geothermal -- exceeded coal-fired generation in the US electric power sector in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Overall, the US electric power sector produced 4,090 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of power in 2022. Wind and solar's combined total generation increased from 12% in 2021 to 14% in 2022. Hydropower stayed the same last year at 6%, and biomass and geothermal also remained unchanged, at less than 1%. So that's a total of 21%. Utility-scale solar capacity in the US electric power sector -- the EIA doesn't include rooftop solar -- increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to EIA data. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022. Coal-fired generation, on the other hand, dropped from 23% in 2021 to 20% in 2022 because a number of coal-fired power plants retired, and the plants still online were used less.

Renewables surpassed nuclear generation for the first time in 2021, and that trend continued last year. Nuclear dropped from 20% in 2021 to 19% in 2022 because Michigan's Palisades nuclear power plant was retired in May 2022. However, Palisades' new owner, Holtec, wants to restart it, and this idea is not proving particularly popular, with one environmental group saying that would risk a "Chernobyl-scale catastrophe." The Biden administration pledged $6 billion on March 2 to help extend the operating life of aging nuclear power plants in order to help the US combat climate change. However, natural gas is still the largest source of US electricity generation, and it grew from 37% in 2021 to 39% in 2022. This month, the EIA forecast that both wind and solar will each grow by 1% in 2023. Natural gas is forecast to remain unchanged, and coal is forecast to decline by 3% to 17% next year.

Saturday Arduino announced "a new, revolutionary revision of the iconic UNO board," promising "a long-awaited update on performance and possibilities." The Arduino UNO R4 indeed preserves the well-known features of the UNO family — standard form factor, shield compatibility, 5V operating voltage, outstanding robustness — while offering no less than a 32-bit Cortex-M4 and a 3-to-16x increase in clock speed, memory and flash storage....

The UNO R4 will come in two versions — UNO R4 WiFi and UNO R4 Minima — offering unprecedented performance and possibilities for the maker community. The WiFi version comes with an Espressif S3 WiFi module, expanding creative opportunities for makers, educators, and hobbyists alike; while the UNO R4 Minima provides a cost-effective option for those seeking the new microcontroller without additional features....

SRAM went from 2kB to 32kB, and flash memory went from 32kB to 256kB to accommodate more complex projects. In addition, following the requests from the community, the USB port was upgraded to the USB-C and maximum power supply voltage was increased to 24V with an improved thermal design. The board provides a CAN bus, which allows users to minimize wiring and execute different tasks in parallel by connecting multiple shields. Finally, the new board includes a 12-bit analog DAC.

All in all, Arduino UNO R4 is the answer to the requests for improvement and updates the developer and maker community has been advancing, making it easier than ever to get started with Arduino.... On the software side, a big effort is being made to maximize retrocompatibility of the most popular Arduino libraries so that users will be able to rely on existing code examples and tutorials.

The New York Times reports: Since January, the price of lithium has dropped nearly 20%, according to Benchmark Minerals, while sales of electric vehicles have soared. The price of cobalt, another important battery material, has fallen by more than half. Copper, essential to electric motors and batteries, has slipped by about 18%, at a time when U.S. mines and copper-rich countries such as Peru are struggling to increase production.

The price moves have confounded many analysts who predicted costs would stay high, or climb higher, slowing the transition to cleaner forms of transportation. Instead, the drop in commodity prices has made it easier for carmakers to cut prices for electric vehicles. This month, Tesla lowered the prices of its two most expensive cars, the Model S sedan and Model X sport utility vehicle, by thousands of dollars. That followed cuts in January by Tesla to its more affordable Model 3 and Model Y, and by Ford Motor to its Mustang Mach-E. The average price of an electric vehicle in the United States fell by $1,000 in February compared with January, according to Kelley Blue Book. "For electric vehicles, the major roadblock is cost," said Kang Sun, the CEO of Amprius Technologies, a young battery maker that this month announced plans for a factory in Colorado. The falling price of lithium, he said, "is going to promote EV sales."

Sun said he thinks prices could fall much further because demand for the metal has not risen as fast as some in the industry expected.... Ryan Melsert, CEO of American Battery Technology, attributed the recent decline in lithium prices to temporary factors like a seasonal slowdown in electric vehicle sales in China. "We expect to see very high prices for the foreseeable future," Melsert said. Vivek Chidambaram, the senior managing director for strategy at Accenture, the consulting firm, also expects the decline to be temporary. Lithium prices have fallen because sales of electric vehicles, while still brisk, are not growing as fast as automakers expected, he said. That has led suppliers to produce more than is needed.
The article notes America's Department of Energy is providing $3 billion in grants to create a domestic battery supply chain — partly because the supply of lithium has to increase 42-fold by 2050, according to the State Department's undersecretary for energy.

"We have to find additional sources of supply because 42 times is a lot," he tells the Times. "Right now, we don't have enough."

"With an 8-core Rockchip RK3588S SoC, the Orange Pi 5 is leaps and bounds faster than the aging Raspberry Pi 4," writes Phoronix: With up to 32GB of RAM, the Orange Pi 5 is also capable of serving for a more diverse user-base and even has enough potential for assembling a budget Arm Linux developer desktop. I've been testing out the Orange Pi 5 the past few weeks and it's quite fast and nice for its low price point.

The Orange Pi 5 single board computer was announced last year and went up for pre-ordering at the end of 2022.... When it comes to the software support, among the officially available options for the Orange Pi 5 are Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and Armbian. Other ARM Linux distributions will surely see varying levels of support while even the readily available ISO selection offered by Orange Pi is off to a great start....

Granted, the Orange Pi developer community isn't as large as that of the Raspberry Pi community or the current range of accessories and documentation, but for those more concerned about features and performance, the Orange Pi 5 is extremely interesting.
The article includes Orange Pi 5 specs:

• A 26-pin header
• HDMI 2.1, Gigabit LAN, M.2 PCIe 2.0, and USB3 connectivity
• A Mali G510 MP4 graphics processor, "which has open-source driver hope via the Panfrost driver stack."
• Four different versions with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM using LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X. "The Orange Pi 4GB retails for ~$88, the Orange Pi 5 8GB version retails for $108, and the Orange Pi 5 16GB version retails for $138, while as of writing the 32GB version wasn't in stock."

In 169 performance benchmarks (compared to Raspberry Pi 4 boards), "this single board computer came out to delivering 2.85x the performance of the Raspberry Pi 400 overall." And through all this the average SoC temperature was 71 degrees with a peak of 85 degrees — without any extra heatsink or cooling.

Intel announced Friday that Gordon Moore, Intel's co-founder, has died at the age of 94: Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. Moore initially served as executive vice president until 1975, when he became president. In 1979, Moore was named chairman of the board and chief executive officer, posts he held until 1987, when he gave up the CEO position and continued as chairman. In 1997, Moore became chairman emeritus, stepping down in 2006.

During his lifetime, Moore also dedicated his focus and energy to philanthropy, particularly environmental conservation, science and patient care improvements. Along with his wife of 72 years, he established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000....

"Though he never aspired to be a household name, Gordon's vision and his life's work enabled the phenomenal innovation and technological developments that shape our everyday lives," said foundation president Harvey Fineberg. "Yet those historic achievements are only part of his legacy. His and Betty's generosity as philanthropists will shape the world for generations to come."

Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, said, "Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his insight and vision. He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors, and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs across the decades. We at Intel remain inspired by Moore's Law and intend to pursue it until the periodic table is exhausted...."

Prior to establishing Intel, Moore and Noyce participated in the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, where they played central roles in the first commercial production of diffused silicon transistors and later the world's first commercially viable integrated circuits. The two had previously worked together under William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor, which was the first semiconductor company established in what would become Silicon Valley.

Huawei has reportedly completed work on electronic design automation (EDA) tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes. The Register reports: Chinese media said the platform is one of 78 being developed by the telecoms equipment giant to replace American and European chip design toolkits that have become subject to export controls by the US and others. Huawei's EDA platform was reportedly revealed by rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun during a meeting in February, and later confirmed by media in China. [...] Huawei's focus on EDA software for 14nm and larger chips reflects the current state of China's semiconductor industry. State-backed foundry operator SMIC currently possesses the ability to produce 14nm chips at scale, although there have been some reports the company has had success developing a 7nm process node.

Today, the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence, as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries, which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls, which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January, the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei.

This is particularly troublesome for Huawei, foundry operator SMIC, and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List, a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies, at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely.

Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from Space.com: The Relativity Space rocket, called Terran 1, lifted off from Launch Complex 16 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:25 p.m. EST (0025 GMT on March 23), kicking off a test flight called "Good Luck, Have Fun" (GLHF). Terran 1 performed well initially. For example, it survived Max-Q -- the part of flight during which the structural loads are highest on a rocket -- and its first and second stages separated successfully. But something went wrong shortly thereafter, at around three minutes into the flight, when the rocket failed to reach orbit.

"No one's ever attempted to launch a 3D-printed rocket into orbit, and, while we didn't make it all the way today, we gathered enough data to show that flying 3D-printed rockets is viable," Relativity Space's Arwa Tizani Kelly said during the company's launch webcast on Wednesday night. "We just completed a major step in proving to the world that 3D-printed rockets are structurally viable," she added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Framework has delivered on the promise of its original 13-inch laptop. Three product generations in, the company has made a respectable competitor for the Dell XPS 13 or MacBook Air that can be repaired, modified, and upgraded, and owners of the original laptop can easily give themselves a significant performance boost by upgrading to the new 13th-generation Intel or AMD Ryzen-based boards the company announced today. Framework is now looking to build on that track record with an all-new Framework Laptop 16. It's a larger-screened model that can fit more powerful processors, dedicated GPUs, and a range of different keyboard modules, all with the same commitment to repairability and upgradeability seen in the original Framework Laptop (now retroactively dubbed the Framework Laptop 13).

Framework isn't discussing many details yet; preorders won't open until "this spring," and shipments won't begin until "late 2023." Today, the company provided a preview of the laptop's features, along with developer documentation to encourage the creation of new Input Modules -- components that allow for keyboard customization much like the current Expansion Card system allows for port customization.

The European Commission has adopted a new set of right to repair rules (PDF) that, among other things, will add electronic devices like smartphones and tablets to a list of goods that must be built with repairability in mind. The Register reports: The new rules will need to be need to be negotiated between the European Parliament and member states before they can be turned into law. If they are, a lot more than just repairability requirements will change. One provision will require companies selling consumer goods in the EU to offer repairs (as opposed to just replacing a damaged device) free of charge within a legal guarantee period unless it would be cheaper to replace a damaged item. Beyond that, the directive also adds a set of rights for device repairability outside of legal guarantee periods that the EC said will help make repair a better option than simply tossing a damaged product away.

Under the new post-guarantee period rule, companies that produce goods the EU defines as subject to repairability requirements (eg, appliances, commercial computer hardware, and soon cellphones and tablets) are obliged to repair such items for five to 10 years after purchase if a customer demands so, and the repair is possible. OEMs will also need to inform consumers about which products they are liable to repair, and consumers will be able to request a new Repair Information Form from anyone doing a repair that makes pricing and fees more transparent. The post-guarantee period repair rule also establishes the creation of an online "repair matchmaking platform" for EU consumers, and calls for the creation of a European repair standard that will "help consumers identify repairers who commit to a higher quality."

"Repair is key to ending the model of 'take, make, break, and throw away' that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy," said Frans Timmermans, EVP for the European Green Deal, which aims to make the whole of EU carbon neutral by 2050. On that note, the EC proposed a set of anti-greenwashing laws alongside passing its right to repair rule yesterday that would make it illegal to make any green claims about a product without evidence. Citing the fact that 94 percent of Europeans believe protecting the environment is important, the EC said its proposal covers any explicit, voluntarily-made claims "which relate to the environmental impact, aspect, or performance of a product or the trader itself." Any such claims, like a laptop being made from recycled plastic, would need to be independently verified and proven with scientific evidence, the EC said.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Researchers have designed a robot that can create and cook a cake with up to seven ingredients, more than any other printed food to date. The scientists built their programmable patisserie by retrofitting a 3D printer with nozzles designed to squeeze out selected ingredients. They then programmed it to dispense those into layered cakes. Initial trials resulted in triangular gobs of sweet goo, so the researchers came up with a winning recipe that could hold its own. They nested softer ingredients, such as jelly and banana puree, inside of stiffer ingredients, such as peanut butter and Nutella, then reinforced those with hefty doses of graham cracker crust. Then, they broiled the crust with a laser and topped the cake with frosting and cherry glaze. The result? A cheesecake, of sorts.

Despite its novelty, the computer-guided cook may not be able to battle it out under the stern eye of a guest judge any time soon -- each slice took about 30 minutes to print. Further in the future, however, better printers could make some cooking automatic, freeing people from kitchen tasks they may find tiring or repetitive -- assuming you don't enjoy those things. A food printer could also be programmed to dispense meals with precision-controlled nutrient and calorie content, helping prepare food for those on strict diets. The study has been published in the journal npj Science of Food.

By the end of 2022, global renewable generation capacity amounted to 3,372 gigawatts (GW), growing the stock of renewable power by 295 GW or 9.6%, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Renewables produced an overwhelming 83% of all power capacity added last year. Electrek reports: Renewable Capacity Statistics 2023, released today by IRENA, shows that renewable energy continues to grow at record levels despite global uncertainties, confirming the downward trend of fossil fuels. While many countries increased their renewable capacity in 2022, the significant growth of renewables is concentrated in Asia, the US, and Europe. IRENA reports that almost half of all new capacity in 2022 was added in Asia, resulting in a total of 1.63 terawatts (TW) of renewable capacity by 2022. China was the largest contributor, adding 141 GW to Asia's new capacity.

Renewables in Europe and North America grew by 57.3 GW and 29.1 GW, respectively. Africa saw an increase of 2.7 GW, slightly above 2021. Oceania continued its double-digit growth with an expansion of 5.2 GW, and South America had a capacity expansion of 18.2 GW. The Middle East recorded its highest increase in renewables on record, with 3.2 GW of new capacity added in 2022, an increase of 12.8%. Although hydropower accounted for the largest share of the global total renewable generation capacity with 1,250 GW, solar and wind continued to dominate new generating capacity. Together, both technologies contributed 90% to the share of all new renewable capacity in 2022. Solar led with a 22% (191 GW) increase, followed by wind, which increased its generating capacity by 9% (75 GW).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Last Energy Inc., a startup developing advanced, smaller nuclear power plants, completed four deals worth $18.9 billion to build 34 reactors in Europe. The Washington-based company expects to install the first of its 20-megawatt systems as soon as 2025, Chief Executive Officer Bret Kugelmass said in an interview Monday. Last is building its first system in Texas, but is still seeking approval from regulators in Poland and the UK, where it closed the Europe deals.

Last is part of a wave of companies seeking to install smaller reactors that could be manufactured in factories and assembled on-site. The approach is expected to make them faster and cheaper to build than conventional nuclear plants, but the technology is still untested. Kugelmass said the agreements validate the strategy and show growing demand for nuclear energy. "It's huge for us, and it's a milestone for the whole industry," he said.

Last plans to build and operate the plants, and the $18.9 billion value of the deals represents the revenue it anticipates over the course of power-purchase agreements that stretch as long as 24 years. The company must arrange financing for the estimated $100 million it will need for each system. The customers include a data-center operator and a hydrogen producer in the UK and an industrial zone in Poland. It announced last year agreements to build 12 systems for two additional customers in Poland. While the lack of regulatory approval is a key barrier, Last Energy's small design means that engineering and safety issues will be simpler than with larger reactors, said Jessica Lovering, executive director of Good Energy Collective, a pro-nuclear research group.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An analysis of 2,007 damaged or defective hard disk drives (HDDs) has led a data recovery firm to conclude that "in general, old drives seem more durable and resilient than new drives." The statement comes from a Los Angeles-headquartered HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery firm aptly named Secure Data Recovery that has been in business since 2007 and claims to have resolved more than 100,000 cases. It studied the HDDs it received in 2022. "Most" of those drives were 40GB to 10TB, according to a blog post by Secure Data Recovery spotted by Blocks & Files on Thursday.

Secure Data Recovery's March 8 post broke down the HDDs it received by engineer-verified "power-on hours," or the total amount of time the drive was functional, starting from when its owner began using it and ending when the device arrived at Secure Data Recovery. The firm also determined the drives' current pending sector count, depicting "the number of damaged or unusable sectors the hard drive developed during routine read-and-write operations." The company's data doesn't include HDDs that endured non-predictable failures or damage by unexpected events, such as electrical surges, malware, natural disasters, and "accidental mishandling," the company said.

Among the sample, 936 drives are from Western Digital, 559 come from Seagate, 211 are Hitachi brand, 151 are Toshiba's, 123 are Samsung's, and there are 27 Maxtor drives. Notably, 74.5 percent of the HDDs came from either Western Digital or Seagate, which Secure Data Recovery noted accounted for 80 percent of hard drive shipments in 2021, citing Digital Storage Technology Newsletter data shared by Forbes. The average time before failure among the sample size was 2 years and 10 months, and the 2,007 defective HDDs had an average of 1,548 bad sectors. "While 1,548 bad sectors out of hundreds of millions or even billions of disk subdivisions might seem minuscule, the rate of development often increases, and the risk of data corruption multiplies," the blog said. "We found that the five most durable and resilient hard drives from each manufacturer were made before 2015," says Secure Data Recovery. "On the other hand, most of the least durable and resilient hard drives from each manufacturer were made after 2015." One of the reasons for this may have to do with HDD manufacturers "pushing the performance envelope," adds Ars. "This includes size limits that cut 'allowance between moving parts, appearing to affect mechanical damage and wear resistance.'"

Secure Data Recovery also believes that shingled magnetic recording (SMR) impacts HDD reliability, as the disks place components under "more stress."

"What this study shows is not the average working life of a hard disk drive," notes Blacks & Files. "Instead it provides the average working life if a failed disk drive. Cloud storage provider Backblaze issues statistics about the working life of its disk drive fleet and its numbers are quite different." A recent report of theirs found that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs.