Longstanding Thunderbolt and network-attached storage company Drobo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late June, and will hold its first creditors meeting on July 17. AppleInsider reports: First formed as Data Robotics in 2005, Drobo manufactured solutions for remote and network storage. Parent company StarCentric filed bankrupcy papers with the California Northern Bankruptcy Court (San Jose) on June 20, 2022. According to official court documentation, the company is to hold its first creditors meeting on July 19. There is also a final deadline for filing claims against the company, which is October 17, 2022.

The company has no commented publicly on the decision. However, the company appears to have been badly affected by the coronavirus. [...] Drobo's online US and European stores are currently both showing every product as sold out. The Chapter 11 filing implies that the company is trying to reorganize and return to full operations at some point. It isn't yet clear what the reorganization will look like, nor the magnitude of the creditors' demands.

A 900 MW 'water battery' that cost Switzerland 2 billion euros and was under construction for 14 years, is now operational, Euronews reported. The battery is located nearly 2,000 feet (600 m) underground in the Swiss Alps. Interesting Engineering reports: A water battery consists of two large pools of water located at different heights. When power production is high, excessive power is used to move water from the lower pool to the pool at a higher height, which is similar to charging a conventional battery. When power demand increases, the water at the higher level can be released and, as it heads to the lower pool, it passes through turbines that generate electricity and can be used to power the grid.

The water battery that recently went operational in Switzerland has a storage capacity of 20 million kWh, the equivalent of 400,000 electric cars, and is aimed at helping stabilize the energy grid in Switzerland and other connected grids in Europe. The plant has six turbines that can generate 900 MW of power, Euronews revealed. The battery has been built between the reservoirs of Emosson and Vieux Emosson in Valais, a canton in the southwestern part of Switzerland. Located nearly 2,000 feet (600 m) underground, the vast engine room of the plant measures about 650 feet (200 m) long and is over 100 feet (32 m) wide.

To move the building materials to the site, the engineers had first to carve out tunnels through the Alps. The length of the tunnels dug for the project extends to about 11 miles (18 km). Once these tunnels were in place, building material and prefabricated buildings could be moved into the mountain, a process that took 14 years. To increase the energy storage capacity of the battery, the height of the Vieux Emosson dam was also increased by 65 feet (20 m). After all this hard work, the battery is now operational and at its peak is capable of powering 900,000 homes at a time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A recent media release from market research firm IDC predicts that Meta (the parent company of Facebook) may not be able to compete in the mixed-reality business in the long run if its strategy remains unchanged. The media release offers a bird's-eye view of the virtual reality hardware marketplace. In the release, IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani said that, while "Meta continues to pour dollars into developing the metaverse, [the company's] strategy of promoting low-cost hardware at the expense of profitability isn't sustainable in the long run."

A similar concern was raised by tech industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo late last month. Kuo predicted that Meta would make moves to scale down investment in virtual reality, creating an opening for Apple and other competitors. He also wrote that Meta's practice of selling VR headsets at a loss is unsustainable. Currently, Meta owns 90 percent of the VR headset market, according to the IDC release. In distant second is ByteDance's Pico, at just 4.5 percent. Overall, VR headset shipments jumped 241.6 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2022. But the industry faced significant supply issues in Q1 2021, contributing to "a favorable comparison" for this year's Q1.

Like Kuo a couple of weeks ago, IDC research director Ramon Llamas said that "all eyes will be on Apple as it launches its first headset next year." Apple's headset is expected to be much more expensive than Meta's offerings, driving up the average unit price for the product category across the board, and Llamas believes Apple's offering "will appeal primarily to a small audience of early adopters and Apple fans." In other words, don't expect the first Apple headset to ship vastly more units than Meta's Oculus Quest 2 right out of the gate. It's just a first step in a long-term plan to own the mixed-reality market.

The party is over for PC makers as figures from Gartner suggest the market is on course for a breathtaking decline this year. From a report: According to the analysts, worldwide PC shipments will decline by 9.5 percent, with consumer demand leading the way -- a 13.5 percent drop is forecast, far greater than business PC demand, which is expected to drop by 7.2 percent year on year. The PC market in the EMEA region is forecast to fare even worse, with a 14 percent decline on the cards for 2022. Gartner pointed the finger of blame at uncertainty caused by conflicts, price increases and simple unavailability of products. Lockdowns in China were also blamed for an impact in consumer demand. It all makes for grim reading from a channel perspective. While worldwide PC shipments fared the worst, tablet devices are forecast to fall by 9 percent and mobile phones by 7.1 percent. Overall, the total decline over all types of devices in the report is expected to be 7.6 percent. This is in stark contrast to a 11 percent increase year on year in the shipment of PCs in 2021 and 5 per cent for mobile phones.

The Associated Press reports on a massive new 150-foot (45-meter) tower going up in Berlin — just to hold 56 million liters (14.8 million gallons) of hot water that "will help heat Berlin homes this winter even if Russian gas supplies dry up..."

"[T]he new facility unveiled Thursday at Vattenfall's Reuter power station will hold water brought to almost boiling temperature using electricity from solar and wind power plants across Germany. During periods when renewable energy exceeds demand the facility effectively acts as a giant battery, though instead of storing electricity it stores heat..." "It's a huge thermos that helps us to store the heat when we don't need it," said Tanja Wielgoss, who heads the Sweden-based company's heat unit in Germany. "And then we can release it when we need to use it.... Sometimes you have an abundance of electricity in the grids that you cannot use anymore, and then you need to turn off the wind turbines," said Wielgoss. "Where we are standing we can take in this electricity."

The 50-million-euro ($52 million) facility will have a thermal capacity of 200 Megawatts — enough to meet much of Berlin's hot water needs during the summer and about 10% of what it requires in the winter. The vast, insulated tank can keep water hot for up to 13 hours, helping bridge short periods when there's little wind or sun....

Berlin's top climate official, Bettina Jarasch, said the faster such heat storage systems are built, the better. "Due to its geographic location the Berlin region is even more dependent on Russian fossil fuels than other parts of Germany," she told The Associated Press. "That's why we're really in a hurry here."
"While it will be Europe's biggest heat storage facility when it's completed at the end of this year, an even bigger one is already being planned in the Netherlands."

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: GM plans to spend $35 billion on EVs and autonomous vehicles by 2025 (and produce a whopping 400,000 EVs). Jeep's parent company Stellantis will invest $35.5 billion in electrification and software, producing 25 all-electric vehicles by 2030. And Ford will spend even more — $50 billion on electrification — by 2026, while producing two million electric vehicles annually.

These are the statistics in the Detroit News, the top newspaper in America's top car-making city. They predict that by 2026 there'll be 180 different "crossover nameplates" in the electric vehicle market — although here's the most surprising statistic of all.

"The automakers are funding their EV investments with profits from SUVs and trucks."

Even with that, the senior auto analyst at Bank of America tells the newspaper that 25% of U.S. auto sales will be electric within just a few years.

"A metallic NATO is starting to take shape," writes the senior metals columnist at Reuters, "though no-one is calling it that just yet." The Minerals Security Partnership is in theory open to all countries that are committed to "responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate objectives". But the coalition assembled by the United States is one of like-minded countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany with an Asian axis in the form of Japan and South Korea. [Also the European Commission, as well as Finland and Sweden.]

It is defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.

China's dominance of key enabling minerals such as lithium and rare earths is the single biggest reason why Western countries are looking to build their own supply chains. Russia, a major producer of nickel, aluminium and platinum group metals, is now also a highly problematic trading partner as its war in Ukraine that the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" grinds on. A previously highly globalised minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarised spheres of influence, a tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications. The United States and Europe have realised that they can't build out purely domestic supply chains quickly enough to meet demand from the electric vehicle transition....

The process was already well underway before the U.S. State Department announced the formation of the Minerals Security Partnership on June 14. U.S. and Canadian officials have been working closely as Canada fleshes out a promised C$3.8 billion ($3.02 billion) package to boost production of lithium, copper and other strategic minerals. European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic has just been in Norway to seal "a strategic partnership" on battery technologies and critical raw materials.
The article points out America's Department of Defense is already investing $120 million in a new plant for heavy rare earths separation — and has chosen an Australian company as its partner.

Shortly thereafter the Defense Department noted an online disinformation campaign against its new partner (according to U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant), disinformation which Reuters describes as "a pro-China propaganda campaign" using fake social media accounts to try to stir up opposition.

An anonymous reader shares this report from NBC News: A controversial bitcoin mining operation on the largest of central New York's Finger Lakes does not meet the requirements of state climate laws, New York's Department of Environmental Conservation ruled Thursday, denying an air permit request the entity's owner, Greenidge Generation LLC., made in March 2021.

Renewing the air permit for the Greenidge facility on Seneca Lake "would be inconsistent with or would interfere with the attainment of statewide greenhouse gas emission limits," the Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, said in its ruling. It added that the company, which burns natural gas at its plant, has "failed to demonstrate that the continued operation of the facility is justified notwithstanding this inconsistency, as it has not provided any electric system reliability or other ongoing need for the facility." Greenhouse gas emissions from the plant have increased "dramatically" since a previous permit was issued to Greenidge in 2016 and after the 2019 enactment of New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, DEC said.

Local residents and environmental groups lauded the decision. Greenidge said it would continue to operate the plant under its current permit while it challenged the DEC ruling....

Greenidge took over a mothballed power plant on the shores of Seneca Lake in 2014 and requested permits to operate it as a so-called peaker plant, providing electricity to the grid in times of heavy use. While the operation initially supplied most of its power to the grid, DEC found its main purpose has become bitcoin mining.
The article adds that the global usage of electricity for bitcoin mining "roughly equals the consumption of Pakistan, according to the University of Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix, written by Michael Larabel: RISC-V International has relayed word to us that in China the DeepComputing and Xcalibyte organizations have announced pre-orders on the first RISC-V laptop intended for developers. The "ROMA" development platform features a quad-core RISC-V processor, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, and should work with most RISC-V Linux distributions. [...] DeepComputing and Xcalibyte say this laptop uses an "unannounced" quad-core RISC-V processor so is very light on the details. But frankly if it wasn't a RISC-V International PR contact relaying this to me, it sounds more like a satire announcement. The ROMA press release today goes on to note, "A Web3-friendly platform with NFT creation and publication plus integrated MetaMask-style wallet, ROMA will create an even more integrated experience with future AR glasses and AI speakers operating entirely on RISC-V software and powered by RISC-V hardware."

Quantities are also said to be limited for this ROMA laptop, which likely will put a pricing premium on it. Their cringe-worthy press release filled with buzzwords and scant technical details goes on to note, "The first 100 customers to pre-order ROMA will receive a unique NFT to mark the birth of the world's first native RISC-V development platform laptop. And you can have your ROMA personally engraved with your name or company name." [...] So right now this announcement just raises a lot more questions than answers, but we are certainly looking forward to hearing more about RISC-V laptops... Further reading: Pine64 Is Working On a RISC-V Single-Board Computer

Open hardware company Pine64 says it's preparing to launch a single-board computer (SBC) that will be its most powerful RISC-V powered device yet. Liliputing reports: While Pine64 hasn't provided detailed specs yet (some are still being worked out), the company says that the upcoming SBC have a RISC-V chip that offers comparable performance to the Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor at the heart of Pine64's Quartz64 board.

The RISC-V board will be available with 4GB or 8GB of RAM and features support for USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and a PCIe slot. And while Pine64 hasn't revealed which RISC-V processor it's using yet, the company notes that that the chip features an Imagination Technologies BXE-2-32 GPU which is designed for "entry-level" and "mid-range" applications and for which Imagination plans to make source code available soon. Pine64 says the board will follow the "Model A" form factor, meaning it'll measure around 133 x 80 x 19mm (5.24" x 3.15" x 0.75"). That makes it a bit larger than a Raspberry Pi Model B, but the extra space means there's room for that PCIe slot and other I/O connectors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since 2015, a California-based company called Mojo Vision has been developing smart contact lenses. Like smart glasses, the idea is to put helpful AR graphics in front of your eyes to help accomplish daily tasks. Now, a functioning prototype brings us closer to seeing a final product. In a blog post this week, Drew Perkins, the CEO of Mojo Vision, said he was the first to have an "on-eye demonstration of a feature-complete augmented reality smart contact lens." In an interview with CNET, he said he's been wearing only one contact at a time for hour-long durations. Eventually, Mojo Vision would like users to be able to wear two Mojo Lens simultaneously and create 3D visual overlays, the publication said. According to his blog, the CEO could see a compass through the contact and an on-screen teleprompter with a quote written on it. He also recalled viewing a green, monochromatic image of Albert Einstein to CNET.

At the heart of the lens is an Arm M0 processor and a Micro LED display with 14,000 pixels per inch. It's just 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) in diameter with a 1.8-micron pixel pitch. Perkins claimed it's the "smallest and densest display ever created for dynamic content." Developing the contact overall included a focus on physics and electronics miniaturization, Perkins wrote. Mojo Lens developed its power management system with "medical-grade micro-batteries" and a proprietary power management integrated circuit. The Mojo Lens also uses a custom-configured magnetometer (CNET noted this drives the compass Perkins saw), accelerometer, and gyroscope for tracking. [...]

A contact lens sounds like it has the potential to be even more discreet than AR headgear posing as regular Ray-Bans. But the current prototype uses a "relay accessory," as Mojo Vision's rep put it, worn around the neck. It includes a processor, GPU, and 5 GHz radio for sending and receiving data to and from the lens. According to CNET, the accessory also sends information "back to computers that track the eye movement data for research." Perkins' blog said this tech required custom ASIC designs. [...] The current prototype also uses a hat with an integrated antenna for easier connecting, CNET reported; though, we'd expect this to be omitted from a final product. "There's no firm release date for the Mojo Lens, which could be the first AR contact lens to reach consumers," adds Ars. "Near-term goals include getting potential partners, investors, and journalists to try the smart lens."

Global nuclear power capacity needs to double by the mid-century to reach net-zero emissions targets. This will help ensure energy security as governments try to reduce their reliance on imported fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday. Euronews reports: Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 would give the world a chance of capping temperature rises at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To reach net-zero emissions, nuclear power capacity needs to double to 812 gigawatts (GW) by 2050 from 413 GW early this year, the IEA report specifies. In the 2030s, annual nuclear power capacity will have to reach 27 GW, it added.

As around 260 GW, or 63 percent, of nuclear plants in the world are currently over 30 years old and nearing the end of their initial operation licenses. Although there have been moves in the past three years to extend the lifetimes of plants representing around 10 per cent of the global fleet, nuclear plants in advanced economies could shrink by a third by 2030, the report said. Advanced economies have nearly 70 per cent of global nuclear capacity -- but the problem is the fleet is aging. Investment has stalled and the latest new projects have run far over budget and behind schedule, the report said.

Engineers at MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have designed a heat engine with no moving parts. It converts heat to electricity with over 40% efficiency -- making it more efficient than steam turbines, the industrial standard. MIT Technology Review reports: The invention is a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell, similar to a solar panel's photovoltaic cells, that passively captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source. It can generate electricity from sources that reach 1,900 to 2,400C -- too hot for turbines, with their moving parts. The previous record efficiency for a TPV cell was 32%, but the team improved this performance by using materials that are able to convert higher-temperature, higher-energy photons. The researchers plan to incorporate the TPV cells into a grid-scale thermal battery. The system would absorb excess energy from renewable sources such as the sun and store that energy in heavily insulated banks of hot graphite. Cells would convert the heat into electricity and dispatch it to a power grid when needed.

The researchers have now successfully demonstrated the main parts of the system in small-scale experiments; the experimental TPV cells are about a centimeter square. They are working to integrate the parts to demonstrate a fully operational system. From there, they hope to scale up the system to replace fossil-fuel plants on the power grid. Coauthor Asegun Henry, a professor of mechanical engineering, envisions TPV cells about 10,000 feet square and operating in climate-controlled warehouses to draw power from huge banks of stored solar energy.

Major League Baseball plans to introduce robot umpires in the 2024 season, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN this week. The Verge reports: He framed the change as a way to speed up games, but anyone who's watched baseball the last few years will tell you that a machine would almost certainly call balls and strikes better than the humans do. There are two ways the "Automated Ball-Strike System," which is the technical term for these robot umpires, might be implemented. One is the fully automated version, in which the AI-powered system calls every pitch a ball or a strike and relays the call to the umpire. Or the MLB could decide to use the AI as a review system, like VAR in soccer or the Hawk-Eye system used in professional tennis: each side gets a certain number of challenges, which are then adjudicated by the automated system.

Samsung Electronics said Thursday it has kicked off mass production of 3-nanometer chips, becoming the first company to do so globally, as it aims to beat Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC, the world's most advanced foundry chipmaker. TechCrunch reports: Samsung said it's using gate-all-around (GAA) transistor architecture, which allows these first-generation 3-nm chips to have 16% smaller surface area, 45% reduction in power usage and 23% performance improvement compared with current 5-nm chips. The South Korean company also said in a statement that the second generation of the 3-nm process would allow 50% lower power consumption. The company is currently producing the first generation of 3-nm chips and plans to start the second generation of the 3-nm process production in 2023, a spokesperson at Samsung Electronics told TechCrunch.

Samsung has been competing with Apple chipmaking partner TSMC, which also said in June that it would begin mass production of a 3-nm chip process to volume production in the second half of 2022. The Taiwanese company plans production of 2-nm chips by 2025. (The smaller number of nanometers, which are hard to develop, the more advanced chips, according to industry sources.) The spokesperson explained that smaller nodes allow more transistors to be placed on a given area, which enables the chip to be more advanced and more power-efficient. [...] The South Korean tech giant will produce the advanced 3-nm chips at its Hwaseong semiconductor production lines and its third chip plant in Pyeongtaek, the world's largest semiconductor facility.

Everyone's favorite versatile microcontroller maker, Raspberry Pi, just unveiled a handful of new, budget-minded products. The company is building on the success of its $4 Pico board, which has thus far moved just under two million units since its January 2021 launch. From a report: The new Pico W is launching today for $6 -- the "W" (and additional $2) brings 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity to the system. The $5 Pico H adds a pre-populated header for interfacing with other systems; the Pico WH ($7) gets you both. The first two are available right now, while WH is shipping at some point in August. As the company notes, its boards have found a lot of success beyond their initial hobbyist and educational focus, as companies have begun to intregrate the controllers directly into their products.

Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel has launched a public consultation on a proposal to make USB-C chargers mandatory for all smartphones sold in the country. The Verge reports: It's the latest example of lawmakers and regulators turning to USB-C as a common charging standard for phones. The EU passed a law on the matter earlier this month, making USB-C mandatory for a range of electronic gadgets (including smartphones) by the end of 2024, and in the US some Democrat politicians are pushing for similar legislation. "Aware of the aforementioned movements in the international market, Anatel's technical area evaluated the topic and presented a proposal with a similar approach for application in the Brazilian market," said Anatel in a blog post (English translation via Google Translate).

In documents supporting the public consultation, Anatel said the advantages for making USB-C mandatory were primarily reducing e-waste and increasing convenience for customers. Disadvantages included higher costs to enforce the regulation and the possibility the law would discourage companies from developing new, better standards. Anatel says its public consultation will run until August 26th.

schwit1 shares a report from The Truth About Cars: Ford Motor Co. will be suspending end-of-lease buyout options for customers driving all-electric vehicles, provided they took possession of the model after June 15, 2022. Those who nabbed their Mach-E beforehand will still have the option of purchasing the automobile once their lease ends. However, there are some states that won't be abiding by the updated rules until the end of the year, not that it matters when customers are almost guaranteed to have to wait at least that long on a reserved vehicle.

The change, made earlier in the month, cruised under our radar until a reader asked for our take over the weekend. Ford could be wanting to capitalize on exceptionally high used vehicle prices, ensuring that more vehicles make it back into rotation. The broader industry has likewise been talking about abandoning traditional ownership to transition the auto market into being more service-oriented where manufacturers ultimately retain ownership of all relevant assets. But it may not be that simple as this being another step in the business sector's larger plan to maximize profitability by discouraging private vehicle ownership.

[...] While leasing customers will not be able to buy their EV, Ford Credit will allow them to renew an expiring contract in exchange for a brand-new model. Amazingly, the manufacturer is trying to frame this as environmentally responsible. But it smells like planned obsolescence and desperation from where I'm sitting. Ford knows that electrics require far less labor to produce. By also retaining/recycling the most-expensive component (the battery) it can effectively maximize profitability on a three or four-year turnaround. For now, the updated leasing scheme is limited exclusively to all-electric products (e.g. Ford Lightning or Mach-E "Mustang") sold in 37 individual states. But the long wait times for new EVs and Ford's desire to expand the plan through the rest of the year effectively means it'll be national by the time most people take ownership.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, we reviewed the MNT Reform, which attempts to bring the dream of entirely open source hardware to an audience that doesn't want to design and build a laptop totally from scratch. Now, MNT is bringing its open-hardware ethos to a second PC, a 7-inch "Pocket Reform" laptop that recalls the design of old clamshell Pocket PCs, just like the big Reform references the design of chunky '90s ThinkPads.

The Pocket Reform borrows many of the big Reform laptop's design impulses, including a low-profile mechanical keyboard and trackball-based pointing device and a chunky, retro-throwback design. The device includes a 7-inch 1080p screen, a pair of USB-C ports (one of which is used for charging), a microSD slot for storage expansion, and a micro HDMI port for connecting to a display when you're at your desk. [...] The version of the Pocket Reform in the announcement isn't ready to launch yet, and MNT says it represents "near-final specs and design." For users interested in the Pocket Reform's imminent early beta program, there's a newsletter sign-up link at the bottom of the announcement. One of the main complaints Ars noted about the big Reform was the "miserably slow ARM processor," which will be included in the Pocket Reform.

With that said, MNT has addressed other complaints about the big Reform by "adding reinforced metal side panels to cover the ports and a redesigned battery system that won't let the batteries fully discharge if the laptop is left unplugged."

Arm is announcing its new flagship Immortalis GPU today, its first to include hardware-based ray tracing on mobile. As PCs and the latest Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles are all gradually moving toward impressive ray-traced visuals, Immortalis-G715 is designed to be the Arm's first GPU to deliver the same on Android phones and tablets. From a report: Built on top of Mali, a GPU that's used by the likes of MediaTek and Samsung, Immortalis is designed with 10-16 cores in mind and promises a boost of 15 percent over the previous generation premium Mali GPUs. Arm sees Immortalis as the start of a transition to ray tracing on mobile following its success with the 8 billion Mali GPUs that have shipped to date.

"The challenge is that Ray Tracing techniques can use significant power, energy, and area across the mobile system-on-a-chip (SoC)," explains Andy Craigen, director of product management at Arm. "However, Ray Tracing on Immortalis-G715 only uses 4 percent of the shader core area, while delivering more than 300 percent performance improvements through the hardware acceleration."

It's not clear if a 3x speedup over software-based ray tracing will be enough to tempt game developers, but when Nvidia introduced hardware accelerated ray tracing in its RTX 2080, it advertised a 2x-3x boost at the time. "It's the right performance point for now to get this technology into the market," says Arm's Paul Williamson, adding that it may also come in handy in augmented reality applications where RT could be used to match virtual lighting to the real-world environment around you. Arm is already delivering software-based ray tracing in last year's Mali-G710, but the promise of hardware support means we will start to see flagship smartphones with this chip at the beginning of 2023. Samsung also announced its Exynos 2200 chip with hardware-based ray tracing earlier this year, so manufacturers are getting ready for the games to arrive.