"The PineNote is a tablet with a 10.1 inch grayscale E Ink display and pen support," reports Liliputing.

"It's designed to be a hackable, Linux-friendly device and it's one of the latest products from the makers of the PinePhone and PineBook line of devices." First introduced last summer, the PineNote began shipping to developers in limited quantities in December. Now it's available for anyone to purchase for $399 — no invitation required. But it's probably only a good idea to buy one if you're a developer or very early adopter because there's very little software available for the PineNote so far. At this point, Pine64 is shipping the PineNote without an operating system installed. It will have only a bootloader, allowing developers and enthusiasts to load their own software... [D]evelopers have already made some progress in getting builds Alpine and Debian Linux to run on the E Ink slate, and according to Pine64, there are ports for NixOS and other operating systems on the way.

There's already a partially working display driver, but it's still a work in progress. The goal is to allow developers to port mainline Linux operating systems and applications to play well with a monochrome display with a slow refresh rate. Developers have also figured out how to enable support PineNote's touchscreen, audio playback, and USB port, making it possible to use USB keyboards, storage devices, and other peripherals.

The new German government is proposing a bold new initiative to dramatically increase onshore wind power in the country by 2030. "If successful, the plan would add up to 10 gigawatts of new onshore wind capacity every year for the rest of the decade," reports CleanTechnica. "In total, 2% of Germany's land area will be set aside for wind energy generation. [T]he German government also plans to increase its offshore wind target to 30 GW by 2030." From the report: During a press conference, [the nation's new Green Minister for Economics and Climate, Robert Habeck] made it clear that wind energy, particularly onshore wind, will remain the most important source of electricity in Germany and is the key to further emission reductions, according to WindEurope. "The Energiewende is roaring again. Germany wants a huge expansion of onshore wind. And the Government fully understands that that requires faster permitting of new wind farms -- and they intend to deliver this ASAP with a dedicated new 'Onshore Wind Law.' Today's announcements mark the comeback of German leadership on renewables -- fantastisch!" says WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson.

Habeck intends to remove restraints on onshore wind development caused by concerns about radar installations for civilian and military aviation. He estimates the government plan could free up 4 to 5 GW of new wind projects currently blocked by aviation radar, and an additional 4 GW currently blocked by the military. Support for renewable energies will be paid from the state budget, reducing the burden on low income households and small businesses. The package is also said to define the energy transition as a 'matter of public interest' in order to prioritize wind energy projects over other forms of land use -- an important precondition to streamlining the permit process and finding new sites for wind energy projects.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: New satellite images show that Tesla significantly expanded its rooftop solar array at Gigafactory Nevada as it aims for it to become the world's biggest. In 2017, Tesla announced plans for a giant 70 MW rooftop array at Gigafactory Nevada, which would be the largest in the world by a wide margin. The project has been lagging for a long time. Tesla finally started construction of the solar array in 2018 and expanded on it throughout the next few years, but it has never grown near the size Tesla has been talking about. Last summer, the automaker said that it had deployed 3.2 MW at the site. At the time, Tesla also changed its goal to deploy 24 MW instead of 70 MW on the rooftop of the factory, which itself is now smaller than originally planned. The company said that it believes this would still be enough to be the largest rooftop deployment of solar power. To be fair, there are much bigger solar farms than 24 MW out there, but Tesla is specifically talking about rooftop solar arrays and not ground-mounted installations.

Now a few months later, it looks like Tesla has made a lot of progress with several more MW of solar power deployed at Gigafactory Nevada based on new satellite images. The image on the left is from September 2021 and the one on the right is from yesterday, January 12 (via Building Tesla). It's hard to determine exactly how much capacity Tesla deployed, but it looks like a significant increase over the last few months. As for the factory itself, it has been expanding in size for a long time. The factory has been producing a lot of battery cells, packs, and drivetrains for Tesla, but the giant structure has been stuck at ~30% completion for the past four years.

The PC market experienced its first big growth in a decade during 2020, when the pandemic began to force people to work and learn from home. Market research firms Gartner and IDC are now reporting that the worldwide PC market has grown again throughout 2021, as demand for traditional PCs continued during a global chip shortage. From a report: Nearly 340 million PCs were shipped in 2021, according to Gartner. That's a nearly 10 percent increase over the already unprecedented numbers seen in 2020. IDC puts the figure at 348.8 million, up nearly 15 percent. "2021 has truly been a return to form for the PC," said Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC. "Consumer need for PCs in emerging markets and global commercial demand remained strong during the quarter with supply being a gating factor." Ongoing supply issues relating to a global chip shortage mean the PC market "could have been even larger than it was in 2021," according to Tom Mainelli, an executive at IDC. Gartner reports that 2021 saw the highest shipment volume of PCs since 2013, after a 2017 milestone of five years of PC decline.

The US government announced Wednesday it will auction more than 480,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey to build wind farms as part of its campaign to supply renewable energy to more than 10 million homes by 2030. Tech Xplore reports: Offshore wind developers will bid February 23 on six areas in the New York Bight -- the most lots ever offered in a single auction -- which could generate between 5.6 to seven gigawatts of energy, enough to power two million homes, the Interior Department said. The auction will be the first under President Joe Biden, whose administration aims to build as many as to seven major offshore wind farms and review plans for at least 16 others along the US coasts. The effort is part of Washington's fight against climate change, and the Biden administration says the wind investment would cut 78 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and create tens of thousands of jobs.

According to Electrek, the number of Gogoro electric scooter battery swap stations in Taiwan will soon eclipse the country's total number of gas stations. From the report: Gogoro's battery swap stations look something like a bright green and white vending machine. Users of Gogoro's batteries (which include scooters of many different brands thanks to its partnerships), simply roll up to a station and swap out their depleted battery for a freshly charged unit. A subscription service makes it a quick and easy process that takes just a few seconds. At the end of 2021, Gogoro counted a total of 2,215 GoStations nationwide, according to the Taipei Times. The number of gas stations stood barely higher at 2,487. At Gogoro's current rate of expansion, 2022 very well may be the year that the number of GoStations surpasses the number of gas stations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A team of researchers at France's Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems created an anti-malware system centered around a Raspberry Pi that scans devices for electromagnetic waves. As reported by Tom's Hardware, the security device uses an oscilloscope (Picoscope 6407) and H-Field probe connected to a Raspberry Pi 2B to pick up abnormalities in specific electromagnetic waves emitted by computers that are under attack, a technique the researchers say is used to "obtain precise knowledge about malware type and identity."

The detection system then relies on Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) to determine whether the data gathered indicates the presence of a threat. Using this technique, researchers claims they could record 100,000 measurement traces from IoT devices infected by genuine malware samples, and predicted three generic and one benign malware class with an accuracy as high as 99.82%. Best of all, no software is needed and the device you're scanning doesn't need to be manipulated in any way. As such, bad actors won't be successful with their attempts to conceal malicious code from malware detection software using obfuscation techniques. "Our method does not require any modification on the target device. Thus, it can be deployed independently from the resources available without any overhead. Moreover, our approach has the advantage that it can hardly be detected and evaded by the malware authors," researchers wrote in the paper.

Scientists from Lancaster University say that we might be close to combining SSDs and RAM into one component. "UltraRAM," as it's being called, is described as a memory technology which "combines the non-volatility of a data storage memory, like flash, with the speed, energy-efficiency, and endurance of a working memory, like DRAM." The researchers detailed the breakthrough in a recently published paper. Tom's Hardware reports: The fundamental science behind UltraRAM is that it uses the unique properties of compound semiconductors, commonly used in photonic devices such as LEDs, lasers, and infrared detectors can now be mass-produced on silicon. The researchers claim that the latest incarnation on silicon outperforms the technology as tested on Gallium Arsenide semiconductor wafers. Some extrapolated numbers for UltraRAM are that it will offer "data storage times of at least 1,000 years," and its fast switching speed and program-erase cycling endurance is "one hundred to one thousand times better than flash." Add these qualities to the DRAM-like speed, energy efficiency, and endurance, and this novel memory type sounds hard for tech companies to ignore.

If you read between the lines above, you can see that UltraRAM is envisioned to break the divide between RAM and storage. So, in theory, you could use it as a one-shot solution to fill these currently separate requirements. In a PC system, that would mean you would get a chunk of UltraRAM, say 2TB, and that would cover both your RAM and storage needs. The shift, if it lives up to its potential, would be a great way to push forward with the popular trend towards in-memory processing. After all, your storage would be your memory -- with UltraRAM; it is the same silicon.

PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) has released the much-awaited final (1.0) specification for PCI Express 6.0. From a report: The next generation of the ubiquitous bus is once again doubling the data rate of a PCIe lane, bringing it to 8GB/second in each direction -- and far, far higher for multi-lane configurations. With the final version of the specification now sorted and approved, the group expects the first commercial hardware to hit the market in 12-18 months, which in practice means it should start showing up in servers in 2023. First announced in the summer of 2019, PCI Express 6.0 is, as the name implies, the immediate follow-up to the current-generation PCIe 5.0 specification. Having made it their goal to keep doubling PCIe bandwidth roughly every 3 years, the PCI-SIG almost immediately set about work on PCIe 6.0 once the 5.0 specification was completed, looking at ways to once again double the bandwidth of PCIe. The product of those development efforts is the new PCIe 6.0 spec, and while the group has missed their original goal of a late 2021 release by mere weeks, today they are announcing that the specification has been finalized and is being released to the group's members. As always, the creation of an even faster version of PCIe technology has been driven by the insatiable bandwidth needs of the industry. The amount of data being moved by graphics cards, accelerators, network cards, SSDs, and other PCIe devices only continues to increase, and thus so must bus speeds to keep these devices fed. As with past versions of the standard, the immediate demand for the faster specification comes from server operators, whom are already regularly using large amounts of high-speed hardware. But in due time the technology should filter down to consumer devices (i.e. PCs) as well.

ArsTechnica: So here's a crazy story. Samsung was supposed to have a big SoC launch on Tuesday, but that launch did not happen. Samsung didn't cancel or delay the event. The January 11 date was announced, but when the time for the event came, nothing happened! Samsung pulled a no-call no-show for a major product launch. [...] The Exynos 2200 was (?) shaping up to be a major launch for Samsung. It is, after all, the first Samsung SoC with the headline-grabbing feature of having an AMD GPU. The two companies announced this deal a year ago, and we've been giddy about it ever since. The Exynos 2200 is (or was) going to debut in the Galaxy S22. That launch event is currently scheduled for February 8, assuming Samsung doesn't ghost everyone again.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years, printers have been encumbered with digital rights management systems that prevent users from buying third-party ink and toner cartridges. Printer companies have claimed that their chip-enabled cartridges can "enhance the quality and performance" of their equipment, provide the "best consumer experience," and "protect [the printers] from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges." Left unsaid is the fact that requiring first-party cartridges also ensures a recurring revenue stream. It's an old business model -- Gillette sold its razor handles cheaply to sell more razors, for example -- and it's one that printer companies have enthusiastically embraced. Lexmark, HP, Canon, Brother, and others all effectively require users to purchase first-party ink and toner. To enforce the use of first-party cartridges, manufacturers typically embed chips inside the consumables for the printers to "authenticate." But when chips are in short supply, like today, manufacturers can find themselves in a bind. So Canon is now telling German customers how to defeat its printers' warnings about third-party cartridges.

"Due to the worldwide continuing shortage of semiconductor components, Canon is currently facing challenges in procuring certain electronic components that are used in our consumables for our multifunction printers (MFP)," a Canon support website says in German. "In order to ensure a continuous and reliable supply of consumables, we have decided to supply consumables without a semiconductor component until the normal supply takes place again." [...] The software on these printers comes with a relatively simple way to defeat the chip checks. Depending on the model, when an error message occurs after inserting toner, users can press either "I Agree," "Close," or "OK." When users press that button, the world does not end. Rather, Canon says users may find that their toner cartridge doesn't give them a low-toner warning before running empty. "Although there are no negative effects on print quality when consumables are used without electronic components, certain additional functions, such as the detection of the toner level, may be impaired," Canon's support site says.

Long-time Slashdot reader jimminy_cricket shares a new article from the technology site Inverse exploring the origin of blinking cursors.

They trace the invention to the 1960s and electronics engineer Charles Kiesling, a naval veteran of the Korean War who "spent his immediate post-war years on a new challenge: the exploding computing age." Still decades away from personal computers — let alone portable ones — Kiesling was joining the ranks of engineers tinkering with room-sized computers like the IBM 650 or the aging ENIAC. He joined Sperry Rand, now Unisys, in 1955, and helped develop the kind of computer guts that casual users rarely think about. This includes innards like logic circuitry, which enable your computer to make complex conditional decisions like "or," "and," or "if only" instead of simply "yes" or "no". One of these seemingly innocuous advancements was a 1967 patent filing Kiesling made for a blinking cursor...."

According to a post on a computer science message board from a user purporting to be Kiesling's son, the inspiration for this invention was simply utility. "I remember him telling me the reason behind the blinking cursor, and it was simple," Kiesling's son writes. "He said there was nothing on the screen to let you know where the cursor was in the first place. So he wrote up the code for it so he would know where he was ready to type on the Cathode Ray Tube."

The blinking, it turns out, is simply a way to catch the coders' attention and stand apart from a sea of text.
The article credits Apple with popularizing blinking cursors to the masses. And it also remembers a fun story about Steve Jobs (shared by Thomas Haigh, a professor of technology history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): While he was in support of the blinking cursor itself, Haigh says Steve Jobs was famously against controlling it using cursor keys. Jobs attempted — and failed — to remove these keys from the original Mac in an effort to force users into using a mouse instead. In an interaction with biographer Walter Isaacson years later, he even pried them off with his car keys before signing his autograph on the keyboard.

There's a problem with the lithium (Li) ion batteries used in electric cars and for energy storage. The BBC reports that the most widely-used methods for battery recycling won't work nearly as well, since Li batteries are "larger, heavier, much more complex and even dangerous if taken apart wrong."

Slashdot reader quonset shared their report: In your average battery recycling plant, battery parts are shredded down into a powder, and then that powder is either melted (pyrometallurgy) or dissolved in acid (hydrometallurgy). But Li batteries are made up of lots of different parts that could explode if they're not disassembled carefully. And even when Li batteries are broken down this way, the products aren't easy to reuse. "The current method of simply shredding everything and trying to purify a complex mixture results in expensive processes with low value products," says Andrew Abbott, a physical chemist at the University of Leicester. As a result, it costs more to recycle them than to mine more lithium to make new ones. Also, since large scale, cheap ways to recycle Li batteries are lagging behind, only about 5% of Li batteries are recycled globally, meaning the majority are simply going to waste....
Fortunately, the article points out that several labs are working on developing more efficient and eco-friendly ways to recycle Li batteries [D]isassembling Li batteries is currently being done predominantly by hand in lab settings, which will need to change if direct recycling is to compete with more traditional recycling methods. "In the future, there will need to be more technology in disassembly," says Abbott. "If a battery is assembled using robots, it is logical that it needs to be disassembled in the same way." Abbott's team at the Faraday Institution in the UK is investigating the robotic disassembly of Li batteries as part of the ReLib Project, which specialises in the recycling and reuse of Li batteries.

The team has also found a way to achieve direct recycling of the anode and cathode using an ultrasonic probe, "like what the dentist uses to clean your teeth," he explains. "It focuses ultrasound on a surface which creates tiny bubbles that implode and blast the coating off the surface." This process avoids having to shred the battery parts, which can make recovering them exceedingly difficult. According to Abbott's team's research, this ultrasonic recycling method can process 100 times more material over the same period than the more traditional hydrometallurgy method. He says it can also be done for less than half the cost of creating a new battery from virgin material...
Another idea: replacing lithium-ion batteries altogether with something more eco-friendly: Jodie Lutkenhaus, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, has been working on a battery that is made of organic substances that can degrade on command. "Many batteries today are not recycled because of the associated energy and labour cost," says Lutkenhaus. "Batteries that degrade on command may simplify or lower the barrier to recycling. Eventually, these degradation products could be reconstituted back into a fresh new battery, closing the materials life-cycle loop."

It's a fair argument considering that, even when a Li battery is dismantled and its parts are refurbished, there will still be some parts that can't be saved and become waste. A degradable battery like the one Lutkenhaus' team is working on could be a more sustainable power source.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's largest coal port has announced it will now be powered entirely by renewable energy. The announcement from Port of Newcastle comes as coal power generation in Australia's national electricity market fell to its lowest level in the final three months of 2021. Though the port continues to export an average of 165Mt of coal a year, the move is part of a plan to decarbonize the business by 2040, and to increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030. It has signed a deal with Iberdrola, which operates the Bodangora windfarm near Dubbo in inland New South Wales, for a retail power purchase agreement that provides the port with large scale generation certificates linked to the windfarm.

Chief executive officer Craig Carmody said the Port of Newcastle's title as the largest coal port in the world "isn't as wonderful as it used to be" and that change was necessary to avoid what happened in Newcastle and the steel industry closed. "I would prefer to be doing this now while we have control over our destiny, while we have revenue coming in, than in a crisis situation where our revenue has collapsed and no one will lend us money," Carmody said. "We get 84 cents a tonne for coal shipped through our port. We get between $6 and $8 for every other product. You can see where I'd rather have my money." As part of its transition the port has converted 97% of its vehicles to electric and engaged in other infrastructure projects to decarbonize its operations. "It's a good thing they're looking at it, but 50% income diversification by 2030, it's still a decade away," said Andrew Stock, climate councillor and retired energy executive who was a founding board member of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. "That's still a lot of coal that's going to go through that port particularly when the IEA and the IPCC have made it clear we have to move. And 50% by 2030 is still 50% coal income."

He went on to say that governments should encourage a "rapid advance in the uptake of renewables" similar to what has occurred in South Australia, which is powered by 100% renewable energy on some days.

Kosovo's government on Tuesday introduced a ban on cryptocurrency mining in an attempt to curb electricity consumption as the country faces the worst energy crisis in a decade due to production outages. Reuters reports: "All law enforcement agencies will stop the production of this activity in cooperation with other relevant institutions that will identify the locations where there is cryptocurrency production," Economy and Energy Minister Artane Rizvanolli said in a statement. Faced with coal-fired power plant outages and high import prices authorities were forced last month to introduce power cuts.

European gas prices soared more than 30% on Tuesday after low supplies from Russia reignited concerns about an energy crunch as colder weather approaches. In December, Kosovo declared a state of emergency for 60 days which will allow the government to allocate more money to energy imports, introduce more power cuts and harsher measures. The country of 1.8 million people is now importing more than 40% of its consumed energy with high demand during the winter when people use electricity mainly for heating. Around 90% percent of energy production in Kosovo is from lignite, a soft coal that produces toxic pollution when burnt.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Chevy Silverado, one of the top-selling pickup trucks in the US, is going electric. General Motors CEO Mary Barra unveiled Chevy's answer to the Ford F-150 Lightning during a virtual presentation at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. GM hopes that the plug-in pickup's familiar nameplate will help it lure Silverado owners and other truck fans to the world of zero tailpipe emissions. The Silverado EV is the second electric truck for GM, succeeding the GMC Hummer EV, which went into production last year. But when it comes out in late 2023, the electric Silverado will be one of the flagship vehicles in the company's much larger $35 billion push into electric vehicles, as well as the first electric truck for the automaker's Chevy brand.

At launch, the Silverado EV will be available in two configurations: an RST First Edition and a fleet-oriented Work Truck (WT) model. Both models will get more than 400 miles of range on a full charge (though that number still needs to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency). The base model work truck will start at $39,900, while the fully loaded RST First Edition, named because it will be first off the assembly line in spring 2023, will sell for the suggested price of $105,000. Chevy says that after production ramps up, various versions of the truck will be available for $50,000-$80,000. The automaker is already taking reservations.

Like most electric vehicles, the electric Silverado will be incredibly quick, able to sprint from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4.5 seconds. That's quicker than the RWD single-motor Cybertruck and about on par with the Ford F-150 Lightning and the tri-motor Cybertruck. (Tesla says the quad-motor truck will be able to hit 60 mph in 2.9 seconds.) The RST version sounds like it could easily knock the wind out of you, with 485kW of total power (664 horsepower) and 780 pound-feet of torque while in the Silverado's Wide Open Watts Mode. The RST First Edition of the truck will also feature a host of additional features, including: Four-wheel steering; Automatic Adaptive Air Suspension, enabling the vehicle to be raised or lowered 2 inches; Multi-Flex Midgate that expands the truck's cargo capability while maintaining seating for a rear row passenger Available Multi-Flex Tailgate with power release; 17-inch LCD infotainment screen paired with a neighboring 11-inch-diagonal reconfigurable driver instrument display and a multi-color driver head-up display with a field of view over 14 inches; and Trailering-capable Super Cruise, GM's hands-free driver assistance technology, allowing drivers to travel hands-free on more than 200,000 miles of compatible roads across the US and Canada. GM doesn't have its own charging network, so Silverado EV owners "will need to rely on a patchwork of third-party EV charging companies for most of their needs," notes The Verge. For onboard power, the Silverado bests the F-150 Lightning "putting out an incredible 10.2kW for all sorts of charging needs, including powering an entire home or charging another electric vehicle."

The vehicle will be built in Detroit at GM's Factory Zero EV plant.

Further reading:
Car and Driver: As Chevy Silverado EV Charges after Ford F-150 Lightning, How They Compare
The Drive: Here's What Comes in the $40K 2024 Chevy Silverado EV Work Truck
Engadget: Watch GM's Silverado EV Reveal In 10 Minutes

FangVT writes: Ars Techinca reports on GAF Energy's new solar shingles which are designed to save on installation costs. They are not only designed to look similar to existing asphalt shingles but to be installed in much the same way, including being nailed in place. The system has moved the wiring to the top, so as to simplify inspections and repairs. "Because each one of our panels is 45 Watts and only 10 volts, we have access to a whole host of electronic components that don't have to be able to withstand 300 Watts, 50 volts," the company says. "That allows us to be more efficient in the electricity generated from those panels." And in what they say is a first, UL has certified the shingles both as solar panels and as roofing materials. The company also says they come with a 25 year warrant and will be offering a more comprehensive warranty that will also include guaranteed power output.

They wouldn't provide a hard number on the price, but "a homeowner won't pay any more for a GAF solar roof than they would if they were to get a new roof and have someone put solar on it," said GAF Energy CEO Martin DeBono. "That's our benchmark. We're half the cost of a Tesla solar roof in any given market right now."

Apple's mixed reality headset that's set to launch in 2022 will be equipped with three displays, according to a research report shared today by display analyst Ross Young. MacRumors reports: The display configuration will include two micro OLED displays along with one AMOLED panel, with Sony set to supply the micro OLED displays that Apple will use. The micro OLED displays will be the main displays for the headset, but it's not yet known just what the AMOLED display will be used for. Modern VR headsets don't use AMOLED technology because the pixel density is too low, so it's possible that Apple is going to add it for low-resolution peripheral vision.

Sony recently showed off a 4K display with 4000 pixels per inch designed for use with VR headsets, and the report suggests that it's possible Sony developed this display specifically for Apple. If Apple is indeed using this Sony technology, an assumed array of 4000 x 4000 pixels indicates the display for the headset will measure in at 1.4 inches diagonally. This kind of advanced display configuration will come at a "high price," and Young suggests that the headset will cost several thousand dollars, which is in line with previous reports that have indicated a price of around $3,000.

ASML Holding has reported a fire at its factory in Berlin, Germany. No one was hurt and the fire was put out on Sunday night, but the incident could exacerbate the current global computer chip shortage. Here's what ASML said about the incident: The fire was extinguished during the night and fortunately no persons were injured during this incident. At this point it is too early to make any statement on the damage or whether the incident will have any impact on the output plan for this year. It will take a few days to conduct a thorough investigation and make a full assessment. As soon as we have such assessment, we will provide an update. The Register reports: ASML is the world's largest supplier of photolithography systems, the machines used to manufacture integrated circuits. Its units -- which cost tens of millions of dollars -- use lasers to etch components into blank silicon wafers, to within an accuracy of nanometers. Berliner Glas, where the fire was extinguished, was acquired by ASML in 2020, and says that over "1,200 employees" work at the firm, now known as ASML Berlin, developing and producing "several key components for ASML lithography systems, including wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks."

These are key components for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems. EUV, in particular, which helps ASML's semiconductor-making clients print chips in much finer detail and at a lower cost, is seen as one of the drivers behind the firm's predictions of a $1 trillion semiconductor industry by 2030. The Dutch firm's customers include TSMC and Intel.

Berlin's fire department said last night that an automatic cleaning system had caught fire across an area of 200m^2 on the second floor of a three-storey "industrial" building in Waldkraiburger Strasse in Berlin's Britz district in the Neukolln area. Resources deployed at the site included a drone that could access the roof. The Berlin company's stated production area is 31,780m^2. A spokesperson confirmed to The Register that a part of the Berlin factory was closed -- but said other parts of the factory were still operating. The firm's stock price dipped 2 per cent on the news.

Electric cars make up less than 5% of new U.S. vehicle sales today — but automakers are betting on increasing demand. Chevy even plans to stop producing gas-powered cars altogether over the next 15 years, according to the Washington Post.

But they also ponder the implications of this year's recall of the Chevy Bolt: The crisis involving the Chevrolet Bolt was a painful reminder for the auto industry that despite treating the electric vehicle era as essentially inevitable — a technical fait accompli — significant obstacles to manufacturing the cars, and especially their batteries, continue to threaten that future. "It's a terrible thing that has happened," Tim Grewe, GM's general director for electrification strategy and cell engineering, said in an interview in September...

The recall of the Bolt covered all of the roughly 141,000 units GM had ever built. The company identified the issue as dual defects that led battery materials to make contact with one another and the components to combust spontaneously. It's a danger that comes directly from the core challenge of creating electric-vehicle batteries: the competition to pack more and more energy into them... Even as automakers seek to phase out gasoline engines en masse, high-voltage car batteries remain in their early stages of mass production. Many manufacturers are experimenting with new technologies and battery chemistries. While they do so, they are discovering defects — some of which can prove catastrophic.... Electric-car-battery explosions can release massive amounts of energy — and the fires can burn for hours, stretching longer and registering hotter than fires in cars with internal-combustion engines...

LG, which has made batteries for the Bolt's entire run, is reimbursing GM for nearly $2 billion of costs associated with the recall.... GM has been hit hardest by fire concerns — but Audi and Hyundai also have recalled EVs over fire risks.