Long-time Slashdot reader BoredStiff writes: An energy Sankey diagram [where the width of arrows is proportional to flow rates] was published today by the University of Chicago, and shows the history of the American energy system in chart form, from 1800 to 2019.
The Atlantic explains: It is the first attempt to put so much information about U.S. energy history in one place. This particular Sankey diagram shows the inputs and outputs for the U.S. energy system, measured in watts per capita. The left side of the chart shows where energy is coming from (coal, natural gas, or petroleum) and the right side shows what it's being used for (transportation, agriculture, or home lighting and heating)...

[I]t has a lot to teach us about how the energy system got to be the way it is today — and how it might change, and be made to change, in the future... The half century from 1800 to 1850 saw the country devour biomass, most of it in the form of firewood and animal feed. In the 1870s, biomass gave way to the first fossil fuels: coal and, to a lesser extent, petroleum... By the 1910s, coal was dominant.... In the 1920s, it began to fade from the economy, replaced by natural gas, electricity, and — in the transportation sector — petroleum (in the form of gasoline). This was the age of cars and electrified Sun Belt suburbs — and it lasted 50 years, until the energy crisis of the 1970s arrived and capped energy use. Since 1973, per capita energy use hasn't increased.

In recent years, you can see natural gas driving out coal from the electricity sector. It was getting a handle on that change, actually, that led the project's leader to start working on it in the first place. "The changes that are happening in the electricity sector now — changes that are as large as any energy transition we've seen — are difficult to grasp... without animating the data," Elisabeth Moyer, an atmospheric-chemistry professor at the University of Chicago who created the project, told me...

Emily Grubert, an engineering professor at Georgia Tech, noted that nearly all of the transitions depicted were accidental or the result of market forces. It's possible that the transition to zero-carbon energy could be faster, she said, because it will be intentional.

Hyundai Motor Group agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics in a deal that values the mobile robot firm at $1.1 billion. From a report: Hyundai Motor, along with some associated companies and Chairman Euisun Chung, will acquire an 80% interest in the U.S. robotics company from SoftBank Group, leaving the Japanese firm with a 20% share, the companies said in a statement Friday. The deal was first reported by Bloomberg News in November. South Korean conglomerate Hyundai Motor Group has been beefing up its research in robotics as it expands further into electric and autonomous vehicles. Carmaker Hyundai Motor plans to spend over 60 trillion won ($55 billion) in the next five years in these areas to become one of the world's leading auto manufacturers. The broader empire is also exploring practical uses for industrial robots. "The combination of the highly complementary technologies of Hyundai Motor Group and Boston Dynamics, and the continued partnership of SoftBank, will propel development and commercialization of advanced robots," the companies said, helping to create a "robotics value chain ranging from robot component manufacturing to smart logistics solutions."

Joel Hruska, writing at ExtremeTech: It's not just a question of whether top-end hardware is available, but whether midrange and last-gen hardware is selling at reasonable prices. If you want to go AMD, be aware that Ryzen 5000 CPUs are hard to find and the 6800 and 6800 XT are vanishingly rare. The upper-range Ryzen 3000 CPUs available on Amazon and Newegg are also selling for well above their prices six months ago. If you want to build an Intel system, the situation is a little different. A number of the 9th and 10th-gen chips are actually priced at MSRP and not too hard to find. The Core i7-9700K has fallen to $269, for example, and it's still one of Intel's fastest gaming CPUs. At that price, paired with a Z370 motherboard, you could build a gaming-focused system, so long as you don't actually need a new high-end GPU. The Core i7-10700K is $359, which isn't quite as competitive, but it squares off reasonably well against chips like the 3700X at $325. Amazon and Newegg both report the 3600X selling for more, at $400 and $345, respectively.

But even if these prices are appealing, the current GPU market makes building a gaming system much above lower-midrange to midrange a non-starter. Radeon 6000 GPUs and RTX 3000 GPUs are both almost impossible to find, and the older, slower, and less feature-rich cards that you can buy are almost all selling for more today than they were six months ago. Not every GPU has been kicked into the stratosphere, but between the cards you can't buy and the cards you shouldn't buy, there's a limited number of deals currently on the market. Your best bet is to set up price alerts on specific SKUs you are watching with the vendor in question. There is some limited good news, though: DRAM and SSDs are both still reasonably priced. DRAM and SSD prices are both expected to decline 10-15 percent through Q4 2020 compared with the previous quarter, and there are good deals to be had on both. [...] Power supply prices look reasonable, too, and motherboard availability looks solid. If you don't need to buy a GPU right now and you're willing to or prefer to use Intel, there's a more reasonable case to be made for building a system. But if you need a high-end GPU and/or want a high-end Ryzen chip to go with it, you may be better off shopping prebuilt systems or waiting a few more months.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Germany, France, Spain and ten other EU countries have joined forces to invest in processors and semiconductor technologies, key to internet-connected devices and data processing, in a push to catch up with the United States and Asia. Europe's share of the 440-billion-euro ($533 billion) global semiconductor market is around 10%, with the EU currently relying on chips made abroad. The 13 countries said they would work together to bolster Europe's electronics and embedded systems value chain. The group will reach out to companies to form industrial alliances for research and investment into designing and making processors and look into funding for such projects. It will also come up with a European-wide scheme known as an Important Project of Common European Interest which allows for funding under looser EU state aid rules. The group will seek to set up common standards and certification for electronics. The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia.

Right after the Apple event in October, Samsung mocked the company for not including the power adapter in the iPhone 12 box and also removing it from the older models. Now, as some rumors have predicted, the Galaxy S21's documentation suggests that it will also not come with a charger included in the box. 9to5Mac reports: As reported by Brazilian website Tecnoblog, the new Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and Galaxy S21 Ultra have just been approved by ANATEL in Brazil, which is the equivalent agency to the FCC in the United States. The new devices have the codenames SM-G991B/DS, SM-G996B/DS, and SM-G998B/DS, respectively. While the documentation filed at ANATEL doesn't reveal much detail about upcoming Galaxy smartphones, it does reveal a noteworthy change in the lineup of Samsung's phones for the next year. ANATEL says that all three new Galaxy S21 models will not have a charger included in the box. Headphones will not be included either.

France will build a new, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to replace its Charles de Gaulle carrier by 2038, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday. The Associated Press reports: Macron framed the decision to use nuclear reactors to propel the future warship as part of France's climate strategy, stressing its lower emissions compared to diesel fuel. Speaking at a nuclear facility in the Burgundy town of Le Creusot, he called France's nuclear weapons and atomic energy industry "the cornerstone of our strategic autonomy," and said the nuclear sector plays a role in France's "status as a great power." One of his advisers noted that having an aircraft carrier also helps France project its global influence. Only a few countries in the world maintain the huge, costly vessels.

The new French aircraft carrier will be about 70,000 tons and 300 meters long, roughly 1.5 times the size of the Charles de Gaulle, which has been deployed for international military operations in Iraq and Syria in recent years, according to French presidential advisers. Its catapults will be electro-magnetic, and American-made, and the ship will be designed to accommodate next-generation warplanes and serve until around 2080, the advisers said. They didn't provide a price tag but French media estimate it will cost around 7 billion euros ($8.5 billion).

Toyota announced today that they will be unveiling a new all-electric SUV in the coming months. Electrek reports: The automaker, which has been seen as a lagger when it comes to all-electric vehicles, says that it's their 'first step' for battery-electric vehicles. Toyota has yet to launch an all-electric vehicle outside of China. Toyota announced a new midsize electric SUV today: "Toyota announced today that it will preview a brand-new model for its European Battery Electric line-up -- a mid-sized battery-electric SUV based on the forthcoming the e-TNGA platform."

For now, they are only showing the silhouette (pictured above), but the automaker says that more details are coming in the next few months. The un-named preview model will be based on Toyota's new e-TNGA platform. Thanks to its clever design the new platform is both highly versatile and easily adaptable for a range of product types. They unveiled this image with the announcement -- showing a dual motor all-wheel-drive powertrain and modular battery pack. The automaker confirmed that the vehicle is already being readied for production.

More than a week after Black Friday, Apple's announced its AirPods Max over-ear headphones for $549. It's available for preorder now, and will ship Dec. 15. From a report: Apple said its AirPods Max are designed with similar features to its $249 in-ear AirPods Pro, but in an over-ear design. As a result, it offers many of the same features as its AirPods cousins, including simple setup and connections, active noise cancellation, transparency mode to pipe sound from the outside world into your ears along with whatever you're listening to, and "spatial" simulated surround-sound audio. It also comes in five colors, including silver, green and pink. "With AirPods Max, we are bringing that magical AirPods experience to a stunning over-ear design with high-fidelity audio," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement Tuesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric-car companies are suddenly worth half of the total market capitalization of the world's 10 most valuable automakers. That's because money managers sized up the convergence of government policies and people's preferences combating climate change and made alternative energy their biggest bet. Much was achieved by Tesla Inc., the Palo Alto maker of the S, X, Y and 3 model vehicles, giving it a market capitalization of $539 billion, or more than Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., Germany's Volkswagen AG and Detroit's General Motors Co. combined. Tesla was barely 26% of Toyota's value at this point last year. None of the industry's Top 10 exclusively manufactured EVs in 2015; this year the list included Shanghai-based Nio Inc. and Guangzhou-based XPeng Inc., EV upstarts in the world's largest market.

Tesla and its Chinese competitors accounted for only 8% of the value of the Top 10 in 2019 -- still a huge leap from zero percent in 2016. The three EV makers reported annual sales of $30.5 billion, or about 3% of total sales for the 10 largest companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Commentators and short sellers, who profit when a security's price declines, predict that the companies' shares will plummet before long because the companies' values are far out of proportion to their more modest profits and revenues. Since its initial public offering in June 2010, Tesla revenue increased 241 times as revenue for the rest of the industry rose 19%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tesla shares appreciated 170 times when the comparable figure was three times for global peers. None of which persuades numerous Tesla detractors, who insist the company will fail as soon as the legacy automakers determine that EVs are profitable. That moment arrives this month when Tesla joins the S&P 500 as its record-breaking largest new member.

In China, where EV incentives are part of the government's goal to become carbon neutral by 2060, Nio's annual revenues have tripled since its September 2018 IPO. Nio shares surged 665% during the same period as global peers were gaining 47%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. XPeng's 2020 third-quarter revenue is 4.4 times the amount during the same period a year ago. After the company's August IPO, the shares rose 269% when global peers gained 29%. These unprecedented valuations come at a point when the fossil fuel industry is reporting record losses, including Exxon Mobil Corp.'s $20 billion write-down this month. The market for zero-emission electric vehicles, meanwhile, is poised to become explosive, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2019, 2.1 million cars, or 2.5% of the cars sold worldwide were electric. By 2030, 26 million EVs will be sold, or 28% of total sales worldwide, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. By 2040, 54 million EVs will be sold, or 58% of the global market, the analysts predict.

LG has partnered with Swedish manufacturer Assa Abloy Entrance Systems to develop automatic sliding doors with built-in transparent OLED displays, the company announced today. The doors will be aimed at businesses, and LG says they'll be able to greet customers, communicate with employees, or show ads. The Verge reports: LG has been showing off its transparent displays for a little while now, and it unveiled a range of transparent signage early last year. Now, we're seeing the panels used in the real world. In August, LG announced that its displays were being used in the windows of subway carriages in Beijing and Shenzhen in China, and OLED-Info reports that both Panasonic and Xiaomi's transparent OLED TVs use LG panels.

LG's announcement doesn't give much of an indication of when these high-end doors might become available for businesses. But considering the transparent OLED technology has started being deployed, they can't be too far away from decorating the world's most decadent shopping centers.

"The building did not stand out. Unremarkable industrial building, which was built in hundreds of Soviet cities," explains a web site called Russian Urban Exploration.

Hackaday describes what happened next: It's probably a dream most of us share, to stumble upon a dusty hall full of fascinating abandoned tech frozen in time as though its operators walked away one day and simply never returned. It's something documented by some Russian urban explorers who found an unremarkable office building with one of its floors frozen sometime around the transition from Soviet Union to Russian Federation. In it they found their abandoned tech, in the form of a cross-section of Soviet-era computers from the 1970s onwards...

As you might expect, in a manner it mirrors the development of civilian computing on the capitalist side of the Iron Curtain over a similar period, starting with minicomputers the size of several large refrigerators and ending with desktop microcomputers. The minis seem to all be Soviet clones of contemporary DEC machines. with some parts of them even looking vaguely familiar. The oldest is a Saratov-2, a PDP/8 clone which we're told is rare enough for no examples to have been believed to have survived until this discovery. We then see a succession of PDP/11 clones each of which becomes ever smaller with advancements in semiconductor integration, starting with the fridge-sized units and eventually ending up with desktop versions that resemble 1980s PCs.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst calls Qualcomm "a little too unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs" Qualcomm executives brushed off a question about Apple's new M1-based Macs during a question-and-answer session at the company's Snapdragon Summit today, where Qualcomm announced a new flagship smartphone chipset but no upgrades to its year-old chips for PCs... In general, reviews of Qualcomm-powered laptops such as the Microsoft Surface Pro X have celebrated the devices' long battery life, but lamented problems with third-party apps that were originally coded for Intel processors. That stands in stark contrast to Apple's new M1-based Macs, which don't seem to be slowed down as badly by older software...

"It's a great validation of what we've been doing for the past few years and [Qualcomm's product line] is just going to get stronger and stronger as we broaden our scope," said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm SVP for mobile. Katouzian made sure to subtly call out ways in which Qualcomm's always-connected PCs are superior to Apple's newest Macs. The Macs lack 4G connectivity and still have poor-quality, 720p front-facing cameras... Katouzian also pointed out that (presumably unlike Apple) Qualcomm addresses "many tiers...and many price points" with its 7c, 8c, and 8cx laptop chipsets, letting Windows laptop makers drive prices well below the MacBook Air's $999 list price.

The core problem with Qualcomm's always-connected PC strategy is one that Qualcomm itself can't fix. While Qualcomm could, and probably will, soon announce a laptop chip that's based on the new Snapdragon 888 and has a level of raw power closer to Apple's M1, it's really down to Microsoft, as well as peripheral and app makers to solve the platform incompatibilities that have frustrated PC reviewers.
Hot Hardware cites Microsoft's promises of changes come in future updates to Windows 10, arguing that "with the arrival of x64 emulation and a growing library of native Arm64 apps, Windows 10 on Arm is going to be an even more powerful platform." From a performance perspective, while running Windows 10 on Arm, these [Snapdragon 8cx] chips may currently be at a disadvantage to the Apple M1, but some day in the not so distant future that might not be the case. We have no doubt that Qualcomm is likely working on a new Windows PC-centric SoC that is based on Snapdragon 888 or similar architecture. Qualcomm has promised a 25 percent uplift in CPU and a 35% lift in GPU performance over the Snapdragon 865, with the Snapdragon 888, which already offers a big boost over the previous gen Snapdragon 855/8cx. So, Qualcomm has the potential to put up a strong showing against the Apple M1, whenever its next-generation Snapdragon PC chip launches.
That may be, but John Gruber at Daring Fireball argues that currently "M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux." Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Well, that just doesn't happen, your instincts tell you. One company, even a company like Apple, doesn't just embarrass the entire rest of a highly-competitive longstanding industry. But just because something hasn't happened — or hasn't happened in a very long while — doesn't mean it can't happen. And in this case, it just happened... M1 Macs completely upend what we can and should expect from PCs. It's a breakthrough along the lines of the iPhone itself in 2007.

China successfully powered up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities. Phys.Org reports: The HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China's largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device, and scientists hope that the device can potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source. It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, according to the People's Daily -- approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun. Located in southwestern Sichuan province and completed late last year, the reactor is often called an "artificial sun" on account of the enormous heat and power it produces. They plan to use the device in collaboration with scientists working on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor -- the world's largest nuclear fusion research project based in France, which is expected to be completed in 2025.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Ars Technica: Micro Magic Inc. -- a small electronic design firm in Sunnyvale, California -- has produced a prototype CPU that is several times more efficient than world-leading competitors, while retaining reasonable raw performance. EE Times reported on the company's new prototype CPU, which appears to be the fastest RISC-V CPU in the world. Micro Magic adviser Andy Huang claimed the CPU could produce 13,000 CoreMarks (more on that later) at 5GHz and 1.1V while also putting out 11,000 CoreMarks at 4.25GHz -- the latter all while consuming only 200mW. Huang demonstrated the CPU -- running on an Odroid board -- to EE Times at 4.327GHz/0.8V and 5.19GHz/1.1V. Later the same week, Micro Magic announced the same CPU could produce over 8,000 CoreMarks at 3GHz while consuming only 69mW of power.

Part of the difficulty in evaluating Micro Magic's claim for its new CPU lies in figuring out just what a CoreMark is and how many of them are needed to make a fast CPU. It's a deliberately simplified CPU benchmarking tool released by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, intended to be as platform-neutral and simple to build and use as possible. CoreMark focuses solely on the core pipeline functions of a CPU, including basic read/write, integer, and control operations. This specifically avoids most effects of system differences in memory, I/O, and so forth. [...] With that said, it's worth pointing out that -- if we take Micro Magic's numbers for granted -- they're already beating the performance of some solid mobile phone CPUs. Even at its efficiency-first 3GHz clockrate, the Micro Magic CPU outperformed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The Snapdragon 820 isn't world-class anymore, but it's no slouch, either -- it was the processor in the U.S. version of Samsung's Galaxy S7.

What if your digital assistant could battle rap? That may sound far-fetched, but Gil Weinberg, a music technologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has adapted a musical robot called Shimon to compose lyrics and perform in real time. From a report: That means it can engage in rap "conversations" with humans, and maybe even help them compose their own lyrics. Shimon, which was intentionally designed to sound machinelike (listen here), is meant to be a one-of-a-kind musical collaborator -- or an inhuman rap-battle opponent. Computer-generated music dates back to the 1950s, when early computers used algorithms to compose melodies. Modern robots can use machine learning to ad-lib on instruments including the flute and drums. One such machine was an earlier version of Shimon, which could play the marimba and sing. The recently updated robot looks the same; it still consists of a ball-shaped "head," with saucy movable eyebrows above visor-covered eyes, perched at the end of a mechanical arm. But now Weinberg claims Shimon is the first improvising robot to foray into rap, with its distinct stylistic features that pose unique programming challenges.

The crowning glory of rap lies in the lyrics. On top of semantic content, the words need to adhere to an aesthetically pleasing beat and rhythm, all while delivering multiple layers of poetic complexity. In a recent paper, published in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Creativity 2020, Weinberg's research team outlines the technical advances that brought a rapping Shimon to life. When Shimon battle raps, software converts its human opponent's spoken lyrics into text. The robot's system identifies keywords from this, and generates new lyrics based on several custom data sets of words that Shimon has been trained on (using deep-learning models). These data sets can come from any text: the work of Lil Wayne, JAY-Z or other rappers; lyrics from other genres; or even nonmusical literary works. Imagine how Shakespeare or Jane Austen might sound if they rapped; Shimon could simulate that for you.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: For the first time, a quantum computer made from photons -- particles of light -- has outperformed even the fastest classical supercomputers. Physicists led by Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Shanghai performed a technique called Gaussian boson sampling with their quantum computer, named Jiuzhang. The result, reported in the journal Science, was 76 detected photons -- far above and beyond the previous record of five detected photons and the capabilities of classical supercomputers.

Unlike a traditional computer built from silicon processors, Jiuzhangis an elaborate tabletop setup of lasers, mirrors, prisms and photon detectors. It is not a universal computer that could one day send e-mails or store files, but it does demonstrate the potential of quantum computing. Last year, Google captured headlines when its quantum computer Sycamore took roughly three minutes to do what would take a supercomputer three days (or 10,000 years, depending on your estimation method). In their paper, the USTC team estimates that it would take the Sunway TaihuLight, the third most powerful supercomputer in the world, a staggering 2.5 billion years to perform the same calculation as Jiuzhang. [...] This latest demonstration of quantum computing's potential from the USTC group is critical because it differs dramatically from Google's approach. Sycamore uses superconducting loops of metal to form qubits; in Jiuzhang, the photons themselves are the qubits. Independent corroboration that quantum computing principles can lead to primacy even on totally different hardware "gives us confidence that in the long term, eventually, useful quantum simulators and a fault-tolerant quantum computer will become feasible," Lu says.

... [T]he USTC setup is dauntingly complicated. Jiuzhang begins with a laser that is split so it strikes 25 crystals made of potassium titanyl phosphate. After each crystal is hit, it reliably spits out two photons in opposite directions. The photons are then sent through 100 inputs, where they race through a track made of 300 prisms and 75 mirrors. Finally, the photons land in 100 slots where they are detected. Averaging over 200 seconds of runs, the USTC group detected about 43 photons per run. But in one run, they observed 76 photons -- more than enough to justify their quantum primacy claim. It is difficult to estimate just how much time would be needed for a supercomputer to solve a distribution with 76 detected photons -- in large part because it is not exactly feasible to spend 2.5 billion years running a supercomputer to directly check it. Instead, the researchers extrapolate from the time it takes to classically calculate for smaller numbers of detected photons. At best, solving for 50 photons, the researchers claim, would take a supercomputer two days, which is far slower than the 200-second run time of Jiuzhang.

sciencehabit writes: The U.K. government today invited communities around the country to volunteer a site for a prototype fusion reactor, which would be the first -- it is hoped -- to put electricity into the grid. The project, called Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), began last year with an initial 222 million pounds over 5 years to develop a design. The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, the government agency overseeing the effort, says construction could begin as soon as 2032, with operations by 2040.

Still, spherical tokamaks also come with drawbacks. The hot dense plasma in a smaller device is more punishing on materials, so components may need to be replaced more often. And STEP is unlikely to be capable of breeding tritium, one of two hydrogen isotopes that fuels the reactor. Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12 years and global supplies are low. A working reactor will have to breed its own tritium by surrounding the vessel with patches of lithium that produce tritium when bombarded by neutrons from the fusion reaction.

schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog, adding: "And CR decides to predict poor reliability on EVs it hasn't even evaluated yet." From the report: The latest auto survey from Consumer Reports shows several newer electric cars to be beset with problems, contradicting the conventional wisdom that EVs with their simpler powertrains should have fewer issues than gasoline- or diesel-powered cars. The CR reader survey harvested data on some 329,000 vehicles and specifically calls out the Audi E-Tron, the Kia Niro EV, and the Tesla Model Y.

The E-Tron is dinged for "drive-system electrical failures along with other power-equipment issues." The Niro EV's problems reportedly included electric-motor bearing failure. The Tesla suffers a panoply of build-quality issues include misaligned body panels and poor paint quality. Both Audi and Kia claimed to be aware of the issues. For now, though, CR has removed the E-Tron and the Niro EV from its Recommended list (which is based on vehicle test results as well as reliability). The Model Y was not on the Recommended list. CR notes that some older, less-complicated EVs did well in the reliability survey, including the Chevrolet Bolt and the Nissan Leaf. More controversially, as a result of this latest survey's findings, Consumer Reports has decided to downgrade the predicted reliability of several new EVs that were not even included in the survey, including the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Mercedes-Benz EQC, and the Porsche Taycan.

"Often, it's not the EV tech that's problematic," says Anita Lam, CR's associate director of automotive data integration. "It's all the other new technology that could show up on any car -- new infotainment systems, more sophisticated power equipment and gadgets -- that often gets put on new EVs to feed a perception that they're supposed to be luxurious and high-tech."

Joe2020 writes: Famous developer Hector Martin who put Linux on the PS4 now wants to port Linux to the new Apple M1, and he wants to do it with the help of crowdfunding by making it his full-time job. One can find his official pledge for support here. "Since these devices are brand new and bespoke silicon, porting Linux to run on them is a huge undertaking. Well beyond a hobby project, it is a full-time job," the developer explains.

"The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job.

Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon is rolling out cheap new tools that will allow factories everywhere to monitor their workers and machines, as the tech giant looks to boost its presence in the industrial sector. Launched by Amazon's cloud arm AWS, the new machine-learning-based services include hardware to monitor the health of heavy machinery and computer vision capable of detecting whether workers are complying with social distancing. Amazon said it had created a two-inch, low-cost sensor -- Monitron -- that can be attached to equipment to monitor abnormal vibrations or temperatures and predict future faults. AWS Panorama, meanwhile, is a service that uses computer vision to analyze footage gathered by cameras within facilities, automatically detecting safety and compliance issues such as workers not wearing PPE or vehicles being driven in unauthorized areas. Amazon said it had installed 1,000 Monitron sensors at its fulfillment centers near the German city of Monchengladbach, where they are used to monitor conveyor belts handling packages.

If successful, said analyst Brent Thill from Jefferies, the move would help Amazon cement its position as the dominant player in cloud computing, in the face of growing competition from Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud as well as a prolonged run of slowed segment growth. "This idea of predictive analytics can go beyond a factory floor," Mr. Thill said. "It can go into a car, on to a bridge, or on to an oil rig. It can cross fertilize a lot of different industries." The new services, announced on Tuesday during the company's annual cloud computing conference, represent a step up in the tech giant's efforts to gather and crunch real-world data in areas it currently feels are underserved. "If you look at manufacturing and industrial generally, it's a space that has seen some innovations, but there's a lot of pieces that haven't been digitized and modernized," said Matt Garman, AWS's head of sales and marketing, speaking to the FT.