UnknowingFool writes: Intel released more information about their next generation CPUs, codenamed Comet Lake. Overall, CPUs will get more cores and threads and slight speed boosts. Price wise, Intel is cutting prices to be more competitive with AMD's Rzyen processors. Some of the downsides include requiring new socket (thus new MBs), LGA 1200 and lack of PCIE 4.0 compatibility. No specific benchmarks were released, however Intel claims to have the fastest gaming CPUs. "[T]he top Comet Lake chip is the same price as the top Coffee Lake at $488, and the cheapest Core i3 is $122," reports PC Gamer. They expect the release date to be sometime in May, though no official date has been confirmed.

VESA has announced that USB 4 will fully support the massive bandwidth available for the DisplayPort 2.0 standard, including support for 8K 60Hz HDR or even 16K 60Hz monitors. Engadget reports: Since USB 4 works at 40Gbps and DisplayPort 2.0 supports 80Gbps speeds, how will this work? USB 4 can actually send and receive at 40Gbps at the same time, so VESA took advantage of that with a new spec called DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0. Since DisplayPort is primarily used for video, which only sends data one way from your PC to a monitor, the Alt Mode 2.0 standard remaps USB-C's data pins to work in one direction only -- giving you double the speeds.

According to Anandtech, Alt Mode 2.0 will support regular USB 4 cables. At the same time, monitors won't need to have USB 4 controllers, which should simplify display designs. Since it also supports the Thunderbolt 3 standard, USB 4 will become a universal connection standard for both smartphones and PCs, supporting things like "docking, gaming, AR/VR HMDs, and professional HDR displays," VESA said.

"Toshiba has just published a full list of all the consumer HDDs in their lineup that use SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology," writes Slashdot reader williamyf. "This comes after the whole submarine consumer SMR HDDs fiasco, and fresh on the heels of Western Digital publishing a full list of all their consumer HDDs using SMR. With this, Seagate is the only HDD vendor which has not yet published a full list of their consumer HDDs using SMR." Blocks and Files reports: Toshiba uses SMR technology -- previously undocumented -- in several desktop drives and in some video surveillance HDDs: P300 6TB, P300 4TB, DT02 6TB, DT02 4TB, DT02-V 6TB and DT02-V 4TB. Certain notebook PC, game consoles, and external consumer drives also use SMR: L200 2TB, L200 1TB, MQ04 2TB and MQ04 1TB. The company does not use SMR in the N300, a NAS drive intended for the consumer market -- unlike Western Digital which uses SMR in some low-end WD Red NAS devices.

Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln have canceled an all-electric SUV that was going to be powered by technology provided by EV startup Rivian, the companies told Automotive News on Tuesday. The Verge reports: Lincoln says it is still working closely with Rivian, including an "alternative vehicle" that will also be based on Rivian's electric vehicle skateboard platform. "Given the current environment, Lincoln and Rivian have decided not to pursue the development of a fully electric vehicle based on Rivian's skateboard platform. Our strategic commitment to Lincoln, Rivian and electrification remains unchanged and Lincoln's future plans will include an all-electric vehicle," a spokesperson from Lincoln told The Verge in a statement.

Lincoln declined to say what specifically about the pandemic led to the cancellation. "This was a decision that was mutually made by Lincoln and Rivian given the rapidly changing environment and after a review of product plans," the spokesperson said. "As we moved through the development cycle, we determined that it would be better to pivot from the Rivian's skateboard platform and focus our development efforts on Lincoln's own fully-electric vehicle." This is a pretty big blow, considering Ford invested $500 million in Rivian last year, just two months after Amazon led a $700 million investment in the Michigan-based startup.

CNBC reports that Ford "lost $632 million during the first quarter and warned investors that it expects an adjusted pretax loss of $5 billion during the second quarter as the company grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic that's shuttered factories and devastated sales."

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is delaying the production ramp-up of its 2020 flagship smartphones by about a month, "as the coronavirus pandemic weakens global consumer demand and disrupts manufacturing across Asia, the heart of the consumer electronics supply chain." From the report: Apple is forging ahead with plans to release four new iPhone models later this year, people familiar with its plans say. The phones, some with 5G connectivity, will vary in price and come in three sizes -- 5.4 inches, two measuring 6.1 inches, and one at 6.7 inches, all featuring organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screens, the people said. Apple's annual product refresh fuels the majority of iPhone sales for an entire year, making new phones the linchpin of a business segment that accounts for more than half of the company's total revenue.

Apple usually unveils new iPhone models in mid-September and begins selling them before the end of the month. To do so, it usually ramps up mass-production in the early summer, building up inventory around August. This year, while Apple would still be building some of the new phones in the July-to-September period, the mass-production ramp-up will slide back by about a month, the people said. Apple is slashing the number of handsets that it plans to make in the second half of this year by as much as 20%, one of the people said. It isn't clear whether the slashed amount for 2020 would be pushed back into 2021 for manufacturing.

News emerged last week that WD, Seagate and Toshiba are all shipping hard drives using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), a slower form of HDD technology that can result in reduced performance in some types of workloads, but without disclosing that critical bit of information in marketing materials or specification sheets. The backlash has been swift, and now WD is striking a conciliatory tone with its customers in an update to its blog. The company also divulged that it is also shipping SMR technology in some of its WD Blue and WD Black hard drives for desktop PCs and laptops. Tom's Hardware reports: The new disclosure comes on the heels of WD's blog post yesterday that outlined its stance on using SMR drives. The company contends that SMR technology is adequate for the applications the drives are designed for, but that is certainly an open matter of debate with many users claiming the drives cause problems in RAID arrays. The issues purportedly stem from the slow random write speeds, which do cause a measurable reduction in performance, and background activities that are purportedly responsible for the drives dropping from RAID arrays. In either case, The WD blog advised users they should step up to more expensive models designed for heavier workloads if they have more demanding needs.

Today the company updated its blog with a more conciliatory tone, and also disclosed all of its drive models that are shipping with SMR tech. In addition to the WD Red NAS drives that the company previously admitted used SMR tech, WD is also shipping the tech into its 2.5"and 3.5" WD Blue and 2.5" WD Black lineups. Both models are designed for desktop PCs and laptops, with the former coming as a value drive while the latter is designed for high-performance users. WD acknowledged the recent brouhaha surrounding the fact it was shipping drives without disclosing they use the slower recording technology, stating: "The past week has been eventful, to say the least. As a team, it was important that we listened carefully and understood your feedback about our WD Red NAS drives, specifically how we communicated which recording technologies are used. Your concerns were heard loud and clear..." Importantly, the blog states, "...Thank you for letting us know how we can do better. We will update our marketing materials, as well as provide more information about SMR technology, including benchmarks and ideal use cases." WD also said that they will share further data in the future, including benchmarks that might prove otherwise.

watha2020 writes: Spot, the four-legged robot made famous by its YouTube dance video, is being tested as a remote triage system at Boston's Brigham Women's Hospital. A Spot robot carrying an iPad allows doctors to interview possibly infected patients at a safe distance. [Spot is also carrying a pouch near the robot's "tail," which allows it to deliver small items such as bottled water to infected patients, without the need to send in a nurse. The report adds that an upgraded model will add cameras that can measure a patient's respiration rate and body temperature, with no need to make physical contact.] An anonymous Slashdot reader also shares news that Boston Dynamics today open-sourced its health care robotics toolkit on GitHub. "The company hopes that existing Boston Dynamics customers and other mobile robot providers can use the toolkit, which includes documentation and CAD files of enclosures and mounts, to help health care workers and essential personnel and ultimately save lives," reports VentureBeat. "The mobile robot provider outlined four use cases for its toolkit: telemedicine (which it has already deployed), remote vitals inspection, disinfection, and delivery."

Babu Mohan writes via Android Central: In an editorial published on the company's website, Yongin Park, who heads the Sensor Business Team at Samsung's LSI division, has revealed that his team is working on a camera sensor that will be able to capture more detail than the human eye. As noted in the article, the human eye is said to match a resolution of around 500 megapixels. Samsung, however, is working on bringing a 600MP camera sensor to the market, which could be used in various fields such as smartphones, autonomous vehicles, drones, and IoT. As you would expect, however, it will take a long time for the company to actually launch a camera sensor with such a high resolution.

A 600MP sensor would be massive in size, making it nearly impossible to fit inside a modern smartphone. In order to shrink the sensor, Samsung will have to reduce the pixel size, which would require the use of pixel binning tech to ensure the smaller pixels don't result in dull pictures. Samsung's 108MP ISOCELL Bright HM1 sensor uses its proprietary 'Nonacell technology,' which boasts a 3x3 pixel structure. This allows nine 0.8um pixels to function as one large 2.4um pixel to deliver impressive low-light performance.

On its way to being net-zero carbon neutral by 2050, General Motors announced today that some of its southeast Michigan facilities will be fully powered by renewable energy by 2023. CNET reports: The carmaker said on Monday it will strengthen a partnership with DTE Energy to buy another 500,000 megawatt-hours worth of energy in the next few years. That's on top of 300,000 mWh already purchased, making a total of 800,000 mWh, or enough clean energy to take C02 from 63 million gallons of gasoline burned out of the air.

Facilities first targeted for fully renewable energy include GM's downtown Detroit-based Renaissance Center headquarters and two assembly plants: Orion and Detroit-Hamtramck. The Warren Technical Center is also on the shortlist for 100% green energy in fewer than three years. Clean energy powering Orion and Detroit-Hamtramck suits the plants, too. Orion builds the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Detroit-Hamtramck will build the GMC Hummer EV along with future electric cars. GM's investment will help fund two new solar parks DTE plans to build, which the company said will create 1,500 jobs during the construction period.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As many as a billion mobile phone owners around the world will be unable to use the smartphone-based system proposed by Apple and Google to track whether they have come into contact with people infected with the coronavirus, industry researchers estimate. The figure includes many poorer and older people -- who are also among the most vulnerable to COVID-19 -- demonstrating a "digital divide" within a system that the two tech firms have designed to reach the largest possible number of people while also protecting individuals' privacy.

The particular kind of Bluetooth "low energy" chips that are used to detect proximity between devices without running down the phone's battery are absent from a quarter of smartphones in active use globally today, according to analysts at Counterpoint Research. A further 1.5 billion people still use basic or "feature" phones that do not run iOS or Android at all. "In all, close to 2 billion [mobile users] will not be benefiting from this initiative globally," said Neil Shah, analyst at Counterpoint. "And most of these users with the incompatible devices hail from the lower-income segment or from the senior segment which actually are more vulnerable to the virus." Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, estimates that only around two-thirds of adults would have a compatible phone. "And that's the UK, which is an extremely advanced smartphone market," he said. "In India, you could have 60-70 percent of the population that is ruled out immediately."

The report adds: "Counterpoint Research is more optimistic, estimating that 88 percent compatibility in developed markets such as the US, UK, and Japan, while about half of people in India would own the necessary handset."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The Milton R. Young Station, close to the town of Center in North Dakota, is as unremarkable as coal-fired power plants come. But if its owner Minnkota Power Cooperative has its way, the plant could soon be famous the world over. The Grand Forks-based electric cooperative has launched Project Tundra, an initiative to build the largest power plant-based carbon capture facility in the world, with construction commencing as early as 2022. If Minnkota Power raises the US $1 billion the project requires, it plans to retrofit the station with technology the cooperative claims will capture more than 90 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the plant's larger generator, a 455-megawatt unit. The effect will be the equivalent of taking 600,000 gasoline-fueled cars off the road.

To sequester CO2 from the Young station, Project Tundra will make use of technology similar to that employed at the only two other existing carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities operating at power plants in the world -- Petra Nova in Texas and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. The CO2-removal process begins by passing the flue gas through a scrubber to remove impurities and lower its temperature. The gas then enters an absorber, which contains a liquid-based amine solution that binds to CO2. Heat is applied to release the gas from the amines and the extracted CO2 is then compressed. Project Tundra plans to pump the liquid CO2 into sandstone rocks that lie just over a mile beneath the nearby lignite coal mine, where it will be stored permanently.

"Storage vendors, including but reportedly not limited to Western Digital, have quietly begun shipping SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) disks in place of earlier CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) disks..." writes Ars Technica.

"In addition to higher capacities, SMR is associated with much lower random I/O performance than CMR disks offer."

Long-time Slashdot reader castrox shares their detailed report: Shingled Magnetic Recording is a technology that allows vendors to eke out higher storage densities, netting more TB capacity on the same number of platters — or fewer platters, for the same amount of TB. Until recently, the technology has only been seen in very large disks, which were typically clearly marked as "archival"...

Storage vendors appear to be getting much bolder about deploying the new technology into ever-smaller formats, presumably to save a bit on manufacturing costs... [S]everal users have reported that these disks cannot be successfully used in their NAS systems — despite the fact that the name of the actual product is WD Red NAS Hard Drive.
Citing a statement from Western Digital, the article concludes that "The writing on the wall here seems clear. Yes, Western Digital slid SMR drives into traditional, non-enterprise channels — and no, the company doesn't feel bad about it, and you shouldn't expect it to stop...

"Western Digital doesn't appear to be the only hard drive manufacturer doing this," they write, noting that the storage-news web site Blocksandfiles.com "has confirmed quiet, undocumented use of SMR in small retail drives from Seagate and Toshiba as well."

A new report from the American Wind Energy Association says wind is now the largest single source of electricity in Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports: According to the trade association's Wind Powers America 2019 Annual Report, Iowa is now generating more than 10,000 megawatts of wind energy, accounting for more than 40% of the state's electricity. Wind became the leading source of electricity in both Iowa and Kansas this year, making them the first states to reach that benchmark. Previously, coal-fired power generation had been Iowa's main source of electricity. Projects in Iowa added the second-most wind power capacity of any state in 2019, behind only Texas. The report also says Iowa is second in the nation in total wind industry jobs, with more than 9,000. The state's total economic investment in wind energy grew by $3 billion to reach $19 billion -- also second in the nation. Texas leads both categories.

MojoKid writes: Intel unveiled its NUC 9 Ghost Canyon platform back at CES earlier this year, but the company has just announced general availability and lifted the embargo on full product reviews. An array of NUC 9 systems are launching today, with the top-end Intel NUC9i9QNX featuring a Core i9-9980HK Comet Lake-H 8-core CPU. The NUC 9 is built around Intel's NUC Compute Element, which essentially places the CPU, chipset, IO, and cooler onto a removable add-in card in a chassis that measures only 9.37 x 8.5 x 3.78 (WxDxH) inches. The Intel NUC 9 Extreme is a different sort of animal than traditional small form factor PCs though, and the version of the system that was tested at HotHardware is quite powerful, thanks to the inclusion of 16GB of RAM, an Intel Optane 905P boot drive, a secondary Kingston SSD, and an ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 discrete GPU, though the NUC 9 does have integrated graphics as well. A barebones Intel NUC 9 Extreme (model NUC9i9QNX), without any components or accessories will sell for about $1,639, but fully configured like the one in the review will retail north of $2000. It's not cheap, but Intel's NUC 9 Extreme is a very compact, robust, reasonably quiet and capable little machine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Two dozen state attorneys general are asking the Trump administration to crack down on Defense Distributed's Defcad site for selling 3D-printed gun files. In a letter sent today, they urged the Justice Department and State Department to enforce rules against exporting weapons and making undetectable firearms. "If the federal government fails to act, these files will be distributed widely with potentially grave consequences for our national and domestic security," warns the letter. Attorneys general argue that Defcad is violating export control regulations and the Undetectable Firearms Act, which bans manufacturing, owning, and selling guns that don't trigger metal detectors. Anyone who downloads files could "automatically manufacture functional weapons that cannot be detected by a standard metal detector and, furthermore, are untraceable because they lack serial numbers," says the letter. "Continued dissemination of these files will increase the risk of terrorist attacks and gun violence across the United States." Defcad has well-established problems with ITAR, but the letter doesn't explain how it violates the Undetectable Firearms Act beyond asserting that files "enable the automatic manufacture of functional plastic weapons."

Advanced Micro Devices said it is adding three new 2nd-Gen AMD Epyc server processors that can deliver up to 50% lower cost of ownership than rival Intel Xeon processors. From a report: The chips are part of AMD's attempt to grab technology leadership away from Intel, which has long dominated the server chip market. AMD has had an advantage lately with its high-performance Zen 2 cores designed to handle database, high-performance computing, and hyper-converged infrastructure workloads, Dan McNamara, senior vice president at AMD's server business unit, said in a press briefing. The three new processors are the AMD Epyc 7F32 (with 8 computing cores), Epyc 7F52 (16 cores) and EPYC 7F72 (24 cores). They have up to 500MHz of additional base frequency and large amounts of cache memory. AMD said the design gives Epyc the world's highest per-core performance x86 server central-processing unit. The previous chips in the second generation of Epyc processors debuted in the third quarter of 2019. [...] The 7F32 is priced at $2,100, the 7F52 at $3,100, and the 7F72 at $2,450.

Google has made significant progress toward developing its own processor to power future versions of its Pixel smartphone as soon as next year -- and eventually Chromebooks as well, Axios reported Tuesday. From the report: The move could help Google better compete with Apple, which designs its own chips. It would be a blow to Qualcomm, which supplies processors for many current high-end phones, including the Pixel. The chip, code-named Whitechapel, was designed in cooperation with Samsung, whose state-of-the-art 5-nanometer technology would be used to manufacture the chips, according to a source familiar with Google's effort. Samsung also manufactures Apple's iPhone chips, as well as its own Exynos processors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Hydrogen is a very good carrier for this type of work," says Wei Wang, who is the chief scientist for stationary energy storage research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington. It's an efficient energy carrier, and can be easily stored in pressurized tanks. When needed, the gas can then be converted back into electrical energy via a fuel cell and fed into the grid. But water electrolyzers are expensive. They work under acidic conditions which require corrosion-resistant metal plates and catalysts made from precious metals such as titanium, platinum, and iridium. "Also, the oxygen electrode isn't very efficient," says Kathy Ayers, vice-president of R&D at Nel Hydrogen, an Oslo-based company that specializes in hydrogen production and storage. "You lose about 0.3 volts just from the fact that you're trying to convert water to oxygen or vice versa," she says. Splitting a water molecule requires 1.23 V of energy.

In a bid to overcome this problem, Nel Hydrogen and Wang's team at Pacific Northwest joined forces in 2016, after receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The solution they've come up with is a fuel cell that acts as both a battery and hydrogen generator. "We call it a redox-flow cell because it's a hybrid between a redox-flow battery and a water electrolyzer," explains Wang. A redox-flow battery, in essence a reversible fuel cell, is typically made up of a positive and negative electrolyte stored in two separate tanks. When the liquids are pumped into the battery cell stack situated between the tanks, a redox reaction occurs, and generates electricity at the battery's electrodes. Compared to normal flow batteries, the new redox-flow cell exhibited a charge capacity of up to one ampere per square centimeter, a ten-fold increase. "It was also able to withstand 'several hundred cycles' of charging, which has never been demonstrated before in hydrogen ion flow batteries," the report says.

"Elon Musk says Tesla's plan for 1 million robotaxi vehicles on the road by the end of the year is still on — pending regulatory approval," writes the electric car news site Electrek: At Tesla's 'Autonomy Day' event last year, Musk announced Tesla's plan to deploy 1 million 'Robotaxi' vehicles for a self-driving ride-sharing network by the end of 2020. It's an extension of Tesla's 'Full Self-driving Capability' plan to improve its Autopilot system in all its vehicles produced since 2016 — leading to those vehicles being capable of self-driving. Once that capability is available through an over-the-air software update, which Tesla aims to be by the end of 2020, Tesla anticipates that it will have over 1 million vehicles on the road with the hardware necessary to run the new software...

Today, Tesla's CEO says that he still believes in Tesla's ability to deliver on the functionality of the robotaxi fleet by the end of the year...

However, Tesla and Musk have been wrong about their Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability timeline before.
Electrek's skeptical writer predicts that instead Tesla won't have a robotaxi fleet until "around the end of 2021."

Saturday Musk also cited robotaxis as the reason that Tesla's Model 3 ships with a camera pointed inside offering a clear, wide-angle view of the car's interior -- to keep an eye on passengers -- though he also sees other applications, according to Engadget.

"Musk hinted it might help you record your 'caraoke' sessions, and the company recently applied for a patent on using the camera to recognize occupants and apply settings (such as seat position or climate controls) when they're inside. For now, though, the in-cabin camera is more a symbol of Tesla's lofty, as yet unfulfilled dreams of putting fully self-driving cars on the road."

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: Before the pandemic, automation had been gradually replacing human work in a range of jobs, from call centers to warehouses and grocery stores, as companies looked to cut labor costs and improve profit. But labor and robotics experts said social distancing directives, which are likely to continue in some form after the crisis subsides, could prompt more industries to accelerate their use of automation.

And long-simmering worries about job losses or a broad unease about having machines control vital aspects of daily life could dissipate as society sees the benefits of restructuring workplaces in ways that minimize close human contact. "Pre-pandemic, people might have thought we were automating too much," said Richard Pak, a professor at Clemson University who researches the psychological factors around automation. "This event is going to push people to think what more should be automated...." Brain Corp, a San Diego company that makes software used in automated floor cleaners, said retailers were using the cleaners 13% more than they were just two months ago. The "autonomous floor care robots" are doing about 8,000 hours of daily work "that otherwise would have been done by an essential worker," the company said. At supermarkets like Giant Eagle, robots are freeing up employees who previously spent time taking inventory to focus on disinfecting and sanitizing surfaces and processing deliveries to keep shelves stocked.

Retailers insist the robots are augmenting the work of employees, not replacing them. But as the panic buying ebbs and sales decline in the recession that is expected to follow, companies that reassigned workers during the crisis may no longer have a need for them.... Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies labor markets, said that with companies hurting for cash, the pressure to replace humans with machines becomes even more intense. "People become more expensive as companies' revenues decline," he said.

A new wave of automation could also mean that when companies start hiring again, they do so in smaller numbers. "This may be one of those situations when automation does substantially depress rehiring," Muro said. "You may see fewer workers when the recovery does come."
Even YouTube had said it's "temporarily" relying more heavily on machines to moderate its videos.

"This means automated systems will start removing some content without human review."