A U.K.-based company Engineered Arts has developed a humanoid robot that can display human-like expressions with ease. Interesting Engineering reports: In a short video released on YouTube, the company shows off its most advanced humanoid, dubbed Ameca, which is initially a platform for testing robotic technologies. As is seen in the video [...], the humanoid appears to have woken up in a robotic laboratory while an actual human is busy working in the background. The robot moves its arms, shows a flurry of expressions in a matter of seconds, and even expresses amazement at how its hands and fingers move fluidly before looking at the camera quite surprised. The teaser is a sufficient demonstration of what the robot can do when it comes to the upper half of the body.

Its lower half though is quite non-functional at the moment. For a humanoid robot, Ameca still can't walk, the Engineered Arts website says. Even though the company has carried out research on this, it hasn't transferred the learnings to the robot yet. [...] Engineered Arts uses a modular architecture for its building its robots. So, upgrades to both, software and hardware components can be made without having to purchase a new robot altogether. So, sooner or later, Ameca will walk too.

Ameca is powered by Engineered Arts' Tritium operating system that allows companies engaged in the development of robotics to test their technologies. Whether it is artificial intelligence or machine learning technology that companies or startups are developing, they can test and even demonstrate their tech in front of a live audience using Ameca. According to its website, Engineered Arts can even rent out Ameca for expos or live TV discussions.

Dozens of printers across the internet are printing out a manifesto that encourages workers to discuss their pay with coworkers, and pressure their employers. Motherboard reports: "ARE YOU BEING UNDERPAID?" one of the manifestos read, according to several screenshots posted on Reddit and Twitter. "You have a protected LEGAL RIGHT to discuss your pay with your coworkers. [...] POVERTY WAGES only exist because people are 'willing' to work for them." On Tuesday, a Reddit user wrote in a post that the manifesto was getting randomly printed at his job. "Which one of you is doing this because it's hilarious," the user wrote. "Me and my co-workers need answers."

Some people on Reddit have suggested that the messages are fake (i.e. printed by people with access to a receipt printer and posted for Reddit clout) or as part of a conspiracy to make it seem like the r/antiwork subreddit is doing something illegal. But Andrew Morris, the founder of GreyNoise, a cybersecurity firm that monitors the internet, told Motherboard that his firm has seen actual network traffic going to insecure receipt printers, and that it seems someone or multiple people are sending these printing jobs all over the internet indiscriminately, as if spraying or blasting them all over. Morris has a history of catching hackers exploiting insecure printers. "Someone is using a similar technique as 'mass scanning' to massively blast raw TCP data directly to printer services across the internet," Morris told Motherboard in an online chat. "Basically to every single device that has port TCP 9100 open and print a pre-written document that references /r/antiwork with some workers rights/counter capitalist messaging."

Whoever is doing this, Morris said, is doing it "in an intelligent way." "The person or people behind this are distributing the mass-print from 25 separate servers so blocking one IP isn't enough," he said. "A technical person is broadcasting print requests for a document containing workers rights messaging to all printers that are misconfigured to be exposed to the internet and we've confirmed that it is printing successfully in some number of places the exact number would be difficult to confirm but Shodan suggests that thousands of printers are exposed," he added, referring to Shodan, a tool that scans the internet for insecure computers, servers, and other devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Microsoft, one of the pioneers of DNA storage, is making some headway, working with the University of Washington's Molecular Information Systems Laboratory, or MISL. The company announced in a new research paper the first nanoscale DNA storage writer, which the research group expects to scale for a DNA write density of 25 x 10^6 sequences per square centimeter, or "three orders of magnitude" (1,000x) more tightly than before. What makes this particularly significant is that it's the first indication of achieving the minimum write speeds required for DNA storage.

Microsoft is one of the biggest players in cloud storage and is looking at DNA data storage to gain an advantage over the competition by using its unparalleled density, sustainability, and shelf life. DNA is said to have a density capable of storing one exabyte, or 1 billion gigabytes, per square inch -- an amount many magnitudes larger than what our current best storage method, Linear Type-Open (LTO) magnetic tape, can provide. What do these advantages mean in real-world terms? Well, the International Data Corporation predicts data storage demands will reach nine zettabytes by 2024. As Microsoft notes, only one zettabyte of storage would be used if Windows 11 were downloaded on 15 billion devices. Using current methods, that data would need to be stored on millions of tape cartridges. Cut the tape and use DNA, and nine zettabytes of information can be stored in an area as small as a refrigerator (some scientists say every movie ever released could fit in the footprint of a sugar cube). But perhaps a freezer would be a better analogy, because data stored on DNA can last for thousands of years whereas data loss occurs on tape with 30 years and even sooner on SSDs and HDDs.

Finding ways to increase write speeds addresses one of the two main problems with DNA storage (the other being cost). With the minimum write speed threshold within grasp, Microsoft is already pushing ahead with the next phase. "A natural next step is to embed digital logic in the chip to allow individual control of millions of electrode spots to write kilobytes per second of data in DNA, and we foresee the technology reaching arrays containing billions of electrodes capable of storing megabytes per second of data in DNA. This will bring DNA data storage performance and cost significantly closer to tape," Microsoft told TechRadar.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It has been another record year for renewable energy, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs for raw materials around the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). About 290GW of new renewable energy generation capacity, mostly in the form of wind turbines and solar panels, has been installed around the world this year, beating the previous record last year. On current trends, renewable energy generating capacity will exceed that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026.

New climate and energy policies in many countries around the world have driven the growth, with many governments setting out higher ambitions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before and at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last month. However, this level of growth is still only about half that required to meet net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. According to the IEA report, published on Wednesday, renewables will account for about 95% of the increase in global power-generation capacity from now to the end of 2026, with solar power alone providing about half of the increase.

Raw material prices have risen as the world has emerged from the Covid pandemic and on the back of the energy price rises around the world. These price increases have cancelled out some of the cost falls of recent years in the renewable sector. If they continue next year the cost of wind power will return to levels last seen in 2015, and two to three years of cost falls in solar power will be wiped out. Heymi Bahar, lead author of the report, said that commodity prices were not the main obstacles to growth, however. Wind and solar would still be cheaper than fossil fuels in most areas, he noted. Permitting was the main barrier to new wind energy projects around the world, and policy measures were needed to expand use of solar power for consumers and industry. "China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030," the report notes.

"India, the world's third-biggest emitter, also experienced strong growth in renewable energy capacity in the past year, but its target -- set out at Cop26 -- of reaching net zero by 2070 is also regarded as too weak by many."

According to Margrethe Vestager, EU's Commissioner for Competition, it's unlikely that the EU will ever become completely independent from other countries as far as semiconductor supply is concerned. Tom's Hardware reports: Leading contract makers of semiconductors -- such as Intel, Samsung Foundry, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. -- spend around $30 billion per year on capital expenditures and billions on developing new process technologies. Analysts believe that a country, or a group of countries, that wants to build a competitive semiconductor industry locally would need to spend over $150 billion over a period of five years on direct help, tax breaks, and incentives. However, the chances of success are extremely low.

The EU official believes that such investments are impossible to make, which is why the bloc will continue to rely on internal and external chip supply. "The numbers I hear of, sort of, the upfront investments to be fully self-sufficient, that makes it not doable," said Vestager in an interview with CNBC. "What is important is that there is a different level of production capacity in Europe."

It is noteworthy that Europe does not produce smartphones or PCs, two kinds of applications that need chips made using leading-edge fabrication technologies. Meanwhile, the EU produces cars, consumer electronics, and other things that do not need chips made using the latest nodes. Thus, the bloc wants to expand production of chips for these products to protect its economy. It also does not want supply chains to be disrupted by China or tensions with the U.S. and Germany. At present, about 10% of the global chip supply is produced in Europe, down from 40% in 1990. The current goal that the block has is to expand its global chip production market share to 20% by 2030, which is already a very ambitious goal as chip manufacturing is growing. Vestager admits that to accomplish this goal, the EU needs to support local makers of semiconductors. Unfortunately, Margrethe Vestager does not announce any particular plans at this time.

What if users could pay for apps or services not with money or attention, but with their spare compute power? A startup called "Massive" is working to take this concept "into the modern world as an alternative to charging users or pounding them with advertisements to generate revenue," writes TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm. From the report: Massive announced an $11 million round this morning, led by Point72 Ventures with participation from crypto-themed entities, including CoinShares Ventures and Coinbase Ventures. Several angels also participated in the funding event. The model is interesting, and Massive's funding round is an indication that it has found some market traction. So, we get the company on the horn to learn more.

Massive co-founder and CEO Jason Grad described the startup's work as something akin to an Airbnb or Turo for users' computers, comparing its service to some of the more popular consumer-sharing startups that folks already know. It's a reasonable comparison. Some 50,000 desktop computer users -- nodes, in the company's parlance -- have opted into its service. Which is white hat, it goes without saying. Given that Massive is asking for compute power, it will have constant work to do to ensure that it is a good steward of user trust and partner selection; no one wants their spare CPU cycles to go to something illegal. The company has a good early stance toward caring for its nascent compute exchange, with a hard requirement of getting users to opt into its service before joining.

To start, Massive is working with crypto-focused companies. They have an obvious need for compute power, and the work they execute -- running blockchain calculations -- is monetized through block rewards and other fees, making them easy choices for partnerships. You can now see why the company's investor list includes a number of crypto-focused venture capital firms. The startup's goal is broader, however. It wants to build a two-sided marketplace for compute power, Grad explained. That means lots more users offering up a slice of their computing power, future acceptance of mobile devices, and a broader partner list. Part of the company's perspective is rooted in the belief that the dominant business models of the internet today are lacking. "Shit," to quote Grad directly.

The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals. CNN reports: Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it takes its name, xenobots are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide. The tiny blobs were first unveiled in 2020 after experiments showed that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal. Now the scientists that developed them at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering said they have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction different from any animal or plant known to science.

[T]hey found that the xenobots, which were initially sphere-shaped and made from around 3,000 cells, could replicate. But it happened rarely and only in specific circumstances. The xenobots used "kinetic replication" -- a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms [...]. With the help of artificial intelligence, the researchers then tested billions of body shapes to make the xenobots more effective at this type of replication. The supercomputer came up with a C-shape that resembled Pac-Man, the 1980s video game. They found it was able to find tiny stem cells in a petri dish, gather hundreds of them inside its mouth, and a few days later the bundle of cells became new xenobots.

The xenobots are very early technology -- think of a 1940s computer -- and don't yet have any practical applications. However, this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence could potentially be used in a host of tasks in the body and the environment, according to the researchers. This may include things like collecting microplastics in the oceans, inspecting root systems and regenerative medicine. While the prospect of self-replicating biotechnology could spark concern, the researchers said that the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished, as they are biodegradable and regulated by ethics experts. "Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In that way it's a robot but it's also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell."

"The AI didn't program these machines in the way we usually think about writing code. It shaped and sculpted and came up with this Pac-Man shape," Bongard said. "The shape is, in essence, the program. The shape influences how the xenobots behave to amplify this incredibly surprising process."

James Rundle writes via the Wall Street Journal: A few years ago, executives at Intel began to realize they had a problem. The company was making dozens of new products each year, from chips to software platforms, but it didn't have a formal method for cataloging and storing older technology so engineers could test it for security flaws. [...] Intel's answer to this conundrum was to create a warehouse and laboratory in Costa Rica, where the company already had a research-and-development lab, to store the breadth of its technology and make the devices available for remote testing. After planning began in mid-2018, the Long-Term Retention Lab was up and running in the second half of 2019. The lab gives Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., and has more than 100,000 employees, a centralized, secure location where security tests can be run from anywhere in the world. Access to the building is strictly controlled and approved by senior managers, while surveillance cameras watch the equipment at all times. Even its location is secret -- Intel representatives declined to say where exactly it is.

The lab brings commercial value to Intel, [said Mohsen Fazlian, general manager of Intel's product assurance and security unit.], citing company research that shows customers are more likely to buy technology from manufacturers that proactively test their products. [...] The lab has changed Intel's product development. All new technology is now built with the facility in mind, with technical documentation created to allow engineers to support it for up to 10 years, and units are sent to the lab before they are released, Mr. Fazlian said. "Hopefully, I will never find myself searching eBay for Intel hardware again," he said.

As wafer costs increase, so are the costs of GPUs. According to a post on the Board Forums, AMD says it's increasing the price of its RX 6000 series GPUs by 10 percent across the board. ExtremeTech reports: This pricing change will apparently occur in the next shipment of GPUs to its partners, which will apparently drive up the price of these GPUs by $20 to $40 USD. This news arrives just in time for the holiday shopping season, when demand for GPUs is expected to increase even more, as if that is even possible.

According to a translation of the board posting, AMD is citing TSMC wafer costs as the reason for the change, and as we reported earlier, sub-16nm prices, including 12nm, 7nm, and 5nm, are said to have increased roughly 10 percent, while TSMC's older nodes have gone up by as much as 20 percent. AMD seems to be passing this price increase along to its partners, who in turn are passing it along to us, the customer, or the scalper, as it were. Then the scalper passes it along to us, the gamers. Although, as Videocardz points out AMD also produces its CPUs at TSMC and there hasn't been a similar across-the-board increase, which is curious.

Nissan has announced plans to spend around $17.6 billion over the next five years to accelerate the roll-out of electric vehicles. "And to emphasize that point, Nissan unveiled a pack of delightful EV concepts, including an adorable pickup truck, an outdoorsy SUV, and a sleek sports car," reports The Verge. From the report: Nissan said it will produce 23 new electrified models by 2030, 15 of which will be fully electric. The company is targeting a 50 percent electrification mix for its Nissan and Infiniti brands by the end of the decade. In the US, Nissan plans to take things a little slower, only targeting 40 percent of its sales to be EVs by 2040. On batteries, Nissan is pursuing what it calls "all-solid-state batteries (ASSB)" by 2028. The company is preparing a "pilot plant" in Yokohama, Japan, for early 2024. Solid-state batteries could theoretically charge faster, hold more power, and last longer than traditional lithium-ion batteries, which use liquid electrolytes to move energy around. While solid-state batteries have eluded researchers for years, some companies claim that a breakthrough is nearly at hand.

Nissan says that solid-state batteries will help make EVs more affordable by reducing the price of battery packs down to $75 per kWh by 2028. The company aims to bring it further down to $65 per kWh to achieve cost parity between EV and gasoline vehicles in the future. To underline its commitment to an electric future, Nissan revealed a handful of EV concepts: a small pickup truck called Surf-Out; a boxy crossover called Hang-Out; a compact SUV called Chill-Out; and a convertible sports car called Max-Out. [...] It's an impressive commitment, but Nissan notably stopped short of making the same promise that other automakers have to phase out the production of gas-powered vehicles. For example, Volvo and General Motors have vowed to become EV-only companies by 2030 and 2040, respectively.

A group of Democrats wants to stop the Grinch from stealing Christmas. Except this time around the spoilsport they're targeting is not a furry green creature, but a robot. From a report: Lawmakers including Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer introduced a bill to crack down on "cyber Grinches" using bots to quickly snap up entire inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them at higher prices. Their actions could make some of the items almost impossible to buy, the politicians say, exacerbating shortages sparked by supply chain woes.

"According to a report in The Telegraph, Raspberry Pi Trading, the arm responsible for the creation of the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi Pico and the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W could soon be listed with a value of more than £370m ($493m)," reports Tom's Hardware: Raspberry Pi Trading has hired advisors from two investment banks, Stifel and Liberum to advise on floating the company in spring 2022. The news comes just a few months after Raspberry Pi received a £45m ($60m) investment from Lansdowne Partners and the Ezrah Charitable Trust which was used to fund the development of new products as demand increased during the global pandemic. A source close to The Telegraph has valued Raspberry Pi at a premium of $500m...

"Obviously, the $45m we raised in September takes away some of the urgency around figuring out how we fund the future. On the other hand, we have great plans for what we are going to do over the next five years." Eben Upton, talking to The Telegraph.

"It's one thing to produce nanoscale devices, but it's another to study and improve on them — they're so small they can't reflect enough light to get a good look," reports Engadget. "A breakthrough might make that possible, however." Univeristy of California Riverside researchers have built technology that squeezes tungsten lamp light into a 6-nanometer spot at the end of a silver nanowire. That lets scientists produce color imaging at an "unprecedented" level, rather than having to settle for molecular vibrations. The developers modified an existing "superfocusing" tool (already used to measure vibrations) to detect signals across the entire visible spectrum. Light travels in a flashlight-like conical path. When the nanowire's tip passes over an object, the system records that item's influence on the beam shape and color (including through a spectrometer). With two pieces of specrtra for every 6nm pixel, the team can create color photos of carbon nanotubes that would otherwise appear gray.
"The researchers expect that the new technology can be an important tool to help the semiconductor industry make uniform nanomaterials with consistent properties for use in electronic devices," according to an announcement from University of California Riverside, adding that the new full-color nano-imaging technique "could also be used to improve understanding of catalysis, quantum optics, and nanoelectronics."

There's a polluted 343-square-mile lake known as "the Salton Sea," about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times calls it California's "largest and most troubled lake," after a recent visit with biogeochemist Timothy Lyons.

But is it about to experience a change of fortune? "The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it's scary," said Lyons, 63. "It's loaded with pesticides and heavy metals — molybdenum, cadmium and selenium — that linger in greatest concentrations in deeper water... That should worry people, because the Salton Sea is shrinking and exposing more and more of this stuff to scouring winds that carry them far and wide," he added. "Our goals include mapping where these hazardous materials are located, and determining where they came from and what may become of them if trends continue."

For Lyons' research team, filling blanks in existing data is an obsession, and it could have significant implications at a time when the air practically crackles with a volatile mix of environmental danger and economic opportunities promised by ongoing efforts to tap immense reserves of lithium, a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries.... Clouds of salty, alkaline toxic dust containing heavy metals, agricultural chemicals and powdery-fine particulates linked to asthma, respiratory diseases and cancer are rolling off newly exposed playa, threatening the health of thousands of nearby residents. Delays and costs are mounting for many projects that were designed to be showcases of restoration and dust mitigation. Scientists say it's because the projects were developed without consideration for heat waves, severe droughts and water cutbacks due to climate change, or for the constantly evolving underlying geology at the hyper-saline landlocked lake at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, where shifting tectonic plates bring molten material and hot geothermal brine closer to Earth's surface.

Now, large corporations investing in proposals to suck lithium out of the brine produced by local geothermal operations have revived hopes of jobs and revenue from land leases, with lithium recovery projects potentially supporting internships, education programs and environmental restoration projects for years to come.
The Times got an interesting quote from Frank Ruiz, a program director at the nonprofit environmental group Audubon California — a man who is also a member of the Lithium Valley Commission (lawmakers and community leaders trying to help guide decisions).

"If done correctly, it will elevate the region by creating jobs, benefit the state and the nation by making geothermal energy more affordable, and lay the groundwork for negotiations aimed at ensuring that some of the royalties from lithium production and related land leases are used to support dust reduction and environmental restoration projects."

Ruiz also says that one way or another, "The lithium rush at the Salton Sea cannot be stopped."

"The thought of combining a printer (the bane of office workers) with the bacterium E. coli (the scourge of romaine lettuce) may seem an odd, if not unpleasant, collaboration," writes the New York Times.

"But scientists have recently melded the virtues of the infuriating tool and of the toxic microbe to produce an ink that is alive, made entirely from microbes." The microbial ink flows like toothpaste under pressure and can be 3D-printed into various tiny shapes — a circle, a square and a cone — all of which hold their form and glisten like Jell-O. The researchers describe their recipe for their programmable, microbial ink in a study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The material is still being developed, but the authors suggest that the ink could be a crucial renewable building material, able to grow and heal itself and ideal for constructing sustainable homes on Earth and in space... [T]he new substance contains no additional polymers; it is produced entirely from genetically engineered E. coli bacteria. The researchers induce bacterial cultures to grow the ink, which is also made of living bacteria cells. When the ink is harvested from the liquid culture, it becomes firm like gelatin and can be plugged into 3D-printers and printed into living structures, which do not grow further and remain in their printed forms...

Bacteria may seem an unconventional building block. But microbes are a crucial component of products such as perfumes and vitamins, and scientists have already engineered microbes to produce biodegradable plastics. A material like a microbial ink has more grandiose ambitions, according to Neel Joshi, a synthetic biologist at Northeastern University and an author on the new paper. Such inks are an expanding focus of the field of engineered living materials. Unlike structures cast from concrete or plastic, living systems would be autonomous, adaptive to environmental cues and able to regenerate — at least, that is the aspirational goal, Dr. Joshi said. "Imagine creating buildings that heal themselves," said Sujit Datta, a chemical and biological engineer at Princeton University who was not involved with the research....

Dr. Manjula-Basavanna is shooting for the moon, Earth's satellite, where there are no forests to harvest for wood and no easy way to send bulk building materials. There, he said, the ink might be used as a self-regenerating substance to help build habitats on other planets, as well as places on Earth. "There is a lot of work to be done to make it scalable and economic," Dr. Datta conceded. But, he noted, just five years ago creating robust structures out of microbes was unimaginable; conceivably, self-healing buildings could be a reality in our lifetime.

An anonymous reader shares a report: 2021 marked a big year for the Galaxy Note series, but not in a good way. Rather, it was the beginning of the end as Samsung prioritized its foldables over the Galaxy Note line. Now, the death of the Note seems set in stone, as Samsung reportedly has no plans for a 2022 Galaxy Note, and is also planning to end production of the Galaxy Note 20. ET News reports that Samsung has pretty much confirmed the end of the Galaxy Note series through two actions. Firstly, Samsung apparently has no plans for a Galaxy Note device in its 2022 roadmap. Likely that means the only flagship-tier Galaxy smartphones coming next year will be the Galaxy S22 series and new foldables.

On top of that, Samsung will also apparently end production on its Galaxy Note 20 series entirely by the end of 2021. Until now, production on the Galaxy Note 20 has continued as the device has still been selling. In 2021, the series reportedly sold around 3.2 million devices, around a third the number of Note devices sold in 2020. Of course, we know well at this point that the Galaxy S22 Ultra will act as a spiritual successor to the Galaxy Note series, with the device adopting a design closer to the Note 20 series as well as using the same built-in stylus. The Galaxy Fold series also inherits the S Pen, but still lacks a good place to store it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Component shortages have been wreaking havoc on the tech industry since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and smartphones are no outlier. Decelerated production schedules have given way to smaller stock and delayed launches. All of this has resulted in a decline in smartphone sales in Q3 of 2021 compared to Q3 2020, Gartner reported today. According to numbers the research firm shared today, sales to consumers dropped 6.8 percent. A deficit in parts like integrated circuits for power management and radio frequency has hurt smartphone production worldwide.

"Despite strong consumer demand, smartphone sales declined due to delayed product launches, longer delivery schedule, and insufficient inventory at the channel," Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, said in a statement accompanying the announcement. The analyst added that the production schedules of "basic and utility" phones were more affected by supply constraints than "premium" ones. As a result, premium smartphone sales actually increased during this time period, even though smartphone sales overall declined. Still, shoppers were left with limited options, Gartner noted. Samsung ended up winning the greatest market share (20.2 percent), thanks to its foldable smartphones. Apple's quarterly market share (14.2 percent) was aided by new features in its iPhones, namely the A15 processor and improvements to battery life and the camera sensor. Gartner also pointed to interest in 5G.

South Australia on Sunday became the first gigawatt scale grid in the world to reach zero demand when the combined output of rooftop solar and other small non-scheduled generators exceeded all the local customer load requirements. Renew Economy reports: The landmark event was observed by several energy analysts, including at Watt Clarity and NEMLog, where Geoff Eldridge noted that a number of measures for South Australia demand notched up record minimums for system normal conditions. It was later confirmed by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which noted that "scheduled" demand -- local demand minus the output of rooftop solar and small unscheduled generators such as small solar farms and bio-energy -- fell to minus 38MW in a five minute period at 1235pm (grid time, or AEST).

Minimum demand is now possibly the biggest challenge for market operators like AEMO, because under current market settings it needs to have a certain amount of synchronous generation to maintain system strength and grid stability. It does this by running a minimum amount of gas generation, and through the recent commissioning of spinning machines called synchronous condensers that do not burn fuel. It also needs a link to a neighboring grid, in this case Victoria, so it can export surplus production.

Rolls-Royce has announced that its all-electric plane, dubbed the "Spirit of Innovation," is the fastest of its kind in the world after it reached a maximum speed of 387.4 mph (623 k/h) in recent flight tests. Gizmodo reports: In a recent news release, the company, not to be mistaken for the car company owned by BMW, claimed that the Spirit of Innovation set three new world records earlier this week. On flight tests carried out on Nov. 16, Rolls-Royce said its aircraft reached a top speed of 345.4 mph (555.9 km/h) over 1.8 miles (3 kilometers), exceeding the current record by 132 mph (213 k/h). It broke another record in a subsequent 9.3-mile (15 kilometer) flight, during which it reached 330 mph (532.1 km/h), surpassing the current record by 182 mph (292.8 km/h).

The Spirit of Innovation didn't stop there, though. Rolls-Royce affirms that it smashed another record when it reached 9,842.5 feet (3,000 meters) in 202 seconds, beating the current record by 60 seconds. In the company's view, it also took the title of the world's fastest all-electric vehicle when it reached a maximum speed of 387.4 mph (623 km/h) during its flight tests. The company's aircraft is powered by a 400kW electric powertrain and "the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace." "Following the world's focus on the need for action at COP26, this is another milestone that will help make 'jet zero' a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonize transport across air, land and sea," CEO Warren East said in the news release.

Qualcomm has announced some key changes to how it brands its Snapdragon chips, including a shift away from the three-digit numbering system it's been using to differentiate between its products for years. From a report: To start, Snapdragon will now exist as a standalone brand, separate from the "Qualcomm" brand (which won't be showing up as much on its chips). It's a direction the company has started moving in earlier this year (the Snapdragon 888 Plus badge, for example, notably lacked the word "Qualcomm"), but today's news solidifies that plan going forward. But the biggest change might be in how the company handles actually naming its semiconductor products.

For years, Qualcomm has labeled its chips with three-digit names, like the Snapdragon 480, Snapdragon 765, or Snapdragon 888. The first number broadly informed customers how powerful the chip was (with the 8-series chips serving as flagships, while 4-series models were for entry-level products). The second number typically indicated annual generational releases (going from a Snapdragon 865 to an 875), while changes in the third number generally showed more minor updates (like the Snapdragon 765G to the Snapdragon 768G). The problem, though, is that in addition to being slightly jargony and confusing to keep track of, Qualcomm is also simply running out of numbers in its naming scheme. The 8-series lineup hit Snapdragon 888 last year, the 7-series is already at Snapdragon 780, and the 6-series is already on the brink with the Snapdragon 695. Going forward, though, Qualcomm says that it'll be shifting to "a single-digit series and generation number, aligning with other product categories," starting with the upcoming announcement of its next 8-series flagship (which had previously been expected to be called the Snapdragon 898, based on Qualcomm's old pattern).