The Netherlands-based startup Lightyear has unveiled an electric car with five square meters of built-in solar panels and therefore does not need to be plugged in to charge. In an optimum situation, a range of 43 miles is achievable daily. The integration of solar panels directly into the car’s chassis is something EV enthusiasts have…
Category Archives: Blog
Every organization must reduce its carbon footprint, and the US Military is no exception. As one of the largest buyers and consumers of fossil fuels, there are a lot of opportunities to improve. However, it’s easier said than done, and you want to have plenty of energy to get the job done in potential life…
During its recent WWDC developer conference, Apple mentioned that the next-generation Apple M2 processor CPU cluster would be “18%” faster than the current M1. Numbers found in the Geekbench database are the first 3rd party data points that corroborate Apple’s claim. It’s not surprising because chipmakers usually provide reliable and accurate performance estimates for their…
Japan has turned to the oceans to produce continuous, reliable, green energy. After years of development and real-world testing, the “Kairyu” (Seadragon?) underwater power generator will enter its commercial phase in the next decade. Kairyu was a demonstrator designed to harness energy from undersea currents, which is different from tidal power generators. Undersea currents have…
We’re alerted by news organizations now and then about an impending “massive solar flare” that might fry the Internet or even the electric grid. In theory, it’s possible, but there’s also a click-bait factor to this gloom and doom coverage. But first, what’s a solar flare? Solar flares are immense bursts, or eruptions, of electromagnetic…
Some U.S. lawmakers have sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to “develop a comprehensive plan that will protect both consumers and the environment by addressing the lack of a common U.S. charging standard.” The letter continues, “We cannot allow the consumer electronics industry to prioritize proprietary and inevitably obsolete charging technology over…
MediaTek has introduced the Dimensity 9000+, a new performance-kicker chip, to supplement the existing Dimensity 9000. As the name suggests, this new processor based on the Dimensity 9000 could be characterized as “the same, but a bit better.” We are primarily talking about a 5% speed gain for the CPU and 10% for the GPU….
Desktop workstation computers are usually bulky and heavy because they are optimized solely for maximum performance and expandability. The ThinkStation P360 Ultra takes the opposite direction and is primarily optimized for space. Lenovo tries to cram as much computing power as possible within that sub-4-Liters space. This computer is a Small Form Factor (SFF) workstation…
When you encounter a single-cell bacteria visible to the naked eye, you know there’s something very uncommon going on. That’s what biologist Jean Marrie Volland experienced when he stumbled upon this bacteria specie that can be 20mm big! (the image above is an artistic rendering, Mangrove photo by Pierre Yves Pascal; Illustration by Susan Brand/Berkeley…
Amazon has announced that the Alexa digital assistant can now technically imitate anyone’s voice based on a few clips, about 1 minute of recording. If it works as advertised, it would be a technical milestone as computer-generated voices don’t really fool humans and are still a poor choice for video voice-over, for example. You can…