"The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use," writes Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino. "German news site heise.de has a detailed write-up. See a CGI video of the power station and its internals, as well as the company's website [at their respective links]." From the report (translated to English): According to the manufacturer Corpower Ocean, it is the first DNV prototype certificate for a wave energy converter. The certificate confirms that Corpower's technology meets DNV's requirements for structural strength, reliability, and safety, Corpower Ocean announced. The certification process began in the design phase and lasted seven years. DNV oversaw the process from concept development through design, manufacturing, and assembly, to dry-running tests and subsequent operation.

This is an important step, said Patrik Moller, CEO and one of the founders of Corpower Ocean. With the certification, wave energy is no longer just a promising technology, but a proven and financially viable one. This opens up new opportunities for project financing, insurance, and investments in commercial applications. The Corpower C4 wave power plant looks like a normal buoy: It consists of a 19-meter-long floating body with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of approximately 11 tons. The system is anchored to the seabed. A mechanism inside the buoy converts its up-and-down movements in the waves into a rotary motion. This, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. The report notes that the company is "planning the first two industrial-scale wave energy farms off the coasts of Portugal and Scotland," which are scheduled to begin operating sometime between 2027 and 2029.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BOEKAREST (ANP/AFP) - Roemenië heeft voor het eerst een drone neergehaald die het luchtruim was binnengevlogen. President Nicușor Dan schrijft op X dat een F-16-piloot het onbemande toestel vrijdagochtend uit de lucht heeft geschoten.

Het gebied waarboven de drone vloog was onbewoond, waardoor de piloot zonder risico kon schieten. De autoriteiten doen onderzoek naar de details en omstandigheden van het incident.

Roemenië is een buurland van Oekraïne en ligt aan de Zwarte Zee, waar regelmatig aanvallen op schepen plaatsvinden. Het Roemeense luchtruim is de afgelopen jaren geregeld geschonden door drones, die soms ook neerstorten op Roemeens grondgebied. Maar voor zover bekend was het tijdens de oorlog nog niet eerder gebeurd dat Roemenië zelf actief een toestel neerhaalde.

(RCA/Cult)
Allying the crackpot strangeness of Julian Casablancas’ side projects with his band’s gift for pop minimalism, the New Yorkers are on playful, joyous form

Here’s a sentence no old-head Strokes fan wants to hear: to understand Reality Awaits, the stalwart NYC group’s seventh album and first in six years, you first have to understand the Voidz. Julian Casablancas’s other band has been taking up more and more of his time in recent years, much to the chagrin of fans who may have dipped into the group’s painfully, awkwardly proggy 2014 debut Tyranny and decided to just let the old legend have his fun (away from their own speakers, of course). Anyone who decided to listen further will have found that the Voidz have turned into a great, crowd-pleasing, safely experimental zone for Casablancas to pull out some of the most energised, goofy work of his career. If you’re thinking I come to this guy for cool, not goof, I don’t know what to tell you: this is a man who spends interviews discussing his theories about ancient Sumerian culture.

The 2018 Voidz record Virtue is a high point of Casablancas’s entire catalogue: a gentle stylistic mixed bag that covers winsome pop-rock, yacht rock, bedroom pop and much more. That album seemed to clear the decks for the Strokes’ last record, 2020’s The New Abnormal, on which they sounded the most like their 2001 selves since Is This It. That album is now the definitive Strokes album for gen Z – go to any Strokes show and watch the younger contingent light up during The Adults Are Talking – but it didn’t presage a long-term back-to-basics route for Casablancas and co. On Reality Awaits, by sheer force of will, he fuses the crackpot strangeness and, ahem, fondness for AutoTune of the Voidz with the Strokes’ minimalism and pop melodicism.

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‘Bulking’, or gaining weight on purpose to get stronger, challenged everything I was once taught to do with my body

I had been casually lifting weights for a few years when several things changed in quick succession.

First, my boyfriend proposed.

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The author on the power of folktales, being inspired by Ulysses – and the book that every woman should read

My earliest reading memory
The summer my middle sister was born, my mum and I would walk to the shops at Cherryvalley, in east Belfast, to do her messages, and she’d buy me the latest issue of Storyteller, illustrated tales from around the world. It came with a cassette tape of actors reading the stories, a ding to tell you when to turn the page. My favourite was a Japanese folktale called The Goblin Rat. I was only just two, but I listened to it, entranced and terrified, until I could recite it by heart.

My favourite book growing up
Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. I first read them aged 10 – I’ve read the title book every midwinter since, and read them last year with my own then-10-year-old son. They tell a haunting story of the age-old battle between the forces of dark and light, weaving in Arthurian legend, shot through with an adult melancholy that makes them as compelling now as then.

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The online retailer said its logistics centers in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, as well as in annexed Crimea, were hit overnight.

Nieuw bij politie en justitie: de verkeershufterspaarkaart! Een fantastische actie waarbij u punten kunt scoren voor het begaan van al uw favoriete verkeersovertredingen. RTL Nieuws weet: "Het strafpuntensysteem is een nieuwe poging om hardnekkige veelplegers in het verkeer te stoppen." Voor 1 punt kunt u bijvoorbeeld appen achter het stuur of uw gordel stiekem niet omdoen. Bent u echter een stuk fanatieker dan kunt u dronken achter het stuur stappen, stukkie sturen zonder rijbewijs of een ernstig ongeval veroorzaken om maar liefst 2 of 3 punten te pakken. Zit u zo op 6 punten. En 6 punten = volle spaarkaart. Die kunt u dan bij een bureau bij u in de buurt inleveren om in een hogere categorie te belanden, de categorie van zogeheten 'veelplegende verkeershufters'. Dat is nou waar voor al dat harde rijden. U heeft immers veel liever de verkeershufterspaarkaart uw dashboardkastje liggen dan een rijontzegging of zo.