Long-time Slashdot reader necro81 writes: There are several companies, such as Tesla, trying to make semi trucks fully electric. The capital cost for such a truck, and the MW-scale infrastructure to recharge it, may be a hard sell for some operators. [IEEE Spectrum notes that's a charging infrastructure "that most freight corridors do not yet reliably provide."] But some companies are instead adding batteries and an electric motor to the semi-trailers that trucks haul behind them.

"The Nivalis Powered Trailer Kit centers on an electric axle [rated at 50 kilowatts-peak]... capable of both propulsion assistance and regenerative braking. It draws on a 60-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt lithium-ion battery pack charged from three sources: the axle itself during braking and deceleration, a full-rooftop array of photovoltaic panels generating up to 3.7 kilowatts-peak, and a 32-amp, three-phase AC grid connection available during parking stops."


This approach is more akin to a plug-in hybrid: the truck may still be diesel-powered, but the electric assist from the trailer allows the truck to run more efficiently. Replacing diesel with kWh can save operators money while also reducing emissions. This incremental approach may be more accessible and less capital-intensive than replacing the truck itself.
From the article:

The driver's only window into the system is a small display readable from the cab's side mirror that shows the system status and battery charge level. Nothing about the trailer's handling or licensing requirements changes. The partners project savings of up to 7,000 liters of diesel per trailer per year, which is enough to keep about 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air...

Trailer Dynamics, an Aachen-based company, has conducted field tests with BMW Logistics, DB Schenker, Duvenbeck, and Volkswagen Konzernlogistik, reporting average fuel savings of around 40% for diesel tractor combinations, substantially higher than the up to 18% reduction implied by the Nivalis projection... Trailer Dynamics prices its system between €145,000 and €195,000 and targets a payback period of no more than five years. Nivalis targets five to six years at current costs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California drew more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, reports the Los Angeles Times, citing data released Thursday by PitchBook on private market funding:

Its next biggest competitor, New York, raised less than a tenth of California's total. Texas raised 1/40th of the amount... Although a campaign for a new tax on billionaires has convinced some ultra-rich residents to shift to other states and businesses often complain that high property and energy costs and an anti-business regulatory regime make it too tough to make money in the state, the inability of the top talent, companies and investors in AI to set up elsewhere shows California's enduring attraction.

The state's economy grew 5% last year to a record $4.25 trillion, making it larger than every country other than the U.S., China and Germany. It is home to nearly 400 billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights... Among metropolitan regions, Los Angeles ranked behind only Silicon Valley and New York, which attracted $98 billion and $11.5 billion in venture investment, respectively... Investors poured in nearly $8 billion across 207 deals in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana metro areas, up 28% from a year earlier, according to PitchBook...

Nearly 90% of invested dollars [in California] went to AI firms, up from last year, when around 65% of new funds were allocated to AI. "If you're a tech company and you're not an AI company, you have a very, very difficult opportunity ahead of you to raise capital," Stanford said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Which jobs are most threatened by AI? "Programmers, software engineers and other tech industry employees," goes one common answer.

"But many economists are more concerned about a different, larger group of white-collar workers," reports the New York Times: customer service reps, bookkeepers, payroll clerks and HR specialists, "who fly under the radar but collectively account for tens of millions of jobs..."

They are spread across the country and throughout the economy, working in every industry, in big cities and small towns, at major corporations and mom-and-pop businesses... These jobs typically offer a middle-class salary or a pathway to achieving one — much as manufacturing jobs did for men before decades of globalisation and automation wiped many of them away... For now, such an outcome is a fear, not a forecast. Despite high-profile layoffs in tech and finance, there is little firm evidence that AI has hurt the labour market as a whole.


Economists have become increasingly convinced that disruptions are likely, but they say it is too early to know where or how widespread they will be. They remain broadly sceptical of claims that the technology will lead to mass unemployment in the near future. Some AI industry leaders have walked back such predictions in recent weeks. But given the extraordinary pace at which companies are adopting AI — and at which the technology is improving — economists say policymakers need to consider the potential effects on the labour market. And they say they are concerned that the public debate has focused too much on software engineers and a relative handful of other high-status careers — lawyers, consultants, economists — rather than the workers who could be most vulnerable...

Economists at Northwestern University recently recalculated measures of AI exposure based on the makeup of the total workforce, not just the people using the technology. Administrative and front-line roles, such as customer service representatives, rose to the top of the list. "The most affected jobs are secretaries, are routine clerks," said Michelle Yin, one of the working paper's authors. "They're not computer scientists or data scientists at all."


The article also includes this counterpoint from an economist at the University of Illinois who has studied earlier waves of white-collar automation: that like other disruptive technologies, AI likely will also create new jobs. So the possibility exists AI will make workers more productive and allow them to earn more. "I would be cautious about just focusing on what are we losing as opposed to what are we going to gain on the other side."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on back of photograph, "Uncle Claud and Martha Ann"

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

ajpscs posted a photo:

LOTUS & WATER LILIES
ON MY KNEES, I CAN SEE FOREVER
© ajpscs

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Spend a half-hour on a guided tour through two notorious Amsterdam cruising hotspots in the video Inside Dirty D & Eagle - Gay Cruising Clubs Amsterdam: FULL TOUR. Tours given before hours so the clubs are empty. See what even people attending for a night of fun won't see because lights can be strictly forbidden. Adventurous, flirty, perhaps eye-opening.

ASIA IN BRIEF Lenovo has denied it sells laptops that include banned Chinese storage devices where they're not allowed. An outlet called Notebookcheck recently reported that it a ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL and found a solid-state disk made by Chinese company YMTC inside. Some observers joined the dots and decided the laptop could be a problem for Lenovo because a Biden administration decision saw the US ban the company on national security grounds. Lenovo dug into the matter and found the laptop in question was not sold into the US market, but was a model destined for Germany. As Notebookcheck’s headquarters is Romania, and the team responsible for the review are in Austria, a made-for-Germany laptop crossing one of the European Union’s internal borders is a long way short of a scandal. Lenovo’s use of a Chinese SSD is, however, notable for two reasons. One is that Beijing encourages Chinese companies to buy from their local peers. The other is that the AI boom has sent prices for memory and storage devices soaring, and YMTC is one of few alternatives to leading suppliers Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Apple reportedly wants the Trump administration to reconsider the USA’s ban on YMTC, to help it find the parts it needs to keep cranking out iThings. China recovers a rocket for the first time China’s National Space Agency (CNSA) last Friday recovered the first stage of a rocket for the first time. The Agency announced it used a ship-borne net to catch the first stage of a Long March-10B carrier rocket that launched a satellite, then guided itself to safety. SpaceX has been doing this for years, because re-using the first stage of a rocket saves a lot of money. China naturally wants the same capability as it will advance its commercial and national security interests. Japan has the same ambition and on Saturday conducted a successful test of a rocket that took off, reached an altitude of 11 meters and hovered there briefly before settling back to Earth without incident. In other China space news, CNSA announced its Tianwen-2 probe arrived at asteroid 2016HO3, pulling to within 20 kilometers of the space rock on a mission that aims to retrieve a sample of the object and return it to Earth. Australia signals strong AI regulation – including copyright protection Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese will this week deliver a speech outlining a revised AI policy. The PM’s speech will come a week after Andrew Charlton, assistant minister for science, tech, and the digital economy, observed “AI’s social licence is precarious” and added “The point of AI safety is not to slow the future down. It is to make sure the future remains human, aligned with our values, and advancing our interests.” Albanese has also mentioned social license ahead of his speech. One issue the PM is expected to address is amendments to Australian copyright laws that would allow AI companies free access to content to train their models. Musician Holly Rankin today told Australian radio she has had assurances such amendments are not part of the government’s AI plan – setting a stage for a showdown with Big Tech. A datacenter for Bhutan, serving India, via Canada The AI datacenter boom has reached the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The tiny landlocked nation, population 750,000, is blessed with impressive hydro-electric power resources. The developer of this project, Canadian company Sato, plans to use renewable energy generated by those resources to power a datacenter in the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a district located just over the border from India. The local authority that runs GMC will reserve 100MW of firm power for the project, and could in future allocate 500MW. Sato will use the juice to power a datacenter that serves clients in India, a nation the Canadian company says has huge appetite for AI, but struggles to develop datacenters due to electricity supply constraints. “The Project is anticipated to deliver low-latency AI compute to India's major demand centres,” Sato says. APNIC to Malaysia: Your own NIR would change nothing The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), the regional internet registry for the region, has published [PDF] its submission to the Malaysian government’s consultation on forming a new national internet registry (NIR) and argued that doing so would essentially be futile. “Cybersecurity, IPv6 acceleration, cost, and local support are not dependent on, and in several respects would not be advanced by, the establishment of a Malaysian NIR,” the submission argues. APNIC also argues that if Malaysia were to establish a NIR it would not increase the availability of IPv4 addresses in Malaysia, or change the criteria for allocation of IPv6 addresses or autonomous system numbers. Nor would it confer any preferential access to resources for Malaysian-based parties. “APNIC makes these observations not to oppose the establishment of a Malaysian NIR, but to assist MCMC and Malaysian stakeholders in calibrating the expected outcomes of such a step,” the submission states. Crims targeting Chinese VPN users Infosec outfit Threatlocker last week identified malware disguised as an installer for Kuailian VPN (aka LetsVPN), a package often used by Chinese netizens who want to subvert the nation’s Great Firewall. Threatlocker says the malware “drops and executes an encrypted RAT that provides attackers with complete control over a victim’s machine and its data.” China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Center (CVERC) has also spotted malware targeting local users in the form of a fake Android education app. CVERC says the malware is a new variant of a financial theft-related mobile Trojan virus, and can intercept users' text messages, steal contacts and phone passwords, use a device’s cameras, record the screen, and even use a phone’s microphone to record ambient audio. Links to the malware spread through text messages and social media software. ®

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Op beelden op sociale media is te zien hoe een enorme vlammenzee de bar compleet in de as legt. Veel mensen konden niet op tijd ontsnappen.

Ons 3-jarig nichtje krijgt voorafgaand aan het bezoek aan opa en oma een strenge aanwijzing van haar moeder: „Niet om ijsjes vragen!” Nog geen vijf minuten over de drempel, deelt…