Author: zppiot

Electric Hydrogen wants to address these issues by developing electrolyzers that have about 10 times the capacity of today’s standard devices while also being more affordable and efficient. The company is already operating a pair of electrolyzer plants in California, including a one-megawatt facility in San Carlos and a 10-megawatt project in San Jose. In April, Electric Hydrogen opened an electrolyzer factory in Devens, Massachusetts, which will crank out its first line of 100-megawatt electrolyzers. The company also raised $380 million in funding in 2023 from backers including BP, United Airlines, and Microsoft, making it the first electrolyzer company to…

Pivot Bio, a biotechnology company based in Berkeley, California, is harnessing microbes to deliver a usable form of nitrogen directly to the roots of crops, reducing the amount of synthetic fertilizer farmers need to use and the pollution that comes with it. Nitrogen is an essential ingredient for photosynthesis, but most plants can’t directly absorb it from the air. Fertilizer manufacturers help them along by breaking down the strong triple bonds between nitrogen molecules and combining those molecules with hydrogen to form ammonia. After it’s applied in fields, much of the fertilizer turns into ammonium and nitrate, nitrogen-rich compounds that…

This is what Sun King has been able to deliver. By providing solar panels, handheld solar-powered lamps, batteries, and home systems that power lights and devices to communities in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, it says, it offers reliable renewable electricity to some 40 million people. Its pay-as-you-go business model allows households to spend as little as $0.15 per day. Now, having acquired PayGo Energy in 2023, Sun King is expanding its product portfolio into clean cooking.  PayGo’s stoves run on liquefied petroleum gas, which produces less of the health-damaging and climate-warming pollution generated by charcoal, biomass, and similar fuels used…

The remaining 80% of the world’s copper comes from copper sulfide ores, which don’t dissolve well in acid. To extract that copper, the industry uses a more energy- and water-intensive process that involves concentrating the metal in vats of chemicals before smelting it at high temperatures. Ceibo is tweaking the lower-impact leaching process so that it works on copper sulfides. The company’s chemistry-based approach mimics the way naturally occurring microbial communities liberate copper from sulfide ores, but at an accelerated pace. By altering conditions within the rock pile, including pH and oxidation state, Ceibo’s tech makes it possible to recover…

LanzaJet’s technology makes jet fuel using alcohol, which can be sourced from a variety of materials, including corn and sugarcane. The company’s process starts with ethanol and then uses a series of steps that pull out water, string molecules together into longer chains, and add hydrogen. The result is a chemical mixture, which the company then processes further to separate out the components that can be burned as jet fuel.  The company is a leader in this alcohol-to-jet-fuel pathway. Currently, nearly all commercially available alternative jet fuels use waste fats, oils, and greases as their starting material, but as the…

Among startups trying to commercialize zero-emissions heat batteries, Rondo stands out for its simple approach. Competitors’ heat batteries often involve some kind of new technique or engineered material that’s a few steps away from any current industrial technology. But the heat-resistant bricks inside a Rondo heat battery are similar to those that have been used in high-temperature steelmaking for over a century, meaning they are already produced cheaply and at industrial scales. That sales pitch is resonating with investors, who have poured $85 million into the startup over the past two years. Key indicators Industry: Energy storage  Founded: 2020 Headquarters: Alameda, California, USA…

A lament about the demise of AM radio has been rising in the halls of Congress. Several automakers, most notably Tesla and Ford, have decided to stop putting AM radios in their electric vehicles. They claim their electric motors interfere with the audio quality of the signal and insist that FM and satellite radio are enough. Given that people who listen to radio tend to primarily do so while driving, a trend like this could threaten the commercial viability of the over 4,000 AM stations currently broadcasting in the U.S. The radio industry has been fighting back, lobbying for legislation…

Now Gogoro is bringing that system online throughout the world, with locations in India, China, Colombia, and the Philippines, among other countries. Key to its success is the complete ecosystem it has created. Gogoro manufactures both scooters and batteries; the latter power not only its own vehicles but also those made by Yamaha, Suzuki, and various other local manufacturers worldwide. It also maintains a fleet of rideshare scooters available to rent (which the company made free in the aftermath of the earthquake until Taipei’s public transit system came back online). And the whole system is tied together by more than…

Another key to its success is its tightly controlled in-house production line. BYD can source everything through its own subsidiaries, from batteries and motors to the majority of the components required to make its affordably priced EVs and plug-in hybrid cars, electric buses, and monorails. This approach doesn’t just allow it to manufacture its vehicles at a lower cost than its competitors; the tight control also lets it innovate across its supply chain, rapidly incorporating new features into production. Key indicators: Industry: Electric vehicles Founded: 1995 Headquarters: Shenzhen, China Notable fact: BYD sold 3,024,417 “new energy” vehicles, which includes battery-only…

When blazes are confirmed, Pano alerts fire monitoring agencies, providing images and location data that help them respond quickly. As firefighters battle the blaze, the company continues to provide up-to-date, highly zoomable images of the shifting conditions, along with satellite imagery, weather information, and additional data feeds assembled from other sources. Key indicators Industry: Wildfire detection  Founded: 2020 Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA Notable fact: Pano is helping several agencies monitor and control flames that wildfire specialists intentionally set to clear out brush and reduce risks in forests and grasslands, standing ready to send the alert if the fire should break out beyond the…

Sony’s Playstation to release a new VR headset Sony’s Playstation to release a new VR headset 03:16 Sony’s PlayStation Network went down for hours on Tuesday, frustrating gamers around the world who complained they weren’t able to sign in to their accounts. PlayStation Network said on its website that “some services are experiencing issues,” and that players “might have difficulty” logging in, creating accounts, launching games or getting video content.”We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” it said. Sony did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Data from Downdetector, an outage tracker, showed that…

In case you missed the memo, we are barreling toward the next big consumer device category: smart glasses. At its developer conference last week, Meta introduced a positively mind-blowing new set of augmented reality (AR) glasses dubbed Orion. Snap also unveiled its new Snap Spectacles last week. Back in June at Google IO, that company teased a pair, and Apple is rumored to be working on its own model as well. After years of promise, AR specs are at last A Thing. But what’s really interesting about all this isn’t AR at all. It’s AI. Smart glasses enable you to…

Both Meta and Snap have now put their glasses in the hands of (or maybe on the faces of) reporters. And both have proved that after years of promise, AR specs are at last A Thing. But what’s really interesting about all this to me isn’t AR at all. It’s AI. Take Meta’s new glasses. They are still just a prototype, as the cost to build them—reportedly $10,000—is so high. But the company showed them off anyway this week, awing basically everyone who got to try them out. The holographic functions look very cool. The gesture controls also appear to function…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In AI research, everyone seems to think that bigger is better. The idea is that more data, more computing power, and more parameters will lead to models that are more powerful. This thinking started with a landmark paper from 2017, in which Google researchers introduced the transformer architecture underpinning today’s language model boom and helped embed the “scale is all you need” mindset into the AI community. Today, big tech companies seem to be competing over…

What to know about the rise of AI deepfakes – CBS News Watch CBS News With the rapid spread of AI-generated deepfakes, experts are sounding the alarm about their influence on society and elections. Laurie Segall, founder of Mostly Human Media, shares tips on how to spot what’s real and what’s not. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On #rise #deepfakes

Microsoft holding cybersecurity summit Microsoft holding cybersecurity summit in wake of CrowdStrike outage 02:49 Verizon customers across the U.S. reported problems accessing the company’s wireless network, with some reporting Monday morning that their phones were limited to SOS service. As of 10:15 a.m. ET, more than 70,000 reports of Verizon outages had been logged with DownDetector, a site that tracks service outages for telecommunications providers, websites and other businesses. Outages were reported from New York to Los Angeles, with the main complaint linked to lack of service on customers’ mobile phones.  “SOS in Ohio since mid-morning. Was working on my drive into…