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Saturday, February 6th, 2021
Time |
Event |
12:45a |
Mac Utility Homebrew Finally Gets Native Apple Silicon and M1 Support An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Homebrew now supports Apple Silicon natively, albeit not with every package. The volunteer Homebrew team made the announcement on the Homebrew blog alongside today's release. While the native support is not yet comprehensive, it bridges the gap significantly, and users can still run Terminal via Rosetta 2 to do what they can't yet while running natively on Apple Silicon. The Homebrew blog post says "we welcome your help" in providing bottles for all packages moving forward.
Here's the full bullet point on Apple Silicon in the Homebrew 3.0.0 release notes: "Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn't (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. | 1:25a |
IBM Quantum Computers Now Finish Some Tasks In Hours, Not Months IBM has found a way to combine a new program execution environment, Qiskit, with a balance of "classical" and quantum computing to deliver a 100 times speedup for tasks that depend on iterative circuit execution. Computations that take months now will take mere hours, IBM said. Engadget reports: Qiskit by itself allows more circuits to run at a "much faster" rate, and can store quantum programs so that other users can run them. However, it also uploads programs to conventional hardware sitting next to the quantum machines. Before you ask, this isn't really cheating -- the move is meant to cut the latency between a user's computer and the quantum chip.
IBM expects to release Qiskit sometime in 2021. Its roadmap also has quantum systems handling a wider range of circuits, and thus a wider range of computing challenges, by 2022. New control systems and libraries in 2023 will help IBM reach its goal of running systems with 1,000 or more qubits, taking the company closer to a "quantum advantage" where the technology can handle at least some tasks more efficiently or cost-effectively than traditional hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. | 1:00p |
Denmark Strikes Deal On Artificial Wind Energy Island An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Denmark's government has agreed to take a majority stake in a 25 billion euro artificial "energy island," which is to be built 50 miles (80km) offshore, in the middle of the North Sea. The island to the west of the Jutland peninsula will initially have an area of 120,000 sq meters -- the size of 18 football pitches -- and in its first phase will be able to provide 3m households with green energy. It will be protected from North Sea storms on three sides by a high sea wall, with a dock for service vessels taking up the fourth side.
In a broad deal struck on Wednesday night, the Social Democrat government agreed with its support parties and the rightwing opposition that the state should hold a 51% stake in the island, with the remainder held by the private sector. The project builds on an inter-party deal struck in June on energy policy, in which the parties agreed to construct two wind energy hubs, one artificial and another centered on the Baltic island of Bornholm. The two hubs will initially support 5GW of wind generation and triple Denmark's current installed offshore wind. The capacity will later be expanded to as much as 12GW.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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