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Wednesday, August 18th, 2021
| Time | Event |
| 1:44a | IKEA Starts Selling Renewable Energy To Households In Sweden IKEA, the world's biggest furniture brand, is branching out into selling renewable energy to households, starting with home market Sweden in September. Reuters reports: Ingka Group, the owner of most IKEA stores worldwide, said households would be able to buy affordable renewable electricity from solar and wind parks, and track their usage through an app. Ingka's partner Svea Solar, which produces solar panels for IKEA, will buy the electricity on the Nordic power exchange Nord Pool and resell it without surcharge. Households will pay a fixed monthly fee plus a variable rate. IKEA, which also sells solar panels for households in 11 markets, said those buyers would be able to track their own production in the app and sell back surplus electricity. Jonas Carlehed, head of sustainability at IKEA Sweden, told Reuters he hoped to roll out the new renewable energy offer as well as IKEA's solar panel offering to all markets. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.  |
| 5:20p | Laptop Shortage is Easing as Pandemic Demand Wanes Since early in the pandemic, soaring demand for consumer electronics led to persistent chip shortages. Some recent signs suggest the situation may finally be starting to change. From a report: An executive at the memory chip maker Micron Technology said last week at an investor conference that demand for consumer PCs is slowing and that some of its customers have more chips lying around. A day later, Morgan Stanley downgraded several chip stocks in a note titled "Winter is Coming." The analysts said PC inventory is rising and that the smartphone market is likely to experience similar deterioration. An old investor maxim says technology companies tend to handily outperform during cyclical upswings while the reverse is true on the downside. Well, the industry is beginning to fall short of estimates. Global PC shipments grew by 13% in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC. That was below Evercore ISI's expectation of 18% and a big deceleration from the 55% rise in the first quarter. Furthermore, wireless router manufacturer Netgear Inc. gave disappointing guidance last month, adding that sales were worse-than-expected in its consumer networking category. Still, it's probably too soon to declare an end. Outbreaks of the delta variant and the long-term efficacy of vaccines make predictions even harder than usual. Some chip analysts have said reports of weakness are primarily seasonal and that sales will pick up through next year. Shortages also vary by part. So even if you can walk into a store and find plenty of laptops, you'll still struggle to get a new car or a video game console. In some cases, chip delivery times are longer than 20 weeks, the longest wait in at least four years. But as I wrote last month, the pandemic rush to computers and printers won't repeat itself. Once a worker or student buys a laptop, they don't need another one for several years. Retailers are offering extensive discounts on nearly every PC-related category, with the exception of graphics cards. (It's still a good time to be in the games business.) The waning demand for PCs will likely last for at least several more quarters.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 9:10p | Intel Is Giving Up On Its AI-Powered RealSense Cameras In a statement to CRN, Intel said it was "winding down" RealSense and transferring the talent and computer vision tech to efforts that "better support" its core chip businesses. Engadget reports: Questions surfaced about the fate of RealSense after the team's leader, Sagi Ben Moshe, said he was leaving Intel two weeks ago. RealSense aimed to make computer vision more flexible and accessible. A company or researcher could buy cameras to aid everything from robot navigation through to facial recognition, and there was even a developer-focused phone. It was never a truly mainstream product, though, and ASI VP Kent Tibbils told CRN that there were few customers buying RealSense cameras in any significant quantities. It wasn't really a money-making division, even if the work helped Intel's other teams. For Intel, there's likely a simpler answer: it wants to cut ballast. CEO Pat Gelsinger wants Intel to reclaim the chipmaking crown, and that means concentrating its resources on design and manufacturing capabilities. No matter how successful RealSense is, it's a potential distraction from Intel's latest strategy.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 11:10p | Google's Fuchsia OS Is Rolling Out Widely To 1st-Gen Nest Hubs More owners of the first-generation Nest Hub are receiving the update to Google's Fuchsia operating system as it expands beyond the Preview program. 9to5Google reports: Back in May, Google formally released Fuchsia, its effort to develop a "not Linux" operating system from scratch, which has been years in the making. The first device to receive the new OS was Google's 2018 smart display, the Nest Hub -- not to be confused with the second generation Nest Hub with sleep tracking released earlier this year -- taking it permanently off of the existing Linux based "Cast OS" without negatively affecting the UI or experience. At the time, the rollout of Fuchsia was limited to a select few devices that were enrolled in the "Preview program" available to all devices via the Google Home app. Over time, the number of Nest Hubs running Fuchsia was expanded, with Google no doubt watching carefully for any issues with the upgrade. Late last week, Google updated a support page to reflect that the Nest Hub has received a new firmware update for both the Preview program and all other devices. Specifically, the first-gen Nest Hub is now receiving firmware version 1.52.260996. Google confirmed to us that this update does indeed include the upgrade to Fuchsia. All goes well, this means in a matter of days, all first-gen Nest Hub devices in households around the world should be running Fuchsia.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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