Monday, April 29th, 2024

Time	Event
1:41a	A Coal Billionaire is Building the World's Biggest Clean Energy Plant - Five Times the Size of Paris An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world's biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can't keep up. "I don't even do the math any more," Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week. Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He's also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia's second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India's biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements. Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world's biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes... [T]he park will cover more than 200 square miles and be the planet's largest power plant regardless of the energy source, AGEL said. CNN adds that the company "plans to invest $100 billion into energy transition over the next decade, with 70% of the investments ear-marked for clean energy." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
11:34a	America's First Big-Rig Hydrogen Fuel Station Opens in California Oakland, California is now home to "the first commercial hydrogen fuel station for big-rig trucks in the United States," according to the Los Angeles Times — serving 30 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. The newspaper says the facility "could mark the start of a nationwide network for fuel-cell truck refueling. It could also flop." Hydrogen fuel is expensive — as much as four times more expensive than gasoline or diesel fuel. The fuel cells, which drive electric motors to drive the truck, are enormously expensive as well.... The vehicles themselves are expensive too. Both battery electric and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks can cost three times as much or more than a $120,000 diesel truck. Those buying the trucks can qualify for state and federal subsidies to make up most of the upfront costs. But government regulations may spark some demand: New diesel truck sales will be outlawed in California by 2036. Only zero-tailpipe-emission new trucks will be allowed. Already, zero-emission requirements are in place for trucks that enter ocean ports. And only two technologies are available to achieve that goal: battery electric trucks and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. "We believe a good portion of those will be hydrogen vehicles," said Matt Miyasato, chief of public policy for hydrogen fuel distributor FirstElement Fuel. FirstElement, through its True Zero brand fueling stations, is the largest hydrogen vehicle fuel distributor in the U.S... Battery electric is gaining a strong foothold in the medium-sized delivery truck market, but hydrogen could have a leg up for long-haul trucking. While a fuel cell is comparable in size to a diesel engine, a battery big enough for long-haul trucks adds weight and size and cuts down on the total freight load the truck can deliver. And while an electric truck battery can take hours to recharge, the refill time for hydrogen is more comparable to filling up with diesel fuel. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
2:42p	Austria Calls For Rapid Regulation as It Hosts Meeting on 'Killer Robots' Austria called on Monday for fresh efforts to regulate the use of AI in weapons systems that could create so-called 'killer robots', as it hosted a conference aimed at reviving largely stalled discussions on the issue. From a report: With AI technology advancing rapidly, weapons systems that could kill without human intervention are coming ever closer, posing ethical and legal challenges that most countries say need addressing soon. "We cannot let this moment pass without taking action. Now is the time to agree on international rules and norms to ensure human control," Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told the meeting of non-governmental and international organisations as well as envoys from 143 countries. "At least let us make sure that the most profound and far-reaching decision, who lives and who dies, remains in the hands of humans and not of machines," he said in an opening speech to the conference entitled "Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation." Years of discussions at the United Nations have produced few tangible results and many participants at the two-day conference in Vienna said the window for action was closing rapidly. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
5:50p	Motherboard Makers Apparently To Blame For High-end Intel Core i9 CPU Failures An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this month, we wrote that some of Intel's recent high-end Core i9 and Core i7 processors had been crashing and exhibiting other weird issues in some games and that Intel was investigating the cause. An Intel statement obtained by Igor's Lab suggests that Intel's investigation is wrapping up, and the company is pointing squarely in the direction of enthusiast motherboard makers that are turning up power limits and disabling safeguards to try to wring a little more performance out of the processors. "While the root cause has not yet been identified, Intel has observed the majority of reports of this issue are from users with unlocked/overclock capable motherboards," the statement reads. "Intel has observed 600/700 Series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency." These are the specific settings that Intel believes are causing problems: Disabling Current Excursion Protection (CEP) Enabling the IccMax Unlimited bit Disabling Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) and/or Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB) Additional settings which may increase the risk of system instability: Disabling C-states Using Windows Ultimate Performance mode Increasing PL1 and PL2 beyond Intel recommended limits. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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