General Tech News

[Rab]

Would be nice if they were forced to give you a charger with your new phone too. Or even if it was just a tick box at no extra cost.

Literally just giving you the phone these days but the price doesn't come down despite the lack of peripherals.

[CaaC (John)]

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A 3D-printer that uses crossed light beams to set its ink

Additive manufacturing … with an LED.

A team of Australian researchers have developed an ink that could be used in a brand-new, potentially much faster 3D-printing concept.

Under the technology, a laser’s light beam lances through ink, exciting the atoms in its path. Some of the molecules change shape as they’re touched by the light but they don’t react with anything – yet. A second light beam, in a different colour, hits the ink at another angle, causing contortions in a different set of molecules.

Where these light beams intersect, the two excited molecules react with each other and become solid.

This is the idea driving the new 3D-printing technique.

“Normally, in a 3D printer the inkjet moves around in two dimensions, slowly printing one 2D layer before moving up to print another layer on top,” says Dr Sarah Walden, a researcher at Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Materials Science.

“But using this technology, you could have a whole two-dimensional sheet activated, and print the entire sheet at once.”

This technology is on the cusp of being taken to market – but there are a few things holding it back.

“These two-colour printers are just being developed now. There’s one commercial one on the market,” says Walden.

At the moment it’s hard to find substances which respond to specific shades of light – and react with each other. This is where Walden and her colleagues’ research comes in.

“We’re making inks that could be used in that type of printing and we think it could really speed up the rate at which we 3D-print materials,” says Walden.

The team has just published a paper in Nature Communications describing one of these inks.

“We’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work, as you do in research. It was great to finally find a system that behaves,” says Walden.

The system works by manipulating two substances: one a type of chemical called an azobenzene, and the other a type of ketene. These two chemicals don’t react with each other in typical conditions. But when the molecules are exposed to light (red or green light in the azobenzene’s case, UV light in the ketene’s case) each changes shape into a form that makes them react with one another to form a solid compound.

This trick means that, absent both shades of light, nothing happens to the substance – meaning it can be used in subsequent manufacturing processes.

“We use the colours of light to basically turn them into their reactive forms,” summarises Walden.

“But if they don’t find a reaction partner, they just go back to their nonreactive forms. So, when we turn the light off, there won’t be any reactions happening subsequently. 

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Read more: Making light of molecule manufacture

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The researchers initially tested the process with a tuneable laser in the QUT labs, but then were able to replicate it with commercially available light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Walden says that, so far, the technology has been used to make hand-held, proof-of-concept objects.

“We’ve made little materials in our lab, so we know that this two-colour process works,” she says.

The interdisciplinary team wants to find other chemicals which can respond to light and each other like this.

“You can start to think of biocompatible-type materials with visible light – but that’s well down the track,” says Walden.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/3d-printing-ink-light-setting/

 

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[Bluebird Hewitt]

7 hours ago, Rab said:

Would be nice if they were forced to give you a charger with your new phone too. Or even if it was just a tick box at no extra cost.

Literally just giving you the phone these days but the price doesn't come down despite the lack of peripherals.

Noticed that when I had my phone last year. Had the leads and wondered where the sodding charger was. Dirty robbing bastards.

[CaaC (John)]

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Nanotechnology that bosses light around to make one-way images

Could computers one day work with light?

The translucent slide is less than a thousandth of a millimetre thick. It’s not much bigger in width or length – about a tenth of a millimetre on each side. When infrared light shines on it from one direction, it lights up blue with a picture of the Sydney Opera House. But when it shines the opposite way, the image changes, becoming a tiny map of Australia.

According to the international team of researchers which made this slide, it’s much more than a microscopic curio. It represents an optical technology that could one day speed up our internet and communications – all because of the way it manipulates light.

The slide is a carefully arranged two-dimensional array of nanoparticles, each 12,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

“They’re made of two materials: silicon and silicon nitride,” says Dr Sergey Kruk, a researcher at the Australian National University’s Nonlinear Physics Centre, and lead author of a paper describing the research, which is published in Nature Photonics.

“[It’s] essentially the same materials that we use to produce computer chips – but these are not electronics. These are photonic.

“They don’t control electricity, they control light.”

The slides are made in a similar way to computer chips.

While the Opera House and Australia images are neat, the real novelty of the panel is its ability to show two completely different images based on the direction of light it’s receiving.

“The particles control the flow of light like road signs control traffic on a busy road by manipulating the direction in which light can, or can’t, travel,” says Kruk.

“Some particles allow light to flow from left to right only, others from right to left or the pathway might be blocked in either direction.”

This ability to block and allow light could be used in a number of different places.

“We are the thinking that it will be really great for controlling light in a way similar to how we control electricity,” says Kruk.

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Co-author Dr Lei Wang, a researcher from Southeast University in China, says: “In real-world applications these nanoparticles can be assembled into complex systems that would control the flow of light in a useful manner – such as in next-generation communications infrastructure.”

Kruk adds: “We exchange enormous amounts of information with the help of light. When you make a video call, say, from Australia to Europe, your voice and image get converted into short pulses of light that travel thousands of kilometres through an optical fibre over the continents and oceans.

“Unfortunately, when we use current light-based technologies to exchange information, a lot of parasitic effects might occur. Light might get scattered or reflected, which compromises your communication.

“By ensuring light flows exactly where it needs to flow, we would resolve many issues with current technologies.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/nanotechnology-light-one-way/

 

[Mel81x+]

Why Lockdown mode from Apple is one of the coolest security ideas ever | Ars Technica

Like one of the comments says "I'd turn this on everyday". It seems like in the rush to make things faster we've inevitably opened a lot of weird doors in the cybersecurity space. This, however, is a step in the right direction and I hope the next step is being able to auto-identify sites that are poaching data and then letting the user shutdown whatever they want. It hurts marketing but its also the right thing to do.

[CaaC (John)]

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New self-calibrating photonic chip shines a light on ultrafast tech of the future

Researchers at Monash University and RMIT say the chip will revolutionise data transfer.

When it comes to advancements in technology, we’re always pushing for things to be faster, better, more efficient, more sustainable, and smaller.

This certainly applies to the burgeoning field of photonics – the use of light particles (photons) to store, transmit and manipulate information. In broad terms, photonics is a lot like electronics except the particles which are doing the work are photons, not electrons.

Researchers at Melbourne’s Monash University and RMIT have now developed an advanced photonic circuit which could transform the speed and scale of photonics technologies.

Publishing their findings in Nature Photonics, the team believes the efficiency of their new photonic chip can help advance research into artificial intelligence as well as in driverless cars, language processing, and data transfer.

In 2020, Monash University’s Bill Corcoran worked with RMIT researchers to develop a new optical microcomb chip. That single fingernail-sized chip was able to transfer 39 terabits per second – three times the record data rate for the entire National Broadband Network. The testing of the chip was widely regarded as a demonstration of the world’s fastest internet speed.

Lead investigator of the latest collaboration Arthur Lowery, professor at Monash, says their work is now building on the 2020 optical microcomb chip.

Researchers say that the microcomb chip represents the building of a superhighway. The new “self-calibrating” optical chip incorporates on and off ramps, connecting a number of superhighways for even greater movement of data.

“We have demonstrated a self-calibrating programmable photonic filter chip, featuring a signal processing core and an integrated reference path for self-calibration,” Lowery explains.

The new chip turns an impressive initial demonstration into something that can be useful in engineering new technologies.

“Self-calibration is significant because it makes tunable photonic integrated circuits useful in the real world; applications include optical communications systems that switch signals to destinations based on their colour, very fast computations of similarity (correlators), scientific instrumentation for chemical or biological analysis, and even astronomy,” says Lowery.

As more and more advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and self-driving cars require greater volumes of data to be transmitted at even greater speeds, developments in photonics illuminate how this might be achieved.

“This research is a major breakthrough – our photonic technology is now sufficiently advanced so that truly complex systems can be integrated on a single chip,” says Professor Arnan Mitchell from RMIT’s Integrated Photonics and Applications Centre. “The idea that a device can have an on-chip reference system, allowing all its components to work as one, is a technological breakthrough that will allow us to address bottleneck internet issues by rapidly reconfiguring the optical networks that carry our internet to get data where it’s needed the most.”

“Electronics saw similar improvements in the stability of radio filters using digital techniques that led to many mobiles being able to share the same chunk of spectrum. Our optical chips have similar architectures, but can operate on signals with terahertz bandwidths,” says Lowery.

While photonics opens up massive opportunities, it is not easy going to make devices which can be programmed and reprogrammed. This is because the manufacturing needs to be done with precision down to the scale of the wavelength of light – nanometres.

So, making an optical chip that can be hooked up to existing infrastructure becomes a major issue.

“Our solution is to calibrate the chips after manufacturing, to tune them up in effect by using an on-chip reference, rather than by using external equipment,” explains Lowery. “We use the beauty of causality, effect following cause, which dictates that the optical delays of the paths through the chip can be uniquely deduced from the intensity versus wavelength, which is far easier to measure than precise time delays. We have added a strong reference path to our chip and calibrated it. This gives us all the settings required to ‘dial up’ and desired switching function or spectral response.”

Instead of dialling in a setting manually, the chip is tuned in one step allowing data streams to be switched seamlessly.

“As we integrate more and more pieces of bench-sized equipment onto fingernail-sized chips, it becomes more and more difficult to get them all working together to achieve the speed and function they did when they were bigger,” says Dr Andy Boes, a collaborator from the University of Adelaide. “We overcame this challenge by creating a chip that was clever enough to calibrate itself so all the components could act at the speed they needed to in unison.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/self-calibrating-photonic-chip/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Welcome to our regularly updated curation of the coolest, smartest kit money can buy.

We all love the arrival of a new gadget, something that will make life more convenient and entertaining for yourself, or help you out with a clever gift idea for a family or friend. That’s why we’ve put together some of the most interesting and innovative bits of tech out there right now in our list of the coolest, new gadgets we think you’ll love.

If you want to boost your listening experience with the latest speakers and headphones, ramp up your fitness with the newest watches and hi-tech trainers, max out your home entertainment experience or just explore what else is out there, we’ve got you covered.

72 cool gadgets: Our pick of the best new tech for 2022

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[nudge]

So BMW is now charging monthly subscription to remove software block and activate front seat heating as if planned obsolescence wasn't enough, now we're also getting subscription models and microtransactions for things that are already built-in by default in the car you already paid for. Welcome to the future. What's next, monthly subscription to be able to use the breaks?... Although that wouldn't even be surprising; Boeing have been selling certain safety features on their planes as extra add-ons for quite a while already. 

[Mel81x+]

17 minutes ago, nudge said:

So BMW is now charging monthly subscription to remove software block and activate front seat heating as if planned obsolescence wasn't enough, now we're also getting subscription models and microtransactions for things that are already built-in by default in the car you already paid for. Welcome to the future. What's next, monthly subscription to be able to use the breaks?... Although that wouldn't even be surprising; Boeing have been selling certain safety features on their planes as extra add-ons for quite a while already. 

What a world we live in. Where safety comes for a cost. Just disgusting.

[CaaC (John)]

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From hypercolor to structural colour: fabrics that change hue when stretched

New technique for printing in full colour without chemicals or dyes.

The 1990s brought us heat-sensitive ‘hypercolor’ t-shirts, a technology which highlighted sweat patches and invited unwanted physical contact.

Thirty years on, and a team of engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are gearing up for a new fad in fabrics which change colour when stretched.

By combining a 19^th century colour photography technique with modern holographic materials, the MIT research team has printed colours and images onto elastic fabric using ‘structural colour’, instead of chemical additives or dyes. Their results are detailed in Nature Materials.

Structural colour is a concept inspired by the light-reflecting properties in nature, in organisms like mollusc shells and butterfly wings which appear to shimmer and shift their colour. The effect is due to microscopic angled and layered surface structures which reflect light like miniature-coloured mirrors.

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Read more: How to print colours without ink

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Many researchers have tried to replicate structural colour in materials but achieving precision at a larger scale has been challenging.

“Scaling these materials is not trivial, because you need to control these structures at the nanoscale,” says the paper’s author and MIT graduate student Benjamin Miller.

The new technique represents the first scalable technique for printing detailed, large-scale materials using structural colour.

The research was inspired by a trip to the museum. After visiting an exhibition on holography, Miller was inspired to learn about holographics and early colour photography, including a technique called Lippmann photography invented in the late 1800s.

Physicist Gabriel Lippmann generated coloured photos by setting a mirror behind a very thin, transparent emulsion — a material concocted from tiny light-sensitive grains. He then exposed the setup to a beam of light, which the mirror reflected back through the emulsion. The interference of incoming and outgoing light waves reconfigured the emulsion’s grains to change position, which like tiny mirrors, reflected the pattern and wavelength of the exposing light.

Using his technique, Lippmann was able to produce structurally coloured images of flowers and other scenes. But despite earning its creator a Nobel Prize in Physics, the method was so laborious it had largely faded into history. Until recently.

Benjamin Miller wondered if, paired with modern, holographic materials, Lippmann photography could be sped up to produce large-scale, structurally coloured materials? Like Lippmann’s emulsions, holographic fabrics consist of light-sensitive molecules that behave in a similar way when exposed to incoming light.

To test the concept, the MIT team adhered elastic, transparent holographic film onto a reflective, mirror-like surface (in this case, a sheet of aluminium). They then placed an off-the-shelf projector several feet from the film and projected images onto each sample, including Lippman-esque bouquets.

Within several minutes, the films were printed with detailed pictures vividly reproducing the full spectrum of colours in the original images.

After peeling the film away from the mirror and sticking it to a silicone backing for support, the researchers found they could stretch the film and watch its appearance change — an effect arising from the material’s structural colour.

In further testing, the MIT researchers printed other films with flower bouquets capable of morphing from warm to cooler shades when stretched.

They found they could also print hidden images – like a strawberry or a fingerprint – onto the film by tilting it at an angle to the incoming light. When stretched, the fabric’s secrets can be revealed.

Beyond creating new fads and fabrics, materials painted with structural colour could be used to monitor bandage pressure levels when treating conditions such as venous ulcers and certain lymphatic disorders.

“Imagine checking an arm band’s colour to gauge muscle mass. Or sporting a swimsuit that changes hue as you do laps,” the paper’s press release enthuses. And after the experience with hypercolor, one can also forsee the potential for colour-changing stretch fabric to highlight body parts with flattering – or more likely unflattering – results.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/structural-colour-fabrics-change-hue/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Producing electricity from your sweat might be key to next wearable technology

This biofilm sounds like science fiction

Imagine a world where the smart watch on your wrist never ran out of charge, because it used your sweat to power itself.

It sounds like science fiction but researchers have figured out how to engineer a bacterial biofilm to be able to produce continuous electricity from perspiration.

They can harvest energy in evaporation and convert it to electricity which could revolutionise wearable electronic devices from personal medical sensors to electronics.

The science is in a new study published in Nature Communications.

“The limiting factor of wearable electronics has always been the power supply,” says senior author Jun Yoa, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass),  in the US. “Batteries run down and have to be changed or charged. They are also bulky, heavy, and uncomfortable.”

But the surface of our skin is constantly moist with sweat, so a small, thin, clear and flexible biofilm worn like a Band-Aid could provide a much more convenient alternative.

The biofilm is made up of a sheet of bacterial cells approximately 40 micrometres thick or about the thickness of a sheet of paper. It’s made up a genetically engineered version of the bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens to be exact.

G. sulfurreducens is a microorganism known to produce electricity and has been used previously in “microbial fuel cells”. These require the bacteria to be alive, necessitating proper care and constant feeding, but this new biofilm can work continuously because the bacteria are already dead.

“It’s much more efficient,” says senior author Derek Lovley, distinguished professor of Microbiology at UMass Amherst. “We’ve simplified the process of generating electricity by radically cutting back on the amount of processing needed.

“We sustainably grow the cells in a biofilm, and then use that agglomeration of cells. This cuts the energy inputs, makes everything simpler and widens the potential applications.”

The process relies on evaporation-based electricity production – the hydrovoltaic effect. Water flow is driven by evaporation between the solid biofilm and the liquid water, which drives the transport of electrical charges to generate an electrical current.

G. sulfurreducens colonies are grown in thin mats which are harvested and then have small circuits etched into them using a laser. Then they are sandwiched between mesh electrodes and finally sealed in a soft, sticky, breathable polymer which can be applied directly onto the skin without irritation.

Initially, the researchers tested it by placing the device directly on a water surface, which produced approximately 0.45 volts of electricity continuously. When worn on sweaty skin it produced power for 18 hours, and even non-sweating skin generated a substantial electric output – indicating that the continuous low-level secretion of moisture from the skin is enough to drive the effect.

“Our next step is to increase the size of our films to power more sophisticated skin-wearable electronics,” concludes Yao.

The team aim to one day be able to power not only single devices, but entire electronic systems, using this biofilm. And because microorganisms can be mass produced with renewable feedstocks, it’s an exciting alternative for producing renewable materials for clean energy powered devices.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/electricity-from-sweat-biofilm/

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

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Quantum dots — a bright idea for achieving more natural lighting

Next-generation smart lighting systems to brighten your day

Finding a more natural light might take a big step forward with quantum dots.

LED (Light-emitting diode) technology has brought about a revolution in lighting — particularly in terms of efficiency and colour. But there’s still daylight between what traditional LEDs can produce and what we get when we step outside into the sun. They in turn are a big step up from fluorescent, halogen and incandescent bulbs.

LEDs produce “white” light either by conversion from blue light via a phosphor coating or by combining three separate LEDs, each with one of the three primary colours of light (red, blue and green).

Now, a research group from the University of Cambridge has delved into the tiny world of quantum dots (semiconductors just tens of atoms across) to design smart, colour-controllable white light devices able to produce white light and replicate a wider range of colours than current smart lighting technology.

Professor Gehan Amaratunga from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who co-led the research, says this increases the potential for a positive impact on human health and well-being, as they can be fine-tuned to respond to individual mood and circadian rhythms.

“It opens the way for a wide variety of new human responsive lighting environments,” Amaratunga says.

So, Quantum… whats? Let me try to ahem…enlighten…ahem…you.

Quantum dots are sometimes known as artificial atoms because their crystal or lattice structures mimic the discrete electronic energy levels found in isolated atoms. A photon (or packet of light) is produced when an electron and a “hole” (where there is no electron) combine within a quantum dot and this can be controlled by applying a laser beam or electric or magnetic field. The wavelength (or colour) of the light produced is effectively determined by the size of the quantum dot material.

By choosing quantum dots that are between three and 30 nanometres in diameter, the Cambridge University team achieved correlated colour temperature (CCT) of between 2243 K (reddish) to 9207 K (bright, midday sun) which far outshines the 2200 K–6500 K CCT range achieved by LEDs.

CCT is the lighting colour equivalent of weather forecast “feels like” temperature ranges.

Although quantum dots as light sources have been investigated for almost 30 years, this innovative approach is scalable to large area lighting systems and can be made with a printing process. “This is a world-first: a fully optimised, high-performance quantum-dot-based smart white lighting system,” says Professor Jong Min Kim from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering who also co-led the research. It’s the “first milestone toward the full exploitation of quantum-dot-based smart white lighting for daily applications”.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/quantum-dots-a-bright-idea/

 

[Mel81x+]

Breach of software maker used to backdoor as many as 200,000 servers | Ars Technica

It really doesn't pay to be company called "Fishpig" I guess. Also, one of the comments did bring to light something the industry is doing in general, offering bug bounties to the open community to get ahead of these issues.

[CaaC (John)]

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What is Web3?

It incorporates blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and NFTs.

The internet is made from the computers in the world that are networked together, from laptops to tiny sensors. The World Wide Web is the software we run on the internet to help us navigate, find and use resources or ‘content’ – data files that might be anything from videos to text documents, stored on all the computers.

In the early days, most websites were static, fixed pages. The transition to Web 2.0 and dynamic content occurred at the beginning of the century. Now pages could change in response to user input, and concepts such as blogs and wikis enabled users to create new content.

This evolved into new media, as audio, photos, video and gaming became integrated into the web. Yet critics began to question the dominance of today’s web by a small number of ‘big tech’ companies who, while under the guise of providing free services, actually collect your private data and exploit it for vast profit.

Web3 is said to be the third great evolution by those who hope for a more secure and decentralised web. Making use of blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFTs, some hope that Web3 will provide the privacy, scalability and security that is currently missing.

Web3 is attracting billions in investment, but it is fuzzily defined. Perhaps it will involve ‘decentralised finance’ without any need for banks, but then how to regulate it and give consumers protection from fraud? Perhaps it will involve ‘decentralised autonomous organisations’ – virtual companies that operate more like computer programs instead of following rules set by specific governments. Perhaps it will use ‘self-sovereign identities’, where you prove your identity with cryptographically secure ‘verifiable credentials’.

Web3 is generating excitement, but it has its critics. As it relies so heavily on crypto, and cryptocurrency solutions are largely consolidated into a small number of big players, the new web may end up resembling the old web – centralised and dominated by big tech.

Web3 is not the only vision of the future of the web. There is another idea, confusingly called Web 3.0, imagined by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the original web. Unlike Web3, Web 3.0 is not about blockchain – instead, the idea is to ensure every resource on the internet is identifiable, traceable and readable by computers in one giant web of meaning, or Semantic Web. He has also created the idea of decentralised social applications, where users own their personal data and can choose exactly who can access it.

Berners-Lee’s ideas are about equality and sharing of information freely, while respecting privacy of users. There are fewer buzzwords. Is it for these reasons that tech companies seem rather less enamoured by his vision? The slower uptake of this pioneer’s ideas seems a shame since they may resolve many of the concerns for Web 2.0.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/what-is-web3/

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

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Self-assembly breakthrough offers new promise for microscopic materials by mimicking biology

It’s like microscopic Ikea furniture that can assemble itself.

A new method for self-assembly in particles by physicists at New York University (NYU) offers promise for developing complex and innovative microscopic materials.

A note here that the “particles” exhibiting self-assembly are not subatomic particles – like protons and electrons – but particles like molecules, usually only visible through a microscope.

Such self-assembling of particles is believed to be useful in future drug and vaccine delivery as well as other medical applications.

Self-assembly was initially put forward in the early 2000s as the potential for nanotechnology began to make headlines. By “pre-programing” particles, scientists and engineers would be able to build materials at the microscopic level without human intervention. The particles organise themselves.

Think of it like microscopic Ikea furniture that can assemble itself.

But, don’t get the wrong end of the microscopic stick – this has nothing to do with artificial intelligence or particles with consciousness. The particles are programmed through chemistry.

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Read more: Generating hydrogen fuel from the very air we breathe

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This self-assembly is reliably done to great effect if all the pieces being assembled are distinct or different. However, systems with fewer different types of particles are much harder to program. The work done at NYU is aimed at producing self-assembly in these systems.

The NYU physicists reported their breakthrough in the journal Nature. Their research centres on emulsion – droplets of oil in water. Droplet chains are made to fold into unique shapes – called “foldamers” – which can be theoretically predicted from the sequence of interactions between the droplets.

Self-assembly already exists in nature. The team borrowed from what we understand of the physical chemistry of folding in proteins and RNA using colloids – a mixture of two or more substances which are not chemically combined, like an emulsion.

By placing an array of DNA sequences on the tiny oil droplets, which served as assembly “instructions”, the team was able to get the droplets to first form flexible chains before sequentially folding or collapsing via the sticky DNA molecules.

The physicists found that a simple alternating chain of up to 13 droplets, with two different types of oil, self-assembled into 11 two-dimensional ‘foldamers’ and an additional one in three dimensions.

“Being able to pre-program colloidal architectures gives us the means to create materials with intricate and innovative properties,” explains senior author Jasna Brujic, a professor in New York University’s Department of Physics. “Our work shows how hundreds of self-assembled geometries can be uniquely created, offering new possibilities for the creation of the next generation of materials.”

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Read more: How to 3D-print a super strong titanium rocket component

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They say the counterintuitive and pioneering aspect of their research is in requiring fewer building blocks to produce a wide variety of shapes.

“Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, in which every piece is different, our process uses only two types of particles, which greatly reduces the variety of building blocks needed to encode a particular shape. The innovation lies in using folding, similar to the way that proteins do, but on a length scale 1,000 times bigger – about one-tenth the width of a strand of hair. These particles first bind together to make a chain, which then folds,  according to pre-programmed interactions that guide the chain through complex pathways, into a unique geometry,” says Brujic.

“The ability to obtain a lexicon of shapes opens the path to further assembly into larger scale materials, just as proteins hierarchically aggregate to build cellular compartments in biology.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/self-assembly-microscopic-materials/

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

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World’s biggest flow battery opens in China

The vanadium flow battery represents a paradigm shift in big storage.

The world’s largest flow battery has opened, using a newer technology to store power.

The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station, in Dalian in northeast China, has just been connected to the grid, and will be operating by mid-October.

The vanadium flow battery currently has a capacity of 100 MW/400 MWh, which will eventually be expanded to 200 MW/800 MWh.

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who helped develop the project, it can supply enough electricity to meet the daily demands of 200,000 residents.

It will be used to smooth peaks and troughs in Dalian’s electricity demand and supply, making it easier to use solar and wind power.

Flow batteries are a newer type of battery technology that operate by combining tanks of liquid electrolytes, rather than using static electrodes.

They use cheaper and more sustainable materials than lithium-ion batteries, and are longer-lasting: theoretically, vanadium flow batteries could charge and discharge indefinitely.

They’re also flame-resistant and therefore safer than lithium-ion.

Flow batteries aren’t as energy dense as lithium-ion batteries, however, meaning they’re unlikely to be viable alternatives in electric vehicles or other places where the weight of the battery needs to be minimised.

Instead, most interest in flow batteries is on static applications, like the big grid-scale battery in Dalian.

Australia’s first and largest flow battery is a 2 MW/8 MWh vanadium flow battery under development in South Australia, at Yadlamalka near Port Augusta.

Australia’s biggest operating lithium-ion battery, by comparison, is currently the 300 MW/450 MWh Victorian Big Battery near Geelong.

How does a flow battery differ from other batteries? Read our battery explainer.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/flow-battery-china/

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[Mel81x+]

“The hell with it”—Elon Musk to keep funding Ukrainian Starlink service [Updated] | Ars Technica

Just a good example of how even the smartest of us is really just a cash-grabbing whore at the end of the day. I like a lot of the tech that Musk has put out but giving one person that much importance and power comes with a whole slew of other problems that no one is equipped to deal with.

[nudge]

1 hour ago, Mel81x said:

“The hell with it”—Elon Musk to keep funding Ukrainian Starlink service [Updated] | Ars Technica

Just a good example of how even the smartest of us is really just a cash-grabbing whore at the end of the day. I like a lot of the tech that Musk has put out but giving one person that much importance and power comes with a whole slew of other problems that no one is equipped to deal with.

I love what SpaceX are doing and what they have achieved in terms of spaceflight, but I also dread the day when they start the first colony on Mars and Musk assumes the position of leader of the new world  

[Mel81x+]

How Vice Society got away with a global ransomware spree | Ars Technica

This kind of hits close to home. The fact that so many of these hacking groups rely on systems that get very little attention because they aren't managed by folks who should be doing better is something the ITSec community can't fight on its own.

The fact that someone says they are on the latest patch but then has an auxiliary system that isn't patched connecting to it can cause a whole world of problems you're not ready to face. Microsoft was just in the news for a configuration block change on storage that cause over 2TB of customer sensitive data out as well. 

It's a strange world we live in where if you're secure and up-to-date it doesn't mean you're truly safe anymore. 

[Mel81x+]

Apparently the manchild now owns the bird app. God help us all.

[Bluebird Hewitt]

9 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

Apparently the manchild now owns the bird app. God help us all.

Probably for the best to sink it really, as Twatter is an absolute shitshow.

[Mel81x+]

1 minute ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Probably for the best to sink it really, as Twatter is an absolute shitshow.

While it is a shit show the irony that the biggest tool on the planet is going to make it crumble kind of makes me feel sorry for Twitter.

[nudge]

I may be in the minority here, but I actually love Twitter as a platform. It's by far the best social network for me to follow news, research and people in specific areas I'm interested in. That said, I stay clear of everything else and avoid the popular interests and events discussions between regular plebs, so that might cloud my judgement.

As for the latest developments, I do wonder if anything will change now that Musk acquired it. The only thing I gathered so far is that he'll want to focus on targeted advertising on the platform.

[Mel81x+]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

I may be in the minority here, but I actually love Twitter as a platform. It's by far the best social network for me to follow news, research and people in specific areas I'm interested in. That said, I stay clear of everything else and avoid the popular interests and events discussions between regular plebs, so that might cloud my judgement.

As for the latest developments, I do wonder if anything will change now that Musk acquired it. The only thing I gathered so far is that he'll want to focus on targeted advertising on the platform.

I think he'll make changes over time but for now its going to run as-is. The idea of acquiring it was to generate more revenue which it wasn't doing such a good job of earlier. 

[Mel81x+]

Microsoft launches developer-focused Mac mini-like PC with ARM processor (msn.com)

Very cool. I like the idea that we're moving towards an ARM development world where the machines aren't as power hungry as they currently are. The bigger challenge of course is changing the tooling landscape to match this goal and I think Microsoft really are ahead of the game there. Now, if only someone would find a way to make hyper-virtualization a much better power standard we'd take one step closer to lower power usage.