Monthly Archives: May 2025

Danes Are Finally Going Nuclear. They Have To, Because of All Their Renewables

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“The Danish government plans to evaluate the prospect of beginning a nuclear power programme,” reports the Telegraph, noting that this week Denmark lifted a nuclear power ban imposed 40 years ago.

Unlike its neighbours in Sweden and Germany, Denmark has never had a civil nuclear power programme. It has only ever had three small research reactors, the last of which closed in 2001. Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate… [“The spinning turbines found in fossil-fuelled energy systems provide inertia and act as a shock absorber to stabilise the grid during sudden changes in supply or demand,” explains a diagram in the article, while solar and wind energy provide no inertia.]

The Danish government is worried about how it will continue to decarbonise its power grid if it closes all of its fossil fuel generators leaving minimal inertia. There are only three realistic routes to decarbonisation that maintain physical inertia on the grid: hydropower, geothermal energy and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal depend on geographic and geological features that not every country possesses. While renewable energy proponents argue that new types of inverters could provide synthetic inertia, trials have so far not been particularly successful and there are economic challenges that are difficult to resolve.

Denmark is realising that in the absence of large-scale hydroelectric or geothermal energy, it may have little choice other than to re-visit nuclear power if it is to maintain a stable, low carbon electricity grid.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta CTO Addresses Quest 3 Battery Setting Issue Following Bungled Horizon OS Update

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Meta’s latest Horizon OS update for Quest (v76) introduced a new Battery Saver setting as default, which has led users to experience frame rate issues in apps and games. Now, Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth says the company is rolling out a fix and “taking a serious look” at how OS updates are communicated in the future.

In a recent Instagram AMA, Bosworth addressed recent user complaints about a quietly included system default, which automatically toggles a more aggressive version of Quest 3’s Battery Saver mode.

Previously, Battery Saver limited Quest’s refresh rate to 72Hz, applied fixed gaze rendering, and reduced brightness to 50%—something which could be toggled on in the settings to extend battery life.

The latest v76 release of Horizon OS however includes a new version of Battery Saver as default, putting the headset’s refresh rate to 90Hz, but critically capping many games at a nauseating 45FPS.

If users were unaware they could turn off Battery Saver, they would have no idea why the headset all of a sudden decided to act up, possibly even leading to blame falling on individual developers for poor optimization.

PSA: To disable Battery Saver on Quest 3, navigate to the “Power” settings within the “Device” menu in the settings app. Then, toggle off the “Power Saving Mode” option.

Notably, many Quest apps don’t use Application Spacewarp (AppSW), which some older titles implemented to smooth out low framerate stutter by generating synthetic frames between real frames, effectively doubling the perceived frame rate.

Bosworth says Meta is “rolling the fix out for that.” He further notes that while the usual staggering of Horizon OS updates “helps us identify regressions sooner,” the company could “do better on documentation” when it comes to patch notes. As it stands today, iterative Horizon OS patch notes are fairly paltry, often times only including a few line items without much explanation.

Here’s the full transcript of Bosworth’s comment below:

Yeah, good discussion and feedback from developers this last week on the stability and changes that we’re making in our rollouts, making sure that those are higher quality than they have been.

I think it’s great feedback. We’re taking it seriously for the battery saver issue. We’re rolling the fix out for that.

And more generally, I don’t think it’s the case that we’re rolling things out too quickly. I do think it’s just the case that we’ve got to have a stronger set of processes in place for quality control before things go out the door, which we’re doing.

We’re taking a serious look at this. We’re spending time on it. So we appreciate the feedback as always from developers. We take it seriously. That’s our responsibility. These are our mistakes. And we’re going to fix them.

And we understand that this is not casual. This is people’s livelihoods and time spent on the line that matters a ton in the experience that consumers have of people’s software.

So yeah, taking that seriously. We’re doing the work. I think staggering things helps because staggering things actually helps us identify regressions sooner. But I agree we could do better on documentation too.

The post Meta CTO Addresses Quest 3 Battery Setting Issue Following Bungled Horizon OS Update appeared first on Road to VR.

Since 2022 Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough, US Researchers Have More Than Doubled Its Power Output

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TechCrunch reports:

The world’s only net-positive fusion experiment has been steadily ramping up the amount of power it produces, TechCrunch has learned.
In recent attempts, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoules and then again to 8.6 megajoules, according to a source with knowledge of the experiment. The new results are significant improvements over the historic experiment in 2022, which was the first controlled fusion reaction to generate more energy than the it consumed. The 2022 shot generated 3.15 megajoules, a small bump over the 2.05 megajoules that the lasers delivered to the BB-sized fuel pellet.

None of the shots to date have been effective enough to feed electrons back into the grid, let alone to offset the energy required to power the entire facility — the facility wasn’t designed to do that. The first net-positive shot, for example, required 300 megajoules to power the laser system alone. But they are continued proof that controlled nuclear fusion is more than hypothetical.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HBO’s The Last of Us S2E6 recap: Look who’s back!

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New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here after they air. While these recaps don’t delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.

Kyle: Going from a sudden shot of beatific Pedro Pascal at the end of the last episode to a semi-related flashback with a young Joel Miller and his brother was certainly a choice. I almost respect how overtly they are just screwing with audience expectations here.

As for the opening flashback scene itself, I guess the message is “Hey, look at the generational trauma his family was dealing with—isn’t it great he overcame that to love Ellie?” But I’m not sure I can draw a straight line from “he got beat by his dad” to “he condemned the entire human race for his surrogate daughter.”

Andrew: I do not have the same problems you did with either the Joel pop-in at the end of the last episode or the flashback at the start of this episode—last week, the show was signaling “here comes Joel!” and this week the show is signaling “look, it’s Joel!” Maybe I’m just responding to Tony Dalton as Joel’s dad, who I know best as the charismatic lunatic Lalo Salamanca from Better Call Saul. I do agree that the throughline between these two events is shaky, though, and without the flashback to fill us in, the “I hope you can do a little better than me” sentiment feels like something way out of left field.

But I dunno, it’s Joel week. Joel’s back! This is the Duality of Joel: you can simultaneously think that he is horrible for failing a civilization-scale trolley problem when he killed a building full of Fireflies to save Ellie, and you can’t help but be utterly charmed by Pedro Pascal enthusiastically describing the many ways to use a Dremel. (He’s right! It’s a versatile tool!)

Truly, there’s pretty much nothing in this episode that we couldn’t have inferred or guessed at based on the information the show has already made available to us. And I say this as a non-game-player—I didn’t need to see exactly how their relationship became as strained as it was by the beginning of the season to have some idea of why it happened, nor did I need to see The Porch Scene to understand that their bond nevertheless endured. But this is also the dynamic that everybody came to the show for last season, so I can only make myself complain about it to a point.

Kyle: It’s true, Joel Week is a time worth celebrating. If I’m coming across as cranky about it at the outset, it’s probably because this whole episode is a realization of what we’re missing out on this season thanks to Joel’s death.

As you said, a lot of this episode was filling in gaps that could well have been inferred from events we did see. But I would have easily taken a full season (or a full second game) of Ellie growing up and Joel dealing with Ellie growing up. You could throw in some zombie attacks or an overarching Big Bad enemy or something if you want, but the development of Joel and Ellie’s relationship deserves more than just some condensed flashbacks.


“It works?!”
Credit:
Warner Bros. Discovery

Andrew: Yeah, it’s hard not to be upset about the original sin of The Last of Us Part 2 which is (assuming it’s like the show) that having some boring underbaked villain crawl out of the woodwork to kill the show’s main character is kind of a cheap shot. Sure, you shock the hell out of viewers like me who didn’t see it coming! But part of the reason I didn’t see it coming is because if you kill Joel, you need to do a whole bunch of your show without Joel and why on Earth would you decide to do that?

To be clear, I don’t mind this season so much and I’ve found things to like about it, though Ellie does sometimes veer into being a protagonist so short-sighted and impulsive and occasionally just-plain-stupid that it’s hard to be in her corner. But yeah, flashing back to a time just two months after the end of season 1 really does make you wonder, “Why couldn’t the story just be this?”

Kyle: In the gaming space, I understand the desire to not have your sequel game be just “more of the same” from the last game. But I’ve always felt The Last of Us Part 2 veered too hard in the other direction and became something almost entirely unrecognizable from the original game I loved.

But let’s focus on what we do get in this episode, which is an able recreation of my favorite moment from the second game, Ellie enjoying the heck out of a ruined science museum. The childlike wonder she shows here is a great respite from a lot of action-heavy scenes in the game, and I think it serves the same purpose here. It’s also much more drawn out in the game—I could have luxuriated in just this part of the flashback for an entire episode!

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Dungeons Of Eternity Teases Major Update With First Look At PC VR Visuals

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Dungeons of Eternity teased its “biggest content update yet” alongside its first look at the PC VR version’s visual upgrades.

Developed by Othergate, Dungeons of Eternity is a fantasy action RPG playable alone or in four-player co-op. Initially launched in 2023 on Quest, we’ve known for a while that a Steam release is on the way. We’ve now got a first look at the upcoming enhancements like real-time lighting, volumetric effects, ambient occlusion on PC VR, and you can see that in action below.

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SteamVR Visuals Showcase

While Dungeons of Eternity initially targeted a Q4 2024 launch on Steam, that release window was later delayed and currently aims for Q2 2025. Addressing this in the YouTube description, Othergate confirmed that “we didn’t want to just port the game from Quest, we’re launching it alongside our biggest content update yet.”

Since arriving on Quest, Dungeons of Eternity has received several notable updates, and last December saw co-op expand to support four players alongside adding new bosses and a PvP mode. Other notable post-launch changes include an Arachnophobia Mode that lets you swap out spiders, while last May delivered the ‘Longswords and Traps Spring‘ update.

Dungeons of Eternity currently targets a Q2 2025 launch on Steam, and it’s available now on Quest. As for other platforms, Othergate previously ruled out a release for Rift, PS VR2 and Pico.

Dungeons Of Eternity Review: One Of Co-Op’s Best On Quest
Dungeons of Eternity offers one of the best VR co-op adventures yet on Meta Quest headsets. Here is our full review.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale

EV Sales Keep Growing In the US, Represent 20% of Global Car Sales and Half in China

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“Despite many obstacles — and what you may read elsewhere — electric-vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the U.S. market,” Cox Automotive reported this week. “Roughly 7.5% of total new-vehicle sales in the first quarter were electric vehicles, an increase from 7% a year earlier.”

An anonymous reader shared this analysis from Autoweek:
“Despite a cloud of uncertainty around future EV interest and potential economic headwinds hanging over the automotive industry, consumer demand for electric vehicles has remained stable,” according to the J.D. Power 2025 US Electric Vehicle Consideration Study released yesterday. Specifically, the study showed that 24% of vehicle shoppers in the U.S. say they are “very likely” to consider purchasing an EV and 35% say they are “somewhat likely,” both of which figures remain unchanged from a year ago…

Globally the numbers are even more pro-EV. Electric car sales exceeded 17 million globally in 2024, reaching a sales share of more than 20%, according to a report issued this week by the International Energy Agency. “Just the additional 3.5 million electric cars sold in 2024 compared with the previous year is more than the total number of electric cars sold worldwide in 2020,” the IEA said. China, which has mandated increases in EV sales, is the leader in getting electric vehicles on the road, with electric cars accounting for almost half of all Chinese car sales in 2024, the IEA said. “The over 11 million electric cars sold in China last year were more than global sales just 2 years earlier. As a result of continued strong growth, 1 in 10 cars on Chinese roads is now electric.”

Interesting figures on U.S. EV sales from the article:

2024 EV sales rose 7.3% from 2023, according to Cox Automotive data.
“Last year American consumers purchased 1.3 million electric vehicles, which was a new record, according to data from KBB.
“Sales have never stopped growing, and the percentage of new cars sold powered purely by gasoline continues to slip.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HP is bringing Snapdragon chips to its more affordable laptops

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HP is giving a much-needed power-up to its OmniBook 5 Series laptop lineup. As part of Computex 2025, HP debuted the laptops equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X and X Plus chips for better energy efficiency and performance. The 14-inch version of the new OmniBook 5 Series starts at $799, while the 16-inch variation costs at least $849.

Previously, if you wanted the benefits of a Snapdragon chip in an HP laptop, you were stuck with the more expensive OmniBook X options that retail for at least $1,000. Now, there are more affordable options from HP that still have the benefits of ARM processors. The OmniBook 5 series may not be as powerful as the OmniBook X, but it still gets access to Copilot+‘s AI features, like Recall, Click-to-Do and an improved Windows Search experience.

All that comes in a laptop with a 2K OLED display that gets 34 hours of battery life and recharges up to 50 percent in 30 minutes. If the laptop’s singular display isn’t enough, the OmniBook 5 can hook up to a single external 5K monitor or two 4K displays. For all your virtual meeting needs, HP’s newest laptops have an 1080p IR camera that’s paired with its Audio Boost 2.0 feature to offer better sound quality and AI-powered noise removal.

HP said the OmniBook 5 with Snapdragon in its 14-inch configuration will be available first on Amazon and Microsoft, starting in June. In July, the 14-inch OmniBook 5 will make its way to HP’s own site, Best Buy and Costco. The 16-inch version will also be available in July through HP directly and its retail partners.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/hp-is-bringing-snapdragon-chips-to-its-more-affordable-laptops-060019642.html?src=rss

STARPro64 Brings 32GB LPDDR5 and 20 TOPS NPU to RISC-V SBC Platform

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The STARPro64 is one of the latest RISC-V single-board computers from PINE64, based on the ESWIN EIC7700X system-on-chip. Now in stock, the board offers key features such as dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, PCIe Gen3.0 expansion, and wireless connectivity. Originally previewed in October 2024, the board integrates a quad-core 64-bit SiFive P550 processor, an Imagination AXM-8-256 […]