United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket launched 27 more Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon from Cape Canaveral, bringing the constellation’s total to 129 in orbit. By the end of the year, Amazon expects over 200 satellites will be deployed, with commercial service starting in several countries by early 2026. Spaceflight Now reports: This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. […] The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later. From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study. … [A]nalysis from the Centre for Net Zero (CNZ) says it would cost 43 percent less to power a 120 MW data facility with renewables and a small amount of gas-generated energy, when compared with an SMR. It claims that a microgrid comprising offshore wind, solar, battery storage, and backed up by gas generation, would be significantly cheaper to run annually than procuring power sourced from a nuclear SMR.

[…] CNZ describes itself as an open research institute, founded by Octopus Energy Group in the UK, and claims to advise the State of California and Europe’s International Energy Agency as well as the British government. While CNZ’s study applies to the UK sector, where energy costs are among the highest in the industrialized world, it is likely that the overall conclusion would still be valid in other countries as well. Its analysis shows that renewables can meet 80 percent of the constant demand from a large datacenter over the course of a year. Offshore wind can provide the majority of load requirements, with gas generation backed by battery storage as a stopgap source of power representing the most cost-optimal mix.

Greater capacity in the on-site battery storage system would reduce the reliance on gas power, and this would likely happen over time as the cost of such systems is expected to come down, the report claims. But perhaps the real kicker is that CNZ estimates that microgrids powered largely by renewables could be built in approximately five years, while operational SMRs are not expected to be widely available until sometime in the next decade. CNZ says that it calculated the typical yearly resource cost (capex and opex) of powering a datacenter with a nuclear SMR, and modeled this using Python for Power System Analysis (PyPSA), an open source energy modeling tool, against two renewable energy scenarios. One was the wind, solar, battery, and gas mix, while the other omitted solar.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. tech workers must sacrifice work-life balance to compete with China’s workforce, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned. Speaking on the All-In podcast, Schmidt said China’s tech sector operates on “996” schedules — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — despite the practice being outlawed in 2021. He criticized remote work as particularly harmful for young employees who miss learning opportunities from in-person office interactions.

âoeIf you’re going to be in tech and you’re going to win, you’re going to have to make some tradeoffs,” Schmidt said. “Remember, we’re up against the Chinese; the Chinese work-life balance consists of 996, which is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week,” he said. Silicon Valley AI startups are already adopting similar expectations, demanding 72-hour workweeks according to Wired. Google’s Sergey Brin recently told Gemini team employees to work in-office weekdays, calling 60 hours weekly “the sweet spot of productivity.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MacStadium’s inaugural CIO survey shows Apple devices gaining major ground in U.S. enterprises, with 96% of CIOs expecting Mac fleets to expand in the next two years and Macs already representing an average of 65% of enterprise endpoints. “The results show rapid Mac deployment across US business in the last two years, with 93% of CIOs claiming increased use, and 59% claiming a significant increase in use of all Apple devices,” adds Computerworld. From the report: “As the adoption of Apple hardware continues to rise with both consumers and business users, and Apple Silicon is emerging as a secure and energy-efficient option for AI workloads, Apple is turning its sights to the enterprise,” [MacStadium CEO Ken Tacelli] said in an interview. Among the specifics:

– 93% of CIOs report increased Apple device usage over the past two years.
– 45% of CIOs describe their leadership’s view of Macs as a strategic investment, reflecting growing executive-level buy-in.
– The top drivers for Apple adoption are security and privacy (59%), employee preference (59%), and hardware performance (54%).
– Perhaps most importantly, 65% of CIOs say Macs are easier to manage than Windows or Linux devices.

In addition to those factors, the unique technical capabilities of Apple’s kit (53%) play a role. Businesses are buying Macs because they’re cheaper to run, last longer, allow employees to be more productive, and are both more private and more secure. The survey also shows that AI has become a leading reason to choose Macs. Apple Silicon is highly performant and energy efficient, enabling Macs to run on-device, secure AI, and to access cloud-based AI services.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Videogame maker Electronic Arts is in advanced talks to go private in a roughly $50 billion deal that would likely be the largest leveraged buyout of all time, WSJ is reporting, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: A group of investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners could unveil a deal for the publisher best known for its sports games as soon as next week, the people said.

EA has long made games including FIFA, the soccer videogame now known as FC, and the football game Madden NFL as well as The Sims and other titles. The California-based company had a market value of around $43 billion before The Wall Street Journal reported on the talks, which sent the stock up nearly 15% Friday. Its shares closed at $193.35, a record high, giving the company a market value of around $48 billion.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You can’t spot a hedgehog from space, but you might be able to find where they live by looking for brambles. That’s the premise behind ongoing research at the University of Cambridge, where scientists are using satellite imagery and AI models to map potential hedgehog habitats across the UK by first identifying their favorite hiding spots: bramble patches.

European hedgehog populations have declined by roughly 30 to 50 percent over the past decade, so tracking these nocturnal creatures across large areas remains difficult and expensive. Rather than searching for the hedgehogs directly, researcher Gabriel Mahler developed an AI model that identifies brambles, which are thorny shrubs that hedgehogs use for shelter and foraging, from satellite data.

These small mammals rely on this type of dense vegetation for daytime shelter, nesting sites, and protection from predators. Brambles also attract insects and provide berries, supporting the invertebrate populations that hedgehogs eat.

Read full article

Comments

Assuming it can turn its Project Orion augmented reality glasses into a real product people can buy, Meta apparently wants to get into robots next. That’s according to Sources‘ Alex Heath, who spoke to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth and reports that much like Apple, Google and Tesla, Meta is researching robotics.

Unlike those other companies, though, Meta apparently isn’t all that focused on competing in hardware. It has a “Metabot” in the works, but its real goal is to create software that other companies can license, much like Google does with Android. “Software is the bottleneck,” according to Bosworth, and the hope is that the combined powers of Meta’s robotics team — led by Marc Whitten, the former CEO of Cruise —  and its highly publicized Superintelligence Labs can produce a solution.

That work apparently starts with the development of a “world model” that can help a robot “do the software simulation required to animate a dexterous hand,” but will presumably extend to more complicated movements and tasks down the road. In February 2025, Meta was reportedly looking at building a robot that could handle household chores like cleaning or folding laundry. Given how early everything sounds, that’s likely a long way off.

Meta isn’t alone in pursuing robotics. Apple is reportedly working on its own home robots, starting with a table-mounted arm with a display. Tesla has regularly demoed versions of its Optimus robot to the public, though often in highly-controlled scenarios. Meta has yet to realize its goal of usurping the smartphone with AR glasses. Whether or not it does, it sounds like robots will be the thing it burns money on next.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-wants-to-become-the-android-of-robotics-220701800.html?src=rss

A 63-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston with severe stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.

She told doctors that for the past month she had developed severe nausea, non-bloody vomiting, and pain she described as a burning feeling that spread from her upper abdomen, through her right side, and around to her back. Nothing she did made it better.

The doctors started collecting her medical history, which was lengthy. The woman had Type 2 diabetes, Stage 2 chronic kidney disease, opioid use disorder, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), among other conditions. While she was taking many medications, she noted that for the past year she had also been taking semaglutide, a GLP-1 weight-loss drug, and had lost about 40 pounds (over 19 percent of her body weight).

Read full article

Comments

LG is looking to create a new market: TVs for senior citizens. However, I can’t help thinking that the answer for a TV that truly prioritizes the needs of older people is much simpler—and cheaper.

On Thursday, LG announced the Easy TV in South Korea, aiming it at the “senior TV market,” according to a Google translation of the press release. One of the features that LG has included in attempts to appeal to this demographic is a remote control with numbers. Many remotes for smart TVs, streaming sticks, and boxes don’t have numbered buttons, with much of the controller’s real estate dedicated to other inputs.

The Easy TV’s remote.
Credit:
LG

LG released a new version of its Magic Remote in January with a particularly limited button selection that is likely to confuse or frustrate newcomers. In addition to not having keys for individual numbers, there are no buttons for switching inputs, play/pause, or fast forward/rewind.

Read full article

Comments

This is a video from Pittsburgh-based Skild AI demonstrating the AI brain they’ve developed (“Any robot. Any task. One brain.”), and how quickly it can adapt to a robot’s broken limbs or other decreased mobility. SPOILER: almost instantly. Me? I broke my pinky toe once and thought I was a goner. I mean I still do, just not because of the toe.

Thanks to my dad, who agrees treating robots like this is only going to lead to our own suffering in the future.