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Captions only appear on new voice tweets, Twitter told The Verge, so you won’t see them on older ones
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Twitter always works on different features for better usage. Microblogging website Twitter has announced a new feature through which users can control their tweets and their replies. To minimize the reply on tweets, the microblogging website introduces this feature in 2020 in which they have made certain modifications.
Users before a tweet can choose who can reply to their tweets, hence they can permit a specific group of people to reply according to their preference.
In a blog, shared on Twitter, product management director Suzanne Xie stated that users will be given three options before tweet:
On opting for the first option, anyone is free to reply to tweets.
The second option will allow only the followers to reply.
And, the third option allows only mentioned or selective users to reply.
According to the blog, this feature is introduced to improve the conversation and to protect the tweets.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
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Google then extended the deadline to March 31 but has not extended the deadline this time
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The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General denied the public a complete view of alleged corruption in the notorious Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, program when it left gaping holes in an audit released last year. The investigator cleared many senior defense officials of favoring Amazon for the program’s $10 billion cloud services contract and also asserted its belief that the Defense Department was not pressured by the White House when eventually making the surprise decision to issue the award to Microsoft. However, new documents show the auditor shielded potentially compromising evidence from the public.
The New York Times reported first today that depositions and emails — which the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, or DOD IG, gathered during its JEDI investigation — show defense officials promoted Big Tech, especially Amazon, more than previously understood. The Intercept also obtained copies of the deposition via the Freedom of Information Act and emails from a source, and a closer look exposes even greater signs of advocacy for the Silicon Valley giants. The documents indicate that the DOD IG — when tasked with investigating the integrity of one of the most disputed and lucrative government contracts in recent years — glossed over evidence of a tainted acquisition.
That decision may be even more troubling since the auditor’s report demonstrates defense officials had notable financial ties to Amazon but nevertheless cleared them of wrongdoing, as The Intercept reported last month. In particular, the DOD IG discovered Sally Donnelly was serving as a senior adviser to former Defense Secretary James Mattis when she received a $390,000 outside payment that she did not disclose until after leaving the Pentagon. That payment stemmed from the earlier sale of her consulting firm — which had Amazon as a client — to British financier André Pienaar, who had ties to Amazon as well. It arrived in March 2017, the same month Mattis and Donnelly dined with Pienaar and his romantic partner, then Amazon executive Teresa Carlson, laying the groundwork for a future meeting with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The DOD IG noted Donnelly consulted a Pentagon ethics attorney about her financial disclosures but didn’t address the proximity of the March payment to the pivotal dinner. That oversight led Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., to criticize the integrity of the report and request Attorney General Merrick Garland to reevaluate Amazon’s influence on the JEDI program in May.
Donnelly and other defense officials cleared by the DOD IG, including Mattis, no longer work at the Pentagon. But last week, the DOD announced it’s abandoning the $10 billion JEDI deal with Microsoft anyway, claiming the military’s evolving data processing and artificial intelligence activities now require the services of multiple companies. That shift is undoubtedly likely to benefit Amazon, which had derailed the contract from ever even starting by filing a lawsuit asserting that former President Donald Trump unfairly tilted the scale to Microsoft.
The new documents show previously unseen evidence of potentially unethical conduct during and immediately following an August 2017 trip that Donnelly helped arrange for Mattis to meet with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, and Google. At that point, the secretary of defense was still researching the military’s data storage challenges and possible solutions. The DOD IG pointed to the visits as proof that Donnelly did not favor Amazon, as she gave its rivals access to Mattis too.
The auditor reported an email that a DOD staffer wrote Donnelly after Mattis met with Bezos on August 10, stating, “Boss did say he’s ‘99.9% there’ in terms of going to cloud.” (Mattis told the DOD IG that meetings with other industry executives and the Central Intelligence Agency also drove his decision to adopt cloud services.)
As the New York Times reported, what the DOD IG did not disclose was another email the same staffer sent that day, informing Donnelly: “The one on one seemed to go very well. The large group seemed to morph into an [Amazon Web Services] sales pitch. Boss was nice and gracious but I didn’t get a good vibe out of it.” (Ethics attorneys do not typically advise that the defense secretary take pitch meetings.)
A few days later, Donnelly and her colleague, Anthony DeMartino, apparently exchanged another email that was not disclosed in the DOD IG’s report, nor the collection of emails obtained by The Intercept, nor in the New York Times’ story. Instead, it was referred to in the depositions of Donnelly and DeMartino, who had been chief of staff to Mattis’s deputy, Patrick Shanahan, and was similarly cleared of wrongdoing.
The interviewer showed DeMartino an August 14, 2017, email he sent Donnelly stating, “Between us. To the Microsoft versus Amazon discussion,” and asked what he meant. (It’s not clear if this “discussion” directly pertained to the future JEDI contract, but the companies eventually emerged as the two frontrunners because of the government’s strict technical requirements for its vendors — restrictions that competitors like Oracle and IBM complained prevented a fair competition.)
DeMartino responded, “[Redacted individual] who was on the trip talked about Amazon and Microsoft.” The interviewer asked what actions Shanahan took based on the assessment and what discussions the two had about Amazon after the trip, and DeMartino responded that he didn’t think any occurred.
Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who would go on to become the acting secretary of defense, was not one of the officials who the DOD IG investigated for signs of corruption, but he was heavily involved in directing the creation of the Pentagon’s cloud adoption strategy and worked closely with the Pentagon’s then acquisition executive, Ellen Lord, former CEO of Textron. Witnesses told the auditor, per the report, that either Shanahan or Lord made the final decision on the use of a winner-takes-all contract for the JEDI program — which companies and lawmakers complained contradicted best practices and unfairly neglected competition.
The DOD IG interviewer didn’t press DeMartino further about his August 14 email to Donnelly but questioned Donnelly, who noted that further down in the email, Shanahan had asked, “how do the Microsofts of the world fit in the equation?”
Donnelly said that someone, whose name was redacted from the transcript, responded: “Microsoft trying to enter the game especially on ML [machine learning], but still a gen, which I think generation, behind Amazon and Google in my estimation, and then he says one area I think Microsoft is ahead is augmented reality and virtual reality.”
The comments were not included in the DOD IG’s dismissal of claims that pro-Amazon bias tainted the JEDI acquisition, nor in its discussion of pressure from the White House to allegedly harm Amazon’s chances of winning the contract.
The allegations of pro-Amazon bias date back to April 2017, when Mattis had just begun evaluating the military’s data storage challenges. The DOD IG reported Donnelly played no role in eventual JEDI procurement decisions, but critics nevertheless argued she gave preferential treatment to Amazon while the Pentagon leadership studied the problem and possible solutions. That month, an unidentified Pentagon staffer asked Donnelly and Adm. Craig Faller, another Mattis advisor, whether to accept a call with Bezos, which ultimately did not materialize. As The New York Times reported, Donnelly responded: “I think he is the genius of our age, so why not.”
The DOD IG report entirely omitted that the reply even existed, despite questioning her about it in an August 2019 deposition. “Well, that was probably flippant language for an official email,” Donnelly acknowledged during the interview.
Instead, the report mentioned another email Donnelly sent April 23 with the subject line, “Why Bezos,” which listed reasons for Mattis to meet with the megabillionaire. The DOD IG removed certain statements, and among those not reported by the New York Times was: “[In] 20 years Amazon has surpassed Wal-Mart in market capitalization.”
Other redactions from the email gave the appearance that Donnelly gave equal weight to another Bezos-founded defense contractor and its rival. The DOD IG reported that she wrote that the Amazon CEO started “a space company(Blue Origin) which, along with SpaceX, is transforming space flight.” What the auditor did not report was that Donnelly went on to say, “of note, Blue Origin has a productive/symbiotic relationship w/the United Launch Alliance (Boeing, etc.), as opposed to SpaceX, which is challenging ULA head on.”
Part of the DOD IG’s justification for clearing Donnelly was that she did not have the final say over who got to actually meet with the secretary of defense. That power rested, the auditor stated, with Mattis’s chief of staff, Kevin Sweeney. However, the DOD IG report neglected to disclose a telling line from an April 21 email to Donnelly and Faller: “[Chief of Staff] defers to you for SecDef consideration.”
Michael Levy, an attorney for Donnelly, wrote in a statement to The Intercept: “She played no role, and exercised no influence, in connection with any government contract, including – as the Department of Defense has confirmed repeatedly – the JEDI contract.”
“After reviewing these and many other emails and conducting numerous interviews, the [DOD IG] issued a detailed report that concluded that Ms. Donnelly acted entirely appropriately and did not provide preferential treatment or greater access to Amazon or anyone else,” Levy added. “It concluded that because it is the truth.”
Asked why the DOD IG left the April 2017 messages out of the report and whether the auditor reviewed them while evaluating whether any wrongdoing occurred, DOD IG spokesperson Dwrena Allen said: “Our JEDI Cloud Procurement report speaks for itself — we stand by our findings and conclusions.”
Nevertheless, in light of the New York Times’ story Tuesday, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Ken Buck slammed Amazon’s alleged influence on the program. “It’s becoming more and more clear that Amazon used its market power and paid-for connections to circumvent ethical boundaries and avoid competition in an attempt to win this contract. Now, more than ever, we need to ask Amazon, under oath, whether it tried to improperly influence the largest federal contract in history,” the two stated.
They’re not alone in calling for more scrutiny of the JEDI program. Cloud services provider Oracle, which originally complained to the DOD IG about alleged corruption among the defense officials, has filed lawsuits in court alleging a warped acquisition, and most recently appealed to the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The post DOD IG Omitted Evidence of Alleged Corruption in JEDI Program, Documents Show appeared first on The Intercept.
This post was originally published on The Intercept.
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The feature has already rolled to WhatsApp beta testers on Android
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The judge said he would go through the citations in detail with regard to the territorial jurisdiction of police
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Silicon Valley/Web Desk:
Despite being high-resolution cameras, WhatsApp users were not able to send their pictures in original quality. Consumers always complain about compressing video or image quality.
According to the WA Beta Info website, Whatsapp is working to resolve the concern and in near future, users will be able to send pictures in high resolution or according to their preference.
The website claims that the new version of WhatsApp will provide three options to choose for sending pictures:
AUTO will be the first option, opting this; the user will be able to send images in medium resolution and was also recommended by Whatsapp.
The second option is BEST QUALITY, in which users will be able to send images in their original resolution.
And the third option is DATA SAVER, which automatically reduces the resolution and saves data.
Whatsapp’s high-resolution feature is available for beta users only, although Whatsapp is still working on it, and in a little while all Whatsapp users will benefit from it.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
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A video clip of a fighter jet landing on a dam is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that it is a “MiG aircraft”. The video is 1:50 minutes long and users sharing it are in awe of the aircraft.
User @shaktichauhan tweeted the video tagging Harsh Goenka, the Chairman of RPG Enterprises. Harsh Goenka also reacted to the tagged tweet with the caption, “Incredible….”
Beautiful landing by a #MIG aircraft on a dam and even more stunning take off… @hvgoenka pic.twitter.com/JPo6Cs93Vv
— Dr Shakti S Chauhan (@shaktichauhan) July 11, 2021
Incredible…. https://t.co/mLIVclRCmL
— Harsh Goenka (@hvgoenka) July 11, 2021
The video was also shared on Twitter accompanied by a caption written in Hindi that asks users to not miss out on this beautiful landing by MiG aircraft.
मिग विमान की ये खूबसरत लैंडिंग देखना न भूलिएगा… pic.twitter.com/u5nK6Twbdv
— Sujata Paul – India First (@SujataIndia1st) July 11, 2021
Beautiful landing by a MIG aircraft on a dam and even more stunning take off… Njoy…?
— ?? ?????? ?? (@nair_hena08) July 11, 2021
The video is viral on both Twitter and Facebook. Alt News has also received multiple requests to verify the claim on its WhatsApp helpline number (+91 76000 11160).
Click to view slideshow.Digital simulation
There are a few aspects one can observe in the video:
- There is no movement of the trees and grass in the video despite the jet coming in close proximity. There should be some movement due to impact.
- As soon as the jet lands, the drogue parachute appears on the screen out of nowhere. It just pops open. When the jet lands, one can also notice the slope (pointed in green arrow) that looks completely digital.
- Once the landing is complete, one can see the drogue parachute falling on the ground very quickly. It doesn’t obey the laws of physics.
- At the end of the video, when the jet takes off again, the drogue parachute suddenly disappears.
We also performed a keyword search and found a video uploaded on YouTube titled, “MiG 29 landing on the dam DCS”. The video has been up on the platform since October 2020.
DCS is the abbreviation for “Digital Combat Simulator”. Digital Combat Simulator World is a Free-to-Play digital battlefield game that offers simulations of military aircraft, tanks and ships.
We performed another keyword search and found that the dam has been designed to resemble the “Inguri Dam” in Georgia. You can also find other simulation videos uploaded on YouTube where different aircraft land against similar digitised backgrounds.
Hence, a video from the game Digital Combat Simulator World was shared as a genuine video.
The post Video game showing MiG aircraft landing believed to be real appeared first on Alt News.
This post was originally published on Alt News.
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This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Lake Mead, which provides water for 25 million people in the American West, has shrunk to 36 percent of its capacity. One rural California community has run out of water entirely after its well broke in early June. Fields are sitting fallow, as farmers sell their water allotments instead of growing crops, putting the nation’s food supply in peril.
As the West withers under extreme drought, legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced HR 4099, a bill that would direct the Secretary of the Interior to create a program to fund $750 million worth of water recycling projects in the 17 western states through the year 2027. (The bill, which was introduced at the end of June, is currently before the House Committee on Natural Resources.)
“This is beginning to be our new normal — 88 percent of the West is under some degree of drought,” says Representative Susie Lee, who introduced the bill. “Lake Mead is at the lowest level it has been at since the Hoover Dam was constructed. And the Colorado River has been in a drought for more than two decades.”
All the while, the population and economy in the western U.S. have been booming, putting tremendous pressure on a dwindling water supply. “We have, I guess, more people — one. And there’s an increase in the agricultural area —two,” says Representative Grace Napolitano, who introduced the bill. “And then climate change is exacerbating the problem.”
Part of the solution, the legislators say, is to fund the construction of more facilities that can recycle the wastewater that flows out of our sinks, toilets, and showers. You may think that’s gross and preposterous, but the technology already exists — in fact, it’s been around for half a century. The process is actually rather simple. A treatment facility takes in wastewater and adds microbes that consume the organic matter. The water is then pumped through special membranes that filter out nasties like bacteria and viruses. To be extra sure, the water is then blasted with UV light to kill off microbes. The resulting water may actually be too pure for human consumption: If you drank it, the stuff might leach minerals out of your body, so the facility has to add minerals back. (I once drank the final product. It tastes like… water.)
The recycled H2O can be pumped underground into aquifers, then pumped out again when needed, purified once more, and sent to customers. Or it may instead be used for non-potable purposes, like for agriculture or industrial processes.
Basically, you’re taking wastewater that’d normally be treated and pumped out to sea — wasting it, really — and putting it back into the terrestrial water cycle, making it readily available again to people. “Part of what makes it so important as an element of water supply portfolios is its reliability,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “To the extent that urban centers exist and produce wastewater, it can be treated. It gives a reliable source of additional water supply — even in dry years when supply is limited and developing alternative sources would be difficult or impossible.”
Recycled water is also bankable, in a sense: Injecting it underground to recharge aquifers stores it up for use during droughts. This is likely to be particularly important in the American West, because climate change is both making droughts more punishing and futzing with the dynamics of rain. Modeling from climate scientists shows that future storms will be more intense, yet arrive less often. And by the end of the century, the mountain snowpack—which normally banks much of the West’s water until it melts into the spring runoff—is predicted to shrink by about half.
“Our hydrologic cycle is going to get more unpredictable,” says Rafael Villegas, program manager of Operation NEXT at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has been recycling water since the 1970s for non-potable reuse. “Coupled with population growth, not only here in California, but where the water comes from — Nevada, Arizona, and Northern California — you can expect that there’s going to be additional demand on those systems. So we’re at the end of the straw, right? We have to then start thinking, how do we become more efficient with the water that we do have?”
Currently in California, about 10 percent of wastewater in municipal and industrial usage is recycled. The goal of Operation NEXT is to upgrade the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant so that it recycles 100 percent of its wastewater by 2035, producing enough purified water to sustain nearly a million households in LA.
The technology is there—it’s just a matter of deploying it all over the West. “This isn’t a moonshot, if you will,” says Brad Coffey, water resource manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has partnered with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts on a water recycling demonstration facility. “This is really putting the building blocks together that have been tested and proven in many other facilities, and applying it to a regional scale.”
While water recycling is not a newfangled technology, it’s not a simple or cheap process, either. It takes time to retrofit a wastewater facility for efficient recycling, and the tab for building one from scratch can run into the billions. And once a facility is up and running, it takes a good amount of energy to push all that water through the filtering membranes and other equipment, which is also expensive.
Still, says Villegas, the bigger cost would be running out of time. “If we wait to act, we’re going to be too late,” says Villegas. While the bill would fund $750 million for projects over the next six years, it will take longer to actually build those facilities and bring them online. “A program like this is going to take multiple decades,” he continues. “So if you react a couple of decades later, then you’re already behind the eight ball.”
Water recycling is only one strategy for adapting the American West to a climate emergency that has created a water emergency. Since the 1980s, per capita water use in Southern California has plummeted by 40 percent, thanks in large part to changes in building codes, but also to behavioral changes among residents, like replacing lawns with drought-tolerant native plants. Cities are also adapting. For example, the LA Department of Water and Power has been experimenting with turning medians and roadsides into green catchment zones that direct stormwater into tanks underground, so LA doesn’t have to import as much water from Northern California and the Colorado River.
While these individual and local efforts help reduce demand and increase supply, $750 million from the Feds would be a huge stimulus for building out the recycling infrastructure that’ll help the West survive climate change. “The magnitude of changes that we’re seeing with climate change, and with long and persistent droughts—that’s not about how many gallons per flush a toilet is,” says Coffey. “It’s really a broader issue that we have to attack from the supply side as well.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A massive water recycling proposal could help ease drought on Jul 10, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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If Twitter thinks it can take as long it wants in my country, I will not allow that, the judge said
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The Centre, in an affidavit filed in the high court, said any non-compliance amounts to breach of provisions of IT Rules
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The Court was hearing a petition seeking direction to the Central government to pass necessary instruction to Twitter
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Instagram is also planning to roll out untitled exclusive stories feature if the testing phase goes smoothly
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This is not the first time that Twitter has announced a new feature related to improvising the security on its platform
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Asia Pacific Report newsdesk
Pacific regional civil society groups claim that DeepGreen, a venture capitalist company, has started “the clock ticking” with little regard for potential wide-ranging environmental damage from seabed mining in two years’ time.
An aggressive push by any industry player to fast-track the conclusion of seven years of ongoing global negotiations on the mining code was a “naked attempt to hijack and undermine” a process seeking stringent standards and regulations for the extremely risky activity, the groups say.
The company is the real beneficiary of the Nauru government’s decision to trigger the start of a process which could lead to potential widespread seabed mining, said the Pacific Civil Society Organisations Collective (CSOC) today in a statement.
The trigger, a clause within a 1994 Agreement on implementing Part XI of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows sponsor states such as Nauru to jump-start the mining process, by invoking a rule that sets a deadline for finalising and adopting of globally negotiated mining laws and regulations.
In the event that the global community failed to agree to mining laws and regulations, DeepGreen or its Nauru subsidiary NORI could proceed to mine based on work plans submitted.
“The Pacific Blue Line collective recognises that under the Sponsorship Agreement, Nauru believes it is required, pursuant to Clause 2.1, to ‘do all things reasonably necessary to give effect to DeepGreen and its subsidiary having the full benefits of the sponsorship’.
“This would include pulling the trigger to ensure full benefits of the sponsorship,” the statement said.
Sovereign decision
“The decision to start the two-year clock ticking is a sovereign decision. However, the Pacific collective believes the Nauru government has been persuaded by DeepGreen to take this action on the pretext that the urgency of the climate crisis demands the commencement of mining in two years, without regard for the potentially wide-ranging environmental damage arising from deep sea mining (DSM).“The damage could see the Nauru government, future administrations, and Nauruan people face liability for environmental consequences that cannot be foreseen or appreciated at this stage.”
The collective said that last week in media interviews pushing for a rapid opening of the seabed through pulling a trigger, DeepGreen had dismissed the increasing scientific knowledge about the deep sea and its biodiversity, as well as the risks to ocean health from seabed mining.
“In the same week, over 300 scientists voiced their support for a moratorium on DSM. Prior to this, major brands BMW Group, Google, Volvo Group and Samsung SDI signed a pledge not to source deep seabed minerals.
“The European Parliament also called for a moratorium on DSM. Here in the Pacific, the collective has called for a total ban on DSM.”
The collective said that in the Pacific, “one of the major concerns is the impact of mining upon coastal communities”.
“Deep seabed mining would likely cause massive sediment plumes that could affect crucial tuna and other fish stocks, thus further destabilising livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of ocean dependent people and communities,” the collective said.
Mounting pressure
“The Pacific Ocean is already under mounting pressure from human activities and the impacts of climate change, and there is substantial evidence that we need to now be embarking on an era of restoration, not further reckless exploitation.“Those who are swayed by the false promise that deep seabed mining is a ‘green’ and attractive investment proposition need to think again and listen to the science. It is simply not the case.
“Based on the best scientific knowledge available, scientists predict deep sea mining will cause irreversible harm to the environment, including to species, habitats, ecosystems and critical ecosystem functions and services.”
While the economic gains promised by DeepGreen and other potential investors remained highly speculative and unsubstantiated there was real danger of a domino effect occurring, in which other states would follow Nauru’s lead, with potential Oceania-wide impacts on the people, nature and economies of the region.
Signatories to the civil society collective statement include the Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Islands Association of NGOs, and the Pacific Network on Globalisation.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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Twitter acknowledged the glitch and tweeted in reply to the users
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Google is updating its Messages app to allow it to delete one-time passwords (OTPs) automatically
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The electric vehicle or EV revolution owes its existence to lithium batteries, and those batteries have a cocktail of specialized minerals to thank for their high performance. In most cases, that cocktail’s ingredient list includes cobalt and nickel, minerals that help deliver the long lifespan and range that consumers increasingly demand of EVs.
But with hundreds of millions of new EVs expected to hit the streets in the coming decades, skyrocketing demand for nickel and cobalt could strain mineral supply chains. Fearing a supply shortage that would slow the EV boom, the U.S. Department of Energy is now proposing that we eliminate cobalt and nickel from batteries altogether.
Earlier this month, the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries, a cross-agency group chaired by the Department of Energy, released the first ever National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries to guide the development of a domestic battery industry that helps the U.S. meet its climate targets. Among other goals, the blueprint calls for eliminating nickel and cobalt from lithium batteries by 2030 to develop “a stronger, more secure and resilient supply chain.”
That goal is more challenging — and fraught — than it may sound. While experts say nickel- and cobalt-free batteries that outperform today’s commercial counterparts could be commercialized in the next 10 years, mass adoption by the EV industry is likely to take far longer. And while such batteries might reduce the American auto industry’s vulnerability to future supply shocks, it could also have complex impacts on mining abroad. Mining watchdogs, who worry that eliminating certain metals from batteries will increase the pressure to extract others, say policymakers and auto manufacturers should focus on responsible sourcing and battery recycling instead.
EV batteries come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and chemistries, but the market is currently dominated by so-called NMC batteries, which contain nickel, manganese, and cobalt in their cathodes. All of these metals have a specific role to play: Nickel boosts the battery’s energy density and range, cobalt helps extend battery lifespan, and manganese helps batteries operate more safely at higher temperatures. The proportions favored by automakers are optimized “to give the best performance between parameters of lifetime, safety, cost and power,” said Jason Croy, a materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
Batteries that don’t contain cobalt or nickel already exist, but there are tradeoffs. Lithium manganese oxide or LMO batteries, used in the e-bike market and some commercial vehicles, are known for their high performance and long lifespan, but they fall short of NMC batteries when it comes to energy density. Cheap and durable lithium iron phosphate or LFP batteries have made inroads in the Chinese EV market, where Tesla uses them in its standard-range Model 3 cars. However, these batteries also have limited energy storage capacity and range compared with their NMC cousins.
“In general, going away from something like a nickel-rich NMC right now means giving up on energy or lifetime,” Croy said. “For the foreseeable future, nickel-rich batteries will be the choice for high-performance applications.”
That said, concerns over mineral scarcity and human rights abuses at mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC, where 70 percent of the world’s cobalt originates, have spurred manufacturers to significantly reduce the cobalt content of EV batteries over the past decade. The EV industry hasn’t faced the same kind of pressure to reduce its nickel use, but “there’s a lot of options on the table” should it want to, says Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who is working on next-generation batteries. For instance, lithium-rich cathodes that contain little to no nickel or cobalt and store more energy than NMC batteries are an active area of research, though more work is needed to improve their lifespan for commercial applications.
Pressure to bring high-performance NMC alternatives onto the streets seems to be growing. A May report by the International Energy Agency found that global demand for cobalt and nickel could rise approximately 20-fold by 2040 if the world churns out lithium batteries at the pace needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). In the U.S. alone, the amount of lithium, cobalt, and battery-grade nickel needed to electrify every light-duty vehicle on the roads surpasses the total amount of these metals mined globally in 2019, according to a recent Biden administration report on supply chain vulnerabilities. That same report concluded that the U.S. does not have the geologic reserves needed to meet its future demand for these metals, meaning it will likely continue to rely on foreign supply chains dominated by China, the DRC, and a few other nations.
David Howell, the acting director of the Vehicle Technologies Office at the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, says that concern over future scarcity of cobalt and nickel prompted the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries to call for developing new batteries that eliminate them. Howell, who was involved with the establishment of the battery consortium last year as well as the drafting of the new report, says the Department of Energy and other research agencies plan to continue supporting basic research on alternative cathode chemistries and leveraging the purchasing power of the federal government to make the most promising alternatives commercially competitive. Howell says the Vehicle Technologies Office spends roughly $12.5 million on this type of research and development each year, and that the Department of Energy’s fiscal year 2022 budget request would “more than double” that annual investment.
“What we want to do is make sure that by 2030, we’ve demonstrated these materials can be used in EVs and be substituted by any auto company that wants to use them instead,” Howell said.
Viswanathan is “fairly optimistic” cobalt- and nickel-free cathodes that measure up to or even outperform NMC ones can be commercialized in 10 years. “It doesn’t require a new breakthrough invention,” he said. “It simply requires careful engineering and optimization.”
Kwasi Ampofo, the head of mining and metals research at energy consultancy BloombergNEF, is more skeptical. Eliminating cobalt and nickel from batteries “is a very easy thing to say, but quite difficult to actually attain,” he said, noting that it took current battery technologies decades to mature to a commercial level.
In Ampofo’s view, if the U.S. government wants to reduce its vulnerability to cobalt and nickel shortages, it should be doubling down on battery recycling in order to create alternative supplies of these metals. The government’s recent battery blueprint also calls for beefing up EV battery recycling, but moving to cobalt and nickel-free chemistries could paradoxically make that harder, since these are two of the most valuable metals that can be recovered. If nickel and cobalt are eliminated from batteries, there will be less economic incentive to recycle, and federal policies mandating recycling, along with new technologies that make recycling more lucrative, may be necessary.
Eliminating nickel and cobalt from batteries could also lead to more mining of the metals that replace them, such as lithium and manganese, warns Benjamin Auciello, who coordinates a program called Making Clean Energy Clean, Just, and Equitable at the environmental nonprofit Earthworks. Instead of eliminating specific metals, Aucilello believes the Biden administration should “aim to mitigate the social and environmental impacts of extraction while putting recycling and public transit alternatives first.”
Saleem Ali, a professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware, suspects that the Biden administration sees resources like cobalt and nickel as “too much of a headache” given activist pressure to reduce mining over labor and environmental concerns. But Ali feels that divesting from these supply chains entirely is “parochial from an environmental justice perspective” because it leaves communities that depend on mining revenue without any clear path to economic development.
Thea Riofrancos, an assistant professor of political science at Providence College in Rhode Island, agrees that eliminating specific resources from global supply chains is “a complex thing from a global justice perspective,” said. While Riofrancos, like Auciello, thinks the U.S. should focus on recycling and reducing personal car usage to alleviate the pressure to mine, in communities where extractive industries are deeply ingrained, “the transition is challenging,” she said. “You need to invest in alternative livelihoods.”
“When you say cobalt-free, you’re saying ‘DRC, you’re going to be disarticulated from the global supply chain,” Riofrancos went on. “I’m not sure what justice looks like for the DRC is being snipped off from a potentially valuable global supply chain.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The US wants to make EV batteries without these foreign metals. Should it? on Jun 30, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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Lucknow, India,
A complaint has filed with police by Hindu hardline group against Twitter’s India region head after politically sensitive regions were depicted outside a map of India on its website, kickstarting an investigation in a fresh probe for the U.S. tech firm.
A map on Twitter’s careers page showed that Jammu and Kashmir region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, as well as the Buddhist enclave of Ladakh outside India. That provoked an outcry on social media this week that comes amid strained relations between Twitter and New Delhi over the firm’s compliance with India’s new IT rules.
The complaint accuses Twitter’s India head, Manish Maheshwari and another company executive of breaching the country’s IT rules as well as laws designed to prevent enmity and hatred between classes.
“This has hurt my sentiments and those of the people of India,” Praveen Bhati, a leader of the group Bajrang Dal in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said in the complaint which was reviewed by news agency. He also called it an act of treason.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. As of Tuesday, the map was no longer visible on its site. Maheshwari was only this month summoned by police in Uttar Pradesh for failing to stop the spread of a video that allegedly incited religious discord. Maheshwari has won relief from a court in that case.
India’s technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has criticized Twitter for its failure to abide by new Indian rules and for denying him access to his Twitter account.
A senior government official has previously told news agency that Twitter may no longer be eligible to seek liability exemptions as an intermediary or the host of user content in India due to its failure to comply with the new IT rules. Activists say, however, it is a matter for the courts to decide.
Last year, the head of an Indian parliamentary panel accused Twitter of disrespecting New Delhi’s sovereignty, after mapping data showed Indian-ruled territory as part of China in what the social media firm said was a quickly resolved mistake.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
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The agenda of the parliamentary panel meeting is to safeguard citizens’ rights and prevent the misuse of social/online news media platforms
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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The controversy erupted on Monday as a user flagged Twitter for displaying a distorted India map on its website under the header Tweep Life
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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A few minutes into Bo Burnham’s Netflix special, Inside, filmed in a single room in his house over the course of the pandemic, the comedian launches into his second number, concerning the purpose of comedy itself. “The world is changing,” Burnham croons at his keyboard. “The planet’s heating up. What the f*** is going on?” The song turns into a retrospective of the last year — the protests, the drought. “The more I look, the more I see nothing to joke about,” he goes on.
Then an angelic chorus from above sends Burnham on an ironic mission: “healing the world with comedy” because “the world needs direction.” “From a white guy like me,” Burnham juts in. “Bingo!” the ethereal voice says.
Burnham’s genre-defying special is much more than a comedy, however. It’s a social commentary on the precarity of life in the 2020s, especially online life. It begins with (sort of) lighthearted music videos in Burnham’s style, formed in YouTube videos shot in his childhood bedroom in the mid-aughts. But the songs in Inside, parodying the classic photos you see on white women’s Instagram accounts and chronicling the perils of sexting with emojis, coexist with explorations of serious topics. In one song, Burnham’s sock puppet says, “Don’t you know? The world is built with blood! And genocide and exploitation!” Near the beginning of Inside, Burnham says that he embarked on the project “to distract me from wanting to put a bullet into my head.” Over the course of the show, months in isolation and the weight of the world’s problems begin to wear on Burnham, who ends up sobbing on camera.
Critics and regular people alike love Inside, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Slate called it “one of the most sincere artistic responses to the 21st century so far.” That might seem like unexpectedly high praise for an eccentric, disturbingly self-aware one-man production where the one man spends a good chunk of 80 minutes dancing in his underwear. (You have to see it to get it.)
Inside isn’t really about the climate crisis. It’s an exploration of how to be a decent person in an indecent world, while facing up to your own role in it. Burnham, for example, skewers the performative nature of social media and points out how the internet is breaking everyone’s brains, while at the same time performing for the internet. But the overheating planet is a recurring theme for a reason. For Burnham, it serves as a touchpoint for doom — it’s there, haunting you in the background, even when your mind is bouncing between a million other things. There’s hardly time to comprehend the enormity of it, let alone do much about it, especially if you’re anywhere as depressed as Burnham.
In one jaunty tune, “Welcome to the Internet,” performed as if it were a movie villain theme, Burnham explains how the internet overstimulates you and inflames your inner demons, offering “a little bit of everything all of the time.” Later in the show, the lyrics of “That Funny Feeling,” with Burnham playing acoustic guitar, appear to be a jumble of disjointed subjects — until you consider that he might be describing the emotionally numbing rollercoaster of scrolling through social media. Seeing news about civil wars next to tweets from Kentucky Fried Chicken and Bugles? The juxtaposition of catastrophes and fluff feels so “funny,” perhaps, because all of these things are packaged as “content,” flattened into our newsfeeds, and presented with equal weight.
A scene from “Welcome to the Internet.” Netflix In his offbeat way, Burnham manages to capture a growing disaffection with online life — and how these new patterns present a threat to well-being. A scientific paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sums up how the internet has radically restructured how we communicate in a couple decades, with the chief goal of maximizing “engagement” to sell ads … instead of, you know, trying to help people or improve the world. The algorithms that determine what people see online, according to these collective behavior experts, “are typically designed to maximize profitability, with often insufficient incentive to promote an informed, just, healthy, and sustainable society.”
More on the internet and climate Burnham contrasts digital reality, where you can find and believe anything you want, with physical reality — including the unrelenting progress of global warming. “The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door,” Burnham sings in “That Funny Feeling.” “The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show / Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go.”
That “seven years” line appears to reference the Climate Clock, a sort of ticking-time bomb counting down the years until the planetary apocalypse. The project gives humanity a deadline of 2028 “to enact bold, transformational changes in our global economy” to prevent global warming from reaching “a point of no return that science tells us will make the worst climate impacts likely inevitable.”
Burnham’s doom-and-gloom serves a dual purpose, speaking to both the climate crisis and his own depression. “All Eyes on Me” is the climax of the show, an auto-tuned banger about coping with anxiety — in the middle of it, he takes a break from singing to explain that he quit live comedy because he kept having panic attacks on stage. But it’s also a song about coming to terms with where the world is heading (“We’re going to go where everybody knows, everybody knows”). The third verse:
You say the ocean’s rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world’s ending, honey, it already did
You’re not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you tried
Got it? Good, now get insideThere is a moment of clarity in the song where Burnham turns off the autotune and starts yelling at the viewer, “Get up. Get up. I’m talking to you! Get the f*** up!”
It’s a jarring wake-up call, and a reminder: This might be a comedy special, but Burnham is not joking about the climate apocalypse.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Bo Burnham is not joking about the climate apocalypse on Jun 28, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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This is the second time Twitter has misrepresented India’s map. Earlier it had shown Leh as part of China
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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By Gorethy Kenneth in Port Moresby
PNG Power Limited managing director Flagon Bekker resigned over the weekend citing family issues after serving the Papua New Guinean utility for nine months as he faced strong pressure over power woes nationwide.
He comes the eighth head of the country’s national electricity supplier to resign from the position over the last six years.
The turnover of top management has been very high since the termination of former boss John Tangit in 2015 under the chairmanship of Larry Andagali.
Tangit served his full term and was serving a second when he was removed.
The PPL board has also had a very high turnover – William Kenjibi was board chairman and replaced by Joshua Bakiri in 2015 until he faced elections and was replaced by Robert Bradshaw as acting.
Larry Andagali served his full three-year term until Andrew Ogil took over between 2016 and 2018. Peter Nupiri succeeded Ogil until this year when Moses Maladina was appointed.
Before Tangit’s leadership, Bougainvillean Tony Koiri was head of PPL and achieved a profit of K50 million.
Biggest profit
Tangit and Larry Andagali, however, had the biggest profit announced in 2016 before he was removed, with a K56 million margin. Since then, the company has struggled, even dropping to more than K100 million in the red.Maladina announced over the weekend the resignation of Bekker effective immediately, indicating the appointment of Obed Batia as officer-in-charge of PNG Power while a more formal engagement was finalised.
“Consequently, I have put in place an officer-in-charge to oversee the operations until such time as the NEC/shareholder makes an appointment,” he said.
“In the interim, Mr Obed Batia will be the officer-in-charge. Mr Batia is the incumbent strategic adviser to the MD’s office and has more than 30 years of experience holding various senior positions within the company.
I have every faith in Mr Batia’s ability to provide much needed stability.
“The chairman and Board of PNG Power will provide the new officer-in-charge and the leadership team with its full support, during the interim.
“We assure all the PNG Power employees and their families, key stakeholders and suppliers and valued PPL customers of continued stability during this transition period.
‘Key priority’
“It remains our key priority, to focus on the objectives of our annual operating plan and to deliver on a promise to provide accessible, affordable and reliable energy services to the people of Papua New Guinea.“On behalf of the board, management and staff of PNG Power, we thank Mr Bekker for his service to PNG Power and wish him all the best in his future endeavours.
“I would like to take this opportunity also to thank Mr Bekker for his time here at PPL and to wish him well, as he returns to his family in Australia.”
The PNG Bulletin reported yesterday that Bekker was under pressure from disgruntled PNG Power workers that confronted him on Friday in a sit-in protest regarding their Enterpriser Agreement which he had not addressed on several occasions and other associated management issues.
Gorethey Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier journalist.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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Google teamed up on technology initiatives, including development of affordable smartphones for price-sensitive, tech-savvy Indian market
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Both the entities, SpiceXpress and Delhivery, have signed a memorandum of understanding to this effect, according to a joint statement
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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The search engine giant usually keeps updating all its app
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Both the M1X MacBook Pro models are expected to feature mini-LED screens a bit like the M1 iPad Pro
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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A leaked document that serves as a talking points memo for use by OnePlus PR, explains the integration in plainer terms
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Mashable has learnt that Facebook is finally launching advertisements globally on Instagram Reels
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
