Google's newest flagship phone is finally official. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro were both unveiled today, with the headline changes being a whopping seven years of updates, flat screens across the board, new CPUs, and a $100 price increase. The Pixel 8 Pro is officially $999, while the Pixel 8 is $699. ArsTechnica: As for specs, the Pro display is a 6.7-inch, 120 Hz, 2992x1344 OLED. Google is branding this display "Super Actua" because it's one of the brightest phone displays on the market at 1600 nits for HDR content and 2400 nits in sunlight mode. That beats the sunlight modes on the S23 Ultra (1750 nits) and iPhone 15 Pro Max (2000 nits) but not the Xiaomi 13T Pro (2600 nits). The storage situation here isn't great. The Pixel 8 Pro has 12GB of RAM and storage tiers of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. Most other phones in this price range start at 256GB, and the 8 Pro uses slower UFS 3.1 storage instead of the speedy UFS 4.0 a lot of phones ship with now. The 8 Pro battery is 5050 mAh, and there's 30 W wired charging. Wireless charging will hit 23 W on the Pixel charging stand, while Qi chargers will only hit 12 W (it would be great if Qi2 would get its act together). Both phones have IP68 dust and water resistance. On the software update support lifecycle: This year, there is finally something tangible to point to -- 7 years of OS updates. Unlike with previous models, there are no games being played here, as Google says there are "7 years of OS, security, and Feature Drop updates." That's more major OS updates than even iPhone owners are getting, with the iPhone X getting iOS versions 11-16.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Intel said it will treat its programmable chip unit as as a standalone business, with an aim to spin it out through an IPO in the next two to three years. Intel's Programmable Solutions Group will have its own balance sheet as it heads toward independence. The company will continue to support the business and retain a majority stake, and could also seek private investment. Sandra Rivera, who leads Intel's broader Data Center and AI group, will become PSG CEO. Intel will manufacture the group's chips.

The move also highlights the strong demand in the semiconductor industry for field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs. [...] FPGAs are simpler than the powerful processors at the heart of servers and PCs but are often more flexible, respond faster and can be more power-efficient. They're "programmed" after they're shipped for specific uses in data centers, telecommunications, video encoding, aviation and other industries. FPGAs can also be used to run some artificial intelligence algorithms.

Intel's FPGAs are sold under the Agilex brand. Intel doesn't break out PSG sales yet, but said in July that the unit had three record quarters in a row, offsetting a slump in server chip sales. PSG has been part of Intel's Data Center and AI group, which generated $4 billion in sales in the second quarter.

Hugh Morris writes via the New York Times: When the musician and artist Paul Purgas was invited in 2017 by the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, to play some of the music he'd found in its archives that year, he was initially very keen. These were tapes that had been hidden from the public for decades; they proved the existence of a fertile avenue for electronic music in 1960s and '70s India, and he was determined for people to hear them. But as he went to use the institute's aging reel-to-reel machine, he got a nasty surprise: an electric shock. "I think that sobered me up," he said in an interview. The project, he realized, was about to become "a bit of a lifetime journey."

Purgas, 43, is a London-based sound artist and curator, and half of the electronic music duo Emptyset. Initially, he had been on the trail of the lost Moog synthesizer that the American experimentalist David Tudor used while in India, which led him to the library of the NID. In "a victory for good record keeping," Purgas found details of some unknown Tudor recordings noted in a handwritten logbook by a diligent archivist in the 1960s. He requested them from the archives, and was presented with box after box of carefully annotated tapes, all taken from a neglected cupboard. Purgas returned to England to undertake training in tape restoration to properly conserve what he'd found: music from a group of Indian composers who, aided initially by Tudor, had used the Moog and some accompanying homemade modular devices between 1969 and 1972 to create some of India's earliest electronic music.

Following a 2020 BBC radio documentary, "Electronic India," in which Purgas situated the music in its cultural context, a new compilation -- "The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969-1972," out Friday -- presents the restored pieces in their full variety. There are manipulated field recordings, pieces linked to birds and nature, compositions inspired by Indian classical music, imagined voyages to outer space, and tracks reminiscent of bleep techno or Aphex Twin. What the recordings demonstrate, Purgas said, is "electronic sound and music existing free from any baggage," away from "any vestiges of what could be conceived as a kind of Western continuum."

Several scientists from NASA told the New York Times that the agency is planning to build houses on the moon by 2040. Forbes reports: The agency is set to return to the moon and is hoping its astronauts can stay long-term -- in a house built on the moon via a 3D printer. The idea is to build the house structure out of a special lunar concrete from the moon's surface, and NASA has found just the company to do it: Austin-based 3D printing company, ICON. In what's been dubbed Project Olympus, ICON

ICON created its first 350-square-foot prototype home in Austin in March 2018 with a proprietary machine called Vulcan. This year, it showcased its first model home at Wolf Ranch in Georgetown, Texas, which is part of its 3D-printed 100-home community project. The start-up first received funding from NASA in 2020, and in 2022 it announced an additional $60 million for a space-based construction system that can be used beyond earth. The idea is to send a 3D printer up to the moon via a rocket, and the printer completes its job from there. "We've got all the right people together at the right time with a common goal, which is why I think we'll get there," NASA's director of technology maturation, Niki Werkheiser told The New York Times. "Everyone is ready to take this step together, so if we get our core capabilities developed, there's no reason it's not possible."

A Tokyo startup has developed a 4.5-meter-tall, four-wheeled robot modeled after the "Mobile Suit Gundam" from the Japanese animation series. It has a price tag of $3 million. Reuters reports: Called ARCHAX after the avian dinosaur archaeopteryx, the robot has cockpit monitors that receive images from cameras hooked up to the exterior so that the pilot can maneuver the arms and hands with joysticks from inside its torso. The 3.5-ton robot, which will be unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show later this month, has two modes: the upright 'robot mode' and a 'vehicle mode' in which it can travel up to 10 km (6 miles) per hour.

"Japan is very good at animation, games, robots and automobiles so I thought it would be great if I could create a product that compressed all these elements into one," said Ryo Yoshida, the 25-year-old chief executive of Tsubame Industries. "I wanted to create something that says, 'This is Japan.'" Yoshida plans to build and sell five of the machines for the well-heeled robot fan, but hopes the robot could one day be used for disaster relief or in the space industry.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It was never clear who the $10,000 to $17,000 18-karat gold Apple Watch was for, beyond celebrities and the ultrarich, but I hope whoever bought one way back in 2015 expected Apple to stop supporting them at some point. That day has come. Apple has now internally listed all first-gen Apple Watch models, including the solid-gold Edition, as "obsolete," MacRumors reports.

Apple's obsolete label doesn't just mean the end of software support. That ship has sailed; the original Apple Watches (widely referred to as Series 0) never updated beyond watchOS 4.3.2 in 2018. It means the end of hardware support: the company will no longer provide parts, repairs, or replacement services. The solid-gold Apple Watch Edition was something of a passion project for Apple's former lead designer, Jony Ive. When it launched, it was seen on the wrists of influential celebrities, including German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who, like Beyonce, wore it with a gold link bracelet that was never available to the public.

Cooler Master's new Sneaker X mimics the exact look of an authentic sneaker but doesn't sacrifice its visuals for performance, coming with a full-blown i7-13700K and an RTX 4070 Ti graphics card. The only drawback of the system is its high price, coming in at a whopping $3,799.99. From a report: Cooler Master's sneaker case is anything but ordinary; the case has all the visual queues of a giant sneaker doused in red and white. Inside is a mini ITX chassis, equipped with a mini-ITX motherboard, Core i7-13700K CPU, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 memory, 2TB of NVMe storage, and an 850W SFX power supply. Topping it all off is a massive 360mm AIO liquid cooler cooling the i7-13700K that sits at the bottom of the case, wholly hidden from prying eyes.

For ventilation, the shoe has perforated outline side panels and one sizeable RGB-illuminated intake fan on the side (which appears to be 120 mm in diameter). There are two cut-outs on the shoe's top and front, exposing the case's insides. To the rear (where your foot would slide if it were an actual shoe), a giant cut-out gives way to the large RTX 4070 Ti graphics card inside. The front cut-out is more obstructive but looks at the system's power supply, RGB-illuminated DDR5 RAM, and rear motherboard tray.

"Bear attacks in Japan have been rising at an alarming rate, so the city of Takikawa [about 570 miles from Tokyo] installed a robot wolf as a deterrent," reports the BBC. "The robot wolf was originally designed to keep wild animals from farmlands, but is now being used by local governments and managers of highways, golf courses, and pig farms." Digital Trends describes the "Monster Wolf" as "complete with glowing red eyes and protruding fangs." [T]he solar-powered Monster Wolf emits a menacing roar if it detects a nearby bear. It also has a set of flashing LED lights on its tail, and can move its head to appear more real... The robot's design is apparently based on a real wolf that roamed part of the Asian nation more than 100 years ago before it was hunted into extinction.

Japanese news outlet NHK reported earlier this month that bear attacks in the country are at their highest level since records began in 2007. The environment ministry said 53 cases of injuries as a result of such attacks were reported between April and July this year, with at least one person dying following an attack in Hokkaido in May.

This week America's Department of Energy announced $264 million for 29 projects as part of its Energy Earthshots Initiative "to advance clean energy technologies within the decade."

The funding will support 11 new research centers — along with 18 university research teams — studying things like industrial decarbonization, carbon storage, and offshore wind energy. The ultimate goal is a clean-energy revolution that will "accelerate innovations toward more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions."

One ambitious example: The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected to lead an Energy Earthshot Research Center focused on developing chemical processes that use sustainable methods instead of burning fossil fuels to radically reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions to stem climate change and limit the crisis of a rapidly warming planet... The ORNL-led Non-Equilibrium Energy Transfer for Efficient Reactions center, or NEETER, will coordinate a research team from across the nation focused on replacing bulk heating for chemical processes with electrified means, providing a new way to do chemistry, and decarbonizing large-scale processes in the chemical industry. DOE has committed $19 million over four years for the center...

The scientists, in addition to using their own laboratories, will use Department of Energy Office of Science user facilities, including ORNL's Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Spallation Neutron Source, High Flux Isotope Reactor, and Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. They will also include the beam line at Stanford's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. NEETER's proposed research is a radical departure from traditional chemistry and holds promise for transformational breakthroughs in energy-related chemical reactions. The NEETER EERC addresses the Department of Energy's Industrial Heat Shot announced in 2022, which aims to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies with at least 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. This EERC will employ new kinds of chemical catalysis as one pathway toward electrifying the delivery of process heat.
The projects include:

• Investigating hydrogen arc plasmas for carbon-free steelmaking

• Using exascale computer simulations and observations to produce more resilient clean energy systems.

• The University of Florida has reportedly teamed with Switzerland-based Synhelion to "research the production of green hydrogen, aiming for a lower cost to produce."

• The Center for Understanding Subsurface Signals and Permeability will attempt research to "advance enhanced geothermal systems with the goal of making them a widely accessible and reliable source of renewable energy"

• Another research center (also lead by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) will research effort to "make floating offshore wind a long-term viable energy source."

"Our Energy Earthshots are game-changing endeavors to unleash the technologies of the clean energy transition and make them accessible, affordable, and abundant," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "The Energy Earthshot Research Centers and the related work happening on college campuses around the country will be instrumental in developing the clean energy and decarbonization solutions we need to establish a 100% clean grid and beat climate change."

An anonymous reader shares this report from Futurism: Training large language models is an incredibly power-intensive process that has an immense carbon footprint. Keeping data centers running requires a ludicrous amount of electricity that could generate substantial amounts of greenhouse emissions — depending, of course, on the energy's source. Now, the Verge reports, Microsoft is betting so big on AI that its pushing forward with a plan to power them using nuclear reactors. Yes, you read that right; a recent job listing suggests the company is planning to grow its energy infrastructure with the use of small modular reactors (SMR)...

But before Microsoft can start relying on nuclear power to train its AIs, it'll have plenty of other hurdles to overcome. For one, it'll have to source a working SMR design. Then, it'll have to figure out how to get its hands on a highly enriched uranium fuel that these small reactors typically require, as The Verge points out. Finally, it'll need to figure out a way to store all of that nuclear waste long term...

Other than nuclear fission, Microsoft is also investing in nuclear fusion, a far more ambitious endeavor, given the many decades of research that have yet to lead to a practical power system. Nevertheless, the company signed a power purchase agreement with Helion, a fusion startup founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this year, with the hopes of buying electricity from it as soon as 2028.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Guardian: Heat pumps are more than twice as efficient as fossil fuel heating systems in cold temperatures, research shows. Even at temperatures approaching -30C, heat pumps outperform oil and gas heating systems, according to the research from Oxford University and the Regulatory Assistance Project thinktank...

Reports have spread that they do not work well in low temperatures despite their increasing use in Scandinavia and other cold climates. The research, published in the specialist energy research journal Joule, used data from seven field studies in North America, Asia and Europe. It found that at temperatures below zero, heat pumps were between two and three times more efficient than oil and gas heating systems.

The authors said the findings showed that heat pumps were suitable for almost all homes in Europe, including the UK, and should provide policymakers with the impetus to bring in new measures to roll them out as rapidly as possible.
"The Guardian and the investigative journalism organisation DeSmog recently revealed that lobbyists associated with the gas boiler sector had attempted to delay a key government measure to increase the uptake of heat pumps."

jizmonkey writes: The new version of Raspberry Pi is priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling, and virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded. The new CPU is twice as fast and new features include simultaneous 5.0 Gbps USB 3.0 ports and a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface which can be used for an m.2 storage. Priority will be given to individual buyers through the end of the year.

Meta introduced its latest lineup of head-worn devices, staking fresh claim to the virtual- and augmented-reality industry just ahead of Apple pushing into the market. From a report: The company officially unveiled the Quest 3 headset on Wednesday, raising the price by $200 to $500, at its annual Connect developers conference. It also introduced second-generation smart glasses that it developed with luxury sunglass maker Ray-Ban. The Quest 3, which was previewed by Meta earlier this year after Bloomberg published a hands-on review of the device, offers improved performance over the Quest 2 from 2020. It also marks a pivot from VR to mixed reality, which melds virtual and augmented reality.

It's a high-stakes moment for Meta's hardware business. Though the company has dominated VR goggles for years, Apple is poised to release its Vision Pro headset in the coming months, setting up a showdown. Like the Quest 3, the Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset -- though one with exclusive Apple technology and content. The Vision Pro will have Apple's marketing muscle behind it, but also a much higher price: $3,499. In addition to the competitive pressure, Meta also has struggled to sell consumers on the metaverse -- a collection of interlocking online worlds that make use of its headsets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Ford Motor Company on Monday halted construction of a $3.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant project in the Marshall area amid months of battles with local residents, Republicans in Congress over its use of Chinese technology and an auto industry strike in its second week. "We're pausing work, and we're going to limit spending on construction at Marshall until we're confident about our ability to competitively run the plant," Ford spokesman T.R. Reid told The Detroit News on Monday. Reid said a "number of considerations" were at play in the company's business decision, but wouldn't say whether the United Auto Workers' ongoing strike of Ford and its crosstown rivals was a factor. "We haven't made a final decision about the investment there," Reid said of the Marshall site. The pause in construction is effective Monday, Reid said.

The Dearborn-based automaker announced on Feb. 13 that it planned to invest about $3.5 billion in an electric vehicle battery plant park in Marshall. As part of the deal, Ford secured about $210 million in direct tax incentives plus a 15-year property tax abatement worth about $775 million over the life of the tax break. There was also roughly $750 million set aside for site prep at the location, with a $299 million earmark allocated for the Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance and a $330 million earmark pushed toward the Michigan Department of Transportation budget for expanding roadways and freeway connections for the presumed Ford plant's truck traffic. Another $120 million was routed to MAEDA earlier this month through the SOAR fund. [...] The 2.5-million-square-foot battery park was to be run by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ford called "Blue Oval Battery Park Michigan." The plant would employ 2,500 people with pay ranging from $20 to $50 an hour.

Some early adopters of Apple's iPhone 15 have taken to social media to complain about overheating issues. Digital Trends' Bryan Wolfe writes: Over the past few days, various user complaints have popped up online by iPhone 15 owners saying their new devices are overheating. Some, for example, have taken to the Apple discussion groups to express their dismay, while others have left messages on Reddit and elsewhere. New smartphones commonly heat up more than usual during setup and in the first 24 hours of use, even those not manufactured by Apple. The issues being reported may have occurred during these instances. Speaking from personal experience, Android Authority's Aamir Siddiqui said he, too, has noticed his iPhone 15 Pro Max running very hot, even after the initial 24 hours of setup and settling in.

Korean YouTuber BullsLab also captured high temperatures using a thermal camera.

The official Tesla Optimus account shared an update video showing the progress its humanoid robot has made since it was announced in August 2021. In a video that looks like CGI, you can see Optimus sorting blocks and performing some yoga poses, among other things. Interesting Engineering reports: The video begins with the Tesla Bot aka the Optimus robot performing a self-calibration routine, which is essential for adapting to new environments. It then shows how TeslaBot can use its vision and joint position sensors to accurately locate its limbs in space, without relying on any external feedback. This enables TeslaBot to interact with objects and perform tasks with precision and dexterity.

One of the tasks that Optimus demonstrates is sorting blue and green blocks into matching trays. Tesla Optimus can grasp each block with ease and sort them at a human-like speed. It can also handle dynamic changes in the environment, such as when a human intervenes and moves the blocks around. TeslaBot can quickly adjust to the new situation and resume its task. It can also correct its own errors, such as when a block lands on its side and needs to be rotated.

The video also showcases Tesla Bot's balance and flexibility, as it performs some yoga poses that require standing on one leg and extending its limbs. These poses are not related to any practical workloads, but they show how TeslaBot can control its body and maintain its stability. The video ends with a call for more engineers to join the Tesla Optimus team, as the project is still in development and needs more talent. There is no information on when TeslaBot will be ready for production or commercial use, but the video suggests that it is making rapid progress and using the same software as the Tesla cars.

Lenovo launched the first foldable laptop in 2020, but the first real era of foldable PCs is only starting to unfold now. From a report: Today, LG became the latest OEM to announce a foldable-screen laptop, right after HP announced its first attempt, the Spectre Foldable PC, earlier this month. LG only announced the Gram Fold in South Korea thus far. A Google translation of LG's Korean announcement said the laptop is 9.4-mm (0.37-inches) thick when unfolded and used like a 17-inch tablet. Alternatively, the OLED PC can be folded in half to use like an approximately 12.2-inch laptop. In the latter form, a virtual keyboard can appear on the bottom screen, and you can dock a Bluetooth keyboard to the bottom screen or pair a keyboard with the system wirelessly. The screen has 1920Ã--2560 pixels for a pixel density of 188.2 pixels per inch.

One draw of foldable PCs is supposed to be portability. The Gram Fold weighs 2.76 pounds (1,250g), which is even lighter than LG's latest Gram clamshell laptop (2.9 pounds). According to Android Authority, LG's laptop will have an Intel Core i5-1335U, which has 8 Efficient cores (E-cores) at up to 3.4 GHz, two Performance cores (P-cores) at up to 4.6 GHz, 12 threads, and 12MB of cache. The PC is also supposed to have 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, a 72 Wh battery, Wi-Fi 6E, and two USB-C ports. LG is claiming 99.5 percent DCI-P3 color coverage with the laptop.

[...] It's also possible we'll see similar designs from other laptop brands, as panel supplier LG Display announced today that it will start mass production of 17-inch foldable OLED laptop panels. The foldable OLED is made with what LG Display calls a Tandem OLED structure, using two-stack OLED technology, "which adds an extra organic emitting layer to deliver brighter screens while effectively dispersing energy across OLED components for optimal stability and longer lifespans," LG Display's announcement said. LG Display first entered mass production of foldable (13.3-inch) laptop panels in 2020. However, foldable PCs didn't immediately take off then, despite the panel being used in Lenovo's 2020 ThinkPad X1 Fold. Foldable PCs lacked the software support that Windows 11 now affords with its Snap windows layouts that make organizing windows across dual or folded screens more intuitive.

Long-time Slashdot reader 140Mandak262Jamuna shared this article from the Washington Post: There is a theoretical, magic tipping point for adoption of electric vehicles. Once somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of new car sales are all-electric, some researchers say, huge numbers of drivers will follow. They predict that electric car sales will then soar — to 25 percent, 50 percent and eventually to close to 80 percent of new sales. Early adopters who love shiny new technologies will be replaced by mainstream consumers just looking for a good deal. Last year, the United States finally passed that elusive mark — 5 percent of all new cars sold in the fourth quarter were fully electric. And earlier this year, all-electric vehicles made up about 7 percent of new car sales...

If the pattern holds, the United States should start to see rapid growth in the next few years. And automakers have gone all-in on the transition. As of early 2023, U.S.-based car companies have announced about $173 billion in spending to shift to electric vehicles. Volkswagen, Ford, BMW, General Motors, and many more car companies are all making electric cars. There are more than 40 all-electric models on offer in the United States.
The article points out that in Norway, more than 80% of cars purchased are now fully electric.

For comparision, in the first half of 2023 in California, about 25% of new-car purchases were electric vehicles.

America's Department of Defense recently exercised a contract option with X-energy, a private nuclear reactor engineering company, seeking "a thorough analysis of design options" for a transportable micro nuclear reactor. The Department says its ultimate goal is "a reactor design which is ready for licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for both commercial ventures and military resiliency."

Their announcement also notes that additional work is already underway by another company, BWX Technologies, on a prototype micro reactor: "Due to their extraordinary energy density, nuclear reactors have the potential to serve multiple critical functions for meeting resiliency needs in contested logistical environments," said Dr. Jeff Waksman, Project Pele program manager. "By developing two unique designs, we will provide the Services with a broad range of options as they consider potential uses of nuclear power for both Installation and Operational energy applications in the near future."

The Defense Department uses approximately 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day — levels that are only expected to increase due to anticipated electrification of the vehicle fleet and maturation of future energy-intensive capabilities. A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that does not add to the Defense Department's fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments...

"The Strategic Capabilities Office specializes in adapting commercial technology for military purposes," said Jay Dryer, director. "By nurturing and developing multiple micro reactor designs, SCO will not just provide options for the military Services, but will also help jumpstart a truly competitive commercial marketplace for micro reactors."

"New York City is now turning to robots to help patrol the Times Square subway station," quipped one local newscast.

The non-profit New York City blog Gothamist describes the robot as "almost as tall as the mayor — but at least three-times as wide around the waist," with a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour-- but a 360-degree field of vision, equipped with four cameras to send live video (without audio) to the police. A 420-pound, 5-foot-2-inch robocop with a giant camera for a face will begin patrolling the Times Square subway station overnight, the New York Police Department announced Friday morning. At a press conference held underground in the 42nd Street subway station, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city is launching a two-month pilot program to test the Knightscope K5 Autonomous Security Robot. During the press conference, the K5 robot — which is shaped like a small, white rocketship — stood silently along with uniformed officers and city officials in suits. Stripes of glowing blue lights indicated it was "on."

The K5 will act as a crime deterrent and provide real-time information on how to best deploy human officers to a safety incident, the mayor said. It features multiple cameras, a button that can connect the public with a real person, and a speaker for live audio communication... During the pilot program, the K5 will patrol the Times Squares subway station from midnight to 6 a.m. with a human NYPD handler that will help introduce it to the public. After two months, the mayor said the handler will no longer be necessary, and the robot will go on solo patrol...

Knightscope, which manufactures the robot, reports that it has been deployed to 30 clients in 10 states, including at malls and hospitals. The K5 has been in some sticky situations in other cities. One was toppled and slathered in barbecue sauce in San Francisco, while another was beaten by an intoxicated man in Mountain View, California, according to news reports. Another robot fell into a pool of water outside an office building in Washington, D.C.

When asked whether the robot was at risk of vandalism in New York City, the mayor strode over to it and gave it a few firm shoves. "Let's be clear, this is not a pushover. 420 pounds. This is New York tested," he said.
The city is leasing the robot for $9 an hour — And yes, local newscasts couldn't resist calling it a robocop. One shows the mayor announcing "We will continue to stay ahead of those who want to harm everyday New Yorkers."

Though the robot is equipped with facial recognition capability, it will not be activated.