It's been argued that technology (especially automation) will continue weakening the position of workers. But today the senior economics correspondent for The New York Times argues a "profound shift" happening in America is instead something else.

"For the first time in a generation, workers are gaining the upper hand..." Up and down the wage scale, companies are becoming more willing to pay a little more, to train workers, to take chances on people without traditional qualifications, and to show greater flexibility in where and how people work. The erosion of employer power began during the low-unemployment years leading up to the pandemic and, given demographic trends, could persist for years. March had a record number of open positions, according to federal data that goes back to 2000, and workers were voluntarily leaving their jobs at a rate that matches its historical high. Burning Glass Technologies, a firm that analyzes millions of job listings a day, found that the share of postings that say "no experience necessary" is up two-thirds over 2019 levels, while the share of those promising a starting bonus has doubled.

People are demanding more money to take a new job. The "reservation wage," as economists call the minimum compensation workers would require, was 19 percent higher for those without a college degree in March than in November 2019, a jump of nearly $10,000 a year, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York... [T]he demographic picture is not becoming any more favorable for employers eager to fill positions. Population growth for Americans between ages 20 and 64 turned negative last year for the first time in the nation's history. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the potential labor force will grow a mere 0.3 to 0.4 percent annually for the remainder of the 2020s; the size of the work force rose an average of 0.8 percent a year from 2000 to 2020.
The article describes managers now "being forced to learn how to operate amid labor scarcity... At the high end of the labor market, that can mean workers are more emboldened to leave a job if employers are insufficiently flexible on issues like working from home..."

But it also notes a ride-sharing driver who switched to an IBM apprenticeship for becoming a cloud storage engineer, and former Florida nightclub bouncer Alex Lorick, who became an IBM mainframe technician, "part of a deliberate effort by IBM to rethink how it hires and what counts as a qualification for a given job." [IBM] executives concluded that the qualifications for many jobs were unnecessarily demanding. Postings might require applicants to have a bachelor's degree, for example, in jobs that a six-month training course would adequately prepare a person for.

"By creating your own dumb barriers, you're actually making your job in the search for talent harder," said Obed Louissaint, IBM's senior vice president for transformation and culture. In working with managers across the company on training initiatives like the one under which Mr. Lorick was hired, "it's about making managers more accountable for mentoring, developing and building talent versus buying talent."

"I think something fundamental is changing, and it's been happening for a while, but now it's accelerating," Mr. Louissaint said.

Billionaire Bill Gates' advanced nuclear reactor company TerraPower LLC and PacifiCorp have selected Wyoming to launch the first Natrium reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant, the state's governor said on Wednesday. Reuters reports: TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion. Late last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations.

In a Q&A with TechRadar, storage hardware giant Seagate revealed it is keeping a close eye on the crypto space, with a view to potentially launching a new line of purpose-built drives. From the report: Asked whether companies might develop storage products specifically for cryptocurrency use cases, Jason M. Feist, who heads up Seagate's emerging products arm, said it was a "possibility." Feist said he could offer no concrete information at this stage, but did suggest the company is "exploring this opportunity and imagines others may be as well."

"For the first time, artificial intelligence was a key component and power multiplier in fighting the enemy," says a senior officer in the intelligence corps of the Israeli military, describing the technology's use in 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip.

They're quoted in a Jerusalem Post article on "the world's first AI war": Soldiers in Unit 8200, an Intelligence Corps elite unit, pioneered algorithms and code that led to several new programs called "Alchemist," "Gospel" and "Depth of Wisdom," which were developed and used during the fighting. Collecting data using signal intelligence, visual intelligence, human intelligence , geographical intelligence, and more, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has mountains of raw data that must be combed through to find the key pieces necessary to carry out a strike. "Gospel" used AI to generate recommendations for troops in the research division of Military Intelligence, which used them to produce quality targets and then passed them on to the IAF to strike...

While the IDF had gathered thousands of targets in the densely populated coastal enclave over the past two years, hundreds were gathered in real time, including missile launchers that were aimed at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The military believes using AI helped shorten the length of the fighting, having been effective and quick in gathering targets using super-cognition. The IDF carried out hundreds of strikes against Hamas and PIJ, including rocket launchers, rocket manufacturing, production and storage sites, military intelligence offices, drones, commanders' residences and Hamas's naval commando unit. Israel has destroyed most of the naval commando unit's infrastructure and weaponry, including several autonomous GPS-guided submarines that can carry 30 kg. of explosives.

IDF Unit 9900's satellites have gathered geographical intelligence over the years. They were able to automatically detect changes in terrain in real time so that during the operation, the military was able to detect launching positions and hit them after firing. For example, Unit 9900 troops using satellite imagery were able to detect 14 rocket launchers that were located next to a school... One strike, against senior Hamas operative Bassem Issa, was carried out with no civilian casualties despite being in a tunnel under a high-rise building surrounded by six schools and a medical clinic... Hamas's underground "Metro" tunnel network was also heavily damaged over the course of several nights of airstrikes. Military sources said they were able to map the network, consisting of hundreds of kilometers under residential areas, to a degree where they knew almost everything about them.

The mapping of Hamas's underground network was done by a massive intelligence-gathering process that was helped by the technological developments and use of Big Data to fuse all the intelligence.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares Science magazine's look at efforts to transform zinc batteries "from small, throwaway cells often used in hearing aids into rechargeable behemoths that could be attached to the power grid, storing solar or wind power for nighttime or when the wind is calm." With startups proliferating and lab studies coming thick and fast, "Zinc batteries are a very hot field," says Chunsheng Wang, a battery expert at the University of Maryland, College Park. Lithium-ion batteries — giant versions of those found in electric vehicles — are the current front-runners for storing renewable energy, but their components can be expensive. Zinc batteries are easier on the wallet and the planet — and lab experiments are now pointing to ways around their primary drawback: They can't be recharged over and over for decades.

For power storage, "Lithium-ion is the 800-pound gorilla," says Michael Burz, CEO of EnZinc, a zinc battery startup. But lithium, a relatively rare metal that's only mined in a handful of countries, is too scarce and expensive to back up the world's utility grids. (It's also in demand from automakers for electric vehicles.) Lithium-ion batteries also typically use a flammable liquid electrolyte. That means megawatt-scale batteries must have pricey cooling and fire-suppression technology. "We need an alternative to lithium," says Debra Rolison, who heads advanced electrochemical materials research at the Naval Research Laboratory. Enter zinc, a silvery, nontoxic, cheap, abundant metal. Nonrechargeable zinc batteries have been on the market for decades. More recently, some zinc rechargeables have also been commercialized, but they tend to have limited energy storage capacity. Another technology — zinc flow cell batteries — is also making strides. But it requires more complex valves, pumps, and tanks to operate. So, researchers are now working to improve another variety, zinc-air cells...

Advances are injecting new hope that rechargeable zinc-air batteries will one day be able to take on lithium. Because of the low cost of their materials, grid-scale zinc-air batteries could cost $100 per kilowatt-hour, less than half the cost of today's cheapest lithium-ion versions. "There is a lot of promise here," Burz says. But researchers still need to scale up their production from small button cells and cellphone-size pouches to shipping container-size systems, all while maintaining their performance, a process that will likely take years.

The ability to boot from an external drive on an Apple Silicon Mac may not be an option for much longer, with the creation and use of the drives apparently being phased out by Apple, according to developers of backup tools. Apple Insider reports: Mike Bombich, the founder of Bombich Software behind Carbon Copy Cloner, wrote in a May 19 blog post that the company will continue to make bootable backups for both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and will "continue to support that functionality as long as macOS supports it." However, with changes in the way a Mac functions with the introduction of Apple Silicon, the ability to use external booting could be limited, in part due to Apple's design decisions.

The first problem is with macOS Big Sur, as Apple made it so macOS resides on a "cryptographically sealed Signed System Volume," which could only be copied by Apple Software Restore. While CCC has experience with ASR, the tool was deemed to be imperfect, with it failing "with no explanation" and operating in a "very one-dimensional" way. The second snag was Apple Fabric, a storage system that uses per-file encryption keys. However, ASR didn't work for months until the release of macOS 11.3 restored it, but even then kernel panics ensued when cloning back to the original internal storage.

In December, Bombich spoke to Apple about ASR's reliability and was informed that Apple was working to resolve the problem. During the call, Apple's engineers also said that copying macOS system files was "not something that would be supportable in the future." "Many of us in the Mac community could see that this was the direction Apple was moving, and now we finally have confirmation," writes Bombich. "Especially since the introduction of APFS, Apple has been moving towards a lockdown of macOS system files, sacrificing some convenience for increased security." [...] While CCC won't drop the ability to copy the System folder, the tool is "going to continue to offer it with a best effort' approach." Meanwhile, for non-bootable data restoration, CCC's backups do still work with the macOS Migration Assistant, available when booting up a new Mac for the first time.

Almost half a decade after the first reports were published, mobile app developers are still exposing their users' personal information through abhorrently simple misconfigurations. From a report: In a report published last week, security firm Check Point said it found 23 Android applications that exposed the personal data of more than 100 million users through a variety of misconfigurations of third-party cloud services. This included developers who forgot to password-protect their backend databases and developers who left access tokens/keys inside their mobile application's source code for services such as cloud storage or push notifications. The Check Point team said it was able to use the information they found through a routine examination of 23 random applications and access the backend databases of 13 apps. In the exposed databases, researchers said they found information such as email addresses, passwords, private chats, location coordinates, user identifiers, screen recordings, social media credentials, and personal images.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Seagate has been working on dual-actuator hard drives -- drives with two independently controlled sets of read/write heads -- for several years. Its first production dual-actuator drive, the Mach.2, is now "available to select customers," meaning that enterprises can buy it directly from Seagate, but end-users are out of luck for now. Seagate lists the sustained, sequential transfer rate of the Mach.2 as up to 524MBps -- easily double that of a fast "normal" rust disk and edging into SATA SSD territory. The performance gains extend into random I/O territory as well, with 304 IOPS read / 384 IOPS write and only 4.16 ms average latency. (Normal hard drives tend to be 100/150 IOPS and about the same average latency.)

The added performance requires additional power; Mach.2 drives are rated for 7.2 W idle, while Seagate's standard Ironwolf line is rated at 5 W idle. It gets more difficult to compare loaded power consumption because Seagate specs the Mach.2 differently than the Ironwolf. The Mach.2's power consumption is explicitly rated for several random I/O scenarios, while the Ironwolf line is rated for an unhelpful "average operating power," which isn't defined in the data sheet. Still, if we assume -- probably not unreasonably -- a similar expansion of power consumption while under load, the Mach.2 represents an excellent choice for power efficiency since it offers roughly 200% of the performance of competing traditional drives at roughly 144% of the power budget. Particularly power-conscious users can also use Seagate's PowerBalance mode -- although that feature decreases sequential performance by 50% and random performance by 10%.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: All future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to stand any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. In a special report designed to inform negotiators at the crucial COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, the IEA predicted a "sharp decline in fossil fuel demand" in the next three decades as well as a 2040 deadline for the global energy sector to achieve carbon neutrality. The Paris-based think tank called for a rapid and vast ramping up of renewable energy investment and capacity, which bring gains in development, wealth and human health.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the roadmap outlined in the report showed that the path to global net-zero by 2050 was "narrow but still achievable." "The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal -- our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5C -- make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced," he said. "Under the IEA's net-zero pathway, oil usage is projected to decline 75 percent and gas 55 percent by mid-century," the report notes. "It also said that all inefficient coal power plants needed to close by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero by 2050."

The IEA went on to say that around half of reductions by 2050 would be provided by "technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase," which include direct air capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Implantable miniaturized medical devices that wirelessly transmit data "are transforming healthcare and improving the quality of life for millions of people," writes Columbia University, noting the devices are "widely used to monitor and map biological signals, to support and enhance physiological functions, and to treat diseases."

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shares the university's newest announcement: These devices could be used to monitor physiological conditions, such as temperature, blood pressure, glucose, and respiration for both diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. To date, conventional implanted electronics have been highly volume-inefficient — they generally require multiple chips, packaging, wires, and external transducers, and batteries are often needed for energy storage... Researchers at Columbia Engineering report that they have built what they say is the world's smallest single-chip system, consuming a total volume of less than 0.1 mm cubed. The system is as small as a dust mite and visible only under a microscope...

"We wanted to see how far we could push the limits on how small a functioning chip we could make," said the study's leader Ken Shepard, Lau Family professor of electrical engineering and professor of biomedical engineering. "This is a new idea of 'chip as system' — this is a chip that alone, with nothing else, is a complete functioning electronic system. This should be revolutionary for developing wireless, miniaturized implantable medical devices that can sense different things, be used in clinical applications, and eventually approved for human use...."

The chip, which is the entire implantable/injectable mote with no additional packaging, was fabricated at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company with additional process modifications performed in the Columbia Nano Initiative cleanroom and the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) Nanofabrication Facility. Shepard commented, "This is a nice example of 'more than Moore' technology—we introduced new materials onto standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor to provide new function. In this case, we added piezoelectric materials directly onto the integrated circuit to transducer acoustic energy to electrical energy...." The team's goal is to develop chips that can be injected into the body with a hypodermic needle and then communicate back out of the body using ultrasound, providing information about something they measure locally.

The current devices measure body temperature, but there are many more possibilities the team is working on.

Framework is one of an increasing number of companies working to address planned obsolescence by creating products that are incredibly customizable and easy to repair. Today, the company's Framework Laptop is up for preorder, starting at $999 and shipping at the end of July. TechCrunch reports: There are three basic configurations -- Base, Performance and Professional, ranging from $999 to $1,999, upgrading from an Intel Core i5, 8GB of Ram and 256GB of storage to a Core i7 and 32GB/1TB. Windows also gets upgraded from Home to Pro at the top level. At $749, the company offers a barebones shell, where users can plug in their own internals.

Other upgrades include: "On top of that, the Framework Laptop is deeply customizable in unique ways. Our Expansion Card system lets you choose the ports you want and which side you want them on, selecting from four at a time of USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, MicroSD, ultra-fast 250GB and 1TB storage, and more. Magnetic-attach bezels are color-customizable to match your style, and the keyboard language can be swapped too."

A carbon-free future "will require many millions of batteries, both to drive electric vehicles and to store wind and solar power on the grid," reports IEEE Spectrum. Unfortunately, today's battery chemistries "mostly rely on lithium — a metal that could soon face a global supply crunch." Recently, Rystad Energy projected a "serious lithium supply deficit" in 2027 as mining capacity lags behind the EV boom. The mismatch could effectively delay the production of around 3.3 million battery-powered passenger cars that year, according to the research firm. Without new mining projects, delays could swell to the equivalent of 20 million cars in 2030. Battery-powered buses, trucks, ships, and grid storage systems will also feel the squeeze... [T]he solution isn't as simple as mining more hard rock — called spodumene — or tapping more underground brine deposits to extract lithium. That's because most of the better, easier-to-exploit reserves are already spoken for in Australia (for hard rock) and in Chile and Argentina (for brine). To drastically scale capacity, producers will also need to exploit the world's "marginal" resources, which are costlier and more energy-intensive to develop than conventional counterparts...

Concerns about supply constraints are driving innovation in the lithium industry. A handful of projects in North America and Europe are piloting and testing "direct lithium extraction," an umbrella term for technologies that, generally speaking, use electricity and chemical processes to isolate and extract concentrated lithium... In southwestern Germany, Vulcan Energy is extracting lithium from geothermal springs that bubble thousands of meters below the Rhine river. The startup began operating its first pilot plant in mid-April. Vulcan said it could be extracting 15,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide — a compound used in battery cathodes — per year. In southern California, Controlled Thermal Resources is developing a geothermal power plant and lithium extraction facility at the Salton Sea. The company said a pilot facility will start producing 20,000 metric tons per year of lithium hydroxide, also by 2024.

Another way to boost lithium supplies is to recover the metal from spent batteries, of which there is already ample supply. Today, less than 5 percent of all spent lithium-ion batteries are recycled, in large part because the packs are difficult and expensive to dismantle. Many batteries now end up in landfills, leaching chemicals into the environment and wasting usable materials. But Sophie Lu, the head of metals and mining for BloombergNEF, said the industry is likely to ramp up recycling after 2028, when the supply deficit kicks in. Developers are already starting to build new facilities, including a $175 million plant in Rochester, N.Y. When completed, it will be North America's largest recycling plant for lithium-ion batteries.
The Economic Times also argues that electric cars and renewable energy "may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.

"That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come."

A Windows Defender bug creates thousands of small files that waste gigabytes of storage space on Windows 10 hard drives. BleepingComputer reports: The bug started with Windows Defender antivirus engine 1.1.18100.5 and will cause the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans\History\Store folder to be filled up with thousands of files with names that appear to be MD5 hashes. From a system seen by BleepingComputer, the created files range in size from 600 bytes to a little over 1KB. While the system we looked at only had approximately 1MB of files, other Windows 10 users report that their systems have been filled up with hundreds of thousands of files, which in one case, used up 30GB of storage space. On smaller SSD system drives (C:), this can be a considerable amount of storage space to waste on unnecessary files. According to Deskmodder, who first reported on this issue, the bug has now been fixed in the latest Windows Defender engine, version 1.1.18100.6.

This week ZDNet dedicated an article to "the most popular Fedora Linux in years." Red Hat's community Linux distribution Fedora has always been popular with open-source and Linux developers, but this latest release, Fedora 34 seems to be something special. As Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader, tweeted, "The beta for F34 was one of the most popular ever, with twice as many systems showing up in my stats as typical."

Why? Nick Gerace, a Rancher software engineer, thinks it's because "I've never seen the project in a better state, and I think GNOME 40 is a large motivator as well. Probably a combination of each, from anecdotal evidence." He's onto something. When Canonical released Ubuntu 21.04 a few days earlier, their developers opted to stay with the tried and true GNOME 39 desktop. Fedora's people decided to go with GNOME 40 for their default desktop even though it's a radical update to the GNOME interface. Besides boasting a new look, GNOME 40 is based on the new GTK 4.0 graphical toolkit. Under the pretty new exterior, this update also fixed numerous issues and smoothed out many rough spots.

If you'd rather have another desktop, you can also get Fedora 34 with the newest KDE Plasma Desktop, Xfce 4.16, Cinnamon, etc. You name your favorite Linux desktop interface, Fedora will almost certainly deliver it to you... Another feature I like is that, since Fedora 33, the default file system is Btrfs. I find it faster and more responsive than ext4, perhaps the most popular Linux desktop file system. What's different this time around is that it now defaults to using Btrfs transparent compression. Besides saving significant storage space — typically from 20 to 40% — Red Hat also claims this increases the lifespan of SSDs and other flash media.
Although the article does point out that most users will never reach the end of that SSD lifespan (approximately ten years of normal use), it suggests that "developers, who might for example compile Linux kernels every day, might reach that point before a PC's usual end of useful life."

In a possibly related note, Linus Torvalds said this week in a new interview that "I use Fedora on all my machines, not because it's necessarily 'preferred', but because it's what I'm used to. I don't care deeply about the distribution — to me it's mainly a way to get Linux installed on a machine and get all my tools set up, so that I can then replace the kernel and work on just that."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: The Oculus Quest 2 is a hell of a lot of hardware for $299. In fact, we're convinced that Facebook is making a loss on each unit sold. Even so, that pricing is one of the main reasons it's the most popular headset on Steam and our pick as the best VR headset. Well, that and the ease of use. [...] The thing is, that price seems too good to be true, with no other manufacturer's VR headset close to the specs list of the Quest 2 -- in either tethered or standalone form -- hitting the same low, low price. That money gets you a robust virtual reality headset with 6GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 CPU, 64GB of storage, 1832x1920 per eye display and a pair of controllers. [...]

But there's one factor that could potentially offset that price -- Facebook has access to a whole lot of your data. This is something the Oculus Quest 2 is upfront about: You absolutely need a Facebook account in order to use the device and it does have its data collection policies in black and white. Although what isn't quite so obvious is how much your data is worth to Facebook. At least it isn't without a tiny bit of digging.

There is another version of the Quest 2 that isn't as discounted as the consumer version, and that's the one aimed at businesses. The actual hardware is identical, but the difference is you don't need to login in with a Facebook account in order to use it. The price for this model? $799. There's also an annual fee of $180 that kicks in a year after purchase, which covers Oculus' business services and support, but that just muddies the waters a little. The point being, the Quest 2 for business, the headset from which Facebook can't access your data directly, costs $500 more. So that's looking essentially like the value the social media giant attributes to your data, which either seems like a lot or barely anything at all, depending on your stance. The Supplemental Oculus Data Policy outlines what sort of data is actually being collected when you use the Quest 2. Such things as your physical dimension, including your hand size, how big your play area is using the Oculus Guardian system, data on any content you create using the Quest 2, as well as more obvious stuff like your device ID and IP address.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The IRS is looking for help to break into cryptocurrency hardware wallets, according to a document posted on the agency website in March of this year. Many cryptocurrency investors store their cryptographic keys, which confer ownership of their funds, with the exchange they use to transact or on a personal device. Some folks, however, want a little more security and use hardware wallets -- small physical drives which store a user's keys securely, unconnected to the internet. The law enforcement arm of the tax agency, IRS Criminal Investigation, and more specifically its Digital Forensic Unit, is now asking contractors to come up with solutions to hack into cryptowallets that could be of interest in investigations, the document states.

"The decentralization and anonymity provided by cryptocurrencies has fostered an environment for the storage and exchange of something of value, outside of the traditional purview of law enforcement and regulatory organizations," the document reads. "There is a portion of this cryptographic puzzle that continues to elude organizations -- millions, perhaps even billions of dollars, exist within cryptowallets." The security of hardware wallets presents a problem for investigators. The document states that agencies may be in possession of a hardware wallet as part of a case, but may not be able to access it if the suspect does not comply. This means that authorities cannot effectively "investigate the movement of currencies" and it may "prevent the forfeiture and recovery" of the funds. "The explicit outcome of this contract is to tame the cybersecurity research into measured, repeatable, consistent digital forensics processes that can be trained and followed in a digital forensics' laboratory," the document says.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to turn every home into a distributed power plant that would generate, store and even deliver energy back into the electricity grid, all using the company's products. TechCrunch reports: While the company has been selling solar and energy storage products for years, a new company policy to only sell solar coupled with the energy storage products, along with Musk's comments Monday, reveal a strategy that aims to scale these businesses by appealing to utilities. "This is a prosperous future both for Tesla and for the utilities," he said. "If this is not done, the utilities will fail to serve their customers. They won't be able to do it," Musk said during an investor call, noting the rolling blackouts in California last summer and the more recent grid failure in Texas as evidence that grid reliability has become a bigger concern.

Last week, the company changed its website to prevent customers from only buying solar or its Powerwall energy storage product and instead required purchasing a system. Musk later announced the move in a tweet, stating "solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall" and that "Powerwall will interface only between utility meter and house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install and seamless whole house backup during utility dropouts." Musk's pitch is that the grid would need more power lines, more power plants and larger substations to fully decarbonize using renewables plus storage. Distributed residential systems -- of course using Tesla products -- would provide a better path, in Musk's view. His claim has been backed up in part by recent studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that the U.S. can reach a zero-carbon grid by more than doubling its transmission capacity, and another from Princeton University showing that the country may need to triple its transmission systems by 2050 to reach net-zero emissions.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, tweeted Wednesday that bitcoin "incentivises renewable energy." And Elon Musk responded "True."

The BBC adds that the tweets came "despite experts warning otherwise." The cyrptocurrency's carbon footprint is as large as some of the world's biggest cities, studies suggest. But Mr Dorsey claims that could change if bitcoin miners worked hand-in-hand with renewable energy firms.

One expert said it was a "cynical attempt to greenwash" bitcoin. China, where more than two-thirds of power is from coal, accounts for more than 75% of bitcoin mining around the world...

The tweet comes soon after the release of a White Paper from Mr Dorsey's digital payment services firm Square, and global asset management business ARK Invest. Entitled "Bitcoin as key to an abundant, clean energy future", the paper argues that "bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers", because they offer flexibility, pay in a cryptocurrency, and can be based anywhere with an internet connection. "By combining miners with renewables and storage projects, we believe it could improve the returns for project investors and developers, moving more solar and wind projects into profitable territory," it said.

Author and bitcoin critic David Gerard described the paper as a "cynical exercise in bitcoin greenwashing".

"The reality is: bitcoin runs on coal," he told the BBC.... "Bitcoin mining is so ghastly and egregious that the number one job of bitcoin promoters is to make excuses for it — any excuse at all."

At today's Spring Loaded event, Apple unveiled a new version of the iPad Pro, equipped with the M1 chip that was first introduced on the company's Mac line. TechCrunch reports: The new chip sports an 8-core CPU, with performance up to 50% faster than the A12Z Bionic found on the previous generation. There's also an 8-core GPU, which it claims is up to 40% faster. The system can be decked out to up to 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage. The device further blurs the line between the company's tablet and desktop offerings, as well as improved battery life now listed as "all day." The Pro also adds Thunderbolt support to the USB-C, which allows for a number of new features including external display support and wired transfers up to 40 Gbps.

As reported, the new tablet (12.9-inch only for now) features an improved display -- Liquid Retina XDR, according to Apple's marketing terms. Among other things that brings much improved high dynamic range. The display is powered by 10,000 micro-LED. That allows for a hugely improved contrast ratio and 1,000 nits of brightness, without hammering the battery life. The 11-inch version starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch, which adds the Liquid Retina display, starts at $1,099. Pre-orders on the tablets starts April 30 and the product is set to start shipping in the second half of May -- along with a number of other products introduced at today's show.

According to the Associated Press, Japan's government decided it will start releasing treated radioactive water accumulated at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years. From the report: Under the basic plan adopted Tuesday by the ministers, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, also known as TEPCO, will start releasing the water in about two years after building a facility and compiling release plans adhering to safety requirements. It said the disposal of the water cannot be postponed further and is necessary to improve the environment surrounding the plant so residents can live there safely. TEPCO says its water storage capacity of 1.37 million tons will be full around fall of 2022. Also, the area now filled with storage tanks will have to be freed up for building new facilities needed for removing melted fuel debris from inside the reactors and for other decommissioning work that's expected to start in coming years.

In the decade since the tsunami disaster, water meant to cool the nuclear material has constantly escaped from the damaged primary containment vessels into the basements of the reactor buildings. To make up for the loss, more water has been pumped into the reactors to continue to cool the melted fuel. Water is also pumped out and treated, part of which is recycled as cooling water, and the remainder stored in 1,020 tanks now holding 1.25 million tons of radioactive water. Those tanks that occupy a large space at the plant interfere with the safe and steady progress of the decommissioning, Economy and Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama said. The tanks also could be damaged and leak in case of another powerful earthquake or tsunami, the report said.

Releasing the water to the ocean was described as the most realistic method by a government panel that for nearly seven years had discussed how to dispose of the water. The report it prepared last year mentioned evaporation as a less desirable option. About 70% of the water in the tanks is contaminated beyond discharge limits but will be filtered again and diluted with seawater before it is released, the report says. According to a preliminary estimate, gradual releases of water will take more than 30 years but will be completed before the plant is fully decommissioned. Japan will abide by international rules for a release, obtain support from the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, and ensure disclosure of data and transparency to gain understanding of the international community, the report said. China blasted the Japanese government for being "extremely irresponsible," and warned that it might take action. "The Japanese side has yet to exhaust all avenues of measures, disregarded domestic and external opposition, has decided to unilaterally release the Fukushima plant's nuclear waste water without full consultation with its neighboring countries and the international community," the foreign ministry statement said. "This action is extremely irresponsible and will pose serious harm to the health and safety of the people in neighboring countries and the international community."

South Korea also isn't happy with Japan's decision. "The government expresses strong regret over the Japanese government's decision to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean," said Koo Yoon-cheol, head of South Korea's Office for Government Policy Coordination.