Month: September 2020

Enlarge / A Starlink user terminal and wildfire-devastated areas seen in images shared by Washington state's Emergency Management Division. (credit: Washington Emergency Management Division)

SpaceX Starlink is providing Internet access to Washington state emergency responders in areas ravaged by wildfires. The group has deployed seven Starlink user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) since it began using the service in early August, as CNBC reported yesterday:

"I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department's IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday.

The broadband service has helped both emergency responders and families in wildfire-stricken areas. Hall "has set up terminals in areas that were burned severely to provide evacuated families with wireless calling and Internet access to file insurance claims," CNBC wrote. Hall said he also "did setup to allow kids to do some of their initial schooling."

Hall said Starlink has "easily double[d] the bandwidth" compared to traditional satellite broadband and consistently provides latency of less than 30ms.

• 

  We opted to only share images from the game's gussied-up trailer that actually resemble what we saw in the hands-off demo.

CD Projekt Red has gone back on a promise that developers wouldn't be required to work overtime or face so-called "crunch time" in the run-up to November's planned release of Cyberpunk 2077. That's according to a Bloomberg report that cites an email from studio head Adam Badowski to employees, suggesting that employees would need to work "one day of the weekend" through launch to fix remaining bugs and glitches in the game.

“I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch," the email continues, as Bloomberg reports. "It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back—that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

"These last 6 weeks are our final sprint on a project we've all spent much of our lives on," Badowski wrote in a tweeted statement in response to the report. "Something we care for deeply. The majority of the team understands that push, especially in light of the fact that we've just sent the game to cert and every day brings us visibly closer to shipping a game we want to be proud of."

• 

  Mercedes-Benz's latest articulated bus is the eCitaro G, and it is available with solid-state batteries. [credit: Mercedes-Benz ]

Lithium-ion battery technology has made impressive gains over the years. Today's cells are cheaper than they've ever been, but lithium-ion still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of energy density compared to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Which means that putting enough of them in a car to give it an acceptable range adds a lot of mass and volume. Which is where solid-state batteries come in.

In a traditional battery, a pair of electrodes are immersed in an electrolyte solution, and it's this liquid electrolyte that allows ions to move from one electrode to the other. But liquid electrolytes can leak, and that's not a great thing, whether the material is highly corrosive, as in a lead-acid battery, or highly flammable, as in a lithium-ion battery. So researchers around the world have been experimenting with batteries that use a solid electrolyte instead, with a particular eye on using them in electric vehicles.

And now, it seems it's a technology that is ready to be deployed, as Mercedes-Benz just announced that its new eCitaro and eCitaro G city buses will be available with roof-mounted solid-state battery packs, developed in conjunction with the Canadian power company Hydro Quebec.