Ford, Volvo, and Redwood Materials start recycling EV batteries

Tesla is an early customer for Redwood’s recycled battery materials.

Ford, Volvo, and Redwood Materials start recycling EV batteries

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

What happens to an electric vehicle's big slab of batteries once it no longer holds a sufficient charge? On Thursday, Redwood Materials moved that conversation forward with an announcement that it has started its EV battery recycling program, with Ford and Volvo as partners.

US law requires an EV's traction battery to maintain at least 70 percent of its original state of charge after eight years or 100,000 miles. Even older EVs—ones with proper thermal management for the battery pack—are showing resilience to battery degradation over time.

But eventually, a pack will no longer be suitable for propelling a car, at which point it can be given a second life as static storage. After the battery degrades enough, it's time for recycling.

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Intel expect to ship 4 million discrete GPUs in 2022, teases Project Endgame streaming service

The first laptops with Intel Arc discrete graphics are expected to begin shipping before the end of March, and now Intel says we can expect to see the first Intel Arc graphics cards for desktop computers in the second quarter of the year with workstation-class GPUs coming in Q3, 2022. All told, the company says […]

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The first laptops with Intel Arc discrete graphics are expected to begin shipping before the end of March, and now Intel says we can expect to see the first Intel Arc graphics cards for desktop computers in the second quarter of the year with workstation-class GPUs coming in Q3, 2022.

All told, the company says it expects to ship more than 4 million discrete GPUs this year. The chip maker is also laying out a roadmap that promises at least two more big launches coming later on.

One is a previously undisclosed GPU in the cloud service code-named “Project Endgame,” which Intel says “will enable user to access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for always-accessible, low-latency computing experience.”

This sounds a lot like it could be Intel’s answer to NVIDIA’s GeForce Now game streaming service, which basically lets gamers leverage NVIDIA’s cloud-based servers to play games on a phone or PC with entry-level hardware that might not otherwise be able to handle things like ray-tracing or gaming on a 120 Hz display.

It’s unclear if Project Endgame will be similarly focused on gaming though, or if Intel plans to leverage its GPU-in-the-cloud service for other tasks. The company says Project Endgame will launch later in 2022.

The company also says its begun designing a new GPU architecture code-named “Celestial,” which is designed for the “ultra-enthusiast segment,” suggesting that while the company’s first discrete GPUs (code-named “Alchemist”) may not exactly be NVIDIA RTX 3080 killers, the company does expect to play in that space eventually.

More importantly, given the impact global supply chain issues have had on the availability of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, the fact that Intel expects to ship any discrete GPUs at all this year is probably good news for folks looking for a bit more graphics horsepower than they can get from systems with integrated graphics alone.

via @IntelGraphics and press release

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Corn ethanol no better—and probably worse—than burning gasoline, study says

Efforts to reduce carbon pollution using ethanol appear to have backfired.

Corn ethanol no better—and probably worse—than burning gasoline, study says

Enlarge (credit: John Paraskevas/Newsday RM)

For over a decade, the US has blended ethanol with gasoline in an attempt to reduce the overall carbon pollution produced by fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks. But a new study says that the practice may not be achieving its goals. In fact, burning ethanol made from corn—the major source in the US—may be worse for the climate than just burning gasoline alone.

Corn drove demand for land and fertilizer far higher than previous assessments had estimated. Together, the additional land and fertilizer drove up ethanol’s carbon footprint to the point where the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions—from seed to tank—were higher than that of gasoline. Some researchers predicted this might happen, but the new paper provides a comprehensive and retrospective look at the real-world results of the policy.

Proponents have long argued that corn-based ethanol bolsters farm incomes while providing a domestic source of renewable liquid fuel, while critics have said that its status as a carbon-reducing gasoline additive relies on questionable accounting. Based on the new study, both sides may be right.

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You’ll need a Microsoft account to set up future versions of Windows 11 Pro

It’s one of the new build’s smaller changes, but also one of the most annoying.

New preview build adds Microsoft account requirement to Windows 11 Pro

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Now that Windows 11's first major post-release update has been issued, Microsoft has started testing a huge collection of new features, UI changes, and redesigned apps in the latest Windows Insider preview for Dev channel users. By and large, the changes are significant and useful—there's an overhauled Task Manager, folders for pinned apps in the Start menu, the renewed ability to drag items into the Taskbar (as you could in Windows 10), improvements to the Do Not Disturb and Focus modes, new touchscreen gestures, and a long list of other fixes and enhancements.

But tucked away toward the bottom of the changelog is one unwelcome addition: Like the Home edition of Windows 11, the Pro version will now require an Internet connection and a Microsoft Account during setup. In the current version of Windows 11, you could still create a local user account during setup by not connecting your PC to the Internet—something that also worked in the Home version of Windows 10 but was removed in 11. That workaround will no longer be available in either edition going forward, barring a change in Microsoft's plans.

While most devices do require a sign-in to fully enable app stores, cloud storage, and cross-device sharing and syncing, Windows 11 will soon stand alone as the only major consumer OS that requires account sign-in to enable even basic functionality. Apple's Macs still allow for local account creation during setup, and you can skip signing in when you set up iPhones and iPads (an Internet connection is sometimes required for device activation, though). Android likewise needs an Internet account for activation but doesn't require signing in to get you to the home screen. Even Chrome OS has a guest mode that you can use to enable basic browsing without a user account.

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Anzeige: Effizientere Administration mit Ansible

Tools wie Ansible kommen gerade recht, wenn es um die Administration größerer Systeme geht. Wer eine komprimierte Einführung sucht, dem bietet die Golem Akademie ein passendes Onlineseminar. (Golem Akademie, Server-Applikationen)

Tools wie Ansible kommen gerade recht, wenn es um die Administration größerer Systeme geht. Wer eine komprimierte Einführung sucht, dem bietet die Golem Akademie ein passendes Onlineseminar. (Golem Akademie, Server-Applikationen)