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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 7 declined, 5 accepted (12 total, 41.67% accepted)

Submission + - US Govt buys 10% stake in Intel (nytimes.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes:

President Trump said on Friday that Intel, the troubled Silicon Valley chipmaker, had agreed to sell the U.S. government a 10 percent stake in its business, worth $8.9 billion, in one of the largest government interventions in a U.S. company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis.

At a news conference, Mr. Trump said the agreement had come out of negotiations last week with Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s chief executive.

“I said, ‘I think it would be good having the United States as your partner.’ He agreed, and they’ve agreed to do it,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think it’s a great deal for them"

...

The government will not take a board seat or have other governance rights at Intel.

It seems surprising, only days after calling on the CEO to resign. This is on top of Biden's CHIPS act. Is the chip industry in such dire straits?

Submission + - Blue Origins' New Shepard reaches orbit (nytimes.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket, barely moving at first, nudged upward and then accelerated in an arc over the Atlantic Ocean, lit up in blue, the color of combustion of the rocket’s methane fuel.

Thirteen minutes later, the second stage of New Glenn reached orbit.

The launch was a major success for Blue Origin, Mr. Bezos’ rocket company.

The upward flight appeared almost flawless, but Blue Origin’s stretch goal of landing the booster stage on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean failed. As planned, the booster fired three of its engines to slow down, but then the stream of data stopped, indicating that the booster had been lost.

“We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring,” Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said in a statement.
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Limp said that, with a successful inaugural launch of New Glenn, Blue Origin is aiming for a second launch in the spring and that he wanted six to eight launches this year.

Submission + - 'World's first' grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant announced in the US (cnn.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.

“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”

The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars. But the path toward it is unlikely to be smooth, not least because the technology has not yet been proved viable.

Submission + - Marines testing real-life aimbot (twz.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: The U.S. Marines are testing a system for standard service rifles that automatically fine-tunes the point of aim with the help of a powered buttstock as a new option to help shoot down drones. The service is in the midst of a broad push to acquire new capabilities to help every Marine better protect themselves from ever-growing uncrewed aerial threats...

ZeroMark’s system is not the first automated small arms targeting system the Marines have looked into in recent years with a particular eye toward helping engage drones. The service has also at least been evaluating SMASH 2000-series computerized optical sights from Israeli firm Smart Shooter. SMASH-series sights have the ability to detect and lock onto targets of interest, even ones on the move, and calculate an optimal aim point for the shooter. Depending on how the system is configured on a particular gun, it can even prevent the trigger from being pulled until the weapon is properly aimed at the target...

The targeting system in ZeroMark’s FCS is similar, in some very broad strokes, to that of the SMASH family. It uses an array of sensors, including electro-optical cameras and LIDAR, coupled with machine vision and advanced software algorithms, to acquire targets, according to the company. Where ZeroMark’s offering differs most substantially is in its motorized articulating buttstock, which uses the data from the sensors to help physically move the gun’s point of aim. This, in turn, helps the shooter engage the target with greater precision and speed...

“[The mechanized buttstock] doesn’t move the soldier’s arm, it creates a virtual pivot between shoulder pad and handheld positions that creates angular change of the bore axis (ultimately where the gun’s pointed),” ZeroMark CEO Joel Anderson said in an interview earlier this year, according to TechCrunch. “The control systems for it are modeled to compensate for all the human factors (proprioception, noise, movement, torque, etc.) as well as the drone’s movement. So if you point in the general direction of the drone such that you’d be in the vicinity of a drone, the system does the rest.”

Zeromark says it is also easy to install and uninstall as required on a wide variety of different rifle types. A promotional video seen earlier in this story shows prototypes or mock-ups of the system installed on rifles in the AK-47/AKM, AR-15/M16, and Tavor families...

Overall, ZeroMark says its FCS “makes hitting a small drone at 200 yards as easy as hitting a 60-foot-diameter circle” at the same range, per TechCrunch. At least for now, the company has said work on its targeting system is focused on the counter-drone role, but has acknowledged that its system could be adapted for use against a wider array of target types in the future.
Science

Submission + - Bill Nye "The Science Guy": Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children (youtube.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: BigThink has released a video missive by Bill Nye "The Science Guy" in which he challenges the low level of acceptance of evolution, particularly in the United States. He does not mince words: 'I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.'
Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo Favors Europe Due to Weak US Dollar

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: The LA Times is reporting that the new Nintendo Wii Fit is hard to find on US shelves, due not only to strong demand but also the United State's declining status in the world economy: "[Nintendo] is also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro," says Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere."

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