Oui, beaucoup de hausse cette semaine, même si on commence avec une très belle baisse chez les bleus, avec le 13900K qui perd pas moins de 52 euros. Chez Intel, nous avons aussi le 14600K qui baisse bien, qui s'affiche à 322.90 euros, son prix le plus bas, c'est 17 euros de moins. Par contre, le 14700K fait + 27 euros et le 14900K fait + 24 euros. […]

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It transforms water into the fuel — one of the first fuel plants in the world to do so. The Washington Post visits a facility in Corpus Christi, Texas using renewable energy to produce "green" hydrogen. The plant feeds water through machines that pull out its hydrogen atoms... [T]he hydrogen is chemically transformed into diesel for delivery trucks. This process could represent the biggest change in how fuel for planes, ships, trains and trucks is made since the first internal combustion engine fired up in the 19th century... Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel could help slash planet-warming pollution from heavy vehicles, cutting a key source of emissions that contribute to climate change. But to fulfill that promise, companies will have to build massive numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to power the energy-hungry process. Regulators will have to make sure hydrogen production doesn't siphon green energy that could go towards cleaning up other sources of global warming gases, such as homes or factories. Although cars and light trucks are shifting to electric motors, other forms of transport will likely rely on some kind of liquid fuel for the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships. Extended charging times could be an obstacle for long-haul trucks, and some rail lines may be too expensive to electrify. Together, these vehicles represent roughly half of emissions from transportation, the fourth-biggest source of greenhouse gases. To wean machines off oil, companies like Infinium, the owner of this plant, are starting to churn out hydrogen-based fuels that — in the best case — produce close to net zero emissions. They could also pave the way for a new technology, hydrogen fuel cells, to power planes, ships and trucks in the second half of this century. For now, these fuels are expensive and almost no one makes them, so the U.S. government, businesses and philanthropists including Bill Gates are investing billions of dollars to build up a hydrogen industry that could cut eventually some of the most stubborn, hard-to-remove carbon pollution. Most scenarios for how the world could avoid the worst effects of climate change envision hydrogen cleaning up emissions in transportation, as well as in fertilizer production and steel and chemical refining. But if they're not made with dedicated renewable energy, hydrogen-based fuels could generate even more pollution than regular diesel, creating a wasteful boondoggle that sets the world back in the fight against climate change. Their potential comes down to the way plants like this produce them... Only about 40 percent of the power on the [Texas] electric grid is from renewables, with the rest coming from natural gas and coal, according to state data. That grid energy is what flows through the power line into the Infinium plant. "One day, heavy transportation may shift to fuel cells that run on pure hydrogen and emit only water vapor from their tailpipes," the article points out. But to accommodate today's carbon-burning vehicles, Infinium produces "chemical copies of existing fuels made with crude oil" by combining captured carbon with green hydrogen. "A truck running on diesel made from hydrogen using only renewable electricity would create 89 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the course of its lifetime than a truck burning diesel made from petroleum, according to a 2022 analysis from the European nonprofit Transport & Environment."

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For those interested in laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC, it's looking like the ASUS Vivobook S15 model could be one of the first devices with decent Linux support. There are patches undergoing review for upstreaming the ASUS Vivobook S 15 DeviceTree support so that much of the basic functionality is working under Linux but various features are known to be broken...

The Etnaviv kernel graphics driver that provides reverse-engineered open-source support for Vivante graphics (and NPU) IP has seen a fresh round of patches ready to go for queuing in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.11 cycle kicking off in mid-July...

With the first half of the year drawing to a close, here is a look back at the most popular content on Phoronix so far in 2024. Year to date there has been 1,530 original news articles so far and 78 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles written by your's truly. There has been a lot happening in 2024 from Linux kernel improvements to exciting new hardware and other open-source advances...

Merged on Saturday ahead of today's Linux 6.10-rc6 release is the latest batch of x86 platform driver changes. Notable as part of this week's fixes is improving support for the very latest (2024) LG laptop models...

For those on the Debian stable train, Debian 12.6 is out this weekend as the newest point release to Debian Bookworm...

Nouvelle semaine classique à la Ferme avec un article par jour. Des domaines variés, peut-être même trop puisqu'il sera impossible d'assembler une machine ! Un boitier, d'accord, pareil pour le watercooling AIO et l'alimentation... Mais aucun rapport avec l'ordinateur portable ! En revanche, le petit ampli trouvera sa place sur de nombreux bureaux avec des PC fixes ou nomades. […]

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Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Ars Technica: Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers — Collins Aerospace — expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits. NASA's Apollo-era suits have long been retired. The current suits used for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit are four decades old. "These new capabilities will allow us to continue on the International Space Station and allows us to do the Artemis program and continue on to Mars," said the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a celebratory news conference in Houston two years ago. The two winning teams were led by Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, respectively. They were eligible for task orders worth up to $3.5 billion — in essence NASA would rent the use of these suits for a couple of decades. Since then, NASA has designated Axiom to work primarily on a suit for the Moon and the Artemis Program, and Collins with developing a suit for operations in-orbit, such as space station servicing... The agency has been experiencing periodic problems with the maintenance of the suits built decades ago, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which made its debut in the 1980s. NASA has acknowledged the suit has exceeded its planned design lifetime. Just this Monday, the agency had to halt a spacewalk after the airlock had been de-pressurized and the hatch opened due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. As a result of this problem, NASA will likely only be able to conduct a single spacewalk this summer, after initially planning three, to complete work outside the International Space Station. Collins designed the original Apollo suits, according to the article. But a person familiar with the situation told Ars Technica that "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget." Ironically, the company's top's post on their account on Twitter/X is still a repost of NASA's February announcement that they're "getting a nextx-generation spacesuit" developed by Collins Aerospace, and saying that the company "recently completed a key NASA design milestone aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft." NASA's post said they needed the suit "In order to advance NASA's spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit and to support continued maintenance and operations at the Space Station."

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Today the Wall Street Journal reported that restoring net neutrality to America is "on shakier legal footing after a Supreme Court decision on Friday shifted power away from federal agencies." "It's hard to overstate the impact that this ruling could have on the regulatory landscape in the United States going forward," said Leah Malone, a lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. "This could really bind U.S. agencies in their efforts to write new rules." Now that [the "Chevron deference"] is gone, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to have a harder time reviving net neutrality — a set of policies barring internet-service providers from assigning priority to certain web traffic... The Federal Communications Commission reclassified internet providers as public utilities under the Communications Act. There are pending court cases challenging the FCC's reinterpretation of that 1934 law, and the demise of Chevron deference heightens the odds of the agency losing in court, some legal experts said. "Chevron's thumb on the scale in favor of the agencies was crucial to their chances of success," said Geoffrey Manne, president of the International Center for Law and Economics. "Now that that's gone, their claims are significantly weaker." Other federal agencies could also be affected, according to the article. The ruling could also make it harder for America's Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on power-plant pollution. And the Federal Trade Commission face more trouble in court defending its recent ban on noncompete agreements. Lawyer Daniel Jarcho tells the Journal that the Court's decision "will unquestionably lead to more litigation challenging federal agency actions, and more losses for federal agencies." Friday a White House press secretary issued a statement calling the court's decision "deeply troubling," and arguing that the court had "decided in the favor of special interests".

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An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the Verge: Threads will now let people like and see replies to their Threads posts that appear on other federated social media platforms, the company announced on Tuesday. Previously, if you made a post on Threads that was syndicated to another platform like Mastodon, you wouldn't be able to see responses to that post while still inside Threads. That meant you'd have to bounce back and forth between the platforms to stay up-to-date on replies... [I]n a screenshot, Meta notes that you can't reply to replies "yet," so it sounds like that feature will arrive in the future. "Threads is Meta's first app built to be compatible with the fediverse..." according to a Meta blog post. "Our vision is that people using other fediverse-compatible servers will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads profile, and vice versa, connecting communities..." [If you turn on "sharing"...] "Developers can build new types of features and user experiences that can easily plug into other open social networks, accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation." And this week Instagram/Threads top executive Adam Mosseri posted that Threads is "also expanding the availability of the fediverse beta experience to more than 100 countries, and hope to roll it out everywhere soon."

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The Wall Street Journal reports that a European initiative studying the feasibility data centers in space "has found that the project could be economically viable" — while reducing the data center's carbon footprint. And they add that according to coordinator Thales Alenia Space, the project "could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros between now and 2050." The study — dubbed Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty — was funded by the European Union and sought to compare the environmental impacts of space-based and Earth-based data centers, the company said. Moving forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its results. Space data centers would be powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, aiming to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator said... Space data centers wouldn't require water to cool them, the company said. The 16-month study came to a "very encouraging" conclusion, project manager Damien Dumestier told CNBC. With some caveats... The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization... The study found that, in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, a new type of launcher that is 10 times less emissive would need to be developed. ArianeGroup, one of the 12 companies participating in the study, is working to speed up the development of such reusable and eco-friendly launchers. The target is to have the first eco-launcher ready by 2035 and then to allow for 15 years of deployment in order to have the huge capacity required to make the project feasible, said Dumestier... Michael Winterson, managing director of the European Data Centre Association, acknowledges that a space data center would benefit from increased efficiency from solar power without the interruption of weather patterns — but the center would require significant amounts of rocket fuel to keep it in orbit. Winterson estimates that even a small 1 megawatt center in low earth orbit would need around 280,000 kilograms of rocket fuel per year at a cost of around $140 million in 2030 — a calculation based on a significant decrease in launch costs, which has yet to take place. "There will be specialist services that will be suited to this idea, but it will in no way be a market replacement," said Winterson. "Applications that might be well served would be very specific, such as military/surveillance, broadcasting, telecommunications and financial trading services. All other services would not competitively run from space," he added in emailed comments. [Merima Dzanic, head of strategy and operations at the Danish Data Center Industry Association] also signaled some skepticism around security risks, noting, "Space is being increasingly politicised and weaponized amongst the different countries. So obviously, there is a security implications on what type of data you send out there." Its not the only study looking at the potential of orbital data centers, notes CNBC. "Microsoft, which has previously trialed the use of a subsea data center that was positioned 117 feet deep on the seafloor, is collaborating with companies such as Loft Orbital to explore the challenges in executing AI and computing in space." The article also points out that the total global electricity consumption from data centers could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. "That's roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency."

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Long-time Slashdot reader jrronimo says JILA physicist Jun Ye's group "has made a breakthrough towards the next stage of precision timekeeping." From their paper recently published to arXiv: Optical atomic clocks use electronic energy levels to precisely keep track of time. A clock based on nuclear energy levels promises a next-generation platform for precision metrology and fundamental physics studies.... These results mark the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks and demonstrate the first comparison of nuclear and atomic clocks for fundamental physics studies. This work represents a confluence of precision metrology, ultrafast strong field physics, nuclear physics, and fundamental physics.

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Founded in 1846, the not-for-profit Associated Press distributes its news stories to other news outlets. But are free online sites putting those outlets at risk? This week the Associated Press wrote that a "crisis" in local and state news reporting "shows little signs of abating" — and that it's now setting up "a sister organization that will seek to raise money" for those outlets. The organization, which will have a board of directors independent of the AP, will solicit philanthropic spending to boost this news coverage, both within the AP and through outside organizations, the news outlet said Tuesday. "We feel we have to lean in at this point, not pull back," said Daisy Veerasingham, the AP's president and CEO. "But the supporting mechanism — the local newspaper market that used to support this — can't afford to do that anymore." Veerasingham said she's been encouraged by preliminary talks with some funders who have expressed concern about the state of local journalism... The local news industry has collapsed over the past two decades, with the number of journalists working in newspapers dropping from 75,000 to 31,000 in 2022, according to Northwestern University. More than half of the nation's counties have no local news outlets or only one. The AP's CEO offered this succinct summary of their goal. "We want to add new products and services to help the industry."

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"The outdoor-apparel brand Patagonia has given 90 U.S. employees a choice," reports Business Insider: "tell the company by Friday that you're willing to relocate or leave your job." [Alternate URL here.] The employees all work in customer services, known at Patagonia as the customer-experience, or CX, team, and have been allowed to work remotely to field calls and inquiries. These workers received a text and email Tuesday morning about an "important" meeting... Two company executives, Amy Velligan and Bruce Old, told staff in a 15-minute video meeting that the team would be moving to a new "hub" model. CX employees are now expected to live within 60 miles of one of seven "hubs" — Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Reno, Nevada; Dallas; Austin; Chicago; or Pittsburgh. Workers were offered $4,000 toward relocation costs and extra paid time off. Those willing to relocate were told to do so by September 30. If CX staff are not willing to live near a hub city, they must leave the company. They were given 72 hours, until Friday, to confirm their decision... Access to company laptops and phones was shut off later that day until employees either agreed to relocate or said they wanted the severance, one affected CX worker said... Both employees who spoke to Business Insider believed this was because Patagonia didn't want to handle the increased demands of employees in states with higher costs of living. "We've been asking for raises for a long time, and they keep telling us that your wage is based on a Reno cost of living and where you choose to live is on you." According to the article, "The company hopes to bring staff together at the hubs at least once every six weeks for in-person training, company gatherings, or 'Activism Hours'." A company spokesperson described the changes as "crucial for us to build a vibrant team culture," and said there were workers who had been complaining about feeling disconnected. Though there may be another motive: "The reality is that our CX team has been running at 200% to 300% overstaffed for much of this year," she added. "While we hoped to reach the needed staffing levels through attrition, those numbers were very low, and retention remained high." One affected worker told Business Insider that the company's proposal "was very factual. If you don't live in these seven metro areas, you either need to move there or give us your stuff and hit the brick. If we don't respond by Friday, they will assume that we have chosen the severance package and we'll start that process." One worker added that the severance package they received was generous... Thanks to Slashdot reader NoWayNoShapeNoForm for sharing the article.

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Lego teamed up with the European Space Agency to make Lego pieces from actual meteorite dust, writes Engadget. "It's a proof of concept to show how astronauts could use moondust to build lunar structures." Consider the sheer amount of energy and money required to haul up building materials from Earth to the Moon. It would be a game changer to, instead, build everything from pre-existing lunar materials. There's a layer of rock and mineral deposits at the surface of the Moon, which is called lunar regolith... However, there isn't too much lunar regolith here on Earth for folks to experiment with. ESA scientists made their own regolith by grinding up a really old meteorite. [4.5 billion years, according to Lego's site, discovered in Africa in 2000.] The dust from this meteorite was turned into a mixture that was used to 3D print the Lego pieces. Voila. Moon bricks. They click together just like regular Lego bricks, though they only come in one color (space gray obviously.) "The result is amazing," says ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley on the Lego site (though "the bricks may look a little rougher than usual. Importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs.") "Nobody has built a structure on the Moon," Cowley said in an ESA statement. "So it was great to have the flexibility to try out all kinds of designs and building techniques with our space bricks." And the bricks will also be "helping to inspire the next generation of space engineers," according to the ESA's announcement — since they'll be on display in select Lego stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia through September 20th.

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This week the Linux Foundation announced a new organization for decentralized systems and technologies, with an aim of "fostering innovation and collaboration" in both their development and deployment. It will build on existing Linux Foundation blockchain and digital identity projects, according to the announcement, while supporting "a rapidly growing decentralized technology landscape." To foster this broader ecosystem, LF Decentralized Trust will encompass the growing portfolio of Hyperledger projects and host new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications that are critical to the macro shift toward decentralized systems of distributed trust.... LF Decentralized Trust's expanded project and member ecosystem will be both essential to emerging tokenized assets classes and networks, as well as to modernizing the core infrastructure for finance, trade, government, healthcare, and more. LF Decentralized Trust will serve as a neutral home for the open development of a broad range of ledger, identity, security, interoperability, scale, implementation, and related technologies... LF Decentralized Trust will also include new directed funding models that will drive strategic investments by members into individual projects and project resources. "With LF Decentralized Trust, we're expanding our commitment to open source innovation by embracing a wider array of decentralized technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "This new, elevated foundation will enable the community to build a more robust ecosystem that drives forward transparency, security, and efficiency in global infrastructure." "After eight years of advancing the development of blockchain, decentralized identity and related technologies via the Hyperledger community, the time has come to broaden our effort and impact," said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, the Linux Foundation. "Ledgers and ledger technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will underpin a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will gather and grow an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to deliver the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world." The announcement includes quotes of support from numerous companies including Oracle, Siemens, Visa, Accenture, Citi, and Hitachi. Some highlights: "The formation of the LF Decentralized Trust reflects the growing demand for open source resources that are critical to the management and functionality of decentralized systems." — CEO of Digital Asset "The adoption of decentralized infrastructure is at an inflection point, reflecting the increasing demand from both enterprises and consumers for more secure and transparent digital transactions. As the industry leader for onchain data, blockchain abstraction, and interoperability, we're excited to see the formation of the LF Decentralized Trust and to expand our collaboration with leading financial institutions on advancing tokenized assets and the onchain economy at large." — CMO at Chainlink Labs. "As a founding member of the Hyperledger Foundation, and given our unique position in the financial markets, we recognize the vast potential for open-source innovation and decentralized technologies when it comes to reducing risk, increasing resiliency and improving security. The expansion of Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust represents an exciting opportunity to continue expanding these groundbreaking technologies." — a managing director at DTCC

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In November of 2022, "More than 800 people were selected to participate in the Denver Basic Income Project," reports the Colorado Sun, "while they were living on the streets, in shelters, on friends' couches or in vehicles. One group received $1,000 a month, according to the article, while a second group received $6,500 in the first month, and then $500 for the next 11 months. (And a "control" group received $50 a month.) Amazingly, about 45% of participants in all three groups "were living in a house or apartment that they rented or owned by the study's 10-month check-in point, according to the research." The number of nights spent in shelters among participants in the first and second groups decreased by half. And participants in those two groups reported an increase in full-time work, while the control group reported decreased full-time employment. The project also saved tax dollars, according to the report. Researchers tallied an estimated $589,214 in savings on public services, including ambulance rides, visits to hospital emergency departments, jail stays and shelter nights... The study, which began in November 2022 with payments to the first group of participants, has been extended for an additional eight months, until September, and organizers are attempting to raise money to extend it further.

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