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Russia’s central bank on Thursday proposed banning the use and mining of cryptocurrencies on Russian territory, citing threats to financial stability, citizens’ wellbeing and its monetary policy sovereignty.

The move is the latest in a global cryptocurrency crackdown as governments from Asia to the United States worry that privately operated and highly volatile digital currencies could undermine their control of financial and monetary systems.

Russia has argued for years against cryptocurrencies, saying they could be used in money laundering or to finance terrorism. It eventually gave them legal status in 2020 but banned their use as a means of payment.

Agreement will finance sales of Class 8 battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles to customers

PHOENIX 0, Jan. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Nikola Corporation (Nasdaq: NKLA), a global leader in zero-emissions transportation and energy infrastructure solutions, and Corcentric Fleet Funding Solutions, a leading provider of leasing and financing solutions, today announced a signed agreement to facilitate sales of Class 8 Nikola Tre battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and Nikola Tre hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). Pursuant to the agreement, Corcentric will purchase vehicles and related assets (e.g., charging assets) directly from Nikola to offer Nikola customers a bundled lease that provides Nikola trucks and related equipment, as well as fuel and maintenance, in a single agreement.

“We believe this partnership will allow Nikola to reach more customers by offering solutions to those who otherwise may not have access to financing options,” said Nikola Chief Financial Officer, Kim Brady. “The agreement will provide Corcentric a launching point to expand its offerings into the electric vehicle space. Together we expect to provide funding resources, multiple options to tailor leases to customer needs, and best-in-class customer care for fleet customers and owner/operators.”

CATL warns investors its expansion plans may not keep up with demand and that advanced solid-state batteries won’t be commercially available until 2035 — at the earliest.

The rules that govern stock markets in China are different than they are in other countries. Recently, CATL, the largest battery manufacturer in China, revealed plans to invest enormous amounts of money to increase its production capacity. But first it had to convince the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that its plans were realistic and in line with sound business practices. In response to several questions put to it by the stock exchange, the company said solid-state battery development faces technical difficulties that will prevent mass production from occurring for a long time yet.

According to CnEVPost, CATL was asked to explain the development of technology paths for solid-state batteries, sodium ion batteries, and hydrogen fuel cells, along with the risks that each could pose to its operations and capacity expansion. Solid-state batteries and hydrogen fuel cells have certain technical features and advantages, but there are still unresolved technical problems and barriers to mass production, the company said.

Continue reading “CATL Warns On Solid-State Batteries, Sees Supply Shortfall Ahead” »

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We’re in the midst of an NFT boom, but that won’t always be the case. Today, NFTs are being flipped quickly — much like house flipping in the lead up to the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean that NFTs are all driven by speculation, just that we need to be cautious and prudent when evaluating their value. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one tool for helping identify and produce valuable art NFTs. Let’s dive into that more here (but see Christian Jensen’s recent article for a broader background on the investment lingo in NFT land).

There are widely cited forecasts that project accelerating information and communications technology (ICT) energy consumption increases through the 2020’s with a 2018 Nature article estimating that if current trends continue, this will consume more than 20% of electricity demand by 2030. At several industry events I have heard talks that say one of the important limits of data center performance will be the amount of energy consumed. NVIDIA’s latest GPU solutions use 400+W processors and this energy consumption could more than double in future AI processor chips. Solutions that can accelerate important compute functions while consuming less energy will be important to provide more sustainable and economical data centers.

Lightmatter’s Envise chip (shown below) is a general-purpose machine learning accelerator that combines photonics (PIC) and CMOS transistor-based devices (ASIC) into a single compact module. The device uses silicon photonics for high performance AI inference tasks and consumes much less energy than CMOS only solutions and thus helping to reduce the projected power load from data centers.

Full Story:

Continue reading “Computing With Light” »

In 2001, the founder of Mitticool ceramics learned many of his customers in India don’t have regular access to electricity. So he invented a fridge made out of clay. It keeps food 8 degrees cooler than the outside air, but it doesn’t need any electricity to run. And while other ceramics companies in the region shut down, Mitticool is thriving thanks to the success of the powerless, eco-friendly fridge.

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Continue reading “How This Electricity-Free Fridge Saved An Indian Ceramics Factory | Big Business” »

The North Korean threat actor group known as ‘BlueNoroff’ has been spotted targeting cryptocurrency startups with malicious documents and fake MetaMask browser extensions.

The motive of this group is purely financial, but its sophistication in carrying out objectives has previously led researchers to conclude that this is a sub-group of the North Korean Lazarus gang.

Although BlueNoroff has been active for several years, its structure and operation have been shrouded by mystery.

Olipa Elisa said her 10-year-old son used to have to hike 5km (3 miles) every day to the nearest school, often arriving late and exhausted.

“I am very excited that we now have a school closer to my home, and my child will not have to take the long journey,” said Elisa, 38. “What we need is more of these learning blocks to accommodate other classes.”

Run by 14Trees, a joint venture between Swiss cement manufacturer LafargeHolcim and British development finance agency CDC Group, the project was faster, cheaper and less energy-intensive than conventional construction, said 14Trees managing director Francois Perrot.

Quantum computers will not be general-purpose machines, though. They will be able to solve some calculations that are completely intractable for current computers and dramatically speed up processing for others. But many of the things they excel at are niche problems, and they will not replace conventional computers for the vast majority of tasks.

That means the ability to benefit from this revolution will be highly uneven, which prompted analysts at McKinsey to investigate who the early winners could be in a new report. They identified the pharmaceutical, chemical, automotive, and financial industries as those with the most promising near-term use cases.

The authors take care to point out that making predictions about quantum computing is hard because many fundamental questions remain unanswered; for instance, the relative importance of the quantity and quality of qubits or whether there can be practical uses for early devices before they achieve fault tolerance.