One of the most plentiful elements on Earth, silicon has been used as the basis for most contemporary technology, including solar cells and computer chips. The characteristics of silicon as a semiconductor, however, are not perfect.

One reason is that while silicon allows electrons to flow easily through its structure, it is far less tolerant of "holes," which are positively charged electrons' opposites, and harnessing both is crucial for particular types of devices. Silicon also does a poor job of transporting heat, which contributes to the frequent overheating problems and pricey cooling systems in computers.

Now, research conducted by a group of scientists at MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions has been published in Science and it shows that a substance known as cubic boron arsenide overcomes both of the negatives of silicon. It has great thermal conductivity and gives both electrons and holes high mobility. According to the experts, it is the best semiconductor material that has ever been discovered and might be the best one.
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Until now, cubic boron arsenide has only been produced and examined in small, uneven lab batches. To examine specific small portions of the material, the researchers had to apply unique techniques that were initially created by former MIT postdoc Bai Song. If cubic boron arsenide can be produced in an efficient, practical form, much less take the place of silicon, more research will be required. However, the researchers think that soon, the material might find some applications where its special features would make a big impact.

In the decarbonization era, solar power is, by far, the leading technology both in scale and in cost. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer. One only needs to walk into the surf on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, to understand the enormous power in the ocean. One of the biggest differences in wave technology is the harsh and punishing environment in which this new energy generation will have to operate.

Even though it’s a tough place to extract energy, several research start-ups have tried over the past decade to harness the immense lunar power of the oceans.

Wave Swell Energy's unusual UniWave 200 is an on-shore sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. In July, after a year of testing, the company reported excellent results. 

Sweden-based Eco Wave Power announced in February, that the first of 10 floats has been successfully installed on the sea wall at Jaffa Port in Israel, marking an important milestone for the company's second grid-connected wave energy harvesting project.

In late August, another startup has announced the results of a 10-year set of tests on wave energy generation. The company, Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL), is making some amazing claims as to the cost and scaling of their invention—Waveline Magnet. 

In the simplest terms, the Waveline Magnet is a long, modular chain of plastic floats designed to sit on top of the water, lined up pointing directly into the waves.

These chains of floats move in a serpentine motion when waves pass through, following the movement of the water. The floats are connected by lever arms to inflexible, non-buoyant spine parts rather than directly to one another. The spine is relatively stationary while the floats move with the waves, and the lever arms move the electrical generators inside the spine units both upward and downward.

As a wave first hits the Waveline Magnet, the system gets a read on the size and speed of the wave, allowing it to fine-tune the power extraction at each generator as the wave moves down the line. SWEL says this machine can work in "all wave heights," and that "harsh wave conditions do not negatively affect the device's performance, but in contrast, enhance it, without survivability complications."

Over the past ten years, SWEL has built prototypes both in wave tanks (University of Plymouth and University of Cyprus) and also open ocean deployments. Now comes the company’s claim of energy generation volume and cost. Much of this information will have to be proven over the next year or two, but if they are right, we could be in for some revolutionary developments in the carbonless generation of energy.

The CEO of SWEL, Adam Zakheos, is quoted in a press release as saying "... we can show how a commercial-sized device using our technology will achieve a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) less than 1c€(US$0.01)/kWh, crushing today's wave energy industry reference value of 85c€(US$0.84)/kWh." SWEL claims that "one single Waveline Magnet will be rated at over 100 MW in energetic environments." The company has produced a video to show how the Waveline Magnet works.

LCoE, of course, is a financial statistic that takes into account all initial capital and continuous operating costs throughout the project's duration. It would be utterly revolutionary if these devices had an LCoE of one penny per kWh (US$10/MWh). They would create power for less than half the price of solar and wind. If that LCoE is accurate, according to Lazard's statistics, it'd even outperform gas, coal, nuclear, geothermal, or pretty much any other known energy generation source.

If SWEL lives up to its promises, the world is in for nothing less than a clean energy revolution. However, there are plenty of bad-faith operators, wishful thinking, and unrealistic expectations in the market as investors line up to take part in green energy moonshots. And if the many tests conducted by SWEL had produced the kinds of results that could have predicted some of the cheapest and cleanest energy in the world, then, yeah, we'd expect to see some Gates-level investment coming in, and many more people working on projects of increasing scale.
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So, for now, we'll remain skeptical, hoping that this is the one that surprises us, and inviting SWEL to make us eat our words as soon, and as hard as possible. We’d love this to be one of the good news stories of the 21st century.

On September 1, the USB Promoter Group announced USB4 V2.0, a specification that will double the current max speed of USB-C from 40Gbps to 80Gbps. This spec will work with existing USB-C passive cables and new 80Gbps USB-C “active cables”.

USB4 will be backwards compatible with USB4 Version 1.0, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3. It will also align with the latest versions of DisplayPort and PCIe.

Most home users might be perplexed as to why they've never heard of USB 4, the standard that USB 4.0 version 2.0 seeks to replace. The widely used USB 3.2 standard was intended to be doubled in performance by the August 2019 announcement of USB 4. The minimum throughput requirement for USB 4 devices is 20 Gbit/s, which is the same as the maximum throughput that USB 3.2 offers, even though the standard does permit up to 40 Gbit/s.

Although there are USB 4 cables and goods like docking stations and external hard drives available, most items still use USB 3.2 or even older standards.
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It will be up to phone, laptop, PC and USB cable manufacturers to implement the technology. It's another win for USB-C, which Europe has decided to standardize on for all phones and gadgets.

How many people do you know who use the same password for everything and it isn’t even something hard to guess, like a birthday, anniversary, address or just “password” or “123456”? There are a lot and even with today’s excellent password managers, users have to be proactive to be sure they have rock solid passwords, change them regularly and protect them by not using them more than once.

Standards. A group of technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, have banded together to form the FIDO Alliance. This is an open industry association with a focused mission: authentication standards to help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. FIDO promotes the development of, use of, and compliance with standards for authentication and device attestation. 

Apple is the first of the major players in FIDO to bring out their standards compliant solution to removing passwords from online security. The new technology is called Passkeys and will debut this fall on all of Apple’s operating systems: macOS Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and Apple TV.

How do Passkeys Work? Passkeys are unique digital keys that are easy to use, more secure, never stored on a web server, and stay on your device. Hackers can’t steal Passkeys in a data breach or trick users into sharing them. Passkeys use Touch ID or Face ID for biometric verification, and iCloud Keychain to sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV with end-to-end encryption.

When you create an online account on a website, you will use a Passkey instead of a password. “To create a Passkey, just use Touch ID or Face ID to authenticate, and you’re done,” said Darin Adler, Apple’s P of internet technologies.

When you go to log in to that website again, Passkeys allow you to prove who you are by using your biometrics rather than typing in a pass phrase (or having your password manager enter it for you). When signing in to a website on a Mac, a prompt will appear on your iPhone or iPad to verify your identity. Apple says its Passkeys will sync across your devices using iCloud’s Keychain, and the Passkeys are stored on your devices rather than on servers. (Using iCloud Keychain should also solve the problem of losing or breaking your linked devices.) Under the hood, Apple’s Passkeys are based on the Web Authentication API (Within) and are end-to-end encrypted so nobody can read them, including Apple. The system for creating Passkeys uses public-private key authentication to prove you are who you say you are.

A password-less system would be a significant step forward for most people’s online security. As well as eliminating guessable passwords, removing passwords reduces the likelihood of successful phishing attacks. And passwords can’t be stolen in data breaches if they don't exist in the first place. (Some apps and websites already allow people to log in using their fingerprints or using face recognition, but these usually require you to first create an account with a password.)
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When all the tech companies have rolled out their version of passkeys, it should be possible for the system to work across different devices—in theory, you could use your iPhone to log in to a Windows laptop, or an Android tablet to log in to a website in Microsoft’s Edge Browser. “All of FIDO’s specs have been developed collaboratively, with inputs from hundreds of companies,” says Andrew Shikiar, the executive director of the FIDO Alliance. Shikiar confirms Apple is the first company to roll out passkey-style technology and says this shows “how tangible this approach will soon be for consumers worldwide.”

We’ve covered the four-day workweek in several issues: In the pre-pandemic issue 6-10, we made the case that a four-day workweek could be the norm by 2050. In issue 9-05, the cover article also said the four-day workweek may be coming and potentially much sooner than 2050 because of the pandemic. Neither of these articles, however, looked at the positive impact a four-day workweek could have on the planet and our ecosystem.

When the pandemic hit, the world as we knew it changed dramatically with everyone at home, transportation infrastructure stopped and heavy industrial production drastically curtailed. Emissions from driving, flying and industrial output were dramatically reduced. Air quality in cities around the world showed marked improvement, while global emissions plummeted.

In May 2021, environmental and social justice collective Platform London released a report detailing the ecological impact of a shorter work week. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it was apparent that fewer people commuting translated quickly to reduced pollution, clearer skies, and less congestion on the roads. The impact was global, with Americans reporting less smog in Los Angeles and Europeans famously spotting dolphins in the canals of Venice. While some of this may be exaggerated, the benefits of fewer rush hour commuters are not. Fewer people heading to the office also means a reduction in electricity consumption from fewer lights, air conditioners and elevators running.

Many estimates put the reduction in carbon footprint at around 30% simply by offering one full day off per week. A more modest 10% reduction in hours (roughly three to four hours a week for most full-time workers) still translates to a 14.6% decrease in carbon emissions.

“The one thing we do know from lots of years of data and various papers and so forth is that the countries with short hours of work tend to be the ones with low emissions, and work time reductions tend to be associated with emission reduction,” said Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College who researches work, consumption and climate change.

It’s what you might call a “potential triple-dividend policy, so something that can benefit the economy, society and also the environment,” said Joe O’Connor, chief executive of the nonprofit group 4-Day Week Global. “There are not many policy interventions that are available to us that could potentially have the kind of transformative impact that reduced work time could have.”

Part of the problem is that we can’t forecast what workers will do with that additional day. Many believe, and international studies like those recently done in Iceland prove, that people will eventually gravitate into more eco-friendly activities like hiking, camping and other outdoor activities. But, if people choose to spend their extra time off traveling, particularly if they use planes or automobiles, we may not see any material eco-related benefits.
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“When we talk about the four-day workweek and the environment, we focus on the tangible, but actually, in a way, the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible,” O’Connor said. “It’s in the shift away from a focus on hard work to a focus on smart work. It’s the cultural change in how we work and the impact that could have on how we live, and I think that’s the piece that’s really revolutionary.”

Record heat all over the globe is now a potentially bigger threat to ongoing data center operations than cybercrime. In late July, Google Cloud’s data centers in London went offline for a day because of cooling failures. Oracle’s cloud-based data center, also in London, was hit and went offline, causing outages for US clients.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says there’s a 93% change that one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the hottest on record. “For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” says Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise, and our weather will become more extreme.”

A survey conducted by the Uptime Institute, a digital services standards agency, found that 45% of all US data centers have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their ability to provide uninterrupted service.

The problem with both US-based and European centers is that their cooling systems were designed for a cooler planet than we have today. Newer data centers are now being constructed with a forecasted weather scenario to better plan for much higher temperatures.

Most data centers don’t operate at full capacity, but recent Cushman & Wakefield research shows that eight data center markets worldwide out of 55 they investigated operate at 95% or higher capacity. These centers are only strained by high temperatures a few days a year and they have been able to adjust loads to compensate for the heat. 

As climate change alters our temperatures permanently, data centers will have to improve their cooling systems so that continuous service can be assured.

“There are a deceptively large number of legacy data center sites built by banks and financial services companies needing to be refreshed and refitted,” says Simon Harris, head of critical infrastructure at data center consultancy Business Critical Solutions. As part of that rethink, Harris advises companies to look at design criteria that can cope with climate change, rather than solely minimizing its effects. “It’ll be bigger chiller machines, machines with bigger condensers, and looking more at machines that use evaporative cooling to achieve the performance criteria needed to ensure that for those days things are still in a good place,” he says.

Companies are trying novel approaches to dealing with the climate issues. Microsoft ran a three-year trial of a data center set 117 feet below the sea offshore of Scotland to insulate it from temperature fluctuations. Other companies are building centers in even more northern climates, but that probably won’t be a viable solution for those organizations who use edge computing and need their centers close to where data is consumed, often in hotter, urban areas.
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We all have to do everything we can to reduce the impact of climate change, but now is the time for all data center management personnel to better plan for the increased temperatures we will experience for the foreseeable future.

It’s summertime and we’re out at the beach, by the pool or at the amusement park. We bring our smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and even laptops with us and, unfortunately, some of us will experience that terrifying moment when our piece of electronics ends up underwater. It could even be as simple as a drink overturning onto your keyboard for your laptop. 

You need to know what to do and NOT to do and react quickly to save your device.

Be Prepared. You should have at home an electronics first-aid kit. You can get all the items from Amazon and you’ll be ready. Get a tub of silica gel (DampRid). 

You should also have one or two rescue packs (Kensington 39723 EVAP Wet Electronics Rescue Pouch) that you can pack with your other stuff to take with you when you’re out and about. This will work well for a smartphone or an iPod.

There’s a chance (about 70%) that you’ll be able to dry the device completely and put it back to work. In most cases, it won’t be quick, and you’ll have to make a bit of a mess. But you could save yourself a trip to the electronics store for a replacement.

Steps:

1. Get it out of the water as soon as possible — An unprotected device has less than 30 seconds before water leaks into the hardware.

2. Turn it off completely — If the device is still on when you fish it out of the water, turn it completely off. Even if the device is still functioning, turning it completely off may prevent any circuits from shorting out. This is NOT simply putting the device to sleep or turning off the display. Shut the device completely down.

3. Remove the battery, if possible — As the power source, this is more likely to be damaged by water than the actual device, especially if the item was on when contact was made with the water. If the device is a smartphone, skip this step. Opening the device will void the warranty and you probably don’t have the right tools to open it, anyway.

4. Remove the memory and SIM cards if possible — Because in many cases your data is stored on these instead of the actual computer or phone, you’ll probably want to protect them as much as possible. Fortunately, they’re fairly durable, so you’ll be able to dry them initially with a cloth towel, then let them air dry for a day before reinserting.

5. Remove any cables or peripherals and set them aside to air-dry — This is especially true for smaller devices, as there’s not a lot you can do beyond this. Headphones, in particular, are tiny, but extremely water resistant, even capable of surviving multiple trips through a washing machine and dryer.

6. Remove any covers and external connectors — This will open up as many gaps, slots and crevices as possible for drying, and help ensure that no moisture is trapped inside the device.

7. Get rid of all the water — This is where things get difficult. You may need to wipe it with a cloth or gently shake the water out. The following are other ways to remove water and completely dry your device.

Can of compressed air – You’ll need to be careful here, as compressed air likes to blow VERY cold and can momentarily freeze the surface of items it’s sprayed on. Any way you approach this, the device needs to be as water-free as you can get it before going to the next step.

Hair Dryer –   If you don’t have compressed air, a hair dryer can help speed up the drying process, but ONLY with cool air settings. Do not bombard your device with hot air. This can be better than the compressed air, as a constant stream of swift blowing room-temperature air can be directed at your device without the worry of quick-freezing parts of it.

Alcohol – Using a cotton swab, wipe small amounts of alcohol on the affected areas and then blow on them again to evaporate the alcohol. Use this sparingly, but because alcohol evaporates faster than water, mixing the two may help remove water from stubborn places.

Cover the device with a drying agent – Here’s where the silica gel pellets come in handy. Some people use white rice, but that can cause many more problems than it solves. Get an airtight container and completely cover your device in the drying agent. Leave the device in the container for AT LEAST 48 full hours. Your device may require more time in the drying agent, depending on how long and how completely submerged it was. In some cases, the device may need to sit for multiple days or up to a week – WITHOUT trying to see if it will turn on again.

Waterproof Your Technology. There’s a high-tech and a low-tech way to do this.

The high-tech way is to buy a waterproof case or bag designed for your device. Check the submersion factor, a gauge of how many feet underwater the case will stay waterproof for at least 10 minutes. 

The low-tech way is to use zippered plastic storage bags. This will work for smaller devices like music players, e-readers, and tablets. If you’re listening to music, keep the device in the plastic bag and use wireless ear buds.
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Preparation is the best defense for summer water catastrophes. Set up your first-aid kit, get a couple of rescue pouches and BE CAREFUL when you get close to any water!

America should be a leader in computer science education, but most of the country’s secondary schools don’t offer any courses on this technology foundational subject.

To get something started on this important topic, 500 notable people in business, education and the non-profit sector have issued a call for action and funding by Congress.

Dear Members of Congress and fellow Americans,

As business leaders, elected officials, educators, and members of the public, we join forces to deliver a bipartisan message about opportunity and the American Dream. 

Technology is transforming society at an unprecedented rate. Whether it’s smartphones or social networks, self-driving cars or personalized medicine, nothing embodies the American Dream so much as the opportunity to change or even reinvent the world with technology. And participating in this world requires access to computer science in our schools. We ask you to provide funding for every student in every school to have an opportunity to learn computer science. 

Support for this idea is sweeping our nation. Ninety percent of parents want their children to have access to computer science education at school, and teachers agree. They know that technology opens doors. A hundred thousand teachers have taken matters into their own hands and already begun teaching computer science. Over 100 school districts are rolling out courses, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, from Miami to Las Vegas. Twenty states have passed policies and are now looking to support professional training for new computer science teachers. Private donors have collectively committed tens of millions of dollars to solving this problem, including $48 million of new commitments announced today by many of the undersigned.

Despite this groundswell, three-quarters of U.S. schools do not offer meaningful computer science courses. At a time when every industry in every state is impacted by advances in computer technology, our schools should give all students the opportunity to understand how this technology works, to learn how to be creators, coders, and makers—not just consumers. Instead, what is increasingly a basic skill is only available to the lucky few, leaving most students behind, particularly students of color and girls.

How is this acceptable? America leads the world in technology. We invented the personal computer, the Internet, e-commerce, social networking, and the smartphone. This is our chance to position the next generation to participate in the new American Dream.

Not only does computer science provide every student foundational knowledge, it also leads to the highest-paying, fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy.There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year. Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in today’s changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive. And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security. Despite this growing need, targeted federal funding to carry out these efforts in classrooms is virtually non-existent. This bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.

We urge you to amplify and accelerate the local efforts in classrooms, unlock opportunity in every state, and give an answer to all the parents and teachers who believe that every student, in every school, should have a chance to learn computer science.

            Sincerely,
            Business Leaders, Education Leaders, and Non-Profit Leaders

After the letter was published, all 50 governors signed a pact supporting the effort stating, “On July 14, 2022, the National Governors Association announced that 50 U.S. governors have signed on to the Governors’ Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education, committing to (1) increase the number of schools offering CS, (2) allocate funding for CS, (3) create post-secondary career pathways in CS, and (4) increase participation in CS from traditionally underserved populations.”
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Separately, some signers also expressed their support on Twitter. “Coding is one of the most valuable skills a person can learn,” Tim Cook wrote. “It can open new doors, jumpstart careers, and help big dreams seem like achievable goals.”

 “When I was 13, computer science changed the course of my life,” Bill Gates tweeted. “I was really lucky to have access to a computer that early on. I hope this initiative will give every student the same opportunity.”

Large data centers need power backup to operate without interruption. They rely on large banks of lithium-ion batteries to provide the instantaneous power when the normal power supplied by the local grid fails. Those lithium-ion batteries could soon be used to help local power grids manage energy demand.

Any city or region that gets its power from renewables is subject to the whim of the weather. Unlike fossil-based energy, renewable energy sources ebb and flow. The battery systems these grids use provide power when the renewable sources ebb and recharge when they flow.

Microsoft realized it could partner with local power grids where its data centers are located around the world and offer to store that renewable power in their battery backup systems. Today, sophisticated data centers operate with what are known as “uninterruptible power supply systems.” These systems include a bank of batteries which kick in the instant the power goes out and may operate for only a few minutes until the backup generators are up and running.

Microsoft’s newest data center in Dublin, Ireland, is due to come online in 2023 and it is planned as the first center to partner with a local power grid. The plan would be to have the data center’s large battery installation provide backup for when the grid sees more energy demand than it can supply. But, instead of only responding to outages, it might actually prevent them.

The company isn’t publicly sharing how much energy its Dublin battery installation will prove to the grid. But, from information provided by Microsoft’s Datacenter Advanced Development Group, we know that a typical center uses “tens of megawatts of power.”

To put the battery’s size into perspective, a single megawatt generated by a power plant can provide electricity for several hundred homes.

Microsoft has tested the concept on a small scale in Chicago, IL and Quincy, Washington in the past. But because almost 35% of all of Ireland’s electricity come from wind farms, this was one of the best places to set up a full commercial partnership.
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The company currently operates over 200 data centers worldwide and has plans to build between 50 and 100 new centers a year through the rest of this decade. Given Microsoft’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it needs more renewable energy for its data centers. The partnerships they plan with local power grids should be real win-win scenarios.

On June 30th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized SpaceX and a second commercial satellite company—Kepler Communications— to use their satellite internet system on vehicles in motion, including cars, trucks, boats, and aircraft.

Starlink is SpaceX’s network of satellites in low Earth orbit, designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere on the globe. There are currently about 2,700 Starlite satellites to support the global network. As of May, SpaceX told the FCC that Starlink had over 400,000 subscribers.

The FCC states that approving the new capability is in the public’s interest. “We agree with SpaceX and Kepler that the public interest would benefit by granting with conditions their applications,” the FCC wrote in its authorization. “Authorizing a new class of terminals for SpaceX’s satellite system will expand the range of broadband capabilities to meet the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move, whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight.”

For some time, SpaceX has been very vocal in its desire to expand Starlink service beyond residential consumer use. SpaceX has signed an early deal with Hawaiian Airlines and one with semiprivate charter provider JSX to provide Wi-Fi on planes.

SpaceX has already deployed a version of its satellite service called “Starlink for RVs.” It requires an additional “portability” fee. But portability is not the same as mobility, which the new FCC decision now allows. It will also apply to ships at sea and even long-haul semi-tractor trailers.

Customers who want the Starlink service must purchase a user terminal for $599 and then pay $110/month for usage.
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It’s clear that this decision opens new worlds of connectivity literally all over the world.