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Optical fibres and the paradox of innovation – Mushy Machines

Nanotechnology

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19 August 2024

Optical fibres and the paradox of innovation – Mushy Machines

Right here is without doubt one of the foundational papers for the trendy world – in impact, reporting the invention of optical fibres. With out optical fibres, there can be no web, no on-demand video – and no globalisation, within the type we all know it, with the extremely dispersed provide chains that low-cost and dependable info transmission between nations and continents that optical fibres make potential. This gained a Nobel Prize for Charles Kao, a HK Chinese language scientist then working in STL in Essex, a now defunct company laboratory.

Optical fibres are made from glass – so, finally, they arrive from sand – as Ed Conway’s glorious latest guide, “Materials World” explains. To make optical fibres a sensible proposition wanted plenty of supplies science to make glass pure sufficient to be clear over enormous distances. A lot of this was accomplished by Corning within the USA.

Who benefitted from optical fibres? The worth of optical fibres to the world economic system isn’t totally captured by their financial worth. Like all manufactured items, productiveness positive aspects have pushed their worth right down to virtually negligible ranges.

In the intervening time, the entire world is being wired with optical fibres, connecting folks, places of work, factories to superfast broadband. But, the the world commerce in optical fibres is value simply $11 bn, lower than 0.05% of whole world commerce. That is attribute of that almost all misunderstood phenomenon in economics, Baumol’s so-called “value illness”.

New innovations successively remodel the economic system, whereas innovation makes their worth fall to this point that, finally, in cash phrases they’re barely detectable in GDP figures. Nonetheless,society advantages from improvements, taken without any consideration by ubiquity & low value. (An earlier weblog publish of mine illustrates how Baumol’s “value illness” works by a toy mannequin)

To have continued financial development, we have to have repeated cycles of invention & innovation like this. 30 years in the past, company labs like STL had been the driving drive behind improvements like these. What occurred to them?

Commonplace Telecommunication Laboratories in Harlow was the company lab of STC, Commonplace Telephones and Cables, a subsidiary of ITT, with an extended historical past of innovation in electronics, telephony, radio coms & TV broadcasting within the UK. After a short interval of independence from 1982, STC was purchased by Nortel, Canadian descendent of the North American Bell System. Nortel wanted an enormous restructuring after late 90’s web bubble, & went bankrupt in 2009. The STL labs had been demolished & at the moment are a enterprise park

The demise of Commonplace Communication Laboratories only one instance of the gradual dying of UK company laboratories by the 90’s & 00’s, pushed by altering norms in company governance and rising short-termism. These had been properly described within the 2012 Kay evaluation of UK Fairness Markets and Lengthy-Time period Choice Making. This has led, in my view, to an enormous weakening of the UK’s innovation capability, whose financial results at the moment are changing into obvious.

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Green Technology

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19 August 2024

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Agriculture & Meals

Agrovision (2017) develops expertise that mixes genetics and knowledge evaluation to streamline farming operations and develop superfruits. Presently, Agrovision operates berry model Fruitist, which is made accessible by world retailers throughout Europe, the UK, U.S., Asia and the Center East. Its different model, Huge Skye, focuses on China.

Agrovision’s August 5^th spherical raised $100M in Development Fairness led by Aliment Capital with participation from different undisclosed buyers, bringing Agrovision’s post-money valuation to $1B.

The spherical will additional speed up product innovation by investing in AI and creating manufacturing capabilities that embrace automating packaging and lengthening product shelf-life. Moreover, the funding might be put in the direction of accelerating world distribution and model improvement.

Power & Energy

TS Conductor (2019) develops carbon-core encapsulated aluminum conductors to extend the ampacity of electrical transmission and distribution strains. Their conductors, that are appropriate for each new construct and reconductoring, can triple technology capability and reduce operational losses.

On July 31^st, TS Conductor raised $60M in Collection A funding from Wellington Administration, Breakthrough Power Ventures, Nationwide Grid Companions (NGP), Quanta, and NextEra Power.

Nearly all of the oversubscribed funding spherical might be used to open a second manufacturing facility within the U.S. and enhance manufacturing capabilities. Their present facility presently operates at near-full capability, with the corporate additionally planning to extend the ability’s output within the brief time period.

Supplies & Chemical compounds

InventWood (2016) is a cellulose-based nanomaterials developer. Their MettleWood product is 60% stronger than construction-grade metal however 80% lighter, providing a less expensive and extra sustainable substitute for structural beams, columns, and connections that can finally end in vital reductions of greenhouse fuel emissions.

Aether Gas’s $8M Seed on August 8^th noticed the participation from Grantham Basis, Builders Imaginative and prescient, Echelon Ventures, and four-time cleantech CEO John Rockwell.

The funding might be put in the direction of commissioning the corporate’s pilot manufacturing facility able to profitably producing as much as a million sq. toes of product yearly. The spherical accompanies the appointment of Tyler Huggins Ph.D., as its new CEO because it prepares for a 2025 launch.

Assets & Environmental Administration

Graphyte (2023) gives carbon dioxide removing expertise that mixes photosynthesis with sensible engineering. Their Carbon Casting expertise sequesters carbon-containing biomass waste underground, offering a much less energy-intensive different to different engineered carbon removing applied sciences.

On July 30^th, Graphyte raised $30M in Collection A funding led by each Prelude Ventures and Carbon Direct Capital Administration. Traders Breakthrough Power Ventures and Overture VC additionally participated within the spherical.

The funding might be used to speed up Graphyte’s modern carbon dioxide removing expertise as it can facilitate the launch of 4 carbon removing amenities between 2025 and 2026 to scale up its carbon removing operations. Its Loblolly challenge in Arkansas has already begun operations and is projected to achieve a capability of fifty,000 metric tons of CO₂ eliminated per yr.

Transportation & Logistics

Wallbox (2021) is an EV charger developer and producer. Presently, Wallbox presents a charging and vitality administration resolution for residential, semi-public, and public use to over 100 nations.

Wallbox raised $45M in Development Fairness funding on July 31^st, led by Generac Energy Programs. This funding strengthens Wallbox’s industrial partnership with Generac to combine Wallbox installers into Generac’s vitality administration programs.

The brand new capital injection might be put in the direction of furthering manufacturing functionality and industrial efficiency to help deliberate development within the North American market. Moreover, their reaffirmed relationship with Generac will allow deeper integration of Wallbox chargers into residential and C&I vitality ecosystems.

Waste & Recycling

Unspun (2015) provides customized denims and gives a software program API platform for digital customization and is a developer of additive and automatic attire manufacturing expertise. Their 3D weaving platform, Vega, weaves yarns straight into the finished items of a garment at pace.

On July 30^th, Unspun raised $32M in Collection B funding from DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital, E12, Decathlon, and SOSV. This spherical follows Unspun’s partnership with Walmart introduced earlier this yr.

By this funding, Unsupun will construct further Vega 3D weaving machines along with attire producers and style manufacturers, concurrently lowering prices and environmental influence of clothes manufacturing. Finally, Unspun goals to scale Vega as quickly as doable to localize attire manufacturing throughout North America and Europe.

Fixing “reference to var myVariable shouldn’t be concurrency-safe as a result of it includes shared mutable state” in Swift

iOS Development

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19 August 2024

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Fixing “reference to var myVariable shouldn’t be concurrency-safe as a result of it includes shared mutable state” in Swift

Revealed on: August 15, 2024

When you begin migrating to the Swift 6 language mode, you may most certainly activate strict concurrency first. As soon as you’ve got completed this there will likely be a number of warings and errors that you’re going to encounter and these errors may be complicated at instances.

I will begin by saying that having a strong understanding of actors, sendable, and information races is a big benefit whenever you wish to undertake the Swift 6 language mode. Just about all the warnings you may get in strict concurrency mode will let you know about potential points associated to working code concurrently. For an in-depth understanding of actors, sendability and information races I extremely advocate that you simply check out my Swift Concurrency course which is able to get you entry to a collection of movies, workout routines, and my Sensible Swift Concurrency e book with a single buy.

WIth that out of the best way, let’s check out the next warning that you simply may encounter in your venture:

reference to var myVariable shouldn’t be concurrency-safe as a result of it includes shared mutable state

There are a number of causes for this warning to pop up in Xcode. For instance, the code under would trigger Xcode to warn us:

// Var 'myVariable' shouldn't be concurrency-safe as a result of it's nonisolated international shared mutable state; that is an error within the Swift 6 language mode
var myVariable = UUID()

func randomCharacter() async -> Character {
    myVariable = UUID()
    return myVariable.uuidString.randomElement() ?? "1"
}

The next code makes myVariable a static var which leads to the identical warning being proven:

struct CharacterMaker {
    // Var 'myVariable' shouldn't be concurrency-safe as a result of it's nonisolated international shared mutable state; that is an error within the Swift 6 language mode
    static var myVariable = UUID()

    static func randomCharacter() async -> Character {
        myVariable = UUID()
        return myVariable.uuidString.randomElement() ?? "1"
    }
}

The Swift compiler considers any globally accessible var to be unsafe from a concurrency perspective. The rationale for that’s that nothing is stopping us from making a number of calls to randomCharacter concurrently which might lead to a knowledge race on myVariable. We might find yourself with a number of learn and write operations on the identical time.

To repair this, myVariable ought to both be moved into an actor or be remoted to a world actor.

For instance, you possibly can isolate myVariable to @MainActor like this:

// with a world variable
@MainActor
var myVariable = UUID()

// or as a static property
struct CharacterMaker {
    @MainActor
    static var myVariable = UUID()
    // ...
}

The draw back of that is, in fact, that we must be on the primary actor to work together with the variable. You possibly can work round this by defining your personal (empty) international actor which is able to be certain that our accesses are on the worldwide executor as an alternative of the primary actor:

@globalActor
actor GlobalIsolator {
  static let shared = GlobalIsolator()
}

@GlobalIsolator
var myVariable = UUID()

// or as a static property
struct CharacterMaker {
    @GlobalIsolator
    static var myVariable = UUID()
    // ...
}

This makes accessing myVariable a bit much less handy since you’ll want to put your self on the GlobalIsolator actor when interacting with myVariable:

@GlobalIsolator
static func randomCharacter() async -> Character {
    myVariable = UUID()
    return myVariable.uuidString.randomElement() ?? "1"
}

In some instances you may know that regardless that the compiler does not like your shared mutable state, you know that it is effective as a result of manner your code is structured.

If that is the case, and also you’re completely 100% certain that you simply will not have any points associated to your shared mutable state, you should utilize nonisolated(unsafe) in your variable to inform the compiler that the dearth of isolation is intentional and that you simply’re conscious of its information issues of safety:

// with a world variable
nonisolated(unsafe) var myVariable = UUID()

// or as a static property
struct CharacterMaker {
    nonisolated(unsafe) static var myVariable = UUID()
    // ...
}

It is best to solely use nonisolated(unsafe) as a last-resort resolution as a result of the compiler will now not have the ability that can assist you detect potential information races round myVariable.

The Lengthy Street to Restoration Following a Ransomware Assault

Hacking

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19 August 2024

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The Lengthy Street to Restoration Following a Ransomware Assault

On the subject of the period of a ransomware assault and the following restoration course of, the numbers are staggering and differ wildly. Partly as a result of there’s no single supply which compiles all the data in a constant method.

Continue

Apple honors Nationwide Park Service with Apple Pay donations

Apple

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19 August 2024

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Apple honors Nationwide Park Service with Apple Pay donations

Apple honors 108 years of the Nationwide Park Service with Apple Pay donations

Apple is commemorating the 108th anniversary of the US Nationwide Park Service by launching a marketing campaign to boost funds by way of Apple Pay donations.

From August 19 by way of August 25, Apple will donate $10 to the Nationwide Park Basis for each buy made utilizing Apple Pay on Apple.com, within the Apple Retailer app, or at Apple Shops throughout the US.

The initiative marks the eighth consecutive yr that Apple has collaborated with the Nationwide Park Basis. The corporate’s assist consists of financial contributions and a spread of digital sources aimed toward bringing customers nearer to the pure magnificence and historical past of nationwide parks.

As an example, Apple Music has curated a “Nature Awaits” playlist in Apple retail shops nationwide. Moreover, over 30 Apple Maps Guides, developed with the Nationwide Park Basis, supply customers curated experiences to discover these protected lands.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner emphasised the importance of this partnership. “Each time I go to a nationwide park, I am struck by their extraordinary magnificence and extremely wealthy historical past,” he mentioned. “We’re proud to associate with the Nationwide Park Basis to assist protect these pure treasures that encourage so many individuals.”

“Their vital work helps be sure that future generations will have the ability to expertise that very same sense of awe, marvel, and reverence for the planet we name house.”

Apple, past its monetary contributions, helps initiatives to foster environmental stewardship. The Nationwide Park Basis engages youth in immersive studying experiences nationwide, providing STEM profession pathways and addressing park entry limitations.

The EcoLogik Institute, supported by Apple, connects younger girls with nature by way of science. In collaboration with Cabrillo Nationwide Monument, it hosts camps for ladies and younger girls in pure useful resource sciences.

Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the Nationwide Park Basis, emphasised the influence of such applications. “By investing in younger girls’s curiosity in STEM, we empower them to turn into the subsequent technology of environmental stewards.”

New methods to get pleasure from and discover nationwide parks

Apple Maps will improve nationwide park exploration later in 2024 with detailed hike data, filtering choices, and turn-by-turn steerage. Topographic maps with contour strains and path particulars are additionally out there offline.

To have fun the Nationwide Park Service’s anniversary, Apple affords varied nature engagement alternatives. For instance, on August 25, Apple Watch customers can earn a limited-edition award by finishing a 20-minute exercise.

Apple helps nationwide parks by way of environmental initiatives. The corporate has already achieved carbon neutrality throughout its world company operations. It is on monitor to increase this to its complete provide chain and product life cycle by 2030.

Optical fibres and the paradox of innovation – Mushy Machines

Latest Offers – 13 August 2024

Agriculture & Meals

Power & Energy

Supplies & Chemical compounds

Assets & Environmental Administration

Transportation & Logistics

Waste & Recycling

Fixing “reference to var myVariable shouldn’t be concurrency-safe as a result of it includes shared mutable state” in Swift

The Lengthy Street to Restoration Following a Ransomware Assault

Apple honors Nationwide Park Service with Apple Pay donations

New methods to get pleasure from and discover nationwide parks

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