Month: March 2024
Bill Gates Says Texas Shows America’s Clean-Energy Future
“If you want to see what the cutting edge of next-gen clean energy innovation looks like, it’d be hard to find a place better than Texas,” Bill Gates wrote recently on his blog,” saying “amazing companies” are breaking ground across the state. “Each one represents a huge boon for the local economy, America’s energy security, and the fight against climate change.”
The world is undergoing an energy transition right now, fueled by the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies. The pace of innovation at the heart of this transition is happening faster than many people (including me!) dared hope. The progress makes me optimistic about the future — and excited about the role that American communities will play, especially in places like Texas.
Breakthrough Energy and I have invested more than $130 million into Texas-based entrepreneurs, institutions, and projects. It’s a big bet, but it’s one I’m confident in. Why? Because of the people. Nearly half a million Texans work in the oil and gas industry, and their skills are directly transferrable to next-generation industries. This workforce will help form the backbone of the world’s new clean energy economy, and it will cement Texas’s energy leadership for generations to come.
Many of the companies I’m seeing on this trip already employ or plan to employ oil and gas workers. One of those companies is Infinium, which is working on next-generation clean fuels for trucks, ships, and even planes. I’m visiting their first demonstration plant in Corpus Christi, where they’re turning waste CO2 and renewable energy into electrofuels — or eFuels — for trucks. They’ve already signed a deal with Amazon, and sometime soon, if you live in the area, you might get a delivery supported by Infinium eDiesel. The key to Infinium’s approach is that their fuels can be dropped into existing engines… I’m especially excited about the work they’re doing on sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF — which could reduce emissions from air travel by as much as 90 percent, according to company estimates. Infinium is in the process of converting an old gas-to-liquid plant in West Texas into a new facility that will increase the company’s capacity for producing eFuels ten-fold. Breakthrough Energy’s Catalyst program has invested in this first-of-its-kind plant, and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.
Another company I’ll see is Mars Materials. They’re a Breakthrough Energy Fellows project working on a different way to reuse CO2. The company is developing a clever technique for turning captured carbon into one of the key components in carbon fiber, an ultra-light, ultra-strong material that is used in everything from clothing to car frames… The Mars Materials team relocated from California to Texas in part because of the skilled oil and gas talent that they could access in the state, and they aren’t the first Breakthrough Energy company to do that. I’m going to check out their lab, where their scientists are hard at work optimizing the conversion process.
Both companies assume abundant CO2, Gates writes, but “fortunately for them, Texas is also in the process of becoming a capital for direct air capture… A recent study found that Texas has the greatest DAC deployment potential in the country and could create as many as 400,000 jobs by 2050.” Already a direct air capture “hub” in Kingsville, Texas is expected to create 2,500 jobs over the next five years, while Houston has been selected as the site for one of America’s seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs.
“If you want to catch a glimpse of our country’s clean energy future,” Gates writes, “you should head on down to the Lone Star State.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
“If you want to see what the cutting edge of next-gen clean energy innovation looks like, it’d be hard to find a place better than Texas,” Bill Gates wrote recently on his blog,” saying “amazing companies” are breaking ground across the state. “Each one represents a huge boon for the local economy, America’s energy security, and the fight against climate change.”
The world is undergoing an energy transition right now, fueled by the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies. The pace of innovation at the heart of this transition is happening faster than many people (including me!) dared hope. The progress makes me optimistic about the future — and excited about the role that American communities will play, especially in places like Texas.
Breakthrough Energy and I have invested more than $130 million into Texas-based entrepreneurs, institutions, and projects. It’s a big bet, but it’s one I’m confident in. Why? Because of the people. Nearly half a million Texans work in the oil and gas industry, and their skills are directly transferrable to next-generation industries. This workforce will help form the backbone of the world’s new clean energy economy, and it will cement Texas’s energy leadership for generations to come.
Many of the companies I’m seeing on this trip already employ or plan to employ oil and gas workers. One of those companies is Infinium, which is working on next-generation clean fuels for trucks, ships, and even planes. I’m visiting their first demonstration plant in Corpus Christi, where they’re turning waste CO2 and renewable energy into electrofuels — or eFuels — for trucks. They’ve already signed a deal with Amazon, and sometime soon, if you live in the area, you might get a delivery supported by Infinium eDiesel. The key to Infinium’s approach is that their fuels can be dropped into existing engines… I’m especially excited about the work they’re doing on sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF — which could reduce emissions from air travel by as much as 90 percent, according to company estimates. Infinium is in the process of converting an old gas-to-liquid plant in West Texas into a new facility that will increase the company’s capacity for producing eFuels ten-fold. Breakthrough Energy’s Catalyst program has invested in this first-of-its-kind plant, and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.
Another company I’ll see is Mars Materials. They’re a Breakthrough Energy Fellows project working on a different way to reuse CO2. The company is developing a clever technique for turning captured carbon into one of the key components in carbon fiber, an ultra-light, ultra-strong material that is used in everything from clothing to car frames… The Mars Materials team relocated from California to Texas in part because of the skilled oil and gas talent that they could access in the state, and they aren’t the first Breakthrough Energy company to do that. I’m going to check out their lab, where their scientists are hard at work optimizing the conversion process.
Both companies assume abundant CO2, Gates writes, but “fortunately for them, Texas is also in the process of becoming a capital for direct air capture… A recent study found that Texas has the greatest DAC deployment potential in the country and could create as many as 400,000 jobs by 2050.” Already a direct air capture “hub” in Kingsville, Texas is expected to create 2,500 jobs over the next five years, while Houston has been selected as the site for one of America’s seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs.
“If you want to catch a glimpse of our country’s clean energy future,” Gates writes, “you should head on down to the Lone Star State.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI’s new voice synthesizer can copy your voice from just 15 seconds of audio
OpenAI’s latest generative AI tech is impressive – but also raises questions about security and misinformation.
OpenAI has been rapidly developing its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot and Sora AI video creator over the last year, and it’s now got a new artificial intelligence tool to show off: Voice Generation, which can create synthetic voices from just 15 seconds of audio.
In a blog post (via The Verge), OpenAI says it’s been running “a small-scale preview” of Voice Engine, which has been in development since late 2022. It’s actually already being used in the Read Aloud feature in the ChatGPT app, which (as the name suggests) reads out answers to you.
Once you’ve trained the voice from a 15-second sample, you can then get it to read out any text you like, in an “emotive and realistic” way. OpenAI says it could be used for educational purposes, for translating podcasts into new languages, for reaching remote communities, and for supporting people who are non-verbal.
This isn’t something everyone can use right now, but you can go and listen to the samples created by Voice Engine. The clips OpenAI has published sound pretty impressive, though there is a slight robotic and stilted edge to them.
Safety first
Voice Engine is already used in ChatGPT’s Read Aloud feature (Image credit: OpenAI)
Worries about misuse are the main reason Voice Engine is only in a limited preview for now: OpenAI says it wants to do more research into how it can protect tools like this from being used to spread misinformation and copy voices without consent.
“We hope to start a dialogue on the responsible deployment of synthetic voices, and how society can adapt to these new capabilities,” says OpenAI. “Based on these conversations and the results of these small scale tests, we will make a more informed decision about whether and how to deploy this technology at scale.”
With major elections due in both the US and UK this year, and generative AI tools getting more advanced all the time, it’s a concern across every type of AI content – audio, text, and video – and it’s getting increasingly difficult to know what to trust.
As OpenAI itself points out, this has the potential to cause problems with voice authentication measures, and scams where you might not know who you’re talking to over the phone, or who’s left you a voicemail. These aren’t easy issues to solve – but we’re going to have to find ways to deal with them.
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AT&T resets millions of customers’ passcodes after account info was leaked on the dark web
AT&T says 7.6 million current customers were affected by a recent leak in which sensitive data was released on the dark web, along with 65.4 million former account holders. TechCrunch first reported on Saturday morning that the company has reset the passcodes of all affected active accounts, and AT&T confirmed the move in an update published on its support page. The data set, which AT&T says “appears to be from 2019 or earlier,” includes names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, according to TechCrunch.
TechCrunch reports that it alerted AT&T about the potential for the leaked data to be used to access customers accounts on Monday, after a security researcher discovered that the records included easily decipherable encrypted passcodes. AT&T said today that it’s “launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts.” The data appeared on the dark web about two weeks ago, according to AT&T.
It comes three years after a hacker known as ShinyHunters claimed in 2021 that they’d obtained the account data of 73 million AT&T customers. AT&T at the time told BleepingComputer that it had not suffered a breach and that samples of information shared by the hacker online did “not appear to have come from our systems.” The company now says that “it is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.” So far, it “does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set.”
AT&T says it will reach out to both current and former account holders who have been affected by the leak. The company also says it will offer credit monitoring to those customers “where applicable.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/att-resets-millions-of-customers-passcodes-after-account-info-was-leaked-on-the-dark-web-160842651.html?src=rss
AT&T says 7.6 million current customers were affected by a recent leak in which sensitive data was released on the dark web, along with 65.4 million former account holders. TechCrunch first reported on Saturday morning that the company has reset the passcodes of all affected active accounts, and AT&T confirmed the move in an update published on its support page. The data set, which AT&T says “appears to be from 2019 or earlier,” includes names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, according to TechCrunch.
TechCrunch reports that it alerted AT&T about the potential for the leaked data to be used to access customers accounts on Monday, after a security researcher discovered that the records included easily decipherable encrypted passcodes. AT&T said today that it’s “launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts.” The data appeared on the dark web about two weeks ago, according to AT&T.
It comes three years after a hacker known as ShinyHunters claimed in 2021 that they’d obtained the account data of 73 million AT&T customers. AT&T at the time told BleepingComputer that it had not suffered a breach and that samples of information shared by the hacker online did “not appear to have come from our systems.” The company now says that “it is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.” So far, it “does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set.”
AT&T says it will reach out to both current and former account holders who have been affected by the leak. The company also says it will offer credit monitoring to those customers “where applicable.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/att-resets-millions-of-customers-passcodes-after-account-info-was-leaked-on-the-dark-web-160842651.html?src=rss
US Techies Claim IT Firm Gave Their Jobs To Indians On H1-B Visas: Report – NDTV
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