MEMPHIS, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 2023--

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Solar and wind energy installations could earn hundreds of millions of dollars by mining bitcoin during periods of excess electricity generation, according to a new study. Scientists from Cornell University in the US, who conducted the research, said setting up mining operations could reduce the environmental impact of cryptocurrency, while also providing revenue that could be reinvested in future renewable energy projects. “Profitability of a mining system hinges on periods of steady energy availability since renewable energy sources can vary significantly,” said Fengqi You, a professor of energy systems at Cornell University. “Therefore, it is important to site the mining farm strategically to maximise productivity.” The state with the most potential for setting up profitable crypto mining operations is Texas, according to the study, with 32 planned renewable projects capable of generating combined profits of $47 million. California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia all showed potential, though setting up mining rigs presents a large initial cost. One way of incentivising such projects, Cornell doctoral student Apoorv Lal suggested, could be the introduction of new policies that provide economic rewards for mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with clean energy ”These rewards can act as an incentive for miners to adopt clean energy sources, which can lead to combined positive effects on climate change mitigation, improved renewable power capacity, and additional profits during pre-commercial operation of wind and solar farms,” Mr Lal said. “We also recommend policies that encourage cryptocurrency-mining operations to return some of their profits back into infrastructure development. This would help create a self-sustaining cycle for renewable energy expansion.” Bitcoin has drawn criticism from environmentalists for the vast amounts of electricity required to support its network and mint new units of the cryptocurrency, with recent analysis from the University of Cambridge estimating that it uses roughly the same amount of electricity as Poland. The plummeting costs of renewable energy mean bitcoin miners are increasingly turning to solar, wind and hydro sources to power their operations. “In its current status, the infrastructure that supports the Bitcoin protocol cannot be sustained, but the beauty of the protocol is that the incentive structure will force miners to adopt the cheapest form of electricity, which in the near future will be renewable energy,” Don Wyper, COO of DigitalMint, told The Independent last year. The latest study, titled ‘From mining to mitigation: how bitcoin can support renewable energy development and climate action’, was published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Read More Bitcoin mining rate hits all-time high amid record-breaking prediction for 2024 Nasa has received a signal from 10 million miles away Scientists reveal surprise finding from huge study into internet and mental health Nasa has received a signal from 10 million miles away Scientists reveal surprise finding from huge study into internet and mental health Software firm Cloudsmith announces £8.8m investment

Omegle, a popular website used to video chat with strangers, is shutting down after almost 15 years. The closure comes amid increasing criticism that the site endangered its users, with reports of child sexual abuse and other crime on the platform. Omegle allowed users to sign up and then be launched into a video chat with another stranger using the site. The two could chat for as long as they wished – until they ended that conversation and embarked on a new one. The app was launched in 2009, and became popular almost straight away. Its founder said that its popularity was a result of “meeting new people being a basic human need”. Quickly, however, it became known for explicit and other criminal content. Leif K-Brooks, the company’s founder, admitted that Omegle had been misused, “including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes”. The site attempted to introduce new features to stop that misuse, such as “monitored chats” that would allow moderators to try and stop criminals using the site. But they did not work, and the site continued to receive criticism for its lack of safety. Now Mr K-Brooks has said that the criticism has become too much, and Omegle will shut down. The intensity of the fight over use of the site had forced him to decide to shut it down, he said, and it will stop working straight away. “As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,” wrote Leif K-Brooks, who has run the website since founding it. Omegle saw a huge surge in popularity during the pandemic, as people not only flocked to the site but recorded their interactions and shared them on social media. But that popularity also brought more awareness of the problems on the site, and increased criticism of it. Mr K-Brooks acknowledged that criticism. But he also suggested that at least some of it was in bad faith, and that it was intended to force the site to shut down. “In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users,” he wrote. He said that the site had been shut down on the basis of “fear”. “If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?”, he wrote, comparing the end of Omegle to “shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil”. The decision to shut down Omegle comes amid increasing concern about regulation of the internet and how best to protect its users. It comes just days after the introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act, for instance, which aims to hold platforms to account for crimes on their platform, including online grooming.

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The US Department of Health and Human Services was ensnared by a sweeping hacking campaign that exploited a

Apple’s new headset is expensive, not “magical” and is fundamentally different from Meta’s vision for the future, Mark Zuckerberg has said. The Vision One headset was revealed during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week. The company showed off both the hardware and a new idea for “spatial computing”, which will be available next year. Apple’s headset costs $3,500, and comes with a range of features including detailed displays and cameras that allow people to see out into the real world while they are using it. It also puts Apple in competition with Meta, which has been producing its own Quest headsets for years. Its headsets are considerably cheaper – with the upcoming Meta Quest 3 costing $499 – though are lacking in some of the same features. Now Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the launch of that headset, saying that it represents a “vision of the future of computing” that is “not the one I want”. He also said that Meta had already explored all of the technology in Apple’s headset. It had opted to avoid using some of that technology in its own products in part because of the high cost that would be required to do so, he told staff in a meeting that was first reported by The Verge. Mr Zuckerberg suggested that was one of a range of philosophical differences between Meta’s approach to the headset and Apple’s. He also pointed to Meta’s aim to feature social features at the heart of its own headsets, as well as fitness features. “From what I’ve seen initially, I’d say the good news is that there’s no kind of magical solutions that they have to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of,” he said. “They went with a higher resolution display, and between that and all the technology they put in there to power it, it costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it. They made that design trade-off and it might make sense for the cases that they’re going for. “But look, I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests. “More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. It’s about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways. Our device is also about being active and doing things. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want. “There’s a real philosophical difference in terms of how we’re approaching this. And seeing what they put out there and how they’re going to compete just made me even more excited and in a lot of ways optimistic that what we’re doing matters and is going to succeed. But it’s going to be a fun journey.” While Meta and Apple work together in many ways, they have occasionally clashed. Apple’s introduction of privacy features has in recent years curtailed the tracking required for Facebook’s ad business, for instance, which has occasionally to friction between the two.

Apple Inc. signed a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar deal with Broadcom Inc. to develop 5G radio frequency components, extending

The Slice app needs a pizza expert to oversee their social media presence. You must love pizza.

LONDON/HONG KONG Vodafone and CK Hutchison will merge their British operations, the two groups said on Wednesday, creating