A new experiment demonstrates that commercial solar farms in space could one day be possible, according to the researchers behind it. Scientists from the UK say that a satellite launched into space to test the opportunities to gather sunlight for power has shown more success than expected. The experiment showed that it was possible to make lightweight solar panels at low cost that would be able to work in space, researchers said. They sent one of those units into space and examined how it worked over a period of six years and 30,000 orbits. It was able to withstand the solar radiation and other damage of space, they said, and continue generating power. “We are very pleased that a mission designed to last one year is still working after six. These detailed data show the panels have resisted radiation and their thin-film structure has not deteriorated in the harsh thermal and vacuum conditions of space,” said Craig Underwood from the University of Surrey, “This ultra-low mass solar cell technology could lead to large, low-cost solar power stations deployed in space, bringing clean energy back to Earth – and now we have the first evidence that the technology works reliably in orbit.” The panels were made at the University of Swansea, and used a new kind of solar cell made out of cadmium telluride. That material allows for larger panels at lighter weights, which provide more power and are relatively cheap. Colleagues at the University of Surrey then built those panels into a satellite that could be delivered to space, as well as the technology to measure how they continued to perform once they were in orbit. Those measurements showed that the panels gradually became less efficient, but researchers say they nonetheless showed that the panels could eventually be commercially viable. Solar farms in space would overcome many of the problems with existing renewable infrastructure on Earth. The solar farms could allow for more space on the ground, but more notably would be able to avoid issues caused by weather and benefit from more intense sunlight than there is on the surface. Making units that are able to withstand the difficulties of space is just one of a number of challenges for solar farms in space. There would also need to be a way to get the energy back down to us, for instance – though this summer researchers were able to successfully beam power down to Earth using microwaves. A study describing the findings, ‘IAC-22-C3.3.8 Six years of spaceflight results from the AlSat-1N Thin-Film Solar Cell (TFSC) experiment’, is published in the journal Acta Astronautica. Read More Scientists receive powerful ‘radio burst’ that travelled billions of years Apple announces surprise event: ‘Scary fast’ ChatGPT and other chatbots ‘can be tricked into making code for cyber attacks’

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TAIPEI TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, will decide this week whether to invest in chip designer Arm

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The U.S. surgeon general is calling for tech companies and lawmakers to take “immediate action” to protect kids’ and adolescents’ mental health on social media

Microsoft debuted a cornucopia of goodies at the Surface event on Thursday, including the Surface

James Milner FIFA 23 challenges are now live as a special End of an Era objective set during Ultimate Team of the Season. Here's how to complete the objective.

The headquarters of Twitter was left with a sign saying “ER” after San Francisco Police interrupted the physical rebrand of the social media platform’s offices. The new name, “X”, was later projected onto the building as night fell. The operation to take down the old sign was put on hold on Monday afternoon after Mr Musk didn’t obtain the correct permits for the crane that had been placed on the street, blocking traffic, according to a witness. “Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down,” Wayne Sutton tweeted from the scene. A San Francisco Police Department spokesperson told The Daily Beast that they had responded to “a report of a possible unpermitted street closure. Through their investigation officers were able to determine that no crime was committed, and this incident was not a police matter”. The name change has led to the social media platform dropping in value by between $4bn and $20bn, according to Bloomberg. The move has also been mocked as uninspired. “The old Twitter logo was open, accessible, instantly recognisable around the world. This new one looks like the logo of a seedy suburban strip club. Devoid of colour, bland, generic... BORING! This is branding suicide!” CM Kosemen wrote. “Taking one of the most recognizable brand names in the world and changing it to X is unfathomably dumb. Sounds like a porn site and the logo looks like the emblem to a bad Call of Duty gamebattles team from 2008,” YouTuber Charlie White wrote. “Gonna be honest this new widget design looks like an app for a membership-only human trafficking gentlemen’s club headquartered in Budapest,” one user said. “Musk doesn’t have the money or the staff to meaningfully update or even fix Twitter, so he’s making the cheapest, smallest tweak he can – literally swapping out a GIF file - that grabs the biggest headlines. It’s nothing but a cheap, meaningless play to get his name in the press,” comedian Adam Conover added. Mr Musk wrote on Sunday about wanting “a good enough X logo,” prompting his supporters to offer their suggestions. Sawyer Merritt posted several, with Mr Musk choosing one of them, saying: “Going with minimalist art deco on the upper right. Probably changes later, certainly will be refined.” The new logo is very similar to a generic Unicode character, which is an international symbol that would be impossible to trademark, the founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, noted. Meta, the operator of X competitor Threads, and Microsoft both own versions of the X symbol, which could possibly lead to legal disputes. “Twitter Japan apparently legally cannot change their rebranding to ‘X Japan’ because the Jrock band X JAPAN owns the rights to the name. How funny would it be if Yoshiki is the one who saves us all from this awful rebranding move? LOL,” one user noted. “I’m not a [copyright] lawyer but I think he should have figured out if he owned the name before changing it,” Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast wrote. “Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app,” Mr Musk wrote on Monday. “This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing. The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.” Mr Musk claimed that users would soon have the “ability to conduct your entire financial world” on the app. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird,” he said. Mr Musk has reportedly been fond of the letter X for decades, co-founding an online bank called x.com in 1999, which later merged and grew into what is now PayPal. Read More Elon Musk’s ‘X’ already trademarked by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta for ‘social networking services’ TikTok launches text-only posts as social media innovation race heats up Twitter to X: Why Elon Musk rebranded the social networking platform Elon Musk’s ‘X’ is already trademarked by Mark Zuckerberg Twitter to X: Why Elon Musk rebranded the social networking platform Twitter rebrands to X as Elon Musk loses iconic bird logo

The UK’s antitrust agency has agreed with Microsoft Corp. and Activision Blizzard Inc. to pause its ongoing London

Concerning messages showing on people’s phones have led to fears that they are being listened to. The app appears to be attempting to access the microphone within people’s phones, when users are asleep, according to the privacy menus within Google’s Android operating system. But WhatsApp said that it believes the issue is a bug within Android, and has stated categorically that the app would not access user’s microphones without their permission. The problem was raised by Twitter engineer Foad Dabiri, who shared a tweet which included a screenshot of a page in Android that shows when a given app accesses the microphone. He noted that it showed a range of attempts to do so, even when he had been asleep. The post was further amplified by Mr Dabiri’s boss, Elon Musk, who shared the tweet and claimed that “WhatsApp cannot be trusted”. Mr Musk’s post followed a range of other criticisms of Mark Zuckerberg, largely for political reasons, and Twitter also competes with WhatsApp with its direct messaging platform. In another post, Mr Musk pointed to the fact that WhatsApp is “owned by Meta/Facebook”, and claimed that WhatsApp’s former owners had left the parent company “in disgust”. “What they learned about Facebook and changes to WhatsApp obviously disturbed them greatly,” he claimed. Other users also reported seeing the same problem, on Twitter and Reddit, even before Mr Dabiri brought it to widespread attention. The screen can be seen within Google’s “Privacy Dashboard”, which is found within the Settings app and collects information about how personal data is being used by apps on a phone. Some claimed that page even showed WhatsApp accessing their camera. Others said that the microphone appeared to be getting accessed every few minutes. The same privacy dashboard can be used to turn off the microphone for any apps that users may be concerned about. But that could lead to certain features not working, such as voice notes or calls on WhatsApp. WhatsApp said that it believed the screen was showing the microphone being accessed as a result of a “bug”. It said that it was showing the wrong information in Google’s privacy dashboard screen and that it had been in touch with Google to fix it. “Users have full control over their mic settings,” WhatsApp posted in response to Mr Dabiri’s tweet. “Once granted permission, WhatsApp only accesses the mic when a user is making a call or recording a voice note or video – and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them.” Meta-owned apps have long been plagued by fears that they are accessing the microphones of users. For years, users have accused Facebook and Instagram of listening to them to collect data and show them more relevant sponsored ads, which Meta has always firmly denied. Many experts have argued that the sometimes uncannily accurate sponsored posts are simply the result of the app’s advertising tools accurately profiling users, without needing to listen to them. Read More WhatsApp just fixed two of its most glaring quirks Google to unveil major new AI Quantum computer discovers bizarre particle that remembers its past Google to unveil major new AI Quantum computer discovers bizarre particle that remembers its past Why is Elon Musk purging Twitter accounts?

Apple will release a range of Macs alongside the unveiling of its headset at an event next week, rumours have suggested. The company is holding its Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, on 5 June in California. It will see Apple executives reveal a host of new products. Usually, the focus of the summer event is software, and Apple will reveal new versions of the software that powers all of its products. But the hottest rumour is the unveiling of Apple’s long-awaited augmented reality headset. That could be joined by new Macs that will also be unveiled during the keynote event, according to multiple reports. That mighttinclude a new MacBook with a larger 15-inch display. Apple might also refresh some of its existing computers – the Mac Studio and smaller MacBook Pro and Air – with the M2 chip that it has gradually been adding to its products. Apple has already fitted MacBooks with those new chips, as well as faster M2 Pro and M2 Max processors. But the Mac Studio has been stuck with versions of the M1 since it was released in May last year, leading to calls for it to be updated. The existing version of the Mac Studio as well as versions of the MacBook Air and Pro will be eligible to be traded in from 5 June, the same day as the keynote event, according to reputable Apple reporter Mark Gurman. “Read into that as you will,” he said in a tweet, presumably suggesting that those computers would be getting new updates during the same event. Apple has also been rumoured to be working on another generation of Mac chips, likely known as M3. But those are not expected yet, and the company is still to update many of its computers with the existing generation. Apple is also still yet to release a version of the Mac Pro that includes its own chips, with the old Intel-powered computer still on sale, and is behind schedule after indicating that all of its computers would have made that transition by now. There is no indication that long-rumoured computer will finally be arriving at WWDC.

Huawei has disappointed legions of fans — and US officials — eager to know more about its Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which has quickly become a symbol of the tech rivalry between the United States and China since it went on sale last month.