energy – Page 43 – Product Management Confabulation

December 13, 2018

Apple plans major US expansion including a new $1 billion campus in Austin

Apple has announced a major expansion that will see it open a new campus in North Austin and open new offices in Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles as it bids to increase its workforce in the U.S. The firm said it intends also to significantly expand its presence in Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado over the next three years.

The Austin campus alone will cost the company $1 billion, but Apple said that the 133-acre space will generate an initial 5,000 jobs across a broad range of roles with the potential to add 10,000 more. The company claims to have 6,200 employees in Austin — its largest enclave outside of Cupertino — and it said that the addition of these new roles will make it the largest private employer in the city.

Beyond a lot of new faces, the new campus will include more than 50 acres of open space and — as is standard with Apple’s operations these days — it will run entirely on renewable energy.

Apple already has 6,200 employees in Austin, but its new campus could add up to 15,000 more

The investment was lauded by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

“Their decision to expand operations in our state is a testament to the high-quality workforce and unmatched economic environment that Texas offers. I thank Apple for this tremendous investment in Texas, and I look forward to building upon our strong partnership to create an even brighter future for the Lone Star State,” he said in a statement shared by Apple.

But Austin isn’t the only focal point for Apple growth in the U.S.

Outside of the Austin development, the iPhone-maker plans to expand to over 1,000 staff Seattle, San Diego and LA over the next three years, while adding “hundreds” of staff in Pittsburgh, New York, Boulder, Boston and Portland, Oregon.

More broadly, Apple said it added 6,000 jobs to its U.S. workforce this year to take its total in the country to 90,000. It said it remains on track to create 20,000 new jobs in the U.S. by 2023.

June 29, 2018

TMGcore is running high-efficiency crypto mines in Texas

Out on the plains of East Texas, not far from Dallas, a company called TMGcore is mining crypto. The company, funded to the tune of $70 million, will be mining multiple cryptocurrencies and is using some unique technology to ensure that it doesn’t eat up an entire city’s worth of energy.

“TMGcore will be one of the first companies to utilize 3M’s Novec fluorochemical coolant at the heart of an enterprise scale cryptocurrency mining apparatus,” said CEO JD Enright. “The company’s intelligent mining system uses a Two Phase Liquid Cooling Immersion technology to dramatically decrease cooling costs by up to 90% and lets the company conduct mining operations from anywhere, including the middle of hot and muggy Texas. TMGcore also employs dynamically intelligent mining software that automatically mines the most profitable coin based on realtime market value and difficulty of access for the most profitable deployment of resources in realtime. Our technology is first-to-market and delivers a transformative approach to crypto mining that stands to fundamentally disrupt the market.”

The goal is to create mining infrastructure in the US and to prevent overseas control of the various currencies.

“Giving America a seat at the table is our #1 goal here at TMgcore. Our cooling technology and efficient mining rigs open up more regions of this country to house this type of operation,” said Enright.

The mine is housed in Plano, Texas inside a 150,000 square foot facility and is capable of a “100 megawatt live power load.” Further, the company is running custom ASIC chips increase board density and reduce mining costs significantly. In short, it will be one of the highest tech mining facilities in the world.

From the release:

The company has developed a unique use case with a fluorochemical coolant that delivers smart, safe and sustainable cooling for industrial technology operations. TMGcore will be one of the first companies to utilize this compound at the heart of an enterprise scale cryptocurrency mining apparatus. The company’s intelligent mining technology uses a Two-Phase Liquid Cooling Immersion technology to dramatically decrease cooling costs by up to 90%. The system also dynamically adapts its mining efforts toward the most profitable token at any given time, factoring in real-time market price, the difficulty of access and hash rate. TMGcore has also developed custom-made ASIC mining boards that result in a 20% increase in token output.

“Leveraging the magic of this coolant and groundbreaking mining circuitry, we saw a massive opportunity to capitalize on the nascent and highly lucrative mining industry in a physical, tangible and industrial fashion,” said Enright. “TMGcore seeks to deconstruct the mining monopoly in other countries with an American-made, U.S. driven approach that not only pushes the blockchain ecosystem forward but also creates job opportunities for Texas’ fast-growing technology community. We understand the importance of the research and development that creates not only innovations but the efficiencies that support the blockchain industry on a global scale.”

“Texas, more so than many other states in this country, has an abundant supply of energy available on their grid with available real estate to house such a project,” said Enright. “Cryptocurrency mining has not really been able to take advantage of Texas’ energy supply to date because the state is too hot. By utilizing Novec in this Two Phase Liquid Cooling Immersion technology, we have unlocked Texas’ potential to mine for the first time.”

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June 25, 2018

New technique brings secrets out of old daguerreotypes

Daguerreotypes – photos made with a process that used mercury vapors on an iodine-sensitized silvered plate – break down quite easily. The result is a fogged plate that that, more often that not, is completely ruined by time and mistreatment. However researchers at Western University have created a system that uses synchrotrons and “rapid-scanning micro-X-ray fluorescence imaging” to scan the plates for eight hours. The system shot an X-ray 10×10 microns thick at “an energy most sensitive to mercury absorption.” This, in turn, showed the researchers where the mercury

Kozachuk used r to analyze the plates, which are about 7.5 cm wide, and identified where mercury was distributed on the plates. With an X-ray beam as small as 10×10 microns (a human scalp hair averages 75 microns across) and at an energy most sensitive to mercury absorption, the scan of each daguerreotype took about eight hours. The team published their findings in Scientific Reports.

“It’s somewhat haunting because they are anonymous and yet it is striking at the same time,” said Madalena Kozachuk, a PhD student in Western’s Department of Chemistry. “The image is totally unexpected because you don’t see it on the plate at all. It’s hidden behind time. But then we see it and we can see such fine details: the eyes, the folds of the clothing, the detailed embroidered patterns of the table cloth.”

The technology promises to improve the methods of conservation for old photographs and should bring many previously unusable daguerreotypes back to life.

June 18, 2018

Breaking down France’s new $76M Africa startup fund

Jake Bright Contributor

Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa.