Tag: Agrees

science

NASA agrees to purchase moon rocks for $1

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Blue Moon cargo lander
An artist’s conception shows the uncrewed cargo version of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA has selected four companies to collect material on the moon and store it up as the space agency’s property, for a total price of $25,001. And one deal stands out: a $1 purchase that may rely on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

Although this sounds like the sort of deal Amazon might have offered on Cyber Monday, neither Seattle-based Amazon nor Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin is directly involved in the purchase. Instead, NASA accepted a $1 offer from Colorado-based Lunar Outpost, based on the expectation that the venture can set aside a sample on the moon for the space agency.

“They propose collecting the lunar material for one dollar — that’s right, one-point-zero-zero dollars —  following the arrival of the Blue Moon lander to the south pole in

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technology articles

Google keeps growing in Seattle area, agrees to buy nearly 10 acres at a car dealership site in Kirkland

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A Google building in South Lake Union, Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / James Thorne)

Google’s footprint in Seattle just keeps on growing.

The Alphabet-owned tech giant signed an agreement to purchase land at a car dealership site in Kirkland, Wash., a spokesperson confirmed Thursday.

Business Insider and Bloomberg reported the news last week. King County records obtained by GeekWire show a sale of nearly 10 acres of land at 11845 NE 85th St., home of Lee Johnson car dealerships. There is no purchase price available yet.

Google did not provide more details. “The site is intended to support Google’s future growth in the area,” a spokesperson said.

It’s the latest expansion for Google this year, even amid the ongoing pandemic that has forced some companies to pull back on physical office space with a shift to remote work.

Death of the HQ? Pandemic hits commercial real estate, but long-term trends

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smartphone

Huawei reportedly agrees billion-dollar sale of Honor smartphone business

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Huawei has reportedly agreed to sale its Honor smartphone subsidiary to a Chinese consortium that includes handset distributor Digital China and firms backed by the local government in Shenzhen.

Speculation last month suggested Huawei was considering a sale of part of Honor in a deal worth up to £2.9 billion, however it is now suggested a deal worth £11.5 billion has been struck to dispense of the entire business.

Honor was launched by Huawei in 2013 and targets budget-conscious consumers with feature-packed, affordable devices. It competes with other Chinese vendors Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi in the Chinese mid-range market and has expanded to other countries in Asia and Europe.

Huawei Honor sale

Given Honor currently accounts for around a quarter of Huawei’s global shipments, a sale would end the firm’s ambition of being the world’s largest smartphone maker having been neck and neck with Samsung for the past few months.

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emerging technology

EU agrees on tighter rules for surveillance tech exports

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The European Union has agreed to tighten up rules for the sale and export of cybersurveillance technology

November 9, 2020, 9:07 PM

2 min read

LONDON — The European Union on Monday agreed to tighten up rules for the sale and export of cybersurveillance technology.

EU lawmakers and the European Council reached a provisional deal to update controls of so-called dual use goods such as facial recognition technology and spyware to prevent them from being used to violate human rights.

Under the new rules, European companies will have to apply for government licenses to export certain products and they’ll have to meet criteria that have been beefed up to include requirements to consider whether the sale poses a risk to human rights.

EU countries will also have to be more transparent by publicly disclosing details about

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latest technology

Germany agrees $2.3 billion aid for auto industry to navigate technology shift

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FILE PHOTO: Two employees, separated by plastic hygiene protection, work at the A3 and A4 production line of the German car manufacturer Audi, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ingolstadt, Germany, June 3, 2020. REUTERS/Andreas Gebert

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany has agreed a 2 billion euro ($2.33 billion) aid package to help its carmakers and auto industry suppliers switch to greener engines and automated driving, according to an Economy Ministry paper seen by Reuters on Monday.

Under the programme, which is due to come into force in 2021, the government plans to distribute grants to key industry players by 2024.

It will also use the funds to promote research and development in areas including the digitalisation of supply chains, 3D-printing and the shared use of production data, and give support to so-called clusters of companies to train employees.

The government plans to cover up to 60% of

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science

State commission agrees to reduce solar energy credits

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The Utah Public Service Commission agreed Friday to let Rocky Mountain Power reduce the amount of energy credits that people receive in exchange for solar power — a move that environmental advocates say will cripple the solar industry.

Electricity generated by panels that is not used by a customer is exported into the grid. Until Friday, customers with solar panels received export credit based on two different grandfathering systems. Friday’s ruling means those signing up for solar systems going forward will receive a discounted rate of 6 cents, or slightly less in winter, per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for that energy.

Most customers who have already invested in solar panels will continue to receive 9.2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Rocky Mountain Power — the state’s largest power company — applied to have that rate reduced to an average of 1.5 cents per kWh. They argued that nonsolar customers are forced to pay more

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technology articles

Twitter Won’t Let The New York Post Tweet Until It Agrees To Behave Itself

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The New York Post has been sent to time-out.

Twitter
TWTR
 has kept the Post’s official Twitter account locked since Thursday, the Post says, when the newspaper shared several tweets about its story on Hunter Biden that has been increasingly called into question.

On Thursday, Twitter blocked sharing of the Post story and said the piece violated several of its rules, including a prohibition on sharing personal information and hacked materials. Facebook also reduced distribution of the Post report, but the brunt of conservative displeasure over the social media sites’ limiting access to the Post story fell on Twitter. Following the outcry, Twitter said that, in future, it would no longer block tweets sharing hacked materials—it

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