Uber on Monday said it launched pilot food delivery services with autonomous vehicles in two California cities, and said it was adding electric vehicle charging stations into its global driver app. From a report: The announcements are part of Uber's annual product event where the ride-hail and food delivery company showcases the latest updates to its app. Uber announced one food delivery service using autonomous cars, and a separate pilot using sidewalk robots. Both services are available to Uber Eats users in Santa Monica and West Hollywood in California, and consumers will have the ability to opt out of the programs. The autonomous car pilot is in collaboration with Motional, the self-driving joint venture of Hyundai and Aptiv, and was initially announced in December. read more It launched on Monday, Uber and Motional said. Uber said the sidewalk robots are provided by Serve Robotics, a spin-off of delivery company Postmates, which Uber acquired in 2020.

Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm shared this report from Hot Hardware: When Nvidia launched its Ampere Lite Hash Rate (LHR) graphics card with the feared Ethereum anti-mining limiter, the world knew it was only a matter of time before someone or a team cracked it. NiceHash, the company that designed the QuickMiner software and Excavator miner, has finally broken Nvidia's algorithm, restoring LHR graphics cards to their 100% Ethereum mining performance....

Graphics card pricing has been plummeting, and we're starting to see better availability at retailers, with some GPUs selling at or below Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. So QuickMiner's arrival shouldn't influence the current state of the graphics market unless big corporations want to buy out everything in sight for the last push before Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), often referred to as "The Merge," is complete. We see that as unlikely, considering current profitability even on a 3080 Ti sits at around $3.50 per day and would still need nearly a year to break even at current rates. Initially scheduled for June, The Merge won't finalize until "the few months after," as Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has expressed on Twitter.

It will be interesting to see if Nvidia responds to this with updated drivers or implements LHRv3 in the remaining GPUs. However, it's perhaps not worth the effort at this point, and all existing LHRv2 and earlier cards can just stay on current drivers for optimized mining performance.

Friday a heat wave hit Texas — prompting the non-profit that manages power for Texas's 26 million customers to...ask them to use less of it.

"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) made the appeal in a statement Friday, saying that soaring temperatures increased demand and caused six power generation facilities to trip offline," reports CNN. "That resulted in the loss of about 2,900 megawatts of electricity."

The statement asks Texans "to conserve power when they can by setting their thermostats to 78-degrees or above and avoiding the usage of large appliances (such as dishwashers, washers and dryers) during peak hours between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. through the weekend." CNN reports: The appeal comes as record temperatures across most of the southern U.S. this weekend are expected to worsen a deepening drought. From Phoenix to Amarillo, Texas, record temperatures are expected to reach triple digits, with a chance for some parts of Texas to break daily records over the next seven days.

ERCOT came under scrutiny last year after record cold temperatures in February caused the state's highest electricity demand and more than 200 people died during the power crisis, with the most common cause of death being hypothermia. In March 2021, ERCOT's president and CEO, Bill Magness, was fired following widespread power outages during a series of winter storms that left many residents in the dark for days. Now the heat is testing Texas' power grid....

Temperatures from the mid-90s to the low 100s are expected on Sunday, with much of central and western Texas reaching 100 to 105 degrees — approximately 10 to 15 degrees above average.

"We do not need to plunge headlong into a nuclear future," argues Serhii Plokhy, author of the book Atoms and Ashes: From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima.

He notes Belgium's adding a 10-year extension to the life of two of its nuclear reactors, France's program to build 14 new reactors, and Boris Johnson's pledge to create supply 25% of the UKs power needs with nuclear energy by 2050. On the surface, the switch to nuclear makes sense. It would not only enable European countries to meet their ambitious net zero targets, since it produces no CO2. It would also make them less vulnerable to Russian threats, and allow them to stop financing the Russian war machine....

What the Russian takeover of [Ukraine] nuclear facilities exposed is a hazard inherent in all nuclear power. In order for this method of producing electricity to be safe, everything else in society has to be functioning perfectly. Warfare, economic collapse, climate change itself — all of these increasingly real risks make nuclear sites potentially perilous places. Even without them, the dangers of atomic fission remain, and we must ask ourselves: are they really worth the cost...?

Technological developments, growing international cooperation and rising safety standards did indeed do a great deal to ensure that no major nuclear accident occurred for 25 years after Chernobyl. But the Fukushima explosions demonstrated that such improvements have not eradicated the dangers surrounding nuclear power plants.... Can anything be done to make reactors safer? A new generation of smaller modular reactors, designed from scratch to produce energy, not to facilitate warfare, has been proposed by Bill Gates, and embraced, among others, by Macron. The reactors promised by Gates's TerraPower company are still at the computer-simulation stage and years away from construction. But his claim that in such reactors "accidents would literally be prevented by the laws of physics" must be taken with a pinch of salt, as there are no laws of war protecting either old or new reactors from attack.

There is also serious concern that the rapid expansion in the number of plants, advocated as a way of dealing with climate change, will increase the probability of accidents. While new technology will help to avoid some of the old pitfalls, it will also bring new risks associated with untried reactors and systems. Responsibility for dealing with such risks is currently being passed on to future generations.

This is the second great risk from nuclear power: even if a reactor runs for its lifetime without incident, you still have a lot of dangerous material left at the end of it. Fuel from nuclear power plants will present a threat to human life and the environment for generations to come, with the half-life of some radioactive particles measured in tens of thousands of years.... Nuclear power plants generally have no alternative to storing their high-level radioactive waste on site....If what we bury today in the New Mexico desert — the waste created by our nuclear ambitions — is so repulsive to us, why do we pass it on to others to deal with?
The author's counter-proposal: expanding the use of renewable energy: New research should be encouraged, grid infrastructure should be built up, and storage capacity increased. Billions that would otherwise go to new nuclear infrastructure, with all the attendant costs of cleanup that continue for decades and beyond, should be pumped instead into clean energy.

In the meantime, we obviously have an existing nuclear industry, and the solution is not to run away in panic, but to take good care of the facilities that already dot our countryside. We must not abandon the industry to its current state of economic hardship, as that would only mean inviting the next accident sooner rather than later.

Samsung is currently considering raising the cost of its semiconductor products by up to 20%, as well as those it manufactures for other companies, which would ultimately lead to consumers paying more for new devices. PC Magazine reports: As Bloomberg reports, the price hike consideration is in response to just about everything in the world getting more expensive, including the cost of raw materials and the logistics surrounding production pipelines. The final price increase is expected to be linked to sophistication of the components being manufactured, but that still means vendors will end up paying between 15-20% more for chips. Samsung is a huge player in the semiconductor industry, producing processors for a wide-range of industries, as well as memory products, storage solutions, and foundry solutions which allow other semiconductor products to be manufactured. Adding up to a 20% price rise across all those sectors will inevitably push up prices for any products that use Samsung components.

Facebook-owner Meta Platforms is preparing cutbacks in its Reality Labs division, a unit at the center of the company's strategy to refocus on hardware products and the "metaverse," a spokesperson confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday. From a report: Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told Reality Labs staffers during a weekly Q&A session on Tuesday to expect the changes to be announced within a week, according to a summary of his comments viewed by Reuters. The Meta spokesperson confirmed that Bosworth told staffers the division could not afford to do some projects anymore and would have to postpone others, without specifying which projects would be affected. She said Meta was not planning layoffs as part of the changes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Researchers from the University of Cambridge have managed to run a computer for six months, using blue-green algae as a power source. A type of cyanobacteria called Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 -- commonly known as "blue-green algae," which produces oxygen through photosynthesis when exposed to sunlight, was sealed in a small container, about the size of an AA battery, made of aluminum and clear plastic.

Christopher Howe from the University of Cambridge and colleagues claim that similar photosynthetic power generators could be the source of power for a range of small devices in the future, without the need for the rare and unsustainable materials used in batteries. The battery made of blue-green algae has provided a continuous current across its anode and cathode that ran a microprocessor. The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes. It was used to calculate sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The microcontroller measured the device's current output and stored this data in the cloud for researchers to analyze.

Howe suggests that there are two potential theories for the power source. Either the bacteria itself produces electrons, which creates a current, or it creates conditions in which an aluminum anode in the container is corroded in a chemical reaction that produces electrons. The experiment ran without any significant degrading of the anode and because of that, the researchers believe that the bacteria is producing the bulk of the current. Howe says that the approach could be scaled up, but further research is needed to figure out how far. The research was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Scientists have discovered evidence that a key rare resource, called helium-3, is potentially ten times more common on Earth than previously known -- though the source of all this extra supply remains mysterious, reports a new study. The finding is important because helium-3 could serve as a foundation of limitless clean power for our civilization, but has been seen as inaccessible since it is largely found in outer space locations, especially the Moon. Helium-3 is an isotope of helium, which means it contains the same number of protons as this common element but a different number of neutrons. This isotope is considered a potentially powerful energy source for future fusion reactors, making it a star of science fiction as well as a sought-out resource in the real world. However, while small amounts of the substance are produced by geological processes and from the fallout of nuclear weapons testing, there is thought to be very little helium-3 available on Earth.

Now, scientists led by Benjamin Birner, a postdoctoral scholar in geosciences at the University of California San Diego, have captured evidence for a previously unknown abundance of helium-3 in the atmosphere, which "presents a major puzzle in the helium-3 budget" and "motivates a search for missing helium-3 sources on Earth, especially since helium-3 is considered an important, yet scarce, resource," according to a study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience. Known sources of helium-3 on Earth only account for 10 percent of the surplus, the researchers said. Birner and his colleagues serendipitously uncovered this inferred surplus of helium-3 (3He) while tackling another challenging problem: measuring the overall rise in atmospheric helium as a result of human consumption of fossil fuels. The team pioneered a first-of-its-kind technique for estimating these anthropogenic helium emissions by examining another isotope, helium-4 (4He), which in turn led to the perplexing conclusion that there is some unknown source of helium-3 on our planet. "We only measured the change in atmospheric 4He," Birner said in an email. "However, previous work by other researchers indicates that the helium isotopic ratio of the atmosphere (3He/4He) is roughly stable. Together these observations imply an increase in atmospheric 3He that matches the rise in 4He or we would see a change in the atmospheric isotope ratio."

Helium-3 could be the ideal fuel for nuclear fusion, a potential energy source that mimics the same process that powers stars. Though nuclear fusion may not materialize as a practical power source for decades, assuming it is feasible at all, its potential to provide clean and limitless energy to the global human population makes it a tantalizing area of study. To that end, scientists across fields are likely to be interested in locating this unexplained surplus of helium-3 on Earth that has been implied by the new research. "That increase of 3He is quite puzzling because we don't have a good explanation for the source of this 3He so far," Birner noted. "It's quite an important puzzle to solve also because 3He is an important and scarce resource for nuclear fusion reactors. Based on the reported uncertainties in previous studies of the atmospheric 3He/4He trend, the buildup of 3He looks significant, but our study clearly motivates a closer look at the atmospheric 3He/4He trend."

Reuters reports: California energy officials on Friday issued a sober forecast for the state's electrical grid, saying it lacks sufficient capacity to keep the lights on this summer and beyond if heatwaves, wildfires or other extreme events take their toll....

California has among the most aggressive climate change policies in the world, including a goal of producing all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045. In an online briefing with reporters, the officials forecast a potential shortfall of 1,700 megawatts this year, a number that could go as high as 5,000 MW if the grid is taxed by multiple challenges that reduce available power while sending demand soaring, state officials said during an online briefing with reporters. Supply gaps along those lines could leave between 1 million and 4 million people without power.

Outages will only happen under extreme conditions, officials cautioned, and will depend in part on the success of conservation measures.

"Extreme drought has drastically reduced reservoir levels and is causing a decline in electricity production from hydropower," reports the Washington Post.

"Yet while climate change has parched the West, these same forces have greatly increased precipitation in much of the Midwest, the South and the East. There, hydropower is gaining momentum, and supporters say that in many places it is poised for a big resurgence." And the Post sees this benefiting "a growing effort to retrofit so-called nonpowered dams, or any dams created for a need other than hydropower, for electricity production..." In 2016, a U.S. Department of Energy study forecast that hydropower in the United States could expand from its current capacity of 101 gigawatts to nearly 150 gigawatts by 2050. This growth would come not from new dam construction but from upgrading existing hydroelectric resources, adding pumped storage capacity, and retrofitting nonpowered dams for hydropower.... Nonpowered dams compose the vast majority of America's dam infrastructure. They can be found across the country, come in all sizes and were built to address a wide array of needs, including flood control, navigation, water supply and recreation.

Out of the estimated 90,000 dams in the United States, about 2,200 of them generate hydroelectric power. These hydropower resources, however, account for 7 percent of national energy production and contribute 37 percent of the nation's renewable energy supply....

Solar and wind produce energy intermittently, but hydropower can operate day or night, 24/7. Some hydropower facilities can shut down or ramp up energy production very quickly, providing energy grids with stopgap flexibility during peak demand or in the case of blackouts.... The addition of hydropower to nonpowered dams can be financially attractive to developers. Typically the dam's operation is not changed, so there is usually much less opposition from communities and environmental groups than there would be to a new dam project.
The article points out that last year's U.S. infrastructure funding included money to add hydropower to "nonpowered dams."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: During spring in the Pacific Northwest, meltwater from thawing snow rushes down rivers and the wind often blows hard. These forces spin the region's many power turbines and generate a bounty of electricity at a time of mild temperatures and relatively low energy demand. But much of this seasonal surplus electricity -- which could power air conditioners come summer -- is lost because batteries cannot store it long enough. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy national laboratory in Richland, Wash., are developing a battery that might solve this problem. In a recent paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science, they demonstrated how freezing and thawing a molten salt solution creates a rechargeable battery that can store energy cheaply and efficiently for weeks or months at a time.

Most conventional batteries store energy as chemical reactions waiting to happen. When the battery is connected to an external circuit, electrons travel from one side of the battery to the other through that circuit, generating electricity. To compensate for the change, charged particles called ions move through the fluid, paste or solid material that separates the two sides of the battery. But even when the battery is not in use, the ions gradually diffuse across this material, which is called the electrolyte. As that happens over weeks or months, the battery loses energy. Some rechargeable batteries can lose almost a third of their stored charge in a single month.

"In our battery, we really tried to stop this condition of self-discharge," says PNNL researcher Guosheng Li, who led the project. The electrolyte is made of a salt solution that is solid at ambient temperatures but becomes liquid when heated to 180 degrees Celsius -- about the temperature at which cookies are baked. When the electrolyte is solid, the ions are locked in place, preventing self-discharge. Only when the electrolyte liquifies can the ions flow through the battery, allowing it to charge or discharge. Creating a battery that can withstand repeated cycles of heating and cooling is no small feat. Temperature fluctuations cause the battery to expand and contract, and the researchers had to identify resilient materials that could tolerate these changes. [...] The result is a rechargeable battery made from relatively inexpensive materials that can store energy for extended periods. "Right now the experimental technology is aimed at utility-scale and industrial uses," notes the report. "The PNNL team plans to continue developing the technology, but ultimately it will be up to industry to develop a commercial product."

Chinese researchers show off a swarm of drones collectively navigating a dense forest they've never encountered. TechCrunch reports: Researchers at Zheijang University in Hangzhou have succeeded, however, with a 10-strong drone swarm smart enough to fly autonomously through a dense, unfamiliar forest, but small and light enough that each one can easily fit in the palm of your hand. It's a big step toward using swarms like this for things like aerial surveying and disaster response.

Based on an off-the-shelf ultra-compact drone design, the team built a trajectory planner for the group that relies entirely on data from the onboard sensors of the swarm, which they process locally and share with each other. The drones can balance or be directed to pursue various goals, such as maintaining a certain distance from obstacles or each other, or minimizing the total flight time between two points, and so on.

The drones can also, worryingly, be given a task like "follow this human." We've all seen enough movies to know this is how it starts ... but of course it could be useful in rescue or combat circumstances as well. A part of their navigation involves mapping the world around them, of course, and the paper includes some very cool-looking 3D representations of the environments the swarm was sent through. Zhou et alThe study is published in the most recent issue of the journal Science Robotics, which you can read here, along with several videos showing off the drones in action.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple has agreed to settle a long-lasting six-year class-action lawsuit that accused it of knowingly slowing down iPhone 4S devices following the iOS 9 update in 2015, agreeing to pay some iPhone 4S owners who had experienced poor performance $15 each for their claims. The class-action lawsuit was initially filed in December 2015 by plaintiffs representing a group of iPhone 4S customers from New York and New Jersey. The lawsuit accused Apple of falsely marketing the iOS 9 update as providing enchanted performance on devices it supports, including the iPhone 4S.

Under the settlement, Apple allocated $20 million to compensate iPhone 4S owners in New York and New Jersey who experienced poor performance after updating to iOS 9. Customers who believe they are entitled to the $15 must "submit a declaration under the penalty of perjury that, to the best of their knowledge, they downloaded iOS 9, or any version thereof, onto their iPhone 4S... their iPhone 4S experienced a significant decline in performance as a result, are entitled to a payment of $15 per applicable device." A website will be created where customers who believe they are entitled to the settlement will be able to submit a form, providing their name, email, iPhone 4S serial number (if possible), and mailing address. See the full motion here.

AMD announced the Ryzen 5000 C-series for Chromebooks today. "The top chip in the series has eight of AMD's Zen 3 cores, giving systems that use it more x86 CPU cores than any other Chromebook," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The 7nm Ryzen 5000 C-series ranges from the Ryzen 3 5125C with two Zen 3 cores and a base and boost clock speed of 3 GHz, up to the Ryzen 7 5825C with eight cores and a base clock speed of 2 GHz that can boost to 4.5 GHz. For comparison, Intel's Core i7-1185G7, found in some higher end Chromebooks, has four cores and a base clock speed of 3 GHz that can boost to 4.8 GHz.

On their own, the chips aren't that exciting. They seemingly offer similar performance to the already-released Ryzen 5000 U-series chips. The Ryzen 5000 C-series also uses years-old Vega integrated graphics rather than the upgraded RDNA 2 found in Ryzen 6000 mobile chips, which, upon release, AMD said are "up to 2.1 times faster." But for someone who's constantly pushing their Chromebook to do more than just open a Chrome tab or two, the chips bring potentially elevated performance than what's currently available.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Volvo will only sell electrified cars in the US beginning with the 2023 model year, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. "Electrified" means that in addition to EVs, Volvo will continue to offer gas-powered cars, but they'll all either have mild-hybrid or plug-in hybrid technology. Volvo will continue to offer plug-in hybrid powertrains, as well. In fact, these T8 Recharge models recently received a power boost, in addition to increased electric-only driving range. The 2023 model year Volvos should arrive at dealers this summer. Meanwhile, Volkswagen says it has "sold out" of battery-powered models in the U.S. and Europe for this year as persistent supply chain bottlenecks hit global production.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A funny thing happened in 2020: AMD won the gaming laptop for the first time ever. Until the Asus Zephyrus G14, we'd never seen a laptop with an AMD CPU and AMD GPU run circles around the competition. Since then, we've repeatedly seen that "AMD laptop" no longer means cheap. But now, AMD is setting its sights higher than mid-range gaming machines -- it just revealed it's building a new CPU aimed at the "pinnacle of gaming performance" with the "highest core, thread and cache ever." The new CPU line is codenamed "Dragon Range," and they'll live exclusively at 55W TDP and up -- enough power that they'll "largely exist in the space where gaming laptops are plugged in the majority of the time," says AMD director of technical marketing Robert Hallock.

According to the Irish Times, citing new figures from the Central Statistics Office, data centers used up a greater share of electricity consumption than rural homes in the State last year. From the report: The overall share of metered electricity consumed by data centers has almost tripled in just six years, from 5 percent in 2015 to 14 percent last year. By comparison, urban homes accounted for 21 per cent of metered electricity consumed in 2021 compared with 12 percent consumed by rural dwellings. The figure for electricity consumption by data centers last year represents an increase of 32 percent in that year.

Data centers consumed 265 per cent more electricity in the three-month period between October and December 2021 compared with the three months between January and March 2015. Total metered electricity consumption increased by 16 per cent over the six years with data centers accounting for the 70 per cent of the increased consumption over that period. The surge in electricity use by data centers has come under scrutiny due to concerns about the State's energy supply and the targeted reduction in carbon emissions to tackle climate change. "There should be more discussion and more serious consideration of a moratorium [to block the opening of more data centers in order to reduce emissions]," said Dr Patrick Bresnihan, a geography lecturer at Maynooth University.

Allowing electricity consumption by data centers to continue to increase would make it harder for the Government to push policies where it is asking individuals to reduce consumption at a time "when consumption by data centers is so high and clearly just growing," said Dr Bresnihan.

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy "the greatest peace plan this world will ever know." Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world's processing and refining of those critical minerals.

Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to "reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain," according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States "can become a dominant force in energy storage technology" and has a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment." Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.

This week saw the 36th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster -- which had occurred just days before the Soviet Union's annual May Day celebration in 1986 -- and featured lots of patriotic outdoor parades.

At the time Lev Golinkin was a 6-year-old living less than 300 miles away in the Ukrainian town now called Kharkiv. Writing for CNN, Golinkin remembers that Moscow "had remained silent, refusing to admit anything had occurred until the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl was detected in Scandinavia on April 28, making it impossible to hide the catastrophe any longer." Even then, Golinkin remembers that they "grossly downpayed the issue...." On April 29, three days after the Chernobyl disaster, Moscow issued a terse television announcement informing citizens that a reactor was damaged and aid was being provided to those who required it. The announcement was less than 20 seconds

The days and weeks that followed were filled with a torrent of rumors and innuendo swirling around living rooms across the USSR while Moscow continued to pile over the explosion with secrecy and obfuscation. The Politburo began to loosen up restrictions on freedom of speech, but the confusion remained. No one knew the truth, but everyone knew the Kremlin was lying -- and that was about the only certainty around...

[T]here was no rationalizing away the radiation. Moscow's refusal to cancel May Day festivities exposed the hollow horror of the Soviet Union -- even the most faithful believers in communism realized they lived in a country that thrust millions of people into danger just so it could hold a parade. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev himself admitted Chernobyl -- which eroded faith in the Soviet system, poisoned vast tracts of land and cost billions to clean up -- contributed to the collapse of the USSR more than any other factor. Decades of Moscow's secrecy around the disaster makes it impossible to arrive at an accurate estimate of casuaties, and to this day, experts continue to guess and reassess the true impact of Chernobyl....

For nearly 70 years, the Soviets in Kremlin had generations of citizens tolerate bloodshed papered over by mendacity and propaganda. The same is happening today, during Moscow's savage war in Ukraine. The media formats may be somewhat different, but the lies continue...

My family and I fled the Soviet Union in 1989. Watching the horrors in Ukraine unfold from America is surreal, in no small part because it feels like the intervening decades between the falls of communism and today have evaporated.

Slashdot reader XXongo brings word of a new three-part documentary — streaming free now — that tries to understand America's early inaction on climate change. Looking back over the last few decades, The Power of Big Oil explores how the fuel industry "successfully set up a campaign to discredit climate science and targetting individual politicians to vote against measures to curb climate change."

The Guardian notes that the series includes an interview with a U.S. senator who they say "blames the oil industry for malignly claiming the science of climate change was not proved when companies such as Exxon and Shell already knew otherwise from their own research."

As far back as 25 years ago, the senator says, "they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly. I mean — they lied." The documentary's makers have dug out a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists and public relations strategists who lay bare how the US's biggest petroleum firm, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes — called Denial, Doubt, Delay — the series charts corporate manipulation of science, public opinion and politicians that mirrors conduct by other industries, from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for America's opioid epidemic.

Some of those interviewed shamefacedly admit their part in the decades-long campaign to hide the evidence of climate change, discredit scientists and delay action that threatened big oil's profits.

Others almost boast about how easy it was to dupe the American public and politicians, with consequences not just for the US but every country on the planet.
In one video clip an aide to a climate-conscious senator remembers that "You had reams of material coming out of the government. They were at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at NASA — this expanding network of people, working on this day in and day out, saying that this was a legitimate issue, and that we needed to do something about it. And on the other hand, you had two or three guys who went around to conferences and said, 'Oh, I'm not sure. Oh, maybe there's clouds....' It quickly became apparent that these were private interests who had a stake in the status quo." He refers to it as "emerging industry of nay-sayers."

There's also a discouraged assessment from climate activist looking back over a lack of progress in the early decades. "You want to make an assumption that it's a meritocracy — a good argument will prevail, and it will displace a bad argument. But, what the geniuses at the PR firms who work for these big fossil-fuel companies know is that truth has nothing to do with who wins the argument. If you say something enough times, people will begin to believe it."