HackerNews Summary (2023-06-02 09AM)

Source: North America is now the growth leader for new battery factories

Summary
North America is predicted to be the fastest-growing regional market for planned battery cell manufacturing factories by the end of 2022 due to incentives offered by the Biden administration. Global EV battery usage increased by 72% from 2021 to 2022, prompting a 186% growth rate in the 1,706 GWh of batteries produced in 2022.

Facts

🔋 Ford and CATL will build a $3.5 billion, 35 GWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell production factory in Michigan by 2026.

🚗 BMW Group and Envision AESC will build a $700 million, 30 GWh EV battery factory in South Carolina, launch date TBD.

🌎 China is still the leading battery cell manufacturing hub, but its share will decline in “coming years.”

📈 Europe has seen delays and cancellations of several planned battery factories.

🌞 Global EV sales exceeded 10 million in 2022, and 14% of all new cars sold were electric in 2022.

---

Source: VGA

Summary
This code uses three PIO state machines synchronized with each other through interrupts to drive a VGA screen. DMA channels are used to communicate pixel data to the PIO state machines, which are stored in a global character array. It uses PIO state machines 0, 1, and 2 on PIO instance 0, all 32 available PIO instructions, and 2 DMA channels.

Fact

🖥️ The code uses three PIO state machines synchronized with each other via interrupts to drive a VGA screen.

📡 DMA channels are used to communicate the pixel data to the PIO system.

🔢 Only 3 bits are used to store color data for each pixel, which limits the number of colors that can be drawn on the screen to 8.

💾 Each character in the character array stores the data for 2 pixels, resulting in a total memory usage of 1.536 kBytes.

---

Source: System76’s Coreboot Open Firmware Manages To Disable Intel ME For Raptor Lake

Summary
System76 has improved its open firmware offerings to enhance its latest Intel Core 13th Gen “Raptor Lake” devices, including disabling the Intel Management Engine (ME) and adding a firmware setup menu option for enabling/disabling UEFI Secure Boot.

Fact

🔥 System76 disabled Intel Management Engine (ME) for its latest Raptor Lake laptops and some older devices.

🔑 System76 added a firmware setup menu for enabling/disabling UEFI Secure Boot to allow Windows 11 support.

💡 System76 increased battery power limits allowing greater CPU performance and added NVIDIA Dynamic Boost for NVIDIA RTX 40 laptops.

👨‍💻 System76 fixed various issues and contributed Intel Maple Ridge Thunderbolt support to Coreboot.

---

Source: MetaBrainz Foundation

Summary
MetaBrainz provides public datasets for free, but requests commercial users to support them. The datasets fall into two categories: main project data dumps and derived data dumps.

Facts

💻 The mission of MetaBrainz is to curate and maintain public datasets for anyone to download and use.

💰 Commercial users are requested to support MetaBrainz to fund the creation and maintenance of the datasets.

🆓 Personal use of the datasets will always be free.

🎁 End user donations are appreciated.

📊 The datasets provided by MetaBrainz fall into two categories: main project data dumps and derived data dumps.

🔍 The main project data dumps contain the entirety of the data for a given project.

🔬 Derived data dumps are based on the data in the main project databases and have a more specific purpose.

---

Source: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

Summary
Restorers of France’s Notre Dame Cathedral are using medieval era techniques including hand axes, chisels and mallets to reconstruct the cathedral’s oak wood roofing beams. Described as “ethically and artistically far more imperative” to stay true to techniques utilised in the Middle Ages, the restoration is expected to be complete by December of 2024.

Fact

🔨 Rebuilders use medieval era hand tools to refashion oak roofing beams.

🏰 Notre Dame is being restored to its original construction using the same Medieval methods.

🚚 Roof components will be transported by truck, then lifted into place by crane.

👨‍💻 Computer analysis is used to ensure the carpenters’ work is precise.

---