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In July Google promised to scale the CO2 batteries of "Energy Dome" as a long-duration energy storage solution. Now IEEE Spectrum visits its first plant in Sardinia, where 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide power a turbine generating 20 MW over 10 hours — storing "large amounts of excess renewable energy until it's needed..." "Google likes the concept so much that it plans to rapidly deploy the facilities in all of its key data-center locations in Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region." Developed by the Milan-based company Energy Dome, the bubble and its surrounding machinery demonstrate a first-of-its-kind "CO2 Battery," as the company calls it... And in 2026, replicas of this plant will start popping up across the globe. We mean that literally. It takes just half a day to inflate the bubble. The rest of the facility takes less than two years to build and can be done just about anywhere there's 5 hectares of flat land. The first to build one outside of Sardinia will be one of India's largest power companies, NTPC Limited. The company expects to complete its CO2 Battery sometime in 2026 at the Kudgi power plant in Karnataka, in India. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the public utility Alliant Energy received the all clear from authorities to begin construction of one in 2026 to supply power to 18,000 homes... The idea is to provide electricity-guzzling data centers with round-the-clock clean energy, even when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. The partnership with Energy Dome, announced in July, marked Google's first investment in long-duration energy storage... CO2 Batteries check a lot of boxes that other approaches don't. They don't need special topography like pumped-hydro reservoirs do. They don't need critical minerals like electrochemical and other batteries do. They use components for which supply chains already exist. Their expected lifetime stretches nearly three times as long as lithium-ion batteries. And adding size and storage capacity to them significantly decreases cost per kilowatt-hour. Energy Dome expects its LDES solution to be 30 percent cheaper than lithium-ion. China has taken note. China Huadian Corp. and Dongfang Electric Corp. are reportedly building a CO2-based energy-storage facility in the Xinjiang region of northwest China. Google's senior lead for energy storage says they like how Energy Dome's solution can work in any region. "They can really plug and play this." And they expect Google to help the technology "reach a massive commercial stage."

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PLUS: Debian supports Chinese chips ; Hong Kong’s Christmas Karaoke crackdown; Asahi admits it should have prevented hack; And more!

APAC in Brief Google and Apple last week started to allow developers of mobile applications to distribute their wares through third-party app stores and accept payments from alternative payment providers.…

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Infosec In Brief Google will soon end its “Dark Web Report”, an email service that alerts users when their personal information appears on the internet’s dark underbelly.…

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if "gifts for geeks" is the next big consumer demographic: For this year's holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game "Oregon Trail." ("Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West....") Top sites and major brands are now targeting the "tech" demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts — and when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there's been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture... While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its "Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life" just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you're wondering, "Should I push to production on New Year's Eve?" GitHub recommends their new "GitHub Copilot Amazeball," which it describes as "GitHub's magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !" Copilot isn't involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. "[Y]ou'll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake," GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. "Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!" And GitHub's "Gift Guide for Developers" also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub's mascots. But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard. Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: "How the Geeks Stole Christmas." Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on "Gifts for Programmers" now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called " Cooking for Programmers? "Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language," explains the book's description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console... Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.) But maybe it all proves that there's something for everybody. That's the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations. It's just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.

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"On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The Independent notes that "Without working traffic lights, the driverless cars were seemingly left confused, with many halting in their tracks and causing major traffic jams. Local riders and pedestrians shared photos and videos of the vehicles stuck at intersections with long lines of drivers piling up behind them..." In some instances, several Waymos were piled up in front of a single intersection. "6 Waymos parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage," another social media user wrote. More from CNBC: San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m. local time, including one he photographed near Arguello Boulevard and Geary Street. "They were just stopping in the middle of the street," Schoolfield said. The power outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco. PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in "significant and extensive" damage, and said it could not yet provide a precise timeline for full restoration... Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X: "Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage." Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco. Tesla's local ride-hailing service uses vehicles equipped with "FSD (Supervised)," a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times... The Waymo pause in San Francisco indicates cities are not yet ready for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of "How to Make AI Useful." "Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is," he said. [He recommends "human backup systems in place around highly automated systems, including robotaxis."] State and city regulators will need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for "chaos gridlock," just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a blackout. Waymo did not say when its service would resume and did not specify whether collisions involving its vehicles had occurred during the blackout.

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