tidal

A plan to build a barrier across the Mersey is starting to take shape. If it goes ahead, the ambitious project would becomes the largest tidal range facility in the world, while also offering pedestrians and cyclists safe passage across the river.Plans appear to have been floating around for a while now. Authorities in Liverpool note that first mentions date back as far as 1924, followed by reports and viability studies in the 1980s. Politician John McDonnell recently recalled that he attended his first meeting on a…

Image: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority The City of Liverpool, England, has unveiled advanced proposals to build the world’s largest tidal power generator on the River Mersey. If it’s built, Mersey Tidal Power would become the largest tidal range scheme in the world. It would power more than 1 million homes for more than 120 years. The dam-like Mersey Tidal Power would be a barrier between the Irish Sea and a tidal basin. It would be fitted with turbines and tap into one of the…

Tidal just devoured Apple and Spotify’s breakfast and ran away with the cereal box — it’s cut the price of its top-level HiFi tier in half, making it the same price as both of those other options.That not only makes it a better option than Spotify with more features for a similar price, but it also brings its superior FLAC file formats and HiRes library to trounce Apple Music.Apple Music bewareTidal has traditionally not been cheap. The top-level HiFi Plus tier (which I pay for) was $20.99, almost double the cost of an…

Tidal is condensing its plans in a bid to compete with fellow music streamers. The platform is removing its HiFi Plus and HiFI tiers to create one individual plan, aptly called Tidal. The new option will offer everything Plus users paid $20 monthly for but for $11— the same price as Spotify and Apple Music's one-person plans. It seems Tidal could no longer justify asking people to pay an extra $9 when its competitors offered similar perks for less (the company notably laid off 10 percent of its employees in December).The…

In a major shakeup of its music streaming plans, Square-owned Tidal has dropped its priciest subscription tier and folded its perks, including high-resolution and spatial audio tracks, into its more affordable “HiFi” plan.  With the move, Tidal’s new $10.99/£10.99 subscription offering – now called simply “Tidal” – essentially matches those of Amazon Music Unlimited and Apple Music.  In a support page on its website, Tidal said its plan changes would take place “globally” on 10 April. The UK site does not…

Match Group, the international conglomerate that owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and almost every other popular dating app, just inked a major partnership with OpenAI. The company shared only a few hazy details, saying AI will help employees with “work-related tasks.” The dating giant says it plans to squeeze artificial intelligence into “literally everything” in its apps, and today marks the first major step forward. Like It or Not, Your Doctor Will Use AI | AI UnlockedThe company celebrated its new partnership with a press…

A giant tidal energy “kite” located in the waters off Vestmannsund, Faroe Islands, has delivered its first power to the grid, in a significant step forward for the budding ocean energy industry. Dubbed the Dragon 12, the device swims against the current, which turns its rotor and generates about 1.2MW of clean electricity — enough to power a small town of around 1,000 homes.  The kite was first designed by carmaker Saab and then commercialised in 2007 by Swedish startup Minesto, which has been…

Minesto's fully operational Dragon 12 looks like some sort of futuristic military drone – but it behaves remarkably like a kite underwater. It uses lift generated by tidal flows to fly patterns faster than the currents, harvesting renewable energy.Solar energy is the bedrock of most renewable energy grid plans – but lunar energy is even more predictable, and a number of different companies are working to commercialize energy generated from the regular inflows and outflows of the tides.One we've completely missed is…

Photo: Hydrowing The UK’s Inyanga Marine Energy Group is going to build Southeast Asia’s first tidal energy plant, which will power an off-grid island. Energy company Energies PH in the Philippines, through its affiliate San Bernardino Ocean Power Corporation, has contracted with Inyanga, which will deploy its patented HydroWing tidal stream technology. Hydrowing is a modular, multi-rotor tidal energy device with a permanent gravity-based structure, and one to three retrievable wings…

The British government tolerates the Kurds right now. No longer are they consigned by the pens of our diplomats and mandarins to the middens of geopolitics. They excel at killing Islamic State fighters, they keep a lid on the grander imperial daydreams of Mr Erdoğan, they give women equal-ish rights and AK47s. At least here, the Foreign Office can say, Brylcreemed Blairite liberal interventionism worked out all right. No more Halabjas. Drilling rights for British oil. Splendid.“When it comes to Kurds, the brightest minds…