Virtual

If you, like me, are unsure how a power plant can be virtual, my colleague June Kim just published an insightful article explaining the technology and how it works. For this week’s newsletter, I took the chance to ask her some more questions about VPPs. It turns out the technology has a particularly good synergy with the EV industry, which is why the Chinese government has started to invest in VPPs.  “VPPs are basically just aggregations of distributed energy resources that can balance electricity on the grid,” June…

Virtual reality (VR) startup AutoVRse said it has raised $2 million in a funding round led by Lumikai. Other investors included Rajat Monga, cofounder of TensorFlow and Inference.io, Viswanathan Krishnamurthi, ex-CIO at Yahoo & Eaton, and Yash Kotak, founder and CEO of Jumper.ai.The funds will be used to enhance its foundational enterprise product, VRseBuilder and also to help the startup augment its team with talent, spearhead expansion efforts in the United States, and expand its product suite. Elevate Your Tech…

We've already discussed the use of a VPN when connecting offices. Any time you have two LANs that need to link over the public internet, you should consider using VPN technology or an equivalent method of enterprise protection. In this case, the VPN software will probably run in a router, a server, or a dedicated VPN server hardware appliance.We talked about two use cases above for consumer VPN services: protecting your data and spoofing your location. We'll talk more about location spoofing later, so let's focus on data…

Explore these virtual reality boot camps to enroll in 2024 Virtual Reality (VR) has rapidly evolved from a niche technology to a transformative force across various industries. As the demand for VR professionals continues to rise, individuals seeking to dive into this exciting field are turning to immersive training programs known as boot camps. These programs offer a condensed and hands-on learning experience, equipping participants with the skills needed to thrive in the dynamic landscape of virtual reality.…

Apple Cash may soon offer a "virtual card number" in the iOS 17.4 beta that can be used to shop online where Apple Pay isn't available, according to a Reddit post spotted by 9to5Mac. The new feature promises a new security code for every transaction and the number can be accessed in Safari's Autofill for easy use.In the beta, Apple Cash users are prompted to "set up virtual card number." Once that's done, you can see it via the settings menu, including the card number, expiration date and security code. The number is…

Both images are a top-down view of the virtual neighborhood used in Study 1. In Panel A, the red rectangle outlines the area that participants could explore. Areas outside the red rectangle were not explorable, and objects in this area were placed to make the neighborhood feel more realistic and to provide a backdrop for the explorable area. Although the backyards are visible from the top-down view, these were fenced in and inaccessible by participants.…

Take-Two Interactive has an interesting response to gamers upset with what the company does with the in-game currency they buy. In an ongoing dispute over whether money is essentially stolen when a game’s servers shut down, Take-Two characterized in-game virtual currency as “fictions created by game publishers.” Currently Take-Two is facing a class-action lawsuit in California related to microtransactions in the NBA 2K games. Particularly, the lawsuit takes issue with the fact that when Take-Two takes down servers for…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out. The news: In the biggest mass-market AI launch yet, Google is rolling out Gemini, its family of large language models, across almost all its products, from Android to the iOS Google app to Gmail to Docs and more. A new subscription plan will also give users access to Gemini Ultra, the most powerful…

Disney CEO Bob Iger wants to launch a virtual Disney world, that would be similar to Meta's Metaverse. Disney is also planning to invest $1.5 bn in Fortnite, and have that as a crucial element of Disney's metaverse In a…

One significant difference is VPPs’ ability to shape consumers’ energy use in real time. Unlike conventional power plants, VPPs can communicate with distributed energy resources and allow grid operators to control the demand from end users. For example, smart thermostats linked to air conditioning units can adjust home temperatures and manage how much electricity the units consume. On hot summer days these thermostats can pre-cool homes before peak hours, when air conditioning usage surges. Staggering cooling times can…