An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Toyota says a recent disruption of operations in Japan-based production plants was caused by its database servers running out of storage space. On August 29th, it was reported that Toyota had to halt operations on 12 of its 14 Japan-based car assembly plants due to an undefined system malfunction. As one of the largest automakers in the world, the situation caused production output losses of roughly 13,000 cars daily, threatening to impact exports to the global market.

In a statement released today on Toyota's Japanese news portal, the company explains that the malfunction occurred during a planned IT systems maintenance event on August 27th, 2023. The planned maintenance was to organize the data and deletion of fragmented data in a database. However, as the storage was filled to capacity before the completion of the tasks, an error occurred, causing the system to shut down. This shutdown directly impacted the company's production ordering system so that no production tasks could be planned and executed.

Toyota explains that its main servers and backup machines operate on the same system. Due to this, both systems faced the same failure, making a switchover impossible, inevitably leading to a halt in factory operations. The restoration came on August 29th, 2023, when Toyota's IT team had prepared a larger capacity server to accept the data that was partially transferred two days back. This allowed Toyota's engineers to restore the production ordering system and the plants to resume operations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Two weeks after Intel said it would cancel its plan to acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion amidst pushback from regulators, the two companies intend to work together anyway. Intel today said that it would provide foundry services and 300mm manufacturing capacity to Tower. As part of the deal, Tower would use Intel's plant in New Mexico, operated by Intel Foundry Services (IFS), investing up to $300 million to "acquire and own equipment and other fixed assets" that would be installed in the manufacturing facility.

The deal will give Tower a new capacity corridor, it said, of "over 600,000 photo layers per month" to meet expected demand for 300mm chips. The deal will mean that Intel will be manufacturing Tower's 65-nanometer power management BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) flows. Tower itself also owns its own manufacturing facilities in owns manufacturing facilities in Israel (150mm and 200mm), the U.S. (200mm), Japan (200mm and 300mm) and soon in Italy in partnership with STMicroelectronics. "We launched Intel Foundry Services with a long-term view of delivering the world's first open system foundry that brings together a secure, sustainable, and resilient supply chain with the best of Intel and our ecosystem. We're thrilled that Tower sees the unique value we provide and chose us to open their 300mm U.S. capacity corridor," said Stuart Pann, Intel SVP and GM of Intel Foundry Services, in a statement.

"We are excited to continue working with Intel," added Tower CEO Russell Ellwanger. "As we look to the future, our primary focus is to expand our customer partnerships through high-scale manufacturing of leading-edge technology solutions. This collaboration with Intel allows us to fulfill our customers' demand roadmaps, with a particular focus on advanced power management and radio frequency silicon on insulator (RF SOI) solutions, with full process flow qualification planned in 2024. We see this as a first step towards multiple unique synergistic solutions with Intel."

The BBC has an article about Japan's release into the sea of treated waste water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. "Scientists largely agree that the impact will be negligible, but China has strongly protested the release. And disinformation has only fuelled fear and suspicion in China." A report by a UK-based data analysis company called Logically, which aims to fight misinformation, claims that since January, the Chinese government and state media have been running a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting the release of the waste water. As part of this, mainstream news outlets in China have continually questioned the science behind the nuclear waste water discharge. The rhetoric has only increased since the water was released on 24 August, stoking public anger... Japan's foreign ministry even warned its citizens in China to be cautious and to avoid speaking Japanese loudly in public...

Logically's data also showed that, since the beginning of the year, state-owned media have run paid ads on Facebook and Instagram, without disclaimers, about the risks of the waste water release in multiple countries and languages, including English, German, and Khmer. "It is quite evident that this is politically motivated," Hamsini Hariharan, a China expert at Logically, told the BBC. She added that misleading content from sources related to the Chinese government had intensified the public outcry...

Dozens of posts on Chinese social media Weibo showed panicked crowds buying giant sacks of salt ahead of the Fukushima water release. Some worried that future supply would be contaminated. Others believed — falsely — that salt protected them against radiation. A restaurant in Shanghai, in an apparent effort to profit off the hysteria, advertised "anti-radiation" meals with errant claims of reducing skin damage and cell regeneration. A social media user asked wryly, "Why would I pay 28 yuan for tomato with seasoning?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: Slowly but surely, sales of electric cars have crept upward as traditional automakers finally embrace EVs. Nissan was early to the electric future with the venerable if modest Leaf. Nissan is now looking to turn old Leafs into something new by harvesting their batteries. The company has begun selling portable power banks built around refurbished automotive batteries, which could give these expensive Leaf cells a new lease on life. The Lithium-ion cells in vehicles have the same properties as the battery in your phone. They start out with a specific power rating, but successive discharge-recharge cycles cause physical stress to the internal structure. Eventually, this results in reduced capacity and voltage. However, Nissan says most Leaf owners stop driving the car before the battery stops working. In fact, many of the individual cells are still in good shape when the vehicles are discarded.

Each Nissan Leaf has around 48 lithium-ion battery modules -- the exact number depends on model. While some may be in poor shape at the end of a car's life, Nissan has taken to disassembling the battery packs to refurbish working modules. The result is the Nissan portable power station, which was developed in partnership with JVCKenwood Corp. and 4R Energy Corp. The bulky 32-pound portable chargers contain two Leaf battery modules with about 80% of their original capacity intact. They're no longer suitable for driving an EV, but they can still charge your phone. Nissan sells the battery packs in Japan for 170,500 yen (about $1,170). That might sound like a lot, but it's actually not bad for a super high-capacity battery pack. Each of Nissan's current-gen battery modules is 1.67 kWh, which converts to 112 Ah (112,000 mAh). Assuming a 20% loss in capacity, two of them would have enough juice to charge the largest current iPhone more than 40 times.

Hot on the heels of its lunar landing success, India is readying to blast a probe even deeper into space to study the sun. From a report: The country's first solar observation mission, named Aditya-L1, is set to be launched from India's main spaceport on Sriharikota, an island off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, at 11:50 a.m. local time on Saturday. The spacecraft is scheduled to spend 125 days traveling 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) to its destination, a point in space where objects stay put and consume less fuel.

While arriving there would be an impressive achievement for ISRO, the Indian space agency, Aditya-L1 would have gone just a fraction of the 150 million km between Earth and the sun. For ISRO, success would be another major feat after India became the first country to land a spacecraft close to the lunar south pole in August. India has more ambitious projects in the works. A human spaceflight program aims to launch astronauts into orbit for the first time possibly by 2025, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said in an interview with news agency Asian News International. ISRO and NASA plan to cooperate on sending astronauts to the International Space Station and India is in discussions with Japan to work together on a mission.

The centenary of the Great Kanto earthquake brings angst, and lessons for the world. From a report: Every year on September 1st, Japan's ministers trek by foot to the prime minister's office to take part in a crisis simulation. Across the country, local officials and schoolchildren drill for disasters. The date marks the Great Kanto earthquake, a 7.9-magnitude tremor that struck near the capital back in 1923. The ensuing disaster killed at least 105,000 people, including around 70,000 in Tokyo itself, destroyed 370,000 homes and changed the course of Japanese history.

This year's centenary of the disaster has occasioned much commemoration -- and angst. What will happen when the next Big One hits? Seismologists cannot predict earthquakes, but their statistical models, which are based on past patterns, can estimate the likelihood of one. The city government's experts reckon there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7 or higher quake hitting the capital within the next 30 years. Far fewer people will probably die than during the disaster in 1923, thanks to better technology and planning: the worst case foresees some 6,000 deaths in the city. But millions of lives will be upended.

Another, similarly likely scenario could be much worse. A Nankai Trough earthquake, envisaged south of Kansai, Japan's industrial heartland, could trigger a tsunami; as many as 323,000 might be killed, according to an official estimate. Japan's approach to the risks of such catastrophes offers insights for a warming world facing more frequent disasters. Quakes of this size could "challenge the survival of Japan as a state" and send economic shock waves around the globe, says Fukuwa Nobuo of Nagoya University. After the next Tokyo quake, recovering basic city functions could take weeks and rebuilding the capital could take years; direct damage alone could run to as much as $75bn. One piece of research estimates that gdp would dip by 11% following a Nankai earthquake.

Reuters reports: Tests of seawater near Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have not detected any radioactivity, the environment ministry said on Sunday, days after authorities began discharging into the sea treated water used to cool damaged reactors.

Japan started releasing water from the wrecked Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, sparking protests in Japan and neighbouring countries, in particular China, which banned aquatic product imports from Japan.

Japan and scientific organisations say the water is safe after being filtered to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Because tritium is difficult to separate from water, the Fukushima water is diluted until tritium levels fall below regulatory limits.

The ministry's tests of samples from 11 points near the plant showed concentrations of tritium below the lower limit of detection — 7 to 8 becquerels of tritium per litre, the ministry said, adding that it "would have no adverse impact on human health and the environment". Monitoring would be carried out "with a high level of objectivity, transparency, and reliability" to prevent adverse impacts on Japan's reputation, Environment Minister Akihiro Nishimura said in a statement.

For SpaceX's 11th crewed mission — its eighth flight for NASA — "A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station early Sunday," reports Space.com, "and you can watch it all live online in a free livestream." The Crew Dragon capsule Endurance is scheduled to reach the International Space Station at 8:39 a.m. EDT (1239 GMT), where it will dock itself to a space-facing port on the outpost's U.S.-built Harmony module.

The docking will mark the end of a nearly 30-hour journey for the capsule's four-person crew, which launched in the wee hours of Saturday from NASA's Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida... "SpaceX, thanks for the ride, it was awesome," Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA said after the crew reached orbit. "Go Crew-7, awesome ride." SpaceX's Crew-7 mission for NASA is ferrying Moghbeli to the ISS with a truly international crew: pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency; and mission specialists Konstantin Borisov of Russia's Roscosmos agency and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The quartet is the first all-international crew, with members from four different agencies and countries, to fly on the same Dragon capsule...

The Crew-7 astronauts are beginning a six-month expedition to the space station and will relieve the four astronauts of NASA's Crew-6 mission, who are due to return shortly after Moghbeli and her crew arrive.
SpaceX has created a "follow Dragon" web page with graphics tracking the capsule's progress to the Space Station...

Japan is to begin releasing wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from Thursday, in defiance of opposition from fishing communities, China and some scientists. From a report: The prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said on Tuesday he had asked the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), "to swiftly prepare for the water discharge" in accordance with plans approved by nuclear regulators, adding that the release would begin on Thursday, "weather and ocean conditions permitting." Kishida has said that disposing of more than 1m tonnes of water being stored at the site was an essential part of the long and complex process to decommission the plant.

The plan has caused controversy because the water contains tritium, a radioactive substance that can't be removed by the facility's water filtration technology. Hong Kong, an important market for Japanese seafood exports, has threatened restrictions. Leader John Lee said on Tuesday he strongly opposed the water plan, adding that he had instructed the city's government to "immediately activate" import controls on Japanese seafood. South Korea and China banned seafood imports from some areas of Japan after Fukushima Daiichi suffered a triple meltdown in the March 2011 triple disaster along the country's north-east coast. China remains strongly opposed, accusing Japan of treating the ocean like a "sewer." The South Korean government recently dropped its objections to the discharge, but opposition parties and many South Koreans are concerned about the impact the discharge will have on food safety.

Amtrak and a company called Texas Central announced a partnership on Wednesday to connect Houston and Dallas by train, spanning roughly 240 miles at speeds upwards of 205 mph. Popular Science reports: According to Quartz, the applications have already been submitted to "several federal grant programs" to help finance research and design costs. Amtrak representatives estimate the project could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 100,000 tons annually and remove an estimated 12,500 cars per day from the region's I-45 corridor. The reduction in individual vehicles on the roads could also save as much as 65 million gallons of fuel each year.

The trains traveling Amtrak's Dallas-Houston route would be based on Japan's updated N700S Series Shinkansen "bullet train," a design that first debuted in 2020. "This high-speed train, using advanced, proven Shinkansen technology, has the opportunity to revolutionize rail travel in the southern US," Texas Central CEO Michael Bui said via the August 9 announcement.

American city planners have been drawn to the idea of high-speed railways for decades, but have repeatedly fallen short of getting them truly on track due to a host of issues, including funding, political pushback, and cultural hurdles. That said, 85 percent of recently surveyed travelers between Dallas and the greater North Texas area indicated they would ride such a form of transportation "in the right circumstances." If so, as many as 6 million travelers could be expected to ride the train by the end of the decade, with the number rising to 13 million by 2050.

Toshiba announced a 2 trillion yen ($14 billion) tender offer on Monday in a move that would take it private, as the scandal-tarnished Japanese electronics and energy giant seeks to turn itself around. From a report: The tender offer led by a buyout fund of major Japanese banks and companies called Japan Industrial Partners starts Tuesday and is priced at 4,620 yen ($32) a share. Chairperson Akihiro Watanabe asked shareholders to back the proposal, saying it is the only option for Toshiba to return to its former strength.

[...] Tokyo-based Toshiba also reported a 25 billion yen ($176 million) loss for the April-June quarter on 704 billion yen ($5 billion) in sales, down nearly 5% from the previous year. It did not give a full fiscal year profit projection, citing uncertainties in its computer chip business. If the proposal succeeds, it will be a major step in Toshiba's yearslong turnaround effort, allowing it to delist from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

"Scientists in Japan may be at the start of a truly monumental accomplishment: a vaccine that can slow or delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease," reports Gizmodo: In preliminary research released this week, the vaccine appeared to reduce inflammation and other important biomarkers in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's-like illness, while also improving their awareness.

More research will be needed before this vaccine can be tested in humans, however. The experimental vaccine is being developed primarily by scientists from Juntendo University in Japan.

It's intended to work by training the immune system to go after certain senescent cells, aging cells that no longer divide to make more of themselves, but instead stick around in the body. These cells aren't necessarily harmful, and some play a vital role in healing and other life functions. But they've also been linked to a variety of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer's. The vaccine specifically targets senescent cells that produce high levels of something called senescence-associated glycoprotein, or SAGP. Other research has suggested that people with Alzheimer's tend to have brains filled with these cells in particular.

The team tested their vaccine on mice bred to have brains that develop the same sort of gradual destruction seen in humans with Alzheimer's.

Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race launched by Nasa four years ago to develop commercial alternatives to the ISS, which was launched 23 years ago and orbits some 420 kms above the earth.

The ISS is an international collaboration, funded by national space agencies from the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Russia. Since its launch it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries. Among the other contenders in the race trying to build a replacement is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is leading a consortium offering a 30,000 sq ft "ecosystem" of different habitats and services for industry, research and tourism. Nasa has allocated $550mn to four consortiums in the first phase of the competition, which will examine the spacecraft design and the business cases of each contender. The US agency has insisted each be commercially viable.

Worldcoin will expand its operations to sign up more users globally and aims to allow other organisations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology, a senior manager for the company behind the project told Reuters. From the report: "We are on this mission of building the biggest financial and identity community that we can," said Ricardo Macieira, general manager for Europe at Tools For Humanity, the San Francisco and Berlin-based company behind the project.

Macieira said Worldcoin would continue rolling out operations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and "all the parts of the world that will accept us." Worldcoin's website mentions various possible applications, including distinguishing humans from artificial intelligence, enabling "global democratic processes" and showing a "potential path" to universal basic income, although these outcomes are not guaranteed. Most people interviewed by Reuters at sign-up sites in Britain, India and Japan last week said they were joining in order to receive the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim.

Every one of Japan's 47 prefectures posted a population drop in 2022, while the total number of Japanese people fell by nearly 800,000. The figures released by the Japan's internal affairs ministry mark two new unwelcome records for a nation sailing into uncharted demographic territory, but on a course many other countries are set to follow. From a report: Japan's prime minister has called the trend a crisis and vowed to tackle the situation. But national policies have so far failed to dent population decline, though concerted efforts by a sprinkling of small towns have had some effect.

Wednesday's new data showed deaths hit a record high of more than 1.56 million while there were just 771,000 births in Japan in 2022, the first time the number of newborns has fallen below 800,000 since records began. Even an all-time high increase in foreign residents of more than 10%, to 2.99 million, couldn't halt a slide in the total population, which has declined for 14 years in a row to 122.42 million in 2022. In January, prime minister Fumio Kishida said that addressing the birthrate was "now or never" and warned, "Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions."

Japan's government plans to expand opportunities for students and working adults to acquire digital skills, aiming to add about 110,000 people studying in the field through fiscal 2024 as it faces a shortage of talent in areas like artificial intelligence. From a report: There are an estimated 1 million digital workers in Japan. The government projects there will be a shortage of 2.3 million by fiscal 2026. Japan needs more business architects, who can help companies adopt digital technology, as well as data scientists.

The goals were set in June as part of the Kishida government's "new capitalism" action plan, which aims to secure a total of 3.3 million digital workers by the end of fiscal 2026, out of a labor force of 68 million people. "We will work to achieve these goals," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference on July 25. Japan will accredit courses that teach the necessary knowledge and skills. There are concerns about a lack of instructors, so the government will consider ways to allow companies to dispatch specialists with hands-on experience.

OpenAI has released ChatGPT for Android, months after launching the free iOS app for iPhones and iPads. You can download it in the Google Play Store. The Verge reports: According to a company tweet, it's available first in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil, with other countries set to follow later, mimicking the staged rollout we saw for the iOS version. On July 27th, OpenAI announced additional availability, saying the Android ChatGPT app is now available in Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, the UK, and South Korea.

Record youth unemployment after Beijing clampdown on private sector, FDI slump. From a report: New graduate Glonee Zhang had high hopes when he landed a job at a lithium battery company in Shenzhen last summer. Now, like more than one in five young people in China, he's out of work. An English major entering a post-COVID working world, Zhang thought "the end of the pandemic would bring a bright future." Six months later, he and half of the firm's intake of 400 new grads were laid off when the company's sales slumped by 10% year-on-year. "Sometimes I feel my soul is being torn apart," said a downbeat Zhang, getting by in the meantime doing odd jobs.

Caught between a long-running regulatory crackdown by Beijing on private enterprise, and a slide in hiring by foreign firms in the country, young people now face a record jobless rate of 21.3%. Since the official number only includes people actively seeking work, some economists say the percentage of young people not in employment, education or training could be significantly higher. While the pandemic may have gone, its departure has unmasked a growing structural problem for President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The world's second-biggest economy is producing twice the number of graduates it did 10 years ago, with nearly 12 million this year - but not the jobs they're qualified to do.

"Over the years, China has expanded universities, but China is still a largely manufacturing [and services] based economy," Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, told Nikkei Asia. "This is structural, because the economy itself is big, it's gradually changing. But it takes time for China to become a more advanced economy like Japan, South Korea and the U.S., which have more professional services dominating job creation." In December 2019, before COVID struck, the youth jobless rate was 12.2%. Graduates like Zhang are now forced to consider continuing in higher education or trying for highly competitive but stable government jobs for which they are overqualified. Studying or working overseas is also an option for some.

Today, Nissan announced it's adopting Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) in its electric vehicles, following in the footsteps of Ford, GM, Rivian, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Polestar. Ars Technica reports: "Adopting the NACS standard underlines Nissan's commitment to making electric mobility even more accessible as we follow our Ambition 2030 long-term vision of greater electrification," said Jeremie Papin, chairperson of Nissan Americas. "We are happy to provide access to thousands more fast chargers for Nissan EV drivers, adding confidence and convenience when planning long-distance journeys."

This is actually Nissan's second time changing its DC fast-charging plugs. An early pioneer of EVs with the first- and then second-generation Leaf, it chose the CHAdeMO standard for those models, which is popular in Japan but never really caught on elsewhere. But when Nissan built the Ariya crossover as its third-generation EV, it dropped CHAdeMO for CCS, which appeared like it was going to win the charging standard war by dint of having every OEM onboard other than Tesla. CCS may have had the power of numbers in terms of OEMs, but EVs from all those makes are still heavily outnumbered on the road by the sheer mass of Models 3 and Y, and it's hard to argue with the superiority of Tesla's Supercharger network, either in terms of reliability or number of deployed chargers.

The European Union is lobbying Asian countries to follow its lead on artificial intelligence in adopting new rules for tech firms that include disclosure of copyrighted and AI-generated content, according to senior officials from the EU and Asia. From a report: The EU and its member states have dispatched officials for talks on governing the use of AI with at least 10 Asian countries including India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines, they said. The bloc aims for its proposed AI Act to become a global benchmark on the booming technology the way its data protection laws have helped shape global privacy standards.

However, the effort to convince Asian governments of the need for stringent new rules is being met with a lukewarm reception, seven people close to the discussions told Reuters. Many countries favour a "wait and see" approach or are leaning towards a more flexible regulatory regime. Singapore, one of Asia's leading tech centres, prefers to see how the technology evolves before adapting local regulations, an official for the city-state told Reuters. Officials from Singapore and the Philippines expressed concern that moving overly hasty regulation might stifle AI innovation.