Lately I’ve had this hunted feeling, that digital forces increasingly want things from us that we are unwilling to give. I used to be blithe about it and give myself up to pestering technology, but now I’m suspicious.

I have an HP printer and for a decade bought the most precious and overpriced material on the planet, printer ink, worth more than lithium, coltan and cobalt. At one point, HP mysteriously began to thank me for buying its ink and rewarded me with free video games I did not play.

It was worried because customers had a new option: buy cut-price no-name ink for HP printers that was sold cheaply in order to make a fortune on HP ink. You thought your printer was a first date; you had married an extortionist.

Take journalist Charlie Warzel who bought an HP printer and had inattentively subscribed to Instant Ink, its auto-refill

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Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang speaks at the COMPUTEX forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 29.ANN WANG/Reuters

Nvidia Corp. NVDA-Q and MediaTek Inc. on Monday said they will collaborate on technology to power advanced vehicle infotainment systems that can stream video or games or interact with drivers using artificial intelligence.

Under the agreement, announced at the Computex technology trade show in Taipei, MediaTek will integrate an Nvidia graphic processing unit chiplet and Nvidia software into the system-on-chips it supplies to automakers for infotainment displays.

MediaTek systems using Nvidia software would be compatible with automated driving systems based on Nvidia technology, the companies said. Dashboard displays could show the environment around the vehicle, while cameras would monitor the driver.

“The automotive industry needs strong companies that can work with the industry for decades at a time,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told a news conference

When wildfires hit Alberta earlier this month, leaving more than 10,000 square kilometres of land scorched so far this year, João Lopes was worried about how much more devastation could be on its way.

“Unfortunately, the statistics are showing that maybe next year will be worse than this year,” said the entrepreneur, who founded crop monitoring and fire risk assessment technology company SensaioTech.

Wildfires flaring up around Halifax in recent days are yet another reminder of the increasing risks that many are warning of.

A United Nations report from 2022 found wildfires are becoming “more intense and more frequent” and said with temperatures on the rise as global warming worsens, “the need to reduce wildfire risk is more critical than ever.”

Canada alone sees about 7,500 wildfires burn more than 2.5 million hectares of forest — about half the size of Nova Scotia — every year and that amount is


An Ottawa councillor wants city staff to explore new technologies to divert waste from landfills, as the city looks at implementing a “bag tag” policy to help extend the life of the Trail Road landfill.


Council will debate a motion from Coun. Allan Hubley on May 24 to direct staff to undertake an “immediate review” of technologies that “are available and in active operation” for diverting waste from landfills which meet or exceed current applicable environmental regulations and requirements.


Hubley’s motion recommends the city give preference to potential solutions that could provide heat and electricity, “to be used to make housing more affordable for our residents.”


The city of Ottawa’s current landfill on Trail Road is expected to reach capacity in the next 13 to 15 years, and staff have said siting and developing a new landfill could cost up to $450 million and take up

SALAR DE ATACAMA, Chile, May 11 (Reuters) – Albemarle Corp (ALB.N) hopes to expand its lithium operations in Chile’s Atacama salt flat as early as 2028 with direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology under its current government contract, Ignacio Mehech, the company’s Chile manager, told Reuters.

“Depending on environmental and other permits needed in Chile, as well as scaling technologies, we believe (DLE) should be implemented, if everything goes well, towards 2028 or 2029,” Mehech said during an interview at the company’s Atacama lithium mining operations.

Albemarle and SQM, the only two lithium producers in Chile, currently extract the metal using mass evaporation ponds from brine taken from underground reservoirs. President Gabriel Boric has heavily pushed DLE technology. So far commercially unproven, the method could preserve water tables by allowing brine to be reinjected underground after lithium is extracted.

Even so, DLE still requires large volumes of freshwater to filter lithium