An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: It's a special moment in the history of clean energy: the 30th anniversary World Solar Challenge has begun. A total of 42 solar-powered cars (the largest field to date) left Darwin, Australia on October 8th to travel roughly 1,880 miles to Adelaide. The race officially lasts a week, but it's likely going to end considerably sooner for the front-runners -- the world record holders, Tokai University, took just under 30 hours in 2009... This year, the race regulations are a clear sign of how rapidly solar technology is changing. Teams have to use a smaller solar collector than before: cars in the Challenger class can have no more than 43 square feet of solar cells versus nearly 65 square feet for the previous race, in 2015. That's half the area allowed on cars from the original 1987 race. In other words, technology is advanced enough now (both in solar cells and the underlying vehicle designs) that you don't need a sea of panels to keep a car running.

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Decision by Turkish embassy in Washington, DC, comes hours after the US mission to Turkey reduced visa services.

Rescue operation under way after boat overcrowded with people fleeing Myanmar violence sinks on its way to Bangladesh.

Microsoft's newest programming language will run on yet-to-be developed quantum computers. An anonymous reader quotes CIO Today: Microsoft said its new quantum computing language, which has yet to be named, is "deeply integrated" into its Visual Basic development environment and does many of the things other standard programming languages do. However, it is specifically designed to allow programmers to create apps that will eventually run on true quantum computers... Like other companies, such as Google and IBM, Microsoft has been working for years to advance quantum computing research to the point where the technology becomes feasible rather than theoretical... Joining Satya Nadella on stage, Fields Medal-winning mathematician Michael Freedman added, "Microsoft's qubit will be based on a new form of matter called topological matter that also has this property that as the information stored in the matter is stored globally, you can't find the information in any particular place..." The programming language is expected to be available as a free preview by the end of the year and "also includes libraries and tutorials so developers can familiarize themselves with quantum computing," Microsoft said.

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Kim Jong-un announces changes at line-up of powerful Workers Party's Politburo as he reaffirms N Korea's nuclear drive.

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An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's electric semi-truck will be launched three weeks later than planned, CNN reports. It's been bumped to November 16th because Tesla says it's "diverting resources" to address problems with its Model 3 sedan production -- they've produced just 17.3% of the cars they'd planned -- and to make more batteries to send to areas hit by hurricanes. CNN notes Tesla's Model X "didn't start shipping until two years after it was supposed to roll out," and production of its Model S sedan "was also much slower than originally promised." Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Autotrader.com, complains Tesla "may well have far too much on its plate. It should focus and deliver on some key promises." But Elon Musk "has a history of some pretty pie-in-the-sky promises," complained CNN business anchor Maggie Lake, citing Musk's claim that he had verbal approval for an underground hyperloop connecting New York City to Washington D.C. ("This is news to City Hall," said New York's press secretary at the time, and no actual approval has ever been produced.) Lake also noted Musk's promise to fix South Australia's blackout problems by building the world's largest lithium-ion battery within 100 days back in March. Last Friday Tesla signed a contract to begin the work, so the 100-day countdown has begun. CNN's report ran under the headline "Elon Musk: Big Dreamer or Monorail Salesman?" -- referencing a satirical 1993 episode of The Simpson's. "Here's a spoiler alert," the segment concludes. "If you haven't seen that episode...the monorail plan doesn't work out too well. Let's put it that way."

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US Embassy says recent events forced it to reassess Ankara's commitment to the security of US facilities and staff.

An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: Another investment bank analyst has signed on to the idea that the internet is holding down the rate of inflation. Bilal Hafeez, the global head of G10 FX strategy and head of EMEA research at Nomura, published two notes last month on whether the value of the dollar was being held down by Amazon and its ilk. In one note he called it "the Amazonization of inflation"... [O]nline commerce typified by Amazon is making the supply and distribution of goods so cheap that "Amazonisation" itself is now a deflationary force at a macro level, Hafeez argues. He writes: "While globalisation was the meme of the 2000s, this decade's has to be the 'Amazonisation' of commerce. Given the bulk of the cost of goods is distribution costs, Amazon's unique distribution model and widening range of products could impart a new disinflationary impulse on goods prices." This idea is becoming more popular among analysts as the months roll by. Back in September 2016, we told you about the "Spotify problem," in an interview with HSBC's James Pomeroy. His theory is that the internet allows consumers to shop around and compare prices incredibly easily. It also substitutes cheap digital goods over more expensive physical ones. For instance, people stop paying £20 every month for a CD when they start paying £10 a month for endless music from Spotify. The result is that businesses are aggressively driving down their own prices because consumers simply won't go to the ones that charge more, and are no longer trapped into shopping in their own neighbourhoods. Sweden is so advanced as a digital economy that it may be importing its own deflation via digital shopping, Pomeroy argued.

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