Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid quotes The Hill: California is requiring ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to transition from gasoline to electric vehicles (EVs) in their networks by the end of this decade.

The state's clean-air regulator on Thursday unanimously approved the Clean Miles Standard mandating that EVs account for 90 percent of ride-hailing vehicle miles traveled in California by 2030. The ride-share companies will have to begin the electrification of their fleets in 2023. The move by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is part of California's effort to phase out gas-powered vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon neutral by 2045. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) last year signed an executive order requiring all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state of nearly 40 million residents be zero-emission by 2035. "The transportation sector is responsible for nearly half of California's greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority of which come from light-duty vehicles," CARB Chair Liane M. Randolph said in a statement...

Both Uber and Lyft have already committed to converting their fleets entirely to EVs by 2030 and have made efforts to help drivers make the shift.

The companies have said, however, California needs to spend more money to help drivers afford the zero emissions vehicles, according to Reuters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Seagate has been working on dual-actuator hard drives -- drives with two independently controlled sets of read/write heads -- for several years. Its first production dual-actuator drive, the Mach.2, is now "available to select customers," meaning that enterprises can buy it directly from Seagate, but end-users are out of luck for now. Seagate lists the sustained, sequential transfer rate of the Mach.2 as up to 524MBps -- easily double that of a fast "normal" rust disk and edging into SATA SSD territory. The performance gains extend into random I/O territory as well, with 304 IOPS read / 384 IOPS write and only 4.16 ms average latency. (Normal hard drives tend to be 100/150 IOPS and about the same average latency.)

The added performance requires additional power; Mach.2 drives are rated for 7.2 W idle, while Seagate's standard Ironwolf line is rated at 5 W idle. It gets more difficult to compare loaded power consumption because Seagate specs the Mach.2 differently than the Ironwolf. The Mach.2's power consumption is explicitly rated for several random I/O scenarios, while the Ironwolf line is rated for an unhelpful "average operating power," which isn't defined in the data sheet. Still, if we assume -- probably not unreasonably -- a similar expansion of power consumption while under load, the Mach.2 represents an excellent choice for power efficiency since it offers roughly 200% of the performance of competing traditional drives at roughly 144% of the power budget. Particularly power-conscious users can also use Seagate's PowerBalance mode -- although that feature decreases sequential performance by 50% and random performance by 10%.

Israeli company ElectReon Wireless is building a kilometer-long stretch of electric vehicle-charging highway between Milan and Brescia in Italy. It's the first trial of its kind involving a highway and will help determine if the technology is ready for widespread adoption. Innovation Origins reports: In a nutshell, Electreon is building the infrastructure by installing copper coils under the asphalt. Energy is transferred directly and wirelessly to the vehicle's batteries while driving by means of magnetic induction. The system includes a control unit located on the side of the lane of the electrified road. A receiver is installed in the chassis of each electric vehicle that is participating in the trial.

ElectReon is working with more than ten Italian partners to carry out the test. The most important of these is Brebemi, who operate the toll road. The goal of the pilot is to see how the technology will fare on toll roads. Brebemi is footing the bill for the pilot project while ElectReon will supply the wireless electric road system. "Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer," as the technology is called, will be tested on different types of electric vehicles in both stationary and dynamic environments.

Around 4.5% of all bitcoin mining takes place in Iran, allowing the country to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies that can be used to buy imports and lessen the impact of sanctions, a new study has found. At its current level of mining, Iran's bitcoin production would amount to revenues close $1 billion a year, according to figures from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Reuters reports: The United States imposes an almost total economic embargo on Iran, including a ban on all imports including those from the country's oil, banking and shipping sectors. While, exact figures are "very challenging to determine," Elliptic estimates are based on data collected from bitcoin miners by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance up to April 2020, and statements from Iran's state-controlled power generation company in January that up to 600 MW of electricity was being consumed by miners.

"Iran has recognised that bitcoin mining represents an attractive opportunity for a sanctions-hit economy suffering from a shortage of hard cash, but with a surplus of oil and natural gas," the study finds. The electricity being used by miners in Iran would require the equivalent of around 10 million barrels of crude oil each year to generate, around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020, according to the study. "The Iranian state is therefore effectively selling its energy reserves on the global markets, using the Bitcoin mining process to bypass trade embargoes," the study reads. "Iran-based miners are paid directly in Bitcoin, which can then be used to pay for imports - allowing sanctions on payments through Iranian financial institutions to be circumvented."

For years, technology companies have imposed strict limits on who can fix chipped iPhones, broken game consoles and a wealth of other non-working (or defective) gadgets. From a report: Components are kept in short supply or simply not shared with independent shops to mend things like USB ports and batteries. After seeing these restrictions firsthand, Millman [anecdote in the story, who runs a repair shop in New York] joined a cadre of small business owners, hobbyists and activists pushing right-to-repair bills across the country. These measures are designed to undo rules businesses set to restrict repairs to authorized providers for a vast range of products from a Kindle to a wheelchair.

Twenty-seven states considered such bills in 2021. More than half have already been voted down or dismissed, according to consumer groups tracking the proposals. To advocates of these bills, the current repair system is a major reason why we cycle through personal devices so quickly, furthering the environmental impact of these gadgets. [...] One reason these legislative efforts have failed is the opposition, which happens to sell boatloads of new devices every year. Microsoft's top lawyer advocated against a repair bill in its home state. Lobbyists for Google and Amazon.com swooped into Colorado this year to help quash a proposal. Trade groups representing Apple successfully buried a version in Nevada. Telecoms, home appliance firms and medical companies also opposed the measures, but few have the lobbying muscle and cash of these technology giants. While tech companies face high-profile scrutiny in Washington, they quietly wield power in statehouses to shape public policy and stamp out unwelcome laws.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Swedish private equity firm EQT had high hopes for its SUSE IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and set the European Linux and cloud power's IPO price at 30 euros per share. Alas, SUSE's shares opened at 29.50 euros per share. By the close of business on May 20th, the stock crept up to 30.39 euros. This gave it a market cap of around 5 billion euros (approximately $6.1 billion). This is nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn't what EQT hoped for either. Before the IPO, EQT had sought an IPO price as high as 34 euros per share. Still, this was no failure. SUSE and its backers sold 37.8 million shares in the IPO, for 1.1 billion euros. EQT is still keeping a stake. SUSE itself continues to do well with reported revenue of $503 million for the 2020 financial year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Does riding an electric bike to work count as exercise, and not just a mode of transportation? It can, if you ride right, according to a pragmatic new study comparing the physiological effects of e-bikes and standard road bicycles during a simulated commute. The study, which involved riders new to e-cycling, found that most could complete their commutes faster and with less effort on e-bikes than standard bicycles, while elevating their breathing and heart rates enough to get a meaningful workout. But the benefits varied and depended, to some extent, on how people's bikes were adjusted and how they adjusted to the bikes. The findings have particular relevance at the moment, as pandemic restrictions loosen and offices reopen, and many of us consider options other than packed trains to move ourselves from our homes to elsewhere.

So, for the new study, which was published in March in the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, researchers at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, decided to ask inexperienced cyclists to faux commute. To do so, they recruited 30 local men and women, aged 19 to 61, and invited them to the physiology lab to check their fitness levels, along with their current attitudes about e-bikes and commuting. Then, they equipped each volunteer with a standard road bike and an e-bike and asked them to commute on each bike at their preferred pace for three miles, a distance the scientists considered typical for bike commutes in America. The cyclists pedaled around a flat loop course, once on the road bikes and twice with the e-bike. On one of these rides, their bike was set to a low level of pedal assistance, and on the other, the oomph was upped until the motor sent more than 200 watts of power to the pedals. Throughout, the commuters wore timers, heart rate monitors and facial masks to measure their oxygen consumption.

Afterward, to no one's surprise, the scientists found that the motorized bikes were zippy. On e-bikes, at either assistance level, riders covered the three miles several minutes faster than on the standard bike -- about 11 or 12 minutes on an e-bike, on average, compared to about 14 minutes on a regular bike. They also reported that riding the e-bike felt easier. Even so, their heart rates and respiration generally rose enough for those commutes to qualify as moderate exercise, based on standard physiological benchmarks, the scientists decided, and should, over time, contribute to health and fitness. But the cyclists' results were not all uniform or constructive. A few riders' efforts, especially when they used the higher assistance setting on the e-bikes, were too physiologically mild to count as moderate exercise. Almost everyone also burned about 30 percent fewer calories while e-biking than road riding -- 344 to 422 calories, on average, on an e-bike, versus 505 calories on a regular bike -- which may be a consideration if someone is hoping to use bike commuting to help drop weight.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Taiwan News: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), National Taiwan University (NTU), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made a significant breakthrough in the development of 1-nanometer chips, reports said Tuesday (May 18). The joint announcement has trumped IBM's statement earlier in the month about the development of a 2nm semiconductor, British website Verdict reported. While at present the most advanced chips are 5nm, TSMC's find was likely to lead to power-saving and higher speeds for future electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies.

The discovery was first made by the MIT team, with elements optimized by TSMC and improved by NTU's Department of Electrical Engineering and Optometrics, according to a report in Nature Magazine. The key element of the research outcome was that using the semi-metal bismuth as the contract electrode of a two-dimensional material to replace silicon can cut resistance and increase the current, Verdict reported. Energy efficiency would thus increase to the highest possible level for semiconductors.

Ford unveiled Wednesday the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck that is a critical piece of the company's $22 billion investment into electrification. TechCrunch reports: Ford had a challenging gig with the F-150 Lightning. The truck would need everything that has made its gas-powered counterpart the best-selling vehicle in North America as well as new benefits that come from going electric. That means torque, performance, towing capability and the general layout has to meet the needs of its customers, many of whom use it for commercial purposes. The vehicle specs suggest that Ford has delivered on the torque and power, while keeping the same cab and bed dimensions as its gas counterpart. [...] Will it convert or will the F-150 Lightning attract a whole new group of customers? It's a question that won't be answered until it comes to market in spring 2022.

The F-150 Lightning will be offered in four trims, which includes the base, XLT, Lariat and Platinum series, and two battery options. The truck, which has an aluminum alloy body, is powered by two in-board electric motors, comes standard with four-wheel drive, and has an independent rear suspension. Ford is only releasing two prices at the moment. The base version will be priced at $39,974 before any federal or state tax credits, while the mid-series XLT model will start at $52,974. According to the reservations site, a fully loaded Lightning will go for $90,474. All of these prices exclude the destination fees and taxes.

The standard battery range truck delivers a targeted 426 horsepower and 775 pound-feet of torque. The F-150 Lightning equipped with the extended-range battery helps push the horsepower to 563 (or 420 kW) and has the same torque, which Ford says is the most of any F-150 ever. The vehicle's battery has a targeted range of 230 miles in the standard and pops up to 300 miles in the extended version. One question remains: how will the range be affected by towing a boat or trailer? [...] Ford notes that the new frame on the truck uses the strongest steel ever put in an F-150 frame and supports a maximum 2,000-pound payload and up to 10,000-pound towing capacity. Other features include a 15.5-inch infotainment system, support for Ford's hands-free driving feature called Blue Cruise, and 9.6 kW of back up power, which the company says can provide energy to a home during a blackout for up to 10 days.

Google developers are confident they can build a commercial-grade quantum computer by 2029. Engadget reports: Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the plan during today's I/O stream, and in a blog post, quantum AI lead engineer Erik Lucero further outlined the company's goal to "build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer" within the decade. Executives also revealed Google's new campus in Santa Barbara, California, which is dedicated to quantum AI. The campus has Google's first quantum data center, hardware research laboratories, and the company's very own quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

"As we look 10 years into the future, many of the greatest global challenges, from climate change to handling the next pandemic, demand a new kind of computing," Lucero said. "To build better batteries (to lighten the load on the power grid), or to create fertilizer to feed the world without creating 2 percent of global carbon emissions (as nitrogen fixation does today), or to create more targeted medicines (to stop the next pandemic before it starts), we need to understand and design molecules better. That means simulating nature accurately. But you can't simulate molecules very well using classical computers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: All future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to stand any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. In a special report designed to inform negotiators at the crucial COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, the IEA predicted a "sharp decline in fossil fuel demand" in the next three decades as well as a 2040 deadline for the global energy sector to achieve carbon neutrality. The Paris-based think tank called for a rapid and vast ramping up of renewable energy investment and capacity, which bring gains in development, wealth and human health.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the roadmap outlined in the report showed that the path to global net-zero by 2050 was "narrow but still achievable." "The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal -- our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5C -- make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced," he said. "Under the IEA's net-zero pathway, oil usage is projected to decline 75 percent and gas 55 percent by mid-century," the report notes. "It also said that all inefficient coal power plants needed to close by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero by 2050."

The IEA went on to say that around half of reductions by 2050 would be provided by "technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase," which include direct air capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.

After Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake, the blockchain's power consumption is expected to drop by more than 99%, making it about 7,000 times more energy efficient than Bitcoin. Crypto Briefing reports: Ethereum will reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% following its transition to proof-of-stake, according to a new blog post from Carl Beekhuizen of the Ethereum Foundation. Beekhuizen estimated there are 87,000 at-home stakers using about 100W of energy for a total of 1.64 megawatts. Additionally, there are another 52,700 exchanges and custodial services that use about 100W per 5.5 validators for a total of 0.98 megawatts. Based on those estimates, Beekhuizen says that Ethereum will consume about 2.62 megawatts when it switches to proof-of-stake.

Beekhuizen added that this estimate may be too large. He noted that his own personal staking setup was optimized to use 15W, while some staking services use as little as 5W per validator. This means that Ethereum will no longer use the energy equivalent of a country or even a city. Instead, its total consumption will be comparable to a small town that contains around 2100 homes.

Horacio Gutierrez, head of global affairs and chief legal officer at Spotify, writes in an opinion piece: I am heartened by the growing global consensus, but time is on Apple's side. While Spotify has been successful despite Apple's behavior, for many app developers the threat of irreparable harm is immediate. The process for putting together regulatory changes is long and laborious. This gives Apple the ability to wait it out and continue stifling innovators, many of whom will fail before they even have a chance to compete. That is why Spotify is asking Congress to pursue urgent, narrowly tailored updates to American antitrust law to end such egregious abuses. It is also why my company has supported the proposed Digital Markets Act in Europe, a legislative proposal that seeks to address unfair and anticompetitive practices of powerful digital platforms.

Apple's ability to strangle its competitors is unprecedented. Even Microsoft in the heyday of the Windows operating system didn't demand a 30% cut of new subscription revenues from competing browsers or media players. And it didn't dictate how or when Microsoft's competitors could communicate with customers. What's more, unless legislative and enforcement action is taken, other platforms will follow Apple's example. The result? Further concentration of power in the hands of a small number of unaccountable digital sovereigns who create and enforce rules that favor their services. The good news is that Spotify is no longer alone in saying this. At long last, those in a position to do something have seen past Apple's facade and are beginning to act in the interests of innovators and consumers around the world.

The Justice Department under President Trump secretly obtained a grand-jury subpoena last year in an attempt to identify the person behind a Twitter account dedicated to mocking Representative Devin Nunes of California, according to a newly unsealed court document. From a report: But Twitter fought the subpoena, as well as an associated gag order barring the company from talking about it publicly. Twitter executives raised skepticism about whether the Justice Department might be abusing federal criminal law-enforcement power to retaliate against a critic of Mr. Nunes, a Republican who is a close ally of Mr. Trump, in violation of the First Amendment. Ultimately, according to a person familiar with the matter, the Justice Department withdrew the subpoena this spring, after President Biden took office.

What was going on behind the subpoena remains murky. The filing -- a motion to suppress the subpoena and lift the gag order that Twitter filed in March -- shows that the Justice Department sent the company a demand on Nov. 24 to provide identifying information about the user @NunesAlt. Twitter appears to have immediately been suspicious about the legitimacy of the request. The user of that account, the filing said, "appears to be engaged in clear First Amendment activity, discussing stances on current events, government policies and one elected official in particular -- Congressman Nunes." The filing provided examples of some of the account's tweets, such as a photograph of Mr. Nunes with text superimposed over his face: "Believe in conspiracy theories. Even if there is no evidence."

Scientists monitoring the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have seen a surge in fission reactions in an inaccessible chamber within the complex. They are now investigating whether the problem will stabilise or require a dangerous and difficult intervention to prevent a runaway nuclear reaction. From a report: The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 brought down walls and sealed off many rooms and corridors. Tonnes of fissile material from the interior of a reactor were strewn throughout the facility and the heat it generated melted sand from the reactor walls with concrete and steel to form lava-like and intensely radioactive substances that oozed into lower floors. One chamber, known as subreactor room 305/2, is thought to contain large amounts of this material, but it is inaccessible and hasn't been seen by human or robotic eyes since the disaster.

Now, researchers have seen a spike in neutron emissions from the room, with levels increasing around 40 per cent since the start of 2016. This points to a growing nuclear fission reaction, so researchers are trying to determine if this surge will fizzle out, as previous spikes in other parts of the ruins have done, or whether they will need to find a way to access the room and intervene. Neil Hyatt at the University of Sheffield, UK, who studies nuclear waste disposal, likens the situation to "embers in a barbecue pit" and says "it's a reminder to us that it's not a problem solved, it's a problem stabilised."

One suggestion for why this is happening is that a new structure placed over the ruined reactor in 2016 is causing the plant to dry out. When uranium or plutonium fuel decay radioactively, they emit neutrons, which can promote a fission reaction if the neutrons are captured by another radioactive nuclei. However, large amounts of water slow these neutrons down, preventing them from being captured. The original shelter, which was hurriedly constructed over the reactor in the months following the accident, was riddled with holes that allowed rainwater and birds inside. If the rainwater was helping to suppress reactions in room 305/2, its absence due to the new structure could mean there is no longer enough water in the room to sufficiently slow neutrons down.

A tech columnist for Inc. noticed that on June 8th Amazon will finally power up its massive "Sidewalk" mesh network (which uses Bluetooth and 900MHz radio signals to communicate between devices). And millions and millions of Amazon customers are all already "opted in" by default: The idea behind it is actually really smart — make it possible for smart home devices to serve as a sort of bridge between your WiFi connection and one another. That way, if your Ring doorbell, for example, isn't located close to your WiFi router, but it happens to be near an Echo Dot, it can use Sidewalk to stay connected.

The same is true if your internet connection is down. Your smart devices can connect to other smart devices, even if they aren't in your home. The big news on this front is that Tile is joining the Sidewalk network on June 14. That means that if you lose a Tile tracker, it can connect to any of the millions of Echo or Ring devices in your neighborhood and send its location back to you.

That's definitely a nice benefit, but it's also where things get a little murky from a privacy standpoint. That's because other people's devices, like your neighbor's, can also connect to your network. Amazon is pretty clear that Sidewalk uses three layers of encryption so that no data is shared between say, someone's Tile tracker and your network. The signal from the Tile is encrypted all the way back to the Tile app on your iPhone or Android smartphone... [But] whether or not you want your device connecting to other devices, or want your neighbors connecting to your WiFi, Amazon went ahead and made Sidewalk opt-out.
Opt out (for all your devices) using Alexa app's More tab (at the bottom): Settings > Account Settings > Amazon Sidewalk > Enabled.

Politico's technology site Protocol reports that some U.S. lawmakers are getting angry about an unpopular but widespread corporate policy -- the non-compete agreement: Non-compete agreements prohibit employees who leave their jobs from taking similar positions with potential competitors for a certain period of time. In the U.S., somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to non-compete agreements, according to a 2019 Economic Policy Institute study.

Such agreements are unenforceable in California and limited in nearby Washington, but they can still have adverse effects on employees nationwide. That's why a current piece of legislation, the Workforce Mobility Act, seeks at the federal level to restrict the use of non-compete agreements in most situations. Sens. Chris Murphy and Todd Young introduced the bill, which would only allow non-competes in certain "necessary" situations... Non-compete legislation also has the support of President Joe Biden, who said during his campaign he would support such a bill. John Lettieri, president and CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, is a proponent of the Workforce Mobility Act and suggested the bill should enjoy broad support. "We believe we're in a position where it's possible for this to become law," Lettieri told Protocol.

"Whether you're a free market conservative or whether you're a pro-worker progressive, you can come from either of those ends of the spectrum and end up in the same place. And this is a special issue for that reason... Competition is generally good and for workers, competition among businesses for your labor is the most fundamental bargaining power you've got," he said. But if companies hinder that with non-compete agreements, they create "a downstream series of consequences that really are bad for the worker, they're bad for the broader labor market and it's increasingly clear they're bad for the broader economy as well...."

Companies such as Amazon and Microsoft — both headquartered in Seattle, Washington — and New York-headquartered IBM have all sued employees for breaking the terms of their non-compete agreements.

Graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group "are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold three time the energy of the best aluminum-based cells," writes a transportation correspondent for Forbes: They are also safer, with no upper Ampere limit to cause spontaneous overheating, more sustainable and easier to recycle, thanks to their stable base materials. Testing also shows the coin-cell validation batteries also last three times longer than lithium-ion versions.

GMG plans to bring graphene aluminum-ion coin cells to market late this year or early next year, with automotive pouch cells planned to roll out in early 2024.

Based on breakthrough technology from the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the battery cells use nanotechnology to insert aluminum atoms inside tiny perforations in graphene planes... GMG Managing Director Craig Nicol insisted that while his company's cells were not the only graphene aluminum-ion cells under development, they were easily the strongest, most reliable and fastest charging. "It charges so fast it's basically a super capacitor," Nicol claimed. "It charges a coin cell in less than 10 seconds." The new battery cells are claimed to deliver far more power density than current lithium-ion batteries, without the cooling, heating or rare-earth problems they face....

Aluminum-ion technology has intrinsic advantages and disadvantages over the preeminent lithium-ion battery technology being used in almost every EV today. When a cell recharges, aluminum ions return to the negative electrode and can exchange three electrons per ion instead of lithium's speed limit of just one. There is also a massive geopolitical, cost, environmental and recycling advantage from using aluminum-ion cells, because they use hardly any exotic materials. "It's basically aluminum foil, aluminum chloride (the precursor to aluminum and it can be recycled), ionic liquid and urea," Nicol said.

Though halted last week by ransomware, America's largest gasoline pipeline announced Saturday that it's resumed normal operations, reports the Associated Press, "delivering fuel to its markets, including a large swath of the East Coast." Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline had begun the process of restarting the pipeline's operations on Wednesday evening, warning it could take several days for the supply chain to return to normal.

"Since that time, we have returned the system to normal operations, delivering millions of gallons per hour to the markets we serve," Colonial Pipeline said in a tweet Saturday. Those markets include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

One of the creators of dogecoin has noted that he "didn't consider" the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency, which was initially created as a joke. The Independent reports: The comments from Billy Markus, one of the people who helped create dogecoin in the first place, when it was intended partly as a joke, came in response to a tweet from Elon Musk. Mr Musk had been attempting to clarify his position on cryptocurrency generally, in the wake of his statement about Tesla. "To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can't drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal," Mr Musk had written. In response, Mr Markus sent a crying face emoji, which he later clarified he had meant to indicate "aw man, you right, environment stuff." In reply to that, Mr Markus was asked whether he had considered energy usage when creating the cryptocurrency. "i made doge in like 2 hours i didn't consider anything," he wrote.

Dogecoin was created in 2013, in reference to the meme and to poke fun at the vast numbers of cryptocurrencies that had been launched. But Mr Markus helped build the technical foundations that allow it to practically work, too. Like bitcoin, dogecoin requires miners to undertake complex cryptographical puzzles to create new bitcoins. That system, known as proof-of-work, relies on large amounts of computing power that use considerable amounts of energy, much of which is generated from fossil fuels.