Unroll this solar carpet onto a roof—or any other surface that sees sunlight.

Estonia is a small country with a population of only 1.3 million. In 2005, it became the first country in the world to allow its citizens to vote online in elections, and today 46.9% of those eligible opt to vote online.

Almost everything in Estonia can now be done online – from filing taxes to signing contracts to ordering prescriptions. Only those that marry or want to get a divorce have to physically visit an office.

The Estonian government estimates that going digital has saved the state and its citizens, 820 years in time and resources, and the country routinely places first in internet freedom, online services, digital public services, and cybersecurity.

For years, when their neighbourhood was asleep and much of the Western world was awake, all four children were forced to perform live sex shows for paedophiles around the world.

They were raped and repeatedly sexually abused on camera by their mother. Their father, aunt and uncle also took part.

Grinding poverty, high-speed internet access and an ability to accept instructions in English have all kept it going.

European research ministers are meeting in Paris to try to agree contributions to the €18.5bn (£16.1bn) of funding needed for future space activity

On their agenda are missions to the Moon and Mars, and, closer to home, satellites to monitor the weather and encrypt global communications.

The proposed budget for the European Space Agency is a near-25% increase.

New aggressive planning is needed to identify the long-duration storage technologies and find the land to grow enough resources to reach Biden net zero emissions goals, a DOE national lab reports.

Four major viable paths to a net zero emissions "clean electricity" power system by 2035 "in which benefits exceed costs" are detailed in an August study by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL.

Electric cars will no longer be exempt from vehicle excise duty from April 2025, the chancellor has said.

Announcing the change as part of his Autumn Statement, Jeremy Hunt said the move was designed to make the motoring tax system "fairer".

The RAC motoring group said it did not expect the change to dampen demand for electric vehicles (EVs).

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been on a belt-tightening mission at Google over the past three months, so it seems he saw this coming: Parent company Alphabet's latest earnings are kind of a disaster.

The company's Q3 2022 earnings were released last night, and they show a 27 percent drop in profits compared to last year, with weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue.

Revenue was up 6 percent year over year to $69.1 billion, a sharp growth decline from 2021 Q3, which saw 41 percent growth. Profits were at $13.9 billion, down from $18.9 billion in Q3 2021.

As usual, Alphabet earnings are mostly about Google ad revenue and click-through rates, with the company citing reduced spending from the "insurance, loan, mortgage, and crypto subcategories" in particular. Worries about the economy and inflation are causing many Google customers to cut their ad budgets

Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today.

As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing.

Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set u­p to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. ­

Satya Nadella doesn’t think your headset will replace your laptop

Is the metaverse a place we’ll all spend all our time someday, thus replacing all our current tech with glasses and headsets? Microsoft’s CEO doesn’t think so:

>When I think about the Metaverse, the first thing I think about is it’s not going to be born in isolation from everything else that’s in our lives, which is you’re going to have a Mac or a Windows PC, you’re going to have an iOS or an Android phone, and maybe you’ll have a headset.