Archive for April, 2016
German Nuclear Plant Infected with Computer Viruses, Operator Says
April 27th, 2016Via: Reuters: A nuclear power plant in Germany has been found to be infected with computer viruses, but they appear not to have posed a threat to the facility’s operations because it is isolated from the Internet, the station’s operator said on Tuesday. The Gundremmingen plant, located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Munich, […]
The Driverless Truck Is Coming, and It’s Going to Automate Millions of Jobs
April 26th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs — or drive more economic efficiency — than the driverless truck. Shipping a full truckload from L.A. to New York costs around $4,500 today, with labor representing 75 percent […]
Robot Longshoremen
April 26th, 2016Via: Bloomberg: On one end of a dock at America’s busiest port, tractor-trailers haul containers through dense, stop-and-go traffic. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes the drivers must wait, diesel engines idling, as piles are unstacked to find the specific container they need. A few hundred yards away, advanced algorithms select the most efficient pathway for autonomous […]
Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage with Solarcity in 2016 Than U.S. Installed in 2015
April 26th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: electrek: It looks like Tesla is about to change the battery game – this time by installing more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the USA installed in 2015. In a recent filing with the SEC, it was found […]
Deaths of People Related to Flint Water Crisis
April 25th, 2016Flint Water Plant Continues to Reel with Sudden Death of Foreman Via: Mlive: Already reeling from the news of criminal charges against one of its workers in the wake of the Flint water crisis, city workers are now dealing with the sudden death of a foreman at the plant. Water Treatment Plant Foreman Matthew McFarland, […]
Foreign ‘Dirty Bomb’ Responders Will Start Training in Nevada
April 25th, 2016Via: Las Vegas Review Journal: In today’s world it could be called the University for Dirty Bomb Studies. Founded in 1998, it was a niche at what was then the Nevada Test Site for emergency responders to learn how to deal with disasters caused by weapons of mass destruction. Since then, about 180,000 firefighters, police […]
Prescription Meds Get Trapped in Disturbing Pee-to-Food-to-Pee Loop
April 24th, 2016Via: Ars Technica: If you love something, set it free… so the old adage goes. Well, if the things you love are pharmaceuticals, then you’re in luck. Through vegetables and fruits, the drugs that we flush down the drain are returning to us—though we’ll ultimately pee them out again. (Love is complicated, after all) In […]
Japan’s Next Generation of Farmers Could Be Robots
April 23rd, 2016Via: Bloomberg: As the average age of farmers globally creeps higher and retirement looms, Japan has a solution: robots and driver-less tractors. The Group-of-Seven agriculture ministers meet in Japan’s northern prefecture of Niigata this weekend for the first time in seven years to discuss how to meet increasing food demand as aging farmers retire without […]
‘Scientists Can Now Make Lithium-Ion Batteries Last a Lifetime’ *
April 22nd, 2016* Using gold. (sigh) In, ARPA-E Batteries to Challenge Tesla?, I wrote: If you’re interested in energy generation and storage technologies that will actually be for sale in the near to medium term, you can safely ignore most press releases about new energy technologies working only in labs. That stuff might as well be on […]
Britain: Bulk Personal Datasets
April 22nd, 2016Via: Ars Technica: The UK’s intelligence agencies (MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) are spying on everything you do, and with only the flimsiest of safeguards in place to prevent abuse, according to more than a thousand pages of documents published today as a result of a lawsuit filed by Privacy International. The documents reveal the details […]
