Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Spectacular Drop in Renewable Energy Costs Leads to Record Global Boost
June 13th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — From Trump Pulls U.S. Out of Paris Climate Agreement: Petrofascism is alive and well in the U.S., but it’s too late to stop solar and wind. Trump’s energy policy is going up against the mathematical certainty that the costs associated with solar and wind energy […]
Tim Cook Says Apple Is Focusing on an Autonomous Car System
June 13th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It’s concentrating on self-driving technology. “We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on […]
China’s Clean Energy Ambition Floats on Abandoned Coal Mine
June 12th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: Bloomberg: China’s ambitions to dominate new energy technologies are unfolding at the site of an abandoned coal mine about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northwest of Shanghai. There, in Anhui province, Sungrow Power Supply Co. has built the world’s largest floating solar farm with 166,000 panels […]
Chinese Style Internet Censorship… in Britain?
June 10th, 2017Via: Independent: Theresa May has refused to rule out censoring the internet like China. The prime minister has looked to introduce sweeping and deep changes to the way the internet works, in what she claims is a necessary move to prevent terror. Those have included restricting the kinds of things people can post online and […]
SoftBank Agrees to Buy Robot Maker Boston Dynamics
June 8th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: SoftBank Group Corp. is taking over Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s robot dreams, buying Boston Dynamics to pursue a future when more machines intermingle with humans. As part of the transaction with Alphabet, SoftBank also agreed to buy Japanese bipedal robotics company Schaft. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
SpaceX Wins Contract to Launch Secret Air Force Space Plane
June 7th, 2017Via: CNN: A major shift in power is underway in the commercial space industry. SpaceX has won an Air Force contract to launch a secretive, unmanned X-37B space plane later this year. The upstart rocket outfit edged out United Launch Alliance — a joint venture between Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) — that until […]
Tesla’s Vice President of Solar Products: Competitors Are, “Kind of Fucked”
June 7th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — The quote in the title is referring to Tesla’s new solar roofing products, but as someone who sells more conventional solar products, the same can be said about the storage sector. I recently wrote: The storage industry needs to deal with the Tesla reality and […]
Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election
June 6th, 2017Via: The Intercept: Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept. The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided […]
‘About Half of All U.S. Retail Jobs Could Vanish Due to Computerization’
June 1st, 2017Via: Kansas City Star: Consider this before you assume you can have a long or lucrative career in the retail industry: Up to half of all current jobs in the retail sector are likely to vanish because of e-commerce, automation of jobs and the closing of brick-and-mortar stores. Millions of retail jobs — as we […]
Microsoft Co-Founder Built the World’s Largest Plane to Launch Rockets Into Space
May 31st, 2017Via: The Verge: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has spent the last six years working on a giant aircraft capable of launching rockets to space. Today, his company Stratolaunch Systems literally rolled that plane out of its hangar in the Mojave Desert for the first time ever. It’s called the Stratolaunch aircraft, and it’s massive. The […]
