Archive for the 'Technology' Category
MIT’s Liquid Metal Batteries Could Compensate for Intermittent Nature of Renewable Energy
March 7th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: A 40-foot trailer loaded with 25 tons of liquid metals may be the solution to the renewable-energy industry’s biggest challenge: making sure electricity is available whenever it’s needed. A Boston-area startup founded by MIT researchers is working to turn this new concept into a commercially viable product, liquid-metal batteries that will store power […]
The E-Waste Disaster in Ghana
March 7th, 2014Via: Kevin McElvaney:
Satoshi Nakamoto, Creator of Bitcoin, Has “Done Classified Work for Major Corporations and the U.S. Military”
March 6th, 2014Update: Nakamoto Now Claims, “I Never Was Involved” Via: Los Angeles Times: The day started with a possible answer to one of the digital era’s greatest mysteries: Who created the bitcoin virtual currency that has become a multibillion-dollar global phenomenon? From there, with the unlikely revelation by Newsweek magazine that it might be Dorian Satoshi […]
Windows XP Market Share Climbs Again as Customers Dig Their Heels In
March 5th, 2014Just about everyone I know with XP won’t budge, despite my warnings. Maybe Microsoft has plans to try to convert millions of XP users over to Windows 8 with the rumored Windows 8.1 with Bing, which will supposedly be free. Still, tens of millions of people will probably refuse to deal with the situation. I […]
Facebook Drones to Battle Google Balloons in the War of Airborne Internet
March 5th, 2014Via: Wired: The race for the airborne internet is on. According to multiple reports, Facebook is in talks to buy a drone maker whose solar-powered aircraft could operate as high-altitude wireless hot spots, circling in the stratosphere for years without refueling. That may seem far-fetched, but it’s not entirely surprising in the context of today’s […]
A Vast Hidden Surveillance Network Runs Across America, Powered by the Repo Industry
March 5th, 2014It’s not just law enforcement running those license plate scanners. This is absolutely nuts. Via: BetaBoston: Few notice the “spotter car” from Manny Sousa’s repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa’s unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond […]
Critical Crypto Bug Leaves Several Linux Distributions, Hundreds of Apps Open to Eavesdropping
March 4th, 2014Via: Ars Technica: Hundreds of open source packages, including the Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Debian distributions of Linux, are susceptible to attacks that circumvent the most widely used technology to prevent eavesdropping on the Internet, thanks to an extremely critical vulnerability in a widely used cryptographic code library. The bug in the GnuTLS library makes […]
A Powerful New Way to Edit DNA
March 4th, 2014Via: New York Times: In the late 1980s, scientists at Osaka University in Japan noticed unusual repeated DNA sequences next to a gene they were studying in a common bacterium. They mentioned them in the final paragraph of a paper: “The biological significance of these sequences is not known.” Now their significance is known, and […]
Rapid Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Job Losses
March 4th, 2014Via: Financial Times: The impact of IT and automation on the world of work – and dire warnings about the job destruction they might cause – are as old as the technology itself. But the convergence of a number of tech trends has made the threat more immediate. As a result, 47 per cent of […]
Sleep Problems Plague Device-Dependent Children
March 4th, 2014Via: The Fiscal Times: Parents reported that nearly 75 percent of children ages 6 to 17 have at least one electronic device in their bedroom, with many using those devices right before bedtime. “To ensure a better night’s sleep for their children, parents may want to limit their [children’s use of] technology in the bedroom […]
