Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Britain: Air Traffic Control System Failure
December 12th, 2014Via: Guardian: London airspace has been severely restricted after a system failure at the main national control centre in Swanick. Passengers travelling to and from London’s major airports face lengthy delays and cancellations, with European controllers suggesting skies would be restricted until 7pm GMT. The restriction, which appears to have been sparked by either a […]
Enphase Says Solar + Solar Market “Infinite,” Ahead of Australia Battery Pilot
December 5th, 2014Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in NZ. Via: RenewEconomy: When the world’s biggest supplier of solar inverters (sometimes described as the “brains” of solar PV systems) sets up camp in Australia, it’s probably a development worth noting. California-based “solar-tech” company Enphase opened offices in Sydney and Melbourne around 18 months ago, and since then, […]
Electricity Infrastructure in Detroit “Beyond Salvage”
December 2nd, 2014Via: Mlive: When a major U.S. city’s government loses power to its schools, fire stations, government buildings and sporting arenas because it’s operating on an antiquated power grid that it can’t afford to update, it’s national news, Detroit proved Tuesday. Media across the nation covered the power outage that selectively impacted municipal buildings in Detroit, […]
You Don’t Know Shit
November 12th, 2014Vis: Vice: Every day, America must find a place to park 5 billion gallons of human waste, and we’re increasingly unable to find the space. We wake up in the morning, brush our teeth, and flush the toilet, thinking that the waste water disappears into the center of the Earth. If only that were the […]
Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
October 28th, 2014Via: Newsweek: It was also in 1999 that Schmidt joined the board of a Washington, D.C.–based group: the New America Foundation, a merger of well-connected centrist forces (in D.C. terms). The foundation and its 100 staff serve as an influence mill, using its network of approved national security, foreign policy and technology pundits to place […]
Contact Lost With Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread
October 3rd, 2014Via: Bloomberg: The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began. Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead. Within minutes, radar feeds, flight […]
Taps Running Dry in Rural California
October 2nd, 2014Via: New York Times: State officials say that at least 700 households have no access to running water, but they acknowledge that there could be hundreds more, with many rural well-owners not knowing whom to contact. Tulare County, just south of Fresno, recently began aggressively tracking homes without running water, delivering bottles to hundreds of […]
U.S. Attacking Oil Infrastructure Belonging to… ISIS?
September 24th, 2014Via: CNN: U.S. and coalition warplanes pounded ISIS positions in eastern Syria on Wednesday, targeting what a Pentagon official described as mobile oil refineries being used by the so-called Islamic State terror group to help finance its operations. The latest round of airstrikes were aimed at cutting off money flowing to ISIS, which makes up […]
EMP Hardened Data Centers
September 16th, 2014Via: Computerworld: In Boyers, Pa., a recently opened 2,000-sq.-ft. data center has been purpose-built to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), either generated by a solar storm or a nuclear event. The company that built the facility isn’t disclosing exactly how the data center was constructed or what materials were used. But broadly, it did […]
A $50 Billion Chinese Canal Across Nicaragua
August 17th, 2014Via: NPR: One hundred years ago today, the first ship passed through the brand-new, U.S.-built Panama Canal; a century later, Panama owns the canal outright, and the country is one of the most prosperous in the region. Panama’s neighbor to the north, Nicaragua, is hoping a transoceanic canal and similar prosperity are in its near […]
