Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Atmosphere Processors for Beijing [???]
January 10th, 2014Do not miss the conceptual visualization of the pH Conditioners: Via: Next Big Future: In the past 30 years, China has suffered from air pollution and heavy haze created by fast industrial growth and economic expansion. An Environmental Chemistry Letter research journal article reviews the techniques for remediation of air pollution. A geoengineering method is […]
West Virginia Chemical Spill Cuts Water for Up to 300,000
January 10th, 2014Freedom Industries, F*ck Yeah! Via: Reuters: A chemical spill along a West Virginia river on Thursday has resulted in a tap water ban for as many as 300,000 people, shutting down bars and restaurants and forcing residents to line up for bottled water at stores. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for […]
The Doomer Congressman Who Went Off Grid
January 5th, 2014Via: Politico: Roscoe Bartlett spent 20 years on Capitol Hill. Now he lives in a remote cabin in the woods, prepping for doomsday. When Roscoe Bartlett was in Congress, he latched onto a particularly apocalyptic issue, one almost no one else ever seemed to talk about: America’s dangerously vulnerable power grid. In speech after late-night […]
The Perils of Plastic: The Problems With Debit And Credit Cards Are Deeper Than We Thought
December 31st, 2013Via: ReadWrite: I called the regional Secret Service office—that agency is involved in both protecting the President and investigating financial crimes—and talked to the agent that was handling the investigation. He confirmed my suspicions: The problem is far worse than we imagined. While there are no real answers yet in our area, it appears that […]
Japan’s Homeless Recruited for Murky Fukushima Clean-Up
December 30th, 2013Via: Reuters: Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a […]
NSA: Office of Tailored Access Operations
December 29th, 2013I always thought that this was called Special Collection Service. Maybe this TAO thing is Double Plus Special. Via: Spiegel: The NSA’s TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency’s top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors […]
Fukushima: Outdoor Radiation Reading 25 Sieverts Per Hour
December 9th, 2013Via: news.com.au: WELCOME to Fukushima, where the radiation’s so bad it can be fatal within 20 minutes. The tsunami may have happened some 33 months ago, but the fallout just keeps getting worse. Japanese media is reporting that the intensity of radiation levels in the nuclear powerplant devastated by the earthquake – and subsequent tidal […]
Someone’s Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet
December 5th, 2013Via: Wired: In 2008, two security researchers at the DefCon hacker conference demonstrated a massive security vulnerability in the worldwide internet traffic-routing system — a vulnerability so severe that it could allow intelligence agencies, corporate spies or criminals to intercept massive amounts of data, or even tamper with it on the fly. The traffic hijack, […]
Green Energy Versus a Grid That’s Not Ready
December 4th, 2013In other news: Germany Hits 59% Renewable Peak, Grid Does Not Explode. Via: Los Angeles Times: Energy officials worry a lot these days about the stability of the massive patchwork of wires, substations and algorithms that keeps electricity flowing. They rattle off several scenarios that could lead to a collapse of the power grid — […]
Typhoons Spread Fukushima Fallout
November 29th, 2013Via: AFP: Typhoons that hit Japan each year are helping spread radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the country’s waterways, researchers say. Contaminated soil gets washed away by the high winds and rain and deposited in streams and rivers, a joint study by France’s Climate and Environmental Science laboratory (LSCE) and Tsukuba University […]
