Babies Made from Three People Approved in UK
December 16th, 2016Via: BBC:
Babies made from two women and one man have been approved by the UK’s fertility regulator.
The historic and controversial move is to prevent children being born with deadly genetic diseases.
Doctors in Newcastle – who developed the advanced form of IVF – are expected to be the first to offer the procedure and have already appealed for donor eggs.
The first such child could be born, at the earliest, by the end of 2017.
Some families have lost multiple children to incurable mitochondrial diseases, which can leave people with insufficient energy to keep their heart beating.
The diseases are passed down from only the mother so a technique using a donor egg as well as the mother’s egg and father’s sperm has been developed.
The resulting child has a tiny amount of their DNA from the donor, but the procedure is legal and reviews say it is ethical and scientifically ready.
Research Credit: Jb
World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That’s Cheaper Than Wind
December 16th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: Bloomberg:
Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels.
A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.
This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.
“Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack”
December 15th, 2016Oh sure.
A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington D.C. after they were leaked by ‘disgusted’ whisteblowers – and not hacked by Russia.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.
‘Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,’ said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.’
His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.
Was Seth Rich involved?
Via: NBC:
U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.
Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.
Execs Representing Companies Worth $3 Trillion Met with Trump
December 15th, 2016Via: CNBC:
Whoa, that’s a lot of dough walking around in Trump Tower.
President-elect Donald Trump’s mega technology summit in New York on Wednesday hosted leaders of companies that have a combined market value of more than $3 trillion.
That’s more than the GDP of many countries, including, the United Kingdom, France and India, according to data from the World Bank Group. Trump’s tech guests would rank as the fifth-largest country in the world based on GDP.
Apple, of course, came at the top of the list with a market value of $616 billion. Alphabet and Microsoft followed with values of $555 billion and $489 billion, respectively.
Here’s the full list:
Apple — $616 billion
Alphabet — $555 billion
Microsoft — $489 billion
Amazon — $366 billion
Facebook — $347 billion
Intel — $173 billion
Oracle — $167 billion
IBM — $160 billion
Cisco — $154 billion
Tesla — $32 billion
SpaceX — $15 billion
Total — $3.074 trillion
No Internet Access
December 14th, 2016My ISP has had an outage requiring a helicopter to get guys to a remote site. Not ETA for a fix.
I might take the night off.
Amazon Drone Makes First Delivery to Customer
December 14th, 2016Via: Engadget:
It’s already been three years since Amazon first revealed its somewhat audacious plan to make deliveries by drone. But the company is quite serious about this, and today it is announcing that it complete the first Amazon Prime Air drone-powered delivery. The company recently launched a trial in Cambridge, England — and on December 7th, Amazon completed its first drone-powered delivery. It took 13 minutes from order to delivery, with the drone departing a custom-built fulfillment center nearby.
150 Filmmakers Ask Nikon and Canon to Sell Encrypted Cameras
December 14th, 2016Yeah, well, then you’d have the old rubber hose cryptanalysis issue to contend with.
Via: Wired:
Nearly all smartphones today encrypt their storage by default, and encrypted storage software for PCs is free and reliable. But cameras, even the ones in the hands of photojournalists and documentary filmmakers capturing sensitive images and video, still don’t offer encrypted storage of video and images as a feature.
Now Poitras and 150 other documentary filmmakers have signed an open letter from the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation to camera-makers Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Fuji, Kodak and Ricoh. The foundation, which has both Poitras and Snowden on its board of directors, is asking those companies to add the encryption features missing from virtually every standalone camera on the market, so that no thief, cop, or border agent can access their footage simply by grabbing the device out of their hands.
Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Start Picking Up Passengers in San Francisco
December 14th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch:
Uber’s self-driving cars are making the move to San Francisco, in a new expansion of its pilot project with autonomous vehicles that will see Volvo SUVs outfitted with sensors and supercomputers begin picking up passengers in the city.
The autonomous cars won’t operate completely driverless, for the time being – as in Pittsburgh, where Uber launched self-driving Ford Focus vehicles this fall, each SUV will have a safety driver and Uber test engineer onboard to handle manual driving when needed and monitor progress with the tests. But the cars will still be picking up ordinary passengers – any customers who request uberX using the standard consumer-facing mobile app are eligible for a ride in one of the new XC90s operated by Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).
AUSTRALIA COULD SCRAP THE $100 NOTE
December 13th, 2016India. Venezuela.
Australia?
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Australia looks set to follow in the footsteps of Venezuela and India by abolishing the country’s highest-denomination banknote in a bid to crack down on the “black economy”.
Speaking to ABC radio on Wednesday, Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer flagged a review of the $100 note and cash payments over certain limits as the government looks to recoup billions in unpaid tax.
Monday’s midyear budget update will include the appointment of former KPMG global chairman Michael Andrew to oversee a black economy taskforce. The black economy accounts for 1.5 per cent of GDP, given many cash payments are untaxed.
O’Dwyer told the ABC not only is the lost revenue owed to the Australian people for schools and hospitals, but it’s also critical for those who do the right thing and pay tax.
“The whole point of this crackdown on the black economy is to make sure we close down any potential loopholes,” she said.
Despite the broad use of electronic forms of payment, O’Dwyer warned there are three times as many $100 notes in circulation than $5 notes.
“It does beg the question, ‘Why?'” she said.
GM Delivers First Bolt EVs to 3 Customers Just a Few Blocks from Tesla’s Factory
December 13th, 2016Via: Electrek:
While it shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a swipe at Tesla for delivering the first sub-$40,000 long-range electric vehicle before them, it wouldn’t be the first time that GM tries to subtly, or more directly, take a shot at Tesla with the Chevy Bolt EV. Like when it sent out press pictures with a Bolt prototype driving in front of Tesla’ HQ or when they criticized the company for its reservation process.
Today, GM announced that it delivered the first Bolt EVs to 3 customers in Fremont, California – just a few blocks from Tesla’s factory.
