EV West Shop Off Grid with DIY Powerwall
August 12th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Guys who refuse to wait.
Via: Jehu Garcia:
Related: EV West
A Big Leap for an Artificial Leaf *
August 11th, 2016* “Commercializing the technology will likely take years.”
Indeed, there are posts about Nocera’s various artificial leaf iterations on Cryptogon going back almost a decade…
Via: MIT Technology Review:
Daniel Nocera, a professor of energy science at Harvard who pioneered the use of artificial photosynthesis, says that he and his colleague Pamela Silver have devised a system that completes the process of making liquid fuel from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. And they’ve done it at an efficiency of 10 percent, using pure carbon dioxide—in other words, one-tenth of the energy in sunlight is captured and turned into fuel. That is much higher than natural photosynthesis, which converts about 1 percent of solar energy into the carbohydrates used by plants, and it could be a milestone in the shift away from fossil fuels. The new system is described in a new paper in Science.
“Bill Gates has said that to solve our energy problems, someday we need to do what photosynthesis does, and that someday we might be able to do it even more efficiently than plants,” says Nocera. “That someday has arrived.”
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Commercializing the technology will likely take years.
DEA Regularly Mines Americans’ Travel Records to Seize Millions in Cash
August 11th, 2016“Basically, you’ve got to feed the monster.”
Via: USA Today:
Federal drug agents regularly mine Americans’ travel information to profile people who might be ferrying money for narcotics traffickers — though they almost never use what they learn to make arrests or build criminal cases.
Instead, that targeting has helped the Drug Enforcement Administration seize a small fortune in cash.
DEA agents have profiled passengers on Amtrak trains and nearly every major U.S. airline, drawing on reports from a network of travel-industry informants that extends from ticket counters to back offices, a USA TODAY investigation has found. Agents assigned to airports and train stations singled out passengers for questioning or searches for reasons as seemingly benign as traveling one-way to California or having paid for a ticket in cash.
The DEA surveillance is separate from the vast and widely-known anti-terrorism apparatus that now surrounds air travel, which is rarely used for routine law enforcement. It has been carried out largely without the airlines’ knowledge.
It is a lucrative endeavor, and one that remains largely unknown outside the drug agency. DEA units assigned to patrol 15 of the nation’s busiest airports seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people over the past decade after concluding the money was linked to drug trafficking, according to Justice Department records. Most of the money was passed on to local police departments that lend officers to assist the drug agency.
“They count on this as part of the budget,” said Louis Weiss, a former supervisor of the DEA group assigned to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. “Basically, you’ve got to feed the monster.”
Unsafe Levels of Toxic Chemicals Found in Drinking Water for Six Million Americans
August 10th, 2016Only six million. *wink*
Via: Science Bulletin:
Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems — polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) — exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
The study will be published August 9, 2016 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
“For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences,” said lead author Xindi Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS. “In addition, the actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found, because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population — about 100 million people.”
PFASs have been used over the past 60 years in industrial and commercial products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to pots and pans. They have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity. Although several major manufacturers have discontinued the use of some PFASs, the chemicals continue to persist in people and wildlife. Drinking water is one of the main routes through which people can be exposed.
Google Employees Have Enjoyed Revolving Door During Obama Administration
August 10th, 2016Via: Watchdog.org:
More than 250 people have moved from Google and related firms to the federal government or vice versa since President Barack Obama took office.
The Google Transparency Project, the work of Campaign for Accountability, poured over reams of data to find 258 instances of “revolving door activity” between Google or its associated companies and the federal government, national political campaigns and Congress since 2009.
Much of that revolving door activity took place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where 22 former White House officials went to work for Google and 31 executives from Google and related firms went to work at the White House or were appointed to federal advisory boards by Obama. Those boards include the President’s Council on Science and Technology and the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
WikiLeaks: US$20K Reward for Information Leading to Conviction for the Murder of Seth Rich
August 9th, 2016Via: Nieuwsuur:
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Via: WikiLeaks:
ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 9, 2016
Related: DNC Staffer Murdered
90-Year-Old Cryptanalytic Efforts Must Stay Secret, Says NSA
August 9th, 2016Via: The National Security Archive:
The National Security Agency is withholding 90-year-old information on early American cryptanalytic efforts against Russia and the Soviet Union from a 20-year-old document on the grounds that releasing the information could “reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security.”
Specifically, the NSA claims that the release of the information would harm another government agency’s (OGA) “intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology” – the OGA cited by the NSA is either the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) or the CIA.
Quantum Computers: Chips with Built-In Optics
August 9th, 2016In case you don’t know about Lincoln Lab:
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security.
Via: MIT News:
Although quantum systems with as many as 12 qubits have been demonstrated in the lab, building quantum computers complex enough to perform useful computations will require miniaturizing qubit technology, much the way the miniaturization of transistors enabled modern computers.
Trapped ions are probably the most widely studied qubit technology, but they’ve historically required a large and complex hardware apparatus. In today’s Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.
“If you look at the traditional assembly, it’s a barrel that has a vacuum inside it, and inside that is this cage that’s trapping the ions. Then there’s basically an entire laboratory of external optics that are guiding the laser beams to the assembly of ions,” says Rajeev Ram, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and one of the senior authors on the paper. “Our vision is to take that external laboratory and miniaturize much of it onto a chip.”
Marie Curie Got Her Start At a Secret University For Women
August 9th, 2016Via: Atlas Obscura:
In the 1860s and 1870s, more educational opportunities were being made available to women in Poland, but universities still staunchly refused to admit them. In 1863, the Ministry of Education had actually sent out a decree to every university council in the country explicitly banning women from enrolling (to be fair, most all universities across Europe had policies forbidding women at the time). Any effort to give a complete education to the complete population would have to happen in violation of the new laws.
The Flying University began in the Polish capital of Warsaw in 1882, when secret classes for women began taking place in private homes. The lectures and seminars were taught by Polish philosophers, professors, and historians. Here they could not only receive a proper higher education, but also one that celebrated Polish heritage, free from the influence of outside powers. Hosting and organizing the classes was illegal under government statute, so to avoid detection they often changed location, moving from private home to private home. The classes came to be known as the Uniwersytet Lataj?cy, the Flying (or Floating) University.
Orlando Shooter’s Father Attends Hillary Clinton Rally in Kissimmee
August 9th, 2016Via: WPTV:
Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd in Kissimmee, just south of Orlando. She was supposed to be talking jobs, but started the speech off paying tribute to those affected by the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
“I know how many people, families, loved ones, and friends are still grieving, and we will be with you as you rebuild your lives.”
WPTV happened to notice the man, who has a mustache and was wearing a red hat, behind Clinton. It was Seddique Mateen, the father of Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen.
