Megapack: Tesla Making Shipping Container Sized Battery for Utility Scale Energy Storage
December 15th, 2018They’re going into a 1.2 GWh project in California.
1.2 GWh…
Via: Electrek:
Electrek has learned some exclusive information about Tesla’s Megapack, the company’s upcoming new stationary energy storage product.
The big new battery system is going to debut at Tesla’s giant 1.2 GWh energy storage project with PG&E in California.
As we reported earlier this year, Tesla is working on a new energy storage system called ‘Megapack’.
Not much was known about the product at the time.
Electrek can now confirm that it’s a large container-size energy storage system that Tesla plans to debut in its upcoming project commissioned by PG&E at the Moss Landing substation.
We obtained Tesla’s proposal for the project and it shows that the company plans to use ‘Megapack’ instead of its usual Powerpack for large utility-scale projects.
According to the document, a Tesla Megapack consists of long 23?-5? (7.14m) x 5?-3? (1.60m) battery system, which the company mostly installs back to back with another unit.
Parrot Uses Alexa to Order Watermelon, Lightbulbs While Owner Is Out
December 15th, 2018Via: Newsweek:
A peckish parrot has been caught ordering strawberries, a watermelon and even a water boiler through his foster owner’s electronic personal assistant.
Rocco, an African Grey, requested the items through an Alexa device while his minder was out of the home. Luckily, due to a parental lock, none of his attempted purchases went through.
Rocco, who lives with Marion Wischnewski in Berkshire, U.K., has attempted to order everything from kites and lightbulbs through Alexa since moving to her home. He also gets the device to tell him jokes and play his favorite tunes.
Federal Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional
December 14th, 2018Via: Reuters:
A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, was unconstitutional based on its mandate requiring that people buy health insurance, a decision in a case that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth agreed with a coalition of 20 states that a change in tax law last year eliminating a penalty for not having health insurance invalidated the entire Obamacare law.
The coalition of states challenging the law was led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, both Republicans.
Republicans have opposed the 2010 law – the signature domestic policy achievement of Republican President Donald Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama – since its inception and have repeatedly tried and failed to repeal it.
O’Connor ruled that under the logic of the landmark 2012 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law, the individual mandate, which required that most Americans obtain health insurance or pay a tax, is now unconstitutional.
J&J Knew for Decades that Asbestos Lurked in its Baby Powder
December 14th, 2018Via: Reuters:
A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.
Affect Recognition: Face Scanning Combined with Insane Pseudoscience
December 14th, 2018You’ll love this one.
Via: The Intercept:
Facial recognition has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers at New York University’s AI Now Institute have issued a strong warning against not only ubiquitous facial recognition, but its more sinister cousin: so-called affect recognition, technology that claims it can find hidden meaning in the shape of your nose, the contours of your mouth, and the way you smile. If that sounds like something dredged up from the 19th century, that’s because it sort of is.
AI Now’s 2018 report is a 56-page record of how “artificial intelligence” — an umbrella term that includes a myriad of both scientific attempts to simulate human judgment and marketing nonsense — continues to spread without oversight, regulation, or meaningful ethical scrutiny. The report covers a wide expanse of uses and abuses, including instances of racial discrimination, police surveillance, and how trade secrecy laws can hide biased code from an AI-surveilled public. But AI Now, which was established last year to grapple with the social implications of artificial intelligence, expresses in the document particular dread over affect recognition, “a subclass of facial recognition that claims to detect things such as personality, inner feelings, mental health, and ‘worker engagement’ based on images or video of faces.” The thought of your boss watching you through a camera that uses machine learning to constantly assess your mental state is bad enough, while the prospect of police using “affect recognition” to deduce your future criminality based on “micro-expressions” is exponentially worse.
Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Doorbell Cameras
December 14th, 2018Via: ACLU:
Recently, a patent application from Amazon became public that would pair face surveillance — like Rekognition, the product that the company is aggressively marketing to police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with Ring, a doorbell camera company that Amazon bought earlier this year.
While the details are sketchy, the application describes a system that the police can use to match the faces of people walking by a doorbell camera with a photo database of persons they deem “suspicious.” Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. In either case, if a match occurs, the person’s face can be automatically sent to law enforcement, and the police could arrive in minutes.
As a former patent litigator, I’ve spent a lot of time reading patents. It’s rare for patent applications to lay out, in such nightmarish detail, the world a company wants to bring about. Amazon is dreaming of a dangerous future, with its technology at the center of a massive decentralized surveillance network, running real-time facial recognition on members of the public using cameras installed in people’s doorbells.
Virgin Galactic Test Flight Reaches Edge of Space for First Time
December 13th, 2018Via: CBS:
Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo carried two test pilots out of the discernible atmosphere Thursday, the company’s first piloted flight to the edge of space and a major milestone for Richard Branson’s plans to eventually launch tourists on brief, sub-orbital trips to space.
It was the fourth non-government, purely commercial flight to carry pilots out of the lower atmosphere and into the realm of space, the first since 2004, and the first by any piloted spacecraft built in the United States since the space shuttle’s final flight in 2011.
Did the crew make it all the way to space? The Air Force considers 50 miles up as the point where aerodynamic effects become insignificant and space begins. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo reached an altitude of 51.4 miles during Thursday’s test flight.
Harvard’s $39B Endowment Is Reportedly Buying Up California’s Vineyards—and Their Water Rights
December 13th, 2018Via: Fortune:
Harvard University’s endowment is reportedly buying up vineyards in California’s wine country, along with the water rights belonging to those properties.
Instead of making the land purchases in its own name, Harvard is using a wholly owned subsidiary—named Brodiaea after the scientific name for the cluster lily—to buy vineyards. Harvard created Brodiaea in 2012, and by 2015 the unit had already purchased 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties for about $60 million, according to an earlier report by Reuters.
Earlier this year, the Harvard Crimson reported that Brodiaea had continued to buy up land in the area, especially vineyards with good access to ground water. Unlike many California vineyards, the ones owned by Harvard don’t welcome tourists to tastings but instead feature “no trespassing signs” on the properties, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.
France in a Nutshell: “The Government Stopped Listening to the People 20 Years Ago”
December 13th, 2018Via: Of Two Minds:
The elites’ clever exploitation of politically correct cover stories has enthralled the comatose, uncritical Left, but not those who see their living standards in a free-fall.
California Considering Text Messaging Tax
December 13th, 2018Via: CBS:
Californians may or may not type OMG at the news, but texting may soon come with an extra fee on their mobile phone bills. State regulators are weighing a tax on text messaging to help fund a program that makes phone service available to low-income residents.
A texting surcharge could help sustain the Public Purpose Program budget, which has risen to $998 million in 2017 from $670 million in 2011, according to a report from the California Public Utilities Commission. Revenue from the telecom industry that funds the program has declined to $11.3 billion last year from $16.5 billion in 2011, the CPUC report stated.
“Parties supporting the collection of surcharges on text messaging revenue argue that it will help preserve and advance universal service by increasing the revenue base upon which Public Purpose Programs rely. We agree,” CPUC stated in its findings.
The agency could vote on the issue as soon as Thursday. But the wireless industry and business groups are fighting the proposal, which if enacted, would likely show up as a flat surcharge in the small print of bills, not a fee per text.
“It’s a dumb idea,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council business-sponsored advocacy group. “This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it’s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.”
