Australia: 50,000 Tesla Powerwalls to Form Virtual Power Plant
May 24th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Earlier this year, Tesla announced that it reached a deal with the South Australian government to install solar arrays and Powerwalls on up to 50,000 homes to create the biggest virtual power plant in the world.
A new government was elected in the state a few weeks later and they quickly cast doubts about following through with the massive plan.
But now they confirmed that they will be moving forward with Tesla’s initiative.
Pentagon Worked with “Private-Sector Organizations” on Plan to Verify Identity with Mobile Phones
May 23rd, 2018Via: Nextgov:
The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in most commercial smartphones within two years.
The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will analyze a variety of identifiers that are unique to an individual, such as the hand pressure and wrist tension when the person holds a smartphone and the person’s peculiar gait while walking, said Steve Wallace, technical director at the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Organizations that use the tool can combine those identifiers to give the phone holder a “risk score,” Wallace said. If the risk score is low enough, the organization can presume the person is who she says she is and grant her access to sensitive files on the phone or on a connected computer or grant her access to a secure facility. If the score’s too high, she’ll be locked out.
…
Once all the bugs have been worked out of the prototypes, major companies will begin embedding the necessary tools inside the computer chips that power smartphones, he said. From there, the smartphone makers themselves will have to update phones to use the tool.
The technology should be commercially available within a couple of years, Wallace said. He declined to say which smartphone and chipmakers planned to participate in the project, but said the capability will be available “in the vast majority of mobile devices.”
It will be up to phone makers to decide whether to make the capability available and up to organizations whether to use it, he said.
DISA gathered information from some private-sector organizations, including in the financial sector, to ensure the verification tool also meets their needs, he said.
“We foresee it being used quite widely,” he said.
Related: Cyborgs at Work: Employees Getting Implanted with Microchips
Amazon Selling Face-Recognition Tech to Police
May 22nd, 2018Amazon, a large CIA contractor, is selling face-recognition tech to police.
Via: AP:
The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone.”
The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at least one agency — the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon — to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country.
But privacy advocates have been concerned about expanding the use of facial recognition to body cameras worn by officers or safety and traffic cameras that monitor public areas, allowing police to identify and track people in real time.
Robots Fight Weeds in Challenge to Agrochemical Giants
May 22nd, 2018Via: Reuters:
In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles.
Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them.
Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models.
Hawaii Lava Approaches Geothermal Power Plant
May 21st, 2018Via: Reuters:
Lava from the erupting Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island flowed towards a geothermal power plant on Monday as workers scrambled to shut it down to prevent the uncontrollable release of toxic gases.
It was the latest danger from Mount Kilauea’s eruption, which geologists says is among the worst events in a century from one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
The Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV) plant, which provides about 25 percent of power on the Big Island, has been closed since shortly after the eruptions began May 3 and some 60,000 gallons (227,124 liters) of flammable pentane used in the plant’s turbines have already been relocated.
Sweden Distributes ‘Be Prepared for War’ Leaflet to All 4.8 Million Homes
May 21st, 2018Via: Guardian:
The Swedish government has begun sending all 4.8m of the country’s households a public information leaflet telling the population, for the first time in more than half a century, what to do in the event of a war.
Om krisen eller kriget kommer (If crisis or war comes) explains how people can secure basic needs such as food, water and heat, what warning signals mean, where to find bomb shelters and how to contribute to Sweden’s “total defence”.
The 20-page pamphlet, illustrated with pictures of sirens, warplanes and families fleeing their homes, also prepares the population for dangers such as cyber and terror attacks and climate change, and includes a page on identifying fake news.
“Although Sweden is safer than many other countries, there are still threats to our security and independence,” the brochure says. “If you are prepared, you are contributing to improving the ability of the country to cope with a major strain.”
Similar leaflets were first distributed in neutral Sweden in 1943, at the height of the second world war. Updates were issued regularly to the general public until 1961, and then to local and national government officials until 1991.
Japan: Directorate for Signals Intelligence
May 21st, 2018Via: The Intercept:
The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is to eavesdrop on communications. But its operations remain so highly classified that the Japanese government has disclosed little about its work – even the location of its headquarters. Most Japanese officials, except for a select few of the prime minister’s inner circle, are kept in the dark about the directorate’s activities, which are regulated by a limited legal framework and not subject to any independent oversight.
Arizona Planning for Exodus of Californians to State in Event of Major Quake
May 21st, 2018Via: NBC:
Government agencies, businesses and other organizations in Arizona plan to participate in an exercise to practice how the state would respond to a migration of 400,000 people following a catastrophic earthquake in Southern California.
The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs says participants in the National Mass Care Exercise in the coming week will tackle how to organize operations such as providing food, shelter and medical services.
The department says its planning for the exercise has been underway for nearly a year.
New Zealand: Northlanders Living in Cars as Housing Crisis Hits Hard
May 21st, 2018We had a couple with five children turn up to Playcentre. They’re living in tents. They fled Wellington with a plan to build some sort of shack on a small piece of land that they bought a couple of valleys over from us. Until that happens: Tents. Both mum and dad had been in the IT field. *chortle*
We are seeing every manner of outlaw dwelling imaginable going up all over this area. Shipping containers. Yurts. Old buses. Uninsulated garden shed-type structures. Cob. Re-cycled houses, which are teardowns from other areas that have been put on trucks and dropped in cow paddocks.
There are many factors contributing to the mess up here. I’ll just touch on three.
First, Northland is very poor compared to the rest of the country and property prices are relatively low—if you’re from Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. So you have people selling out of the cities, quite literally running for the hills, driving prices higher. People who were poor to begin with in Northland are finding it even more difficult to find housing. The next thing you know, people are aspiring to live in shipping containers with a couple of solar panels for power.
Second, it’s extremely expensive to build a legal dwelling in New Zealand. In the Far North, since so many people live in upmermitted homes, the council seems to want to severely stick it to anyone who tries to comply. Everyone knows this and increasingly they’re saying, “F-it. I’ll live in a shack.”
Third, it’s hard to find places to rent. I don’t see this mentioned much, but here’s why it’s hard to rent in Northland: Property owners know that if they rent out a house up here, they could easily wind up with a deadbeat renter who’s difficult and expensive to dislodge or a renter who trashes the property. A meth lab operation is another real possibility.
There have been so many nightmare situations with renting that property owners would rather not deal with it. And why risk renting when property prices have never been higher? If someone has an extra house, it’s easy to sell it for a relative fortune to people fleeing Auckland.
NZ is billed as some sort of Switzerland of the South pacific. Maybe, for a few people, but the reality on the ground is very different for most.
The new government is apparently going to crack down on foreign property speculators, but that’s not going to solve the problem. The government could tell wealthy foreigners, “Sure, you can buy your doomstead, but you have to build two more houses for sale, one in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch and one in some other district. We would be getting two new homes for sale for every one bought by a speculator. Don’t worry. It’ll never happen.
How about some sort of inexpensive and fast way for councils to approve smaller dwellings?
The way permitting is done now, with the breathtaking fees and Kafkaesque red tape and delays, just has to change.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Northlanders are living in cars and cowsheds amidst a public housing crisis that won’t be solved by plans to build or buy 147 houses by 2020, a community leader says.
One Double Five Community House co-ordinator Carol Peters said Northlanders were living on streets, in emergency houses, in overcrowded houses and even in cowsheds.
Peters said building cheaper houses was a way to alleviate the problem but that required partnership between the Government, local councils and community housing providers.
Her comments come as a Ministry of Social Development report revealed it is regularly paying more than $1 million each week to Northlanders for accommodation supplements (AS) and temporary additional support (TAS).
Related: Left Behind: Why Boomtown New Zealand Has a Homelessness Crisis
Saildrones
May 20th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
Engineer and adventurer Richard Jenkins has made oceangoing robots that could revolutionize fishing, drilling, and environmental science. His aim: a thousand of them.
