Tag: french

Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables — wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany’s coal-fired power stations weren’t even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany’s progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won’t be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country’s sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be “completely normal” by the year 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables — wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany’s coal-fired power stations weren’t even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany’s progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won’t be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country’s sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be “completely normal” by the year 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables — wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany’s coal-fired power stations weren’t even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany’s progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won’t be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country’s sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be “completely normal” by the year 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables — wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany’s coal-fired power stations weren’t even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany’s progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won’t be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country’s sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be “completely normal” by the year 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables

French Politician Uses Hologram To Hold Meetings In Two Cities At the Same Time

neutrino38 writes: The French presidential election is approaching fast. One of the candidates, Jean-Luc Melanchon, used a hologram to hold two public meetings at once. With a political program that is mostly socialist and very left leaning, some people pointed out that he used private innovation to stand out from the crowd. Reuters notes that this is “not the first politician to employ such technology, ” adding that “in 2014, then-Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan used a huge hologram of himself to attract wider support, while India’s Narendra Modi trounced the opposition with a campaign that included holograms of his speeches in villages across the country.” You can watch part of one of Melanchon’s virtual meetings here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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French Politician Uses Hologram To Hold Meetings In Two Cities At the Same Time

World’s First ‘Solar Panel Road’ Opens In France

The world’s first solar road has officially opened in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France. The road is 1 kilometer long and can generate enough electricity to power the street lights. The Verge reports: That might not sound very impressive for 30, 000 square feet of solar panels — and it kind of isn’t, especially for its $5.2 million price tag. The panels have been covered in a silicon-based resin that allows them to withstand the weight of passing big rigs, and if the road performs as expected, Royal wants to see solar panels installed across 1, 000 kilometers of French highway. There are numerous issues, however. For one, flat solar panels are less effective than the angled panels that are installed on roofs, and they’re also massively more expensive than traditional panels. Colas, the company that installed the road, hopes to reduce the cost of the panels going forward and it has around 100 solar panel road projects in progress around the world. Earlier this year, Solar Roadways partnered with the Missouri Department of Transportation to upgrade a small stretch of the historic Route 66 roadway with solar-powered panels. They too are facing the same seemingly insurmountable cost problems as Colas and the French. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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World’s First ‘Solar Panel Road’ Opens In France

France Becomes First Federal Postal Service To Use Drones To Deliver Mail

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The French postal service is beginning an experimental drone delivery program to deliver parcels on a nine mile route once a week. After the program gets approval from the French aviation regulatory authority, the federal postal service will be the first to ever use drone delivery on a regular route. The drones used in the French postal service experiment have the capacity to fly up to 12 miles carrying about two pounds maximum, going around 19 miles per hour. They are also equipped with parachutes for safe emergency landing in case something disrupts the flight. The eventual goal is to reach rural or mountainous regions that are otherwise difficult and expensive to get to using cars. The drone mail delivery program has been a project of the DPDgroup, Europe’s second largest international parcel delivery network, operating as a subsidiary under the French national postal service. The DPDgroup had been working on this program with Atechsys, a French drone company, since 2014 in the south of France. “The first commercial line represents a new step in the program, ” DPDgroup said in a press release. With the testing phase now over, the experimentation phase is all set to begin. Currently, those participating in the experiment to receive parcels are non-residential, including over ten tech companies. The done routes stretch over the southeastern region of Provence, going between Saint-Maximin-La-Sainte-Beaume and Pourrieres. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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France Becomes First Federal Postal Service To Use Drones To Deliver Mail

Security writer recovers from massive revenge cyberattack

Journalists are no stranger to making enemies bent on retaliation. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to survive that retaliation in internet era… just ask security writer Brian Krebs. An unknown party knocked his website offline last week with a massive distributed denial of service attack (620Gbps of non-stop data) as revenge for exposing two major cyberattack sellers who’ve since been arrested. He’s only back online after taking advantage of Google’s Project Shield , which protects journalists against censorship-oriented denial of service campaigns. His previous anti-DDoS provider, Akamai, had little choice but to drop him — the company tells the Boston Globe that a sustained attack on that level would have cost the company “millions.” The campaign might not have required an elaborate effort, either. Krebs believes that the attackers took advantage of a botnet made up of hacked Internet of Things devices like DVRs, home internet routers and security cameras , many of which have poor or even unchangeable passwords. A larger attack recently played havoc with a French web host using similar tactics. There’s also the chance that the culprits used spoofing, which magnifies attacks by tricking machines into sending reply messages to the victim. To Krebs, the incident highlights the dangers to free speech in the modern era. It’s not just that it’s relatively trivial to mount a censorship campaign, it’s that the cost of defending yourself against that campaign can be prohibitive. One anti-DDoS service estimated that an Akamai-level defense would cost Krebs over $150, 000 per year. How could any small-scale news outfit afford that kind of protection? A concerted effort to clamp down on device exploits and block spoofed traffic could be vital not just to improving basic internet security, but protecting freedom of expression. Countries with a penchant for censorship can easily use these data floods to silence critics, and they might just try so long as it’s easy. Source: Krebs on Security , Boston Globe

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Security writer recovers from massive revenge cyberattack

Facebook Live adds nonstop, 24-hour video

As part of the social network’s wider push into live video , Facebook is expanding beyond on-the-ground journalism and in-car Star Wars toy reviews . TechCrunch reports Facebook Live will now also allow for 24-hour, nonstop streaming broadcasts. The new feature is an upgrade from the 90-minute limit previously imposed on streams using Facebook’s Live API , but it comes with the drawback of not allowing for archiving or rewind streams to play back later. Which is unfortunate, considering the Facebook Live team just rolled out a feature to jump to the best bits based on reactions and comments. For now, however, the endless feeds seem to be mostly taking the place of the once-ubiquitous livecams like Explore.org’s Eagle Cam . On top of the continuous streaming capability, Facebook also debuted a Live Video feature which TechCrunch calls “geogating” that allows producers to make a video available to users in a specific location — which could come in handy for sporting events with limited broadcasting rights. And speaking of sports-friendly features, Facebook recently rolled out multi-camera support and the ability to add on-screen graphics, so it’s only a matter of time before someone creates the first Facebook-only 24-hour live news channel.

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Facebook Live adds nonstop, 24-hour video

Researchers are using silk cocoons to store blood samples

When doctors draw blood for analysis, it’s vital that the sample either be immediately examined or refrigerated. That’s because the proteins which indicate various diseases will either be destroyed by enzymes in the blood or deformed by ambient heat. Either way, the sample quickly becomes useless if you leave it sitting out. However a team of researchers from Tufts University have developed a new way to store samples without having to put them on ice by using silkworm cocoons . The system works in a manner similar to conventional dried blood spot collection — wherein a drop of blood is deposited onto a piece of cardboard and allowed to dry. The Tufts method, however, relies on powdered silk and a separate silk-based solution. Mixing these two items with a sample of blood and allowing the result to dry preserved more viable blood proteins than both the normal drying or refrigeration methods. The team published its findings in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. The technology itself is still very much in its preliminary development stages and won’t be showing up in your doctor’s office in the foreseeable future. Source: STAT News

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Researchers are using silk cocoons to store blood samples