Beijing is one thirsty city. Its population of 22 million consumes barely 100 cubic meters of water per capita—one fifth the international water-shortage level—thanks to a chronic drought in the nation’s north. But this massive desalination plant could help supply a third of the city’s water singlehandedly. Read more…
View article:
Beijing’s Giant New Desalination Plant Will Give Water to the People
Lucas123 (935744) writes “Seagate has released what it said is the industry’s fastest hard drive with up to a 6TB capacity, matching one released by WD last year. WD’s 6TB Ultrastar He6 was hermetically sealed with helium inside, something the company said was critical to reducing friction for additional platters, while also increasing power savings and reliability. Seagate, however, said it doesn’t yet need to rely on Helium to achieve the 50% increase in capacity over it’s last 4TB drive. The company used the same perpendicular magnetic recording technology that it has on previous models, but it was able to increase areal density from 831 bits per square inch to 1, 000. The new drive also comes in 2TB, 4TB and 5TB capacities and with either 12Gbps SAS or 6Gbps SATA connectivity. The six-platter, enterprise-class drive is rated to sustain about 550TB of writes per year — 10X that of a typical desk top drive.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read More:
Seagate Releases 6TB Hard Drive Sans Helium
An anonymous reader writes “An article at FiveThirtyEight looks at the likelihood of various occupations being replaced by automation. It mentions President Obama’s proposed increase to the federal minimum wage, saying big leaps in automation could reshape that debate. ‘[The wage increase] from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour could make it worthwhile for employers to adopt emerging technologies to do the work of their low-wage workers. But can a robot really do a janitor’s job? Can software fully replace a fast-food worker? Economists have long considered these low-skilled, non-routine jobs as less vulnerable to technological replacement, but until now, quantitative estimates of a job’s vulnerability have been missing from the debate.’ Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years (PDF): 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff. There are other jobs with a high likelihood, but they employ fewer people and generally have a higher pay rate: tax preparers (99%), freight workers (99%), and legal secretaries (98%).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Originally posted here:
Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate
EwanPalmer sends a followup to a story from last year about a team of Siberian scientists who recovered an ancient wooly mammoth carcass. It was originally believed to be about 10, 000 years old, but subsequent tests showed the animal died over 43, 000 years ago. The scientists have been surprised by how well preserved the soft tissues were. They say it’s in better shape than a human body buried for six months. “The tissue cut clearly shows blood vessels with strong walls. Inside the vessels there is haemolysed blood, where for the first time we have found erythrocytes. Muscle and adipose tissues are well preserved.” The mammoth’s intestines contain vegetation from its last meal, and they have the liver as well. The scientists are optimistic that they’ll be able to find high quality DNA from the mammoth, and perhaps even living cells. They now say there’s a “high chance” that data would allow them to clone the mammoth. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
43,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Remains Offer Strong Chance of Cloning
If you ever want to change the style of all the headings or captions in a document, bold all the italicized text, or otherwise fine-tune the formatting of your document in one swoop, Microsoft Word has a setting for that. Read more…
Read the article:
Select All Text with the Same Formatting in Word (and Other Word Tips)
Sometimes when you go a stadium to watch a game or an arena to watch a concert, you’ll have the option of buying an overpriced large beer or a slightly less overpriced small beer. Go small to save a few dollars because the small cup holds just as much beer as the large cup. More beer for your buck! Read more…
Continue reading here:
There’s no difference in buying a large beer vs a small beer at a game
mpicpp points out an article detailing the case of French blogger Olivier Laurelli, who had the misfortune to click links from search results. Laurelli stumbled upon a public link leading to documents from the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor. He downloaded them — over 7 Gb worth — and looked through them, eventually publishing a few slides to his website. When one of France’s intelligence agencies found out, they took Laurelli into custody and indicted him, referring to him as a ‘hacker.’ In their own investigation, they said, “we then found that it was sufficient to have the full URL to access to the resource on the extranet in order to bypass the authentication rules on this server.” The first court acquitted Laurelli of the charges against him. An appeals court affirmed part of the decision, but convicted him of “theft of documents and fraudulent retention of information.” He was fined €3, 000 (about $4, 000). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
Blogger Fined €3,000 for ‘Publicizing’ Files Found Through Google Search
Back in May of 2012 the NHK’s science & Technology Research Lab in Japan successfully broadcasted an 8K, 7680×4320 signal over a distance of 2.7 miles using UHF frequencies. As a proof of concept it showed that 8K TV could be successfully delivered to televisions over the air, but it lacked the distance of traditional TV broadcasts. Read more…
Read this article:
8K (Yes, 8K) Broadcasts Just Took a Major Step Forward
The island of California. A huge triangle of land called Florida. A great ocean that cut down from the Arctic into the Midwest. As the New World came into focus beginning in the 17th century, explorers and cartographers struggled to measure a massive expanse of land that would take centuries to accurately map. Read more…
Excerpt from:
12 Maps of America From Before We Knew What It Looked Like
An anonymous reader writes “Norway is the latest country to consider the legal implications of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Norway’s director general of taxation has come out and said ‘[Bitcoin] doesn’t fall under the usual definition of money, ‘ which means that it will be considered as assets and charged under capital gains laws. This sentiment was echoed last week by the European banking authority as well, where citizens were warned of using the cyrptocurrency.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read More:
Norway Rejects Bitcoin As Currency; Taxes As Asset, Instead