An anonymous reader writes “Michael Nielsen has written a detailed article describing the nuts and bolts of a Bitcoin transaction. He builds the concepts from the ground up, starting with a basic, no-frills digital currency. He then examines it for flaws and tweaks the currency to patch up areas where we run into technical or security problems. Eventually, he ends up with Bitcoin, and explains how a transaction works. It’s an interesting, technical read; much more in-depth than any explanation I’ve heard. Here’s a brief snippet from a walkthrough of the transaction data: ‘One thing to note about the input is that there’s nothing explicitly specifying how many bitcoins from the previous transaction should be spent in this transaction. In fact, all the bitcoins from the n=0th output of the previous transaction are spent. So, for example, if the n=0th output of the earlier transaction was 2 bitcoins, then 2 bitcoins will be spent in this transaction. This seems like an inconvenient restriction – like trying to buy bread with a 20 dollar note, and not being able to break the note down. The solution, of course, is to have a mechanism for providing change. This can be done using transactions with multiple inputs and outputs…'” Bitcoin is going through another period of heavy fluctuation: it fell from a high of around $1, 200 per bitcoin to roughly half that, and as of this writing trade around $760 per bitcoin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How a Bitcoin Transaction Actually Works
mdsolar writes with this bit of news from Green Tech Media “The German government has responded to the next big challenge in its energy transition – storing the output from the solar boom it has created — by doing exactly what it has successfully done to date: greasing the wheels of finance to bring down the cost of new technology. … Now it is looking at bringing down the cost of the next piece in the puzzle of its energy transition — battery storage. … KfW’s aim, according to Axel Nawrath, a member of the KfW Bankengruppe executive board, is to ensure that the output of wind and solar must be ‘more decoupled’ from the grid. … This is seen as critical as the level of renewable penetration rises to around 40 per cent — a level expected in Germany within the next 10 years. … According to Papenfuss, households participating in the scheme will spend between €20, 000 and €28, 000 on solar and storage, depending on the size of the system (the average size is expected to be around 7kW for the solar array and around 4kWh for the battery).” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
SpaceGhost writes “Sky News reports that the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has launched an orbital telescope on a new generation rocket from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima, in southwestern Japan. The Epsilon rocket uses an onboard AI for autonomous launch checks by the rocket itself (launch video). A product of renewed focus on reducing costs, the new vehicle required two laptops and a launch team of eight, compared to the 150 people needed to launch the previous platform, the M-5. Because of the reduced launch team and ease of construction, production and launch costs of the Epsilon are roughly half that of the M-5. The payload, a SPRINT-A telescope, is designed for planetary observation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
judgecorp writes “BT has demonstrated an 800Gbps ‘superchannel’ on a 410km fiber in its core network, which was not able to carry 10Gbps channels using older technology. The superchannel is an advanced dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) technique, created by combining multiple coherent optical signals into one channel, which had previously been shown in laboratory tests. BT ran the test on a fiber with optical characteristics (high polarization mode dispersion) that made it unsuitable for 10GBps using current techniques. That’s a good result for BT, because it means its existing core fiber network can be upgraded to handle more data. It’s also a good customer story for Ciena, which makes the optical switches used in the test.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.