The US and Asia will soon be connected by a trans-Pacific cable network that will carry data at — hold your breath — 60 terabits per second. Read more…
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Google Funds An Undersea Cable to Connect the US to Asia at 60 Tbps
Getting a fully-laden cargo ship across an entire ocean requires enormous amounts of energy—usually derived from pollutant-rich diesel fuel. But one environmentally-minded shipping company has bucked that convention and instead begun construction on a pair of hybrid containerships—the first of their kind—that run primarily on cleaner burning liquefied natural gas. Read more…
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The World’s Largest Natural Gas-Powered Ships Are Almost Ready to Sail
MojoKid (1002251) writes “Security researcher Gene Bransfield, with the help of his wife’s grandmother’s cat, decided to see how many neighborhood WiFi access points he could map and potentially compromise. With a collar loaded with a Spark chip, a Wi-Fi module, a GPS module, and a battery, Coco the cat helped Gene identify Wi-Fi networks around the neighborhood and then reported back. The goal here is obvious: Discover all of the unsecured, or at least poorly-secured, wireless access points around the neighborhood. During his journey, Coco identified dozens of Wi-Fi networks, with four of them using easily-broken WEP security, and another four that had no security at all. Gene has dubbed his collar the “WarKitteh”, and it cost him less than $100 to make. He admits that such a collar isn’t a security threat, but more of a goofy hack. Of course, it could be used for shadier purposes.” (Here’s Wired’s article on the connected cat-collar.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving
Megan Geuss RENO, NV—On an uncharacteristically rainy day in Western Nevada, a small tour bus of journalists rumbled past security gates at the Ormat Steamboat Complex in Washoe County. We were there to learn about geothermal power, a renewable energy resource produced by transferring heat from underground rocks up to power plants. Most people think of Iceland when they think of geothermal power. On that island, approximately 90 percent of homes are heated by geothermal energy. But some 12 gigawatts of geothermal power are generated worldwide, and the US is one of the largest producers of it, generating nearly 3.4 gigawatts in 2013 . Ormat’s Steamboat Complex is within the Reno city limits, and it’s made up of seven smaller plants that collectively generate 78 megawatts of power. A typical coal-fired power plant can generate around 660 megawatts of power , so Ormat’s 78 megawatts are not a lot by comparison. But when compared to other renewables, geothermal has some advantages. Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Geothermal energy has success in Nevada, wants to spread to the rest of the west
theodp (442580) writes “Google earned kudos from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel this week for teaming up with Staples to fund the projects of 367 of the city’s 22, 519 public school teachers on “begfunding” site DonorsChoose.org. “Everything that you asked for…every project that the teachers put on to help their students learn, exceed and excel here in the city of Chicago, you now have fully funded, ” Mayor Emanuel said. “Chicago’s hardworking public school teachers are doing all that they can-and more-to support their students, but they need more help, ” said Rob Biederman, head of Chicago Public Affairs at Google. “We jumped at the chance to join with DonorsChoose.org and Staples to make Chicago’s local classroom wishes come true.” So what kind of dreams did Google make possible? Ironically, a look at Google Chicago’s Giving Page shows that the biggest project funded by Google was to outfit a classroom with 32 Microsoft Surface RT tablets for $12, 531, or about 6.5% of the $190, 091 Google award. Other big ticket projects funded by Google included $5, 931 for a personal home biodiesel kit and $5, 552 for a marimba (in the middle of the spectrum was $748 for “Mindfulness Education”). In addition to similar “flash-funding” projects in Atlanta (paper towels!) and the Bay Area, Google and DonorsChoose have also teamed up this year to reward teachers with $400, 000 for recruiting girls to learn to code (part of Google’s $50 million Made With Code initiative) and an unknown amount for AP STEM teachers who passed Google muster (part of Google’s $5 million AP STEM Access grant).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chicago Mayor Praises Google For Buying Kids Microsoft Surfaces
An anonymous reader writes “Beginning with the Chrome 38 Beta it’s now possible to watch Netflix without any Wine/Silverlight plug-ins but will work natively using Chrome’s DRM-HTML5 video capabilities with Netflix. The steps just involve using the latest beta of Chrome and an HTTP user-agent switcher to tell Netflix you’re a Windows Chrome user, due to Netflix arbitrarily blocking the Linux build.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix Now Works On Linux With HTML5 DRM Video Support In Chrome
They may be well reviewed and China’s new top selling phone, but reader DavidGilbert99 writes with reason to be cautious about Xiaomi’s phones: Finnish security firm F-Secure has seemingly proven that Xiaomi smartphones do in fact upload user data without their permission/knowledge despite the company strongly denying these allegations as late as 30 July. Between commercial malware and government agencies, how do you keep your phone’s data relatively private? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Originally posted here:
F-Secure: Xiaomi Smartphones Do Secretly Steal Your Data
sciencehabit (1205606) writes “Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the International Space Station and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five. In fact, getting a full night’s rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it’s important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Study Finds That Astronauts Are Severely Sleep Deprived
It began rather quietly as a underground fire at a dump in Canada’s remote northern reaches. Then in May, the fire “erupted, ” spewing forth flames and toxic fumes over the city of Iqaluit. Faced with a football field-sized smoldering dump fire, this week the city council finally scrounged up the $2.2 million to put it out. How the hell does a dump fire spontaneously ignite—and why is it so expensive to put out? Read more…
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A "Dumpcano" of Trash Erupted in the Arctic and Won’t Stop Burning
Gmail doesn’t display a true message count by default, because Gmail uses the conversation view. Turn the conversation view off to see the real number of individual messages in your Gmail account. Read more…
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Find the Real Number of Email Messages in Your Gmail Account