Japan was once colloquially known as the Land of the Rising Sun, and it can’t be only environmentalists hoping that a country with such a moniker would take solar power to heart. Following the Fukushima disaster of 2011, safe and renewable sources of energy have been under study, and at least one corporate giant has done something about it–rather swiftly, by Japanese standards. This month Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera pulled the wraps off of the Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant, a project constructed at a backbreaking pace from September 2012 to October 2013. Some 290, 000 solar panels are arrayed on 1.27 million square meters on the coast of Kagoshima Prefecture, making it the largest solar power plant in Japan. The juice started flowing on November 1st, and the KNMSPP is expected to generate 70 megawatts of power, enough to power 22, 000 homes in the region. As promising as that sounds, the stark math is actually a bit dismal compared to Fukushima: The latter facility generated 4.7 gigawatts, or enough to power nearly 1.5 million homes. (more…)
Tag: management
UK to Get Driverless Taxis. Heathrow Already Has Them. Man, NYC/JFK Sucks
[Image via Podcars ] Milton Keynes sounds like the name of someone your cousin married for his money, but in fact it’s a large town in Buckinghamshire, 50 miles northwest of London. With a population of over 200, 000, it can be considered urban, and the area is about to become more well-known, perhaps even famous. Because in 2015 it will start deploying driverless taxis, also called PRTs, for Personal Rapid Transit. In actuality the electricity-operated PRTs are less like taxis and more like surface-going, two-person subway cars that travel directly from point A to point B, without making undesired stops. Routes, it seems, will be fixed, with the town’s central train station serving as a hub, and areas of service expected to include the local shopping mall and particular office buildings. PRTs are not without precedent in the UK; London Heathrow has been running them since 2011 to ferry passengers between terminals, and the things recharge themselves. Check out how they operate, and don’t be put off by this video’s silly beginning, as the entire thing is pretty informative: (more…)
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UK to Get Driverless Taxis. Heathrow Already Has Them. Man, NYC/JFK Sucks
The Operations of a Cyber Arms Dealer
An anonymous reader writes “FireEye researchers have linked eleven distinct APT cyber espionage campaigns previously believed to be unrelated (PDF), leading them to believe that there is a shared operation that supplies and maintains malware tools and weapons used in them. The eleven campaigns they tied together were detected between July 2011 and September 2013, but it’s possible and very likely that some of them were active even before then. Despite using varying techniques, tactics, and procedures, the campaigns all leveraged a common development infrastructure, and shared — in various combinations — the same malware tools, the same elements of code, binaries with the same timestamps, and signed binaries with the same digital certificates.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The Operations of a Cyber Arms Dealer
Microsoft Warns Customers Away From RC4 and SHA-1
Trailrunner7 writes “The RC4 and SHA-1 algorithms have taken a lot of hits in recent years, with new attacks popping up on a regular basis. Many security experts and cryptographers have been recommending that vendors begin phasing the two out, and Microsoft on Tuesday said it is now recommending to developers that they deprecate RC4 and stop using the SHA-1 hash algorithm. RC4 is among the older stream cipher suites in use today, and there have been a number of practical attacks against it, including plaintext-recovery attacks. The improvements in computing power have made many of these attacks more feasible for attackers, and so Microsoft is telling developers to drop RC4 from their applications. The company also said that as of January 2016 it will no longer will validate any code signing or root certificate that uses SHA-1.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Warns Customers Away From RC4 and SHA-1
Linux Kernel Running In JavaScript Emulator With Graphics and Network Support
New submitter warmflatsprite writes “It seems that there have been a rash of JavaScript virtual machines running Linux lately (or maybe I just travel in really weird circles). However until now none of them had network support, so they weren’t too terribly useful. Sebastian Macke’s jor1k project uses asm.js to produce a very fast emulation of the OpenCores OpenRISC processor (or1k) along with a HTML5 canvas framebuffer for graphics support. Recently Ben Burns contributed an emulated OpenCores ethmac ethernet adapter to the project. This sends ethernet frames to a gateway server via websocket where they are switched and/or piped into TAP virtual ethernet adapter. With this you can build whatever kind of network appliance you’d like for the myriad of fast, sandboxed VMs running in your users’ browsers. For the live demo all VMs connect to a single private LAN (subnet 10.5.0.0/16). The websocket gateway also NATs traffic from that LAN out to the open Internet.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux Kernel Running In JavaScript Emulator With Graphics and Network Support
Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Vanishes, Taking £2.5m of Coins With It
An anonymous reader writes “A Chinese Bitcoin exchange has vanished without trace, taking more than $4 million of the virtual currency with it and leaving profit-hungry investors out of pocket. GBL, the Chinese Bitcoin exchange was launched in May 2013 and putatively based in Hong Kong, despite its servers being registered in Beijing. However GBL’s Hong Kong offices do not exist. GBL mysteriously disappeared in early November taking an estimated $4.1m (£2.6m) of Bitcoins with it.” (Beware the auto-playing ads, with sound.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Vanishes, Taking £2.5m of Coins With It
Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites
alphadogg writes “A music industry group is warning some 50 website that post song lyrics that they need to be licensed or face the music, possibly in the form of a lawsuit. The National Music Publishers Association said Monday that it sent take-down notices to what it claims are 50 websites that post lyrics to songs and generate ad revenue but may not be licensed to do so. The allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia.” The “complicated algorithm” (basis statistics using Excel and Google) is described in the NMPA’s “Undesirable Lyric Website List.” Anyone remember lyrics.ch? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites
Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners
rtoz writes “Sweden is taking steps to close many prisons due to lack of prisoners. This year alone, four prisons and a detention center got closed in Sweden. The percentage of the population in Sweden prison is significantly lower than in most other countries. … Though the Swedish Government is taking steps to close the prisons, the crime rate in Sweden has increased slightly. It seems they are planning to take steps for preventing crime rather than focusing on jailing people involved in criminal activities.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners
Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic
First time accepted submitter sqorbit writes “Netflix and Youtube are gaining ground not only on the competition, such as Amazon, but also over peer-to-peer file sharing. Netflix claims more than 30 million customers and believes it could double that number in the future. Traffic from Netflix and Youtube amounted to over 50% of Internet traffic in September. Meanwhile Bittorrent traffic is down slightly (7.4% from 10%) in Internet traffic compared to last year. Could more people be satisfied with current video offerings or are less people finding useful things to download via file sharing?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic
British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle
judgecorp writes “British mobile operator EE is offering a massive 1 Petabyte data bundle to businesses spread across multiple phones, .It’s more than a gimmick to promote the 4G data service — it’s aimed at heavy data users such as media companies who use data networks to upload content. This deal charges £8 per gigabyte, which is less than half the cost of the satellite uplinks they currently use. So the £8 million cost of this package might even result in savings for some organizations.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle