UN report calls for “deep decarbonization” :
A UN report says “deep decarbonization” is needed to limit global temperature rise. Decarbonization will require use of new technology, but that “Robust economic growth and rising prosperity are consistent with the objective of deep decarbonization.”
It identifies “three pillars” of emissions reductions: low-carbon electricity, massive efficiency gains, and a greater electrification of transit and infrastructure.
via Ars Technica
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How Solar Will Destroy The Power Companies, In 5 Easy Steps:
Barclays recently downgraded the entire U.S. electric utilities sector to “underweight” on the threat posed by widespread adoption of solar-storage. via Pocket
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"It's diggers all the way down, mate.":
Some of London’s most expensive homes have an excavator buried in the basement:
A new solution emerged: simply bury the digger in its own hole. Given the exceptional profits of London property development, why bother with the expense and hassle of retrieving a used digger – worth only £5,000 or £6,000 – from the back of a house that would soon be sold for several million? The time and money expended on rescuing a digger were better spent moving on to the next big deal.
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Vermeer's paintings might be 350 year-old color photographs:
I was sitting in the bathtub in 2008 when I thought of a simple way Johannes Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring) might have painted his photorealistic pictures 350 years ago, long before the invention of photography. via Pocket
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Most truthful IoT FAQ ever?:
The exclamation marks mean our robot overlords have targeted your SmartThings for “re-education” and you should plan on them turning against you in 2-4 business days.
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Tesla Motors opens patents to speed electric vehicle adoption:
I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.
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Microsoft funding efforts to to create Quantum Computer building blocks| :
There are several organizations trying to build quantum computers, but Microsoft is focusing on how to create the device “analogous to the transistor” for quantum computing.
(via MIT Technology Review)
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Does Fortran still rule?:
Fortran still has a role in modern systems:
Wherever you see giant simulations of the type that run for days on the world’s most massive supercomputers, you are likely to see Fortran code.
Good to know at least one of my technical skills is still useful.
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NSTIC pilot programs starting in PA, MI:
Two states are piloting ID schemes from the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) for access to state services.
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Carbon, Avogadro's Constant and the Importance of the Number 12:
Scientists are proposing to dispense with the need for a physical object to define mass by redefining Avogadro’s constant. The approach is to pick a number for the constant “that is divisible by 12 so that a whole number of carbon-12 atoms are equal to the mass of a gram.”
One must admire their relentless pursuit of precision:
He suggests that if this number—the number of layers and the number of atoms along each hexagonal edge—was equal to 51,150,060, then the total would be 602,214,158,510,196,804,982,800 atoms. That’s as near as dammit equal to the current number.
(via MIT Technology Review)
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As it is Internet of Things Week in Massachusetts it seemed appropriate to step up on the home front. Over the past six months, I’ve been adding automation to my home on a piece-by-piece basis. I started with WeMo Home Automation switches for my outside lights, and later added a Nest Thermostat to control my heating and cooling system. These are very nice, and a huge improvement over the old and unreliable X10 timer system I used to run my outside lights. They also had a much better WAF. Still each technology family had it’s own iPhone app, and, despite the growing reach of IFTTT, it was really just remote control, not real home automation. That has changed with the addition of the SmartThings hub into the mix. The Smartthings hub brings a few important capabilities: It is a multi-protocol device, so it can talk to TCP/IP devices like WeMo and Nest, and also to traditional home automation protocols like Z-Wave and ZigBee Alliance devices. It has the ability to run small control...
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I'm increasingly impressed by the thought SmartThings is putting in to their app. Of course, Apple's entry into the field will shake things up.
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