SoylentNews

frojack writes:

It is common knowledge that white roofs (or plant covered roofs) can help reduce building cooling costs in sunny areas. The effect varies depending on latitude, and can reduce the Urban Heat Island effect which contributes 2-4% of the gross global warming.

Not everyone agrees, and there is at least one study that suggest reflecting roofs may not be helpful in fighting global warming even if they do reduce air-conditioning costs. The problem is that reflected light can heat existing pollution and dust in the atmosphere.

ScienceMag is reporting on a new development by engineers at Stanford University that has the potential to not only reflect sunlight, but also re-radiate heat directly into space, without heating the atmosphere.

The first part of the new cooling technology, reflecting, is easy to grasp: Just look in a mirror. The second part, radiating away heat, is less intuitive. Buildings, trees, and people all radiate heat in the form of infrared light.

Typically this infrared radiation occurs over a broad range of wavelengths between 6 and 30 micrometers. Because molecules in the air can absorb [heat] at the top and bottom of that range, the radiation heats up its surroundings. Wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometers, however, pass right through the air into the cold vastness of space.

The engineer's developed a complex seven layer material that reflects 97% of the light striking it, but it also radiates heat (fed to it by the building itself) through that golden window of 8 and 13 micrometers, which dumps the heat directly to space without heating the atmosphere.

The coating can cool building roofs 5°C below ambient temperature. Still unknown is if the material can be installed cheaply enough to be cost effective.

tonyPick writes:

In celebration of it's 50th anniversary year IEEE Spectrum has an article covering the 50 favourite articles of current executive editor Glenn Zorpette.

These articles, from 1964 onward, have not been available in the IEEE archive previously, and are provided as downloadable PDF's which contain scans of the original magazine copies.

We wrote about robots, the Internet, lasers and LEDs, code-breaking and compound semiconductors, wireless and weapons, transistors and trans-humanism.

We documented the moon landing and nuclear mishaps and breakthroughs, as well as the rise of China, India, and Japan as technology titans. And, to be honest, we predicted the imminent success of magnetic-levitation trains way more times than we should have.

...

I’m [Executive Editor Glenn Zorpette] referring to outstanding feature articles that were written by friends or colleagues, or ones that were published before my time but that came to my attention because their legends lingered, like the memory of an adolescent kiss. There are of course far too many of these notable articles to acknowledge in a brief column such as this one. So my account will of necessity be deeply personal and seriously abridged, and restricted to articles that were published so long ago that they are not available in the archive on our website.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Brian Fung writes in the Washington Post that Wikipedia has been a little hesitant to weigh in on net neutrality, the idea that all Web traffic should be treated equally by Internet service providers such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable. That's because the folks behind Wikipedia actually see a non-neutral Internet as one way to spread information cheaply to users in developing countries. With Wikipedia Zero, users in places like Pakistan and Malaysia can browse the site without it counting it counting against the data caps on their cellphones or tablets. This preferential treatment for Wikipedia's site helps those who can't afford to pay for pricey data — but it sets the precedent for deals that cut against the net neutrality principle. "We believe in net neutrality in America," says Gayle Karen Young adding that Wikipedia Zero requires a different perspective elsewhere. "Partnering with telecom companies in the near term, it blurs the net neutrality line in those areas. It fulfils our overall mission, though, which is providing free knowledge."

Facebook and Google also operate programs internationally that are exempted from users' data caps — a tactic known somewhat cryptically as "zero rating". Facebook in particular has made “Facebook Zero” not just a sales pitch in developing markets but also part of an Internet.org initiative to expand access “to the two thirds of the world’s population that doesn’t have it.” But a surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. Chile recently put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries, of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. "That might seem perverse," says Glyn Moody, "since it means that Chilean mobile users must now pay to access those services, but it is nonetheless exactly what governments that have mandated net neutrality need to do."

gewg_ writes:

TorrentFreak reports

A federal court in California has ruled that Usenet service provider Giganews is not guilty of copyright infringement, nor can it be held responsible for customers who do pirate content.

[...]Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 has made a business out of suing online services for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement. Over the past several years the company has targeted a dozen high-profile companies including Google, Amazon, Yandex, MasterCard, Visa, RapidShare, Giganews, and Depositfiles.

Aside from a few private settlements, the company has yet to score its first victory in court.

tonyPick writes:

Nature has an article on the future regulation of thought controlled prosthetics.

The article looks at the way proposed regulation may affect the work of private companies in this area, and references recent work at Caltech. More background to this work and other efforts is available in this New Scientist article from October.

Leebert writes:

Alissa Walker of Gizmodo reports on a change that various GPS and online mapping vendors have implemented. Visitors to the iconic Hollywood sign find closeup access to the sign elusive, and often crowd the tight local residential streets while trying to get a closer view. Locals contend that, aside from being annoying, the excessive congestion represents a safety hazard, potentially impeding emergency responders.

Their solution was to have the location of the sign changed in GPS vendor databases, which was accomplished through the efforts of LA City Council member Tom LaBonge. Such changes are not without precedent, according to the article:

Over at Garmin, Hysell noted that their cartographers do, in fact, take input outside of their own experiences driving the routes. "They do receive data on a regular basis from city officials, county officials, DOT websites, and so on, and of course, make updates and adjustments to the mapping accordingly," she says. "They also take reports from users, too, and apply changes as deemed worthy and verifiable."

While this sounds fairly reasonable, the article touches on the negatives, including a detailed explanation as to why the new location provides a worse view, an account of legal threats she received for posting better addresses online, and a general discussion of the ostensibly excessive NIMBY-ism of the locals.

frojack writes:

The BBC, and Others are reporting that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) phase 1 trials of its Ebola Vaccine is indicating promising results:

From the International Business Times

The vaccine is expected to arrive late in 2015.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Ben Smith of Buzzfeed recently wrote that his site doesn’t traffic in “click bait” because the term applies to “tempting, vacuous ‘curiosity gap’ headlines” that mislead readers. But in an industry riddled with plagiarism, civil insensitivities and “hot takes,” “click bait” is still the worst insult you can hurl at a publication. Looking at the history of journalism, sensationalist teases have always been with us. In the past, the city newspaper version of click bait was the "extra" issued every hour or two. "Click bait takes it farther, or rather, faster," says Mark Bauerlein. "It’s not that all the content has degenerated. It’s that the delivery has sped up and the content can be blasted widely on the Internet." Gloria Mark, a professor specializing in human-computer interactions at the University of California, Irvine, says that click bait as a design element is a natural evolution, and consequence, of the way the Internet affects our flow of attention. "Many argue that click bait is not new, as newspapers have used enticing headlines to lure readers since the 19th century. What is new, however, is the combination of click bait with the design of hypermedia that leads us down cognitive paths that make it hard to find our way back to the original, intended task," says Mark. "It is part of the larger grand challenge we face in managing our focus of attention amid the sheer volume of digital information available."

Baratunde Thurston says that one good thing about click bait is that it has inspired a new arena for humor. "Over a year ago, my company hosted a “Comedy Hack Day" built around humor, and one team created a satirical site called Clickstrbait to lampoon this silly practice. Since then The Onion has gone further, successfully launching ClickHole.com, which parodies (and monetizes) the click bait phenomenon with articles like '6 Sunsets That Would Be More Peaceful If It Weren't For Your Loudly Growling Stomach.'" If Thurston is right then the only thing that will defeat click bait overuse is time. "Until then, at least we have jokes."

Horse With Stripes writes:

The Telegraph is reporting on a Twitter blog post announcing that the Twitter app for Android and iOS is going to keep track of the list of applications you have installed on your phone or tablet. While the Telegraph is claiming "Twitter to snoop on every app on your phone", Twitter says "We are not collecting any data within the applications."

"Twitter is using your app graph to help build a more tailored experience for you on Twitter." "To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in."

This seems like the next step in companies prying their way into every personal detail of someone's life. Yes there's an 'opt-out', but shouldn't it really be an 'opt-in'? And would you really trust an app that wants to track this information to honor the 'opt-out'? IMHO the best way to ensure Twitter doesn't track your apps (or more) is to not have the app installed.

frojack writes:

Ars Technica features a story of how one grad student defeated the vested interests of the big content to control the sales of legally imported copyrighted works:

Sometimes all it takes to alter the course of history is one pissed-off person. Supap Kirtsaeng wasn’t a crusader or lone nut; he was just an eBay trader who got backed into a legal corner and refused to give up.

To help pay for grad school at USC, he sold textbooks online—legitimate copies that he’d purchased overseas. But academic publishing behemoth John Wiley & Sons sued Supap, claiming that his trade in Wiley’s foreign-market textbooks constituted copyright infringement.

The implications were enormous. If publishers had the right to control resale of books that they printed and sold overseas, then it stood to reason that manufacturers could restrain trade in countless products—especially tech goods, most of which are made in Asia and contain copyright-able elements such as embedded software.

The story covers events from 2006 to the present, and laws dating to the 1700s, but does so in a fast-paced and eminently readable story; more like a historical thriller than a condensed history. Even with the spoiler right there in the title, the article holds your attention to the end, and is well worth the 4-clicks it takes to read it.

It quickly covers the big content efforts to defend market segmentation, (allowing cheap prices overseas for the same books and movies while gouging US customers) and the rallying of big media and the US government to preserve what was clearly an unworkable system of copyright that would have end-run the First Sale Doctrine.

As a bonus it hints to the future, such as the pending YODA: You Own Devices Act pending in Congress, which would assure your rights to software embedded in purchased devices like cell phones and computers.

gewg_ writes:

The Linux Foundation reports

We've focused a lot of attention in recent years on making Linux learning materials more accessible to more people. This year, for example, together with our partner edX, we were able to offer our Intro to Linux course for free to nearly 300,000 people from all over the world.

While the United States ranks first in the number of students taking Intro to Linux, it only represents about 30 percent of all class participants. The top geographies include the U.S., India, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Spain. Linux attracted more people with this one course than the number of people who attended all seven games of the recent World Series combined.

What's even more overwhelming is that our Intro to Linux course saw one of the highest enrollments of any class offered on edx.org this year. It's also worth noting that while MOOCs have a reputation for low completion rates among registrants, the Linux course is ranking well above the industry average. This enthusiasm and participation bodes well for the future of Linux and the many individuals getting involved.

Related:
Free Intro to Linux Course

Ryuugami writes:

Under the recent controversial "right to be forgotten" EU ruling, the search engines (well, mostly Google) are required to remove the links that point to old, inaccurate or irrelevant information from the search results if the person involved requests it. This is only applied when the search terms include the person's name — the links can still be found by using different search terms. In case of Google, delisting has been limited to the European sub-domains, but the EU wants Google to expand it to it's core .com domain, as reported by the BBC:

At present, visitors are diverted to localised editions of the US company's search tool - such as Google.co.uk and Google.fr - when they initially try to visit the Google.com site.

However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place.

Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.

The data watchdogs said[pdf] this "cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights" of citizens living in the union's 28 member countries.

gewg_ writes:

Common Dreams reports:

The U.S. government's so-called "pinpoint"(NYT paywall) drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen are, in fact, leaving wide perimeters of death, as people on the Kill List are targeted--and even reported dead--again and again, according to a report published Monday by the UK-based charity Reprieve.

While drone attacks and their victims are kept secret by the U.S. military and government, Reprieve compiled public information available, most of it from media reports and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to determine who actually died when the U.S. went after individuals in Yemen and Pakistan between November 2002 and November 2014.

The study examines the cases of 41 people included on a Kill List--a classified U.S. assassination program personally approved by President Obama with no judicial or public oversight. According to the report's findings, up to 1,147 unnamed people were killed in pursuit of these 41 known individuals.

Furthermore, each of these 41 men was reported killed multiple times.

"This raises a stark question," states the study. "With each failed attempt to assassinate a man on the Kill List, who filled the body bag in his place?

tonyPick writes:

phys.org has a report on reusing Blu-Ray disks as nanoimprinting templates for solar cells, improving performance.

Using the pattern from the Blu-Ray, the compressed data sequences:

...resulted in a quasi-random array of islands and pits (0s and 1s) with feature sizes between 150 and 525 nanometers. And this range, it turns out, works quite well for light-trapping applications over the entire solar spectrum.

The overall broadband absorption enhancement of a Blu-ray patterned solar cell was measured to be 21.8 percent, the researchers report.

Also covered at IEEE Spectrum, and from the Spectrum article:

While it’s certainly appealing to think about recycling our Blu-ray discs directly into more efficient solar panels, a more realistic approach might be to use the mass-production infrastructure that’s already in place to create optical media that’s adapted to improving solar cell performance.

babywombat writes:

Estonia will become the first country in the world to offer “e-residency” for foreigners. So what does this mean and how does it work?

Basically e-residency means a state-sanctioned authentication process. According to the article, “The card is an opportunity for people whose country of residence does not offer them a strong digital identity." It is especially useful for entrepreneurs and others who already have some relationship to Estonia. The e-residency project builds on top of the existing Estonian national ID card infrastructure, which is already widely used in Estonia. Each e-resident will get an electronic card similar to the Estonian ID card, though without a photo or fingerprints as these cards are meant for electronic use only. The card can be used for accessing a multitude of public and private electronic services which require authentication, like online banking or founding a company in Estonia. Some services extend the borders of Estonia, for example digital signatures will be legally valid in the whole European Union.

The card can be used from all over the world, but the applicant must be physically present in Estonia at least once, to verify his or her identity. There are also background checks involved and the authorities can cancel the e-residency at any moment without explanations if there is a suspicion of fraud. This seems reasonable as carrying out any investigations in foreign countries would be next to impossible.

Issuing the e-resident digital identity will start by the end of 2014.