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takyon writes:

California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”

A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO2 over the next 20 years.

Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves.

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"exec" writes:

Original URL: Big Blue to buy Verizon's cloud

In February 2016 Verizon told The Register it "remains committed to delivering a range of cloud services for enterprise and government customers and is making significant investments in its cloud platform in 2016."

And today it announced IBM will acquire its cloud and managed hosting business, for an undisclosed sum.

Verizon hinted it wanted out of the bit barn business in mid-2016 and then sold 29 data centres to Equinux for US$3.6bn in December of the same year.

Now it's quit the business altogether in a deal it says will see it agree "to work with IBM on a number of strategic initiatives involving networking and cloud services." Just what those initiatives are has not been disclosed.

[...] Verizon says "We are notifying affected customers directly although we do not expect any immediate impact to their services as a result of this agreement. We will formally notify and update customers as appropriate with additional information nearer the close of the deal. We expect the transaction to close later this year."

IBM is silent on the deal. The Register imagines an impossible-to-refuse Bluemix offer may not be long in coming once the ink is dry.

-- submitted from IRC

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for charon

A father's depression has a direct effect on both internalized and externalized behavioral problems in adolescents, according to a recent study out of BYU's School of Social Work.

"Many studies look at moms who are depressed and how they impact children," Shafer said. "Very few looked at how depressed fathers influence their children. As dads become more involved in their children's lives, we thought this was an important question with significant implications for families."

The research, published last month, found that a father's depression had a direct effect on both internalized and externalized behavioral problems in adolescents. Internalizing behaviors include high levels of withdrawal, anxiety and depressed mood. Externalizing behaviors are directed outward and are associated with heightened anger and aggression. In contrast, the study also showed that maternal depression impacts kids, but in more subtle ways, since most women internalize their depression.

"Kids probably pick up on their dad's depression in ways they don't with mothers," Shafer said. "Men are more likely to show anger and frustration. Children are going to notice, and it's going to affect them."

[...] Depression is the most common mental health issue in the United States, with approximately seven percent experiencing a major depressive episode each year and nearly 20 percent experiencing it in their lifetime.

BYU is Brigham Young University

Source: BYU study finds more evidence why depressed dads should seek help

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Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a holographic imaging process that depicts the radiation of a Wi-Fi transmitter to generate three-dimensional images of the surrounding environment. Industrial facility operators could use this to track objects as they move through the production hall.

Just like peering through a window, holograms project a seemingly three-dimensional image. While optical holograms require elaborate laser technology, generating holograms with the microwave radiation of a Wi-Fi transmitter requires merely one fixed and one movable antenna, as Dr. Friedenmann Reinhard and Philipp Holl report in the current issue of the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

"Using this technology, we can generate a three-dimensional image of the space around the Wi-Fi transmitter, as if our eyes could see microwave radiation," says Friedemann Reinhard, director of the Emmy Noether Research Group for Quantum Sensors at the Walter Schottky Institute of the TU Munich. The researchers envision fields of deployment especially in the domain of industry 4.0 -- automated industrial facilities, in which localizing parts and devices is often difficult.

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takyon writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-idUSKBN18113D

North Korea on Friday accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea's intelligence service of a plot to attack its "supreme leadership" with a bio-chemical weapon and said such a "pipe-dream" could never succeed.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks, driven by concern that North Korea might conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Reclusive North Korea warned this week that U.S. hostility had brought the region to the brink of nuclear war.

The North's Ministry of State Security released a statement saying "the last-ditch effort" of U.S. "imperialists" and the South had gone "beyond the limits".

"The Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. and the Intelligence Service (IS) of south Korea, hotbed of evils in the world, hatched a vicious plot to hurt the supreme leadership of the DPRK and those acts have been put into the extremely serious phase of implementation after crossing the threshold of the DPRK," the North's KCNA news agency quoted the statement as saying, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"A hideous terrorists' group, which the CIA and the IS infiltrated into the DPRK on the basis of covert and meticulous preparations to commit state-sponsored terrorism against the supreme leadership of the DPRK by use of bio-chemical substance, has been recently detected."

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takyon writes:

Kodi, previously known as XBMC or Xbox Media Center, is being used "fully loaded" with add-ons (such as TVAddons.ag) by millions of households in North America:

New data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that close to 9 percent of all North American households have at least one Kodi device. Roughly two thirds of these actively use pirate add-ons, which is good for millions of families in total.

[...] Sandvine analyzed a dataset from multiple North America tier one fixed-line provider, which covers over 250,000 anonymized households throughout North America. Using this data, it was able to estimate how many households actively use at least one Kodi device. "The Kodi application itself does not generate much data, but it is easy to detect within a household due to its 'heartbeat' traffic which can easily be identified," Sandvine reports.

Overall Sandvine estimates that 8.8% of the households with Internet access across North America have an active Kodi device. This translates to several millions of households and many more potential users. [...] Looking at the various traffic sources for the streaming data, including file-hosts, the company determined that 68.6% of the households with Kodi devices also use unofficial, or "pirate" add-ons.

Meanwhile, UK tabloids are running stories (tall tales?) about Kodi:

You know a technology's gone mainstream when the tabloids start yelling about it. This year the Sun, the Mirror, the Express, and the Daily Star have run splashes ranging from "Kodi Crackdown" through "Kodi Killers" to "Kodi TOTAL BAN!". It's not that they've stumbled on an underground hack scene; the stories have been briefed by copyright owners and law enforcement agencies.

[...] Illicit use of Kodi has reached a point where the UK government's Intellectual Property Office issued a "Call for Views," which closed in April, to find out how law enforcement agencies were dealing with infringing use. They use the term "IPTV," but also refer specifically to Kodi. No conclusions have yet been published, but three basic enforcement approaches are possible: shutting down suppliers of boxes, cutting off illegal streams, and going after end users.

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"exec" writes:

Original source

It is a common trope in disaster movies: an earthquake strikes, causing the ground to rip open and swallow people and cars whole. The gaping earth might make for cinematic drama, but earthquake scientists have long held that it does not happen.

Except, it can, according to new experimental research from Caltech.

The work, appearing in the journal Nature on May 1, shows how the earth can split open -- and then quickly close back up -- during earthquakes along thrust faults.

[...] However, researchers investigating the Tohoku earthquake found that not only did the fault slip at shallow depths, it did so by up to 50 meters in some places. That huge motion, which occurred just offshore, triggered a tsunami that caused damage to facilities along the coast of Japan, including at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

[...] "This is actually built into most computer models of earthquakes right now. The models have been programed in a way that dictates that the walls of the fault cannot separate from one another," says Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at Caltech and one of the senior authors of the Nature paper. "The findings demonstrate the value of experimentation and observation. Computer models can only be as realistic as their built-in assumptions allow them to be."

[...] The team was surprised to see that, as the rupture hit the surface, the fault twisted open and then snapped shut. Subsequent computer simulations--with models that were modified to remove the artificial rules against the fault opening--confirmed what the team observed experimentally: one slab can twist violently away from the other. This can happen both on land and on underwater thrust faults, meaning that this mechanism has the potential to change our understanding of how tsunamis are generated.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The campaign staff of Emmanuel Macron, one of the two candidates in France's presidential election run-off, claim to have been targeted by a massive hacking operation that leaked sensitive documents:

On the eve of the most consequential French presidential election in decades, the staff of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the campaign had been targeted by a "massive and coordinated" hacking operation, one with the potential to destabilize the nation's democracy before voters go to the polls on Sunday.

The digital attack, which involved a dump of campaign documents including emails and accounting records, emerged hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect. While the leak may be of little consequence, the timing makes it extremely difficult for Mr. Macron to mitigate any damaging fallout before the runoff election, in which he faces the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has pledged to pull France out of the euro and hold a referendum to leave the European Union.

French authorities recently arrested a suspect who admitted to attacking the campaign website for the other candidate, Marine Le Pen.

Also at the Washington Post, CNN, BBC, and Reuters.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The 'natural branding' process marks the outermost layer of peel without using ink or affecting taste and shelf life.

Plastic produce stickers might be a thing of the past if Swedish supermarket ICA has its way. The chain, with more than 1,300 stores across Sweden, began experimenting last December with 'natural branding,' a process that imprints a fruit or vegetable peel with its name, country of origin, and code number using a laser. The low-energy, carbon dioxide laser burns away the first layer of pigment to a clearly legible result that uses no ink or additional products. It is a superficial, contact-free method that does not affect taste or shelf life.

This innovation is welcome news for shoppers familiar with the irritation of having to pick stickers off while washing produce prior to eating. Especially for those striving to reduce plastic waste, it's highly annoying to have to pick off stickers in the produce aisle and placate grumpy cashiers who don't like looking up produce codes.

No more annoying plastic stickers.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Source article

The District Court for the Northern District of California1 recently issued an opinion that is being hailed as a victory for open source software. In this case, the court denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging violation of an open source software license, paving the way for further action enforcing the conditions of the GNU General Public License ("GPL").

[...] Artifex's complaint asserts that Hancom's violations of the conditions of the GPL constitute both copyright infringement and breach of contract. Artifex has requested remedies including compensatory, consequential, and statutory damages, as well as attorneys' fees and costs. Artifex also sought injunctive relief barring further infringement by Hancom and requiring Hancom to comply with obligations under the GPL. Hancom moved to dismiss Artifex's complaint on several grounds. The District Court denied Hancom's motion to dismiss on each ground.

[...] Here, in denying a motion to dismiss, the District Court only holds that the claims may proceed on the theories enunciated by Artifex, not necessarily that they will ultimately succeed. Still, the case represents a significant step forward for open source plaintiffs.

[...] In the past decade, while enforcement of open source licensing violations has become more common, few enforcement cases result in published law. The open source community will be watching this case carefully, and this initial decision vindicates the rights of the open source authors to enforce GPL terms on both breach of contract and copyright theories.

ARTIFEX SOFTWARE, INC. v. HANCOM, INC.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Citigroup listed seven companies as potential takeover targets for Apple Inc (AAPL.O), including Netflix (NFLX.O), Walt Disney (DIS.N) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), as a way to put its cash hoard of more than $250 billion to work.

With over 90 percent of its cash sitting overseas, a one-time 10 percent repatriation tax would give Apple $220 billion for acquisitions or buybacks, Citigroup analyst Jim Suva said in a note to clients.

U.S. President Donald Trump's tax blueprint, which was unveiled last month, proposes allowing multinationals to bring in overseas profits at a tax rate of 10 percent versus 35 percent now.

"Since one of the new administration's top priorities is to allow US companies to repatriate overseas cash at a lower tax rate, Apple may have a more acute need to put this cash to use,"

If Apple acquired Tesla its cash reserves would supercharge the latter's potential to disrupt markets.

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"exec" writes:

Original URL: A zinc battery that could compete with your favorite rechargeables

Lithium batteries are currently the belle of the battery ball. They have a lot going for them, including high energy storage for their weight and the ability to charge and recharge many times before losing much capacity.

But we're all familiar with the drawbacks, too. Lithium-ion batteries pose a fire risk, and the lithium and cobalt used in them aren't the most abundant elements, which makes things more expensive.

Plenty of other possible battery chemistries could compete with lithium, but getting them to live up to their theoretical potential is difficult. Zinc, for example, performs admirably in your non-rechargeable alkaline batteries, and it could theoretically make a safer and cheaper rechargeable one—with a water-based electrolyte rather than a flammable organic one. This hasn't happened, though, and the reason becomes apparent if you throw the batteries under a microscope.

Zinc anodes are typically made by binding together particles of zinc powder. Over cycles of charging and recharging, these develop a zinc oxide coating, which is less-conductive and effectively walls off some of the zinc. Branching needles of zinc can also start to grow as a result of this uneven charge distribution. These will eventually pierce through the thin barrier that separates anode from cathode and fatally short-circuit the battery.

A group at the US Naval Research Laboratory has been working on a different way to put together the zinc anode in order to avoid this problem. (The work was funded by a Department of Energy ARPA-E grant—a program the Trump administration has threatened and recently frozen.) In a paper published recently in Science, the team describes how the structure of the zinc anode is more like a sponge, in that the zinc is continuously connected throughout but peppered with tiny pockets of open space. In some ways, it's like a photo-negative of the zinc powder granules.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In classical computer science, information is stored in bits; in quantum computer science, information is stored in quantum bits, or qubits. Experiments at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw prove that chemistry is also a suitable basis for storing information. The chemical bit, or 'chit,' is a simple arrangement of three droplets in contact with each other, in which oscillatory reactions occur.

In typical electronic memory, zeros and ones are recorded, stored and read by physical phenomena such as the flow of electricity or the change in electrical or magnetic properties. Dr. Konrad Gizynski and Prof. Jerzy Gorecki from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw have demonstrated a working memory based on chemical phenomena. A single bit is stored here in three adjoining droplets, between which chemical reaction fronts propagate steadily, cyclically, and in a strictly defined manner.

The chemical foundation of this form of memory is the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The course of the reaction is oscillatory. When one cycle ends, the reagents necessary to start the next cycle are reconstituted in the solution. Before the reaction stops, there are usually several tens to hundreds of oscillations. They are accompanied by a regular change in the colour of the solution, caused by ferroin—the reaction catalyst. The second catalyst used by the Warsaw researchers was ruthenium. The introduction of ruthenium causes the BZ reaction to become photosensitive—when the solution is illuminated by blue light, it ceases to oscillate. This feature makes it possible to control the course of the reaction.

"Our idea for the chemical storage of information was simple. From our previous experiments, we knew that when Belousov-Zhabotinsky droplets are in contact, chemical fronts can propagate from droplet to droplet. So we decided to look for the smallest droplet systems in which excitations could take place in several ways, with at least two being stable. We could then assign one sequence of excitations a logic value of 0, the other 1, and in order to switch between them and force a particular change of memory state, we could use light," explains Prof. Gorecki.

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Phoenix666 writes:

It's named after a Nordic god and drills deep into the heart of a volcano: "Thor" is a rig that symbolises Iceland's leading-edge efforts to produce powerful clean energy.

If successful, the experimental project could produce up to 10 times more energy than an existing conventional gas or oil well, by generating electricity from the heat stored inside the earth: in this case, volcanic areas.

Launched in August last year, the drilling was completed on January 25, reaching a record-breaking depth of 4,659 metres (nearly 3 miles).

At this depth, engineers hope to access hot liquids under extreme pressure and at temperatures of 427 degrees C (800 F), creating steam that turns a turbine to generate clean electricity.

Iceland's decision to harness the heat inside the earth in a process known as geothermal energy dates back to the 1970s and the oil crisis.

But the new geothermal well is expected to generate far more energy, as the extreme heat and pressure at that depth makes the water take the form of a "supercritical" fluid, which is neither gas nor liquid.

"We expect to get five to 10 times more power from the well than a conventional well today," said Albert Albertsson, an engineer at the Icelandic energy company HS Orka, involved in the drilling project.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Ubuntu GNOME distros blog post tells you everything you need to know:

There will no longer be a separate GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. The development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release... We are currently liaising with the Canonical teams on how this will work out.

Old hands in this field may recall a similar refocusing happened to Red Hat back in 2003. Red Hat dropped its desktop, then called Red Hat Linux, and started up Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in the process becoming the boring enterprise-focused company it is today. But it created the community based Fedora to serve as what Red Hat Linux had once been so not all was lost.

While this is the likely script for Canonical over the next few years, it is equally possible that it may not actually go this way. Canonical may stick with its desktop and still make it a major focus of its development because while the money is in enterprise, what made Ubuntu very nearly a household name is not enterprise, but community.

Original Submission