Tag Archives: technology

Smart appliances will tell Google when you rise, and hit the shower

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Now that we know Google — the search engine giant and revolving door operation for CIA analysts — has been spying on Wi-Fi laptop users, we can expect corporations and governments to next target so-called smart appliances: toasters, clock radios (such as this prototype, left) and dishwashers connected directly to the Internet.

Add these gadgets to the smart meters being promoted by the likes of the Boston-based “consumer group,” ConsumerUnited.com (actually, the organization lists utility companies as its “partners”), and you will find it impossible to flip a switch in your house without someone knowing about it.

Here’s a bit from my column this week, below the fold, about a Wi-Fi (and therefore, apparently, vulnerable) alarm clock that factors-in your commute time, and the time it takes you to shave and shower before work, to calculate when you wake up:

“The Dynamically Programmable Alarm Clock will not make getting out of bed easier. But it will do a better job than your current bedside gadget to make sure you’re on time for that meeting.

The DPAC (egaertner.com/dpac), as its developers at Northeastern University call it, connects to Google Calendar via Wi-Fi. It then grabs your first task of the day as a starting point for its calculations.”

Note: Special thanks to Alan Watt (and his Cutting Through the Matrix listeners) for sharing your thoughts about my research, here.

via Power up, with juice from the yard – The Boston Globe.

Power up, with juice from the yard – The Boston Globe

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Call it the democratization of wind, sun, and rain: You catch it, you keep it. With a residential turbine on your roof or in your backyard, subsidized in part by tax rebates, you (and your accountant) might find a way to break even in a few years.

In a year or so, for example, you might want to charge your Chevrolet Volt, without paying NStar for the privilege.

Enter Envision Solar International Inc. (envisionsolar.com), which this year plans to market a carport, called the LifePort, which has solar panels on its roof.

Read my Boston Globe column this week: Power up, with juice from the yard – The Boston Globe.

Inventor of H-Bomb and Mars mining expert to fix spill

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The president has called together America’s most devastatingly brilliant men to fix the spill.

But who will deliver the explosive charge in that terribly dangerous world, 5,000 feet down?

Who’s writing this script?

Doug Owen at the Oracle Broadcasting Network suggested this week that depleted uranium be used to stop-op the Gulf oil spill. Place your bets…

“Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five ‘extraordinarily intelligent’ scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.”

via Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill (Update1) – BusinessWeek.

Star Trek prophecy fulfilled, centuries early

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Thanks to the Secret Sun for alerting us to the news that — as anticipated by the interesting, if boring, Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Voyager 2 is still speaking.

Only this time, the craft is speaking to us Terrans, and in a strange language, which the craft acquired “out there.”

“Alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf said:’It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth.’”

via Have aliens hijacked Voyager 2 spacecraft | The Daily Telegraph.

Gulf oil spill a sucker punch to lazy science reporters

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The takeaway: Too many science journalists lack skepticism, and balls. — MB

Science reporters and bloggers are guilty of overstating the ability of microbes, nanobots and other technologies to prevent and to lap-up oil spills.

As a result, TV and Web viewers are being lulled into thinking there’s a fix for everything, including BP’s latest pooch-screw.

Here is the underlying problem: Rather than treating scientists and technologists as potential liars — as we are trained to do with pols, for example — we science journos typically treat our subjects with reverence.

To the science writer, I say, the next time any company puts a hard hat on you, and gives you the nickel tour of its facilities, wipe that look of astonishment off your face, and remember to ask, “Will this work?” “Is it safe?” “Where’s the documentation?” and “What if…?”

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There’s a stunning slide show, meanwhile, over at Boston.com. Here’s a snip from the text accompanying the images, via PuppetGov:

“While tracking the volume of the continued flow of oil is difficult, an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil possibly much more continues to pour into the gulf every day. While visible damage to shorelines has been minimal to date as the oil has spread slowly, the scene remains, in the words of President Obama, a ‘potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.’”

via The Big Picture: Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico | PuppetGov.

Maya were masters of sustainability, sat images show

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Sustainable cities, now in ruins. Photo: Bill McChesney/Flickr CC

Archaeologists studying ancient Mesoamerica are trading-in their machetes for satellites that can spy massive structures buried by time.

Using satellite images, scientists at the University of Central Florida are reporting that — long before Agenda 21 — Mayan architects were concentrating people into smaller areas, by weaving together living and work spaces.

It’s a stretch, greenwashing the Maya to make them appear relevant to 21st Century audiences. But that’s how science writers roll, these days.

The Maya’s reasons for forming self-sustaining city states were, after all, entirely defensive.

“Until now, Maya archeologists have been limited in exploring large sites and understanding the full nature of ancient Maya landscape modifications because most of those features are hidden within heavily forested and hilly terrain and are difficult to record. LiDAR effectively removes these obstacles.’It’s very exciting,’ said Arlen Chase. ‘The images not only reveal topography and built features, but also demonstrate the integration of residential groups, monumental architecture, roadways and agricultural terraces, vividly illustrating a complete communication, transportation and subsistence system.’”

via UCF Newsroom.

Obama's Emancipation Proclamation: Kill your PlayStation

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Photo: Emily and Alex/Flickr CC

That, and your iPod and iPad, and Xbox:

“‘With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,’ Obama said. He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.”

The president is, of course, onto something. These media are already having unanticipated consequences.

via AFP: Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era.

U. of Utah reveals nuke secrets in iPhone app

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Photo: James Vaughan/Flickr CC

This iPhone app will enrich the student experience. — MB

The University of Utah’s nuclear engineers worry that the US is running out of skilled operators for its 100-or-so aging nuclear power plants.

So, to make the field seem more relevant to young engineers, they fed sensitive nuke data into a 3D visualization and simulation app for the iPhone.

A Utah spokesman told me last week that the school will not make the nuke data for the iPhone app — which can be used to visualize core meltdowns and the like — generally available.

I presume that is because the data might appeal to terrorists. But the spokesman was reluctant to detail Utah’s reasons for keeping its data secret.

Alas, I do not imagine the school will have much luck keeping this stuff on campus, once it is on an iPhone.

“The University of Utah’s nuclear engineering program hopes to enrich its students’ learning with an iPhone app that renders in three dimensions the collision of neutrons and uranium inside a nuclear reactor core. Utah last fall released a free 3D iPhone app, ImageVis3D Mobile as part of a biomedical visualization project.Utah does not plan to make the software behind its nuke visualizations, which were also generated for the ImageVis3D Mobile app, publicly available anytime soon.”

via (below the fold) Seagate promises seamless backup and playback – The Boston Globe.

Intel aircraft over NYC tapped cell phone calls

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SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) aircraft such as this one, bristling with antennae, swirled above New York after this week's failed bombing attempt. Photo: US Navy

That’s how officials caught up with the stumblebum Times Square terrorist:

“In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport.”

via Army Intelligence Planes Led To Suspect’s Arrest – wcbstv.com.

Implantable recording device "hugs the brain"

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Photo: Sarah G/Flickr CC

Silk-based implants that stretch, and stick to the brain’s contours and folds like shrink wrap, will monitor patient’s brains and other organs, without damaging sensitive tissues.

Tufts University biomedical engineering professors David Kaplan and Fiorenzo Omenetto created the silk substrate, which causes less inflammation than one with sharp edges.

“The implants contain metal electrodes that are 500 microns thick, or about five times the thickness of a human hair. The absence of sharp electrodes and rigid surfaces should improve safety, with less damage to brain tissue. Also, the implants’ ability to mold to the brain's surface could provide better stability; the brain sometimes shifts in the skull and the implant could move with it. Finally, by spreading across the brain, the implants have the potential to capture the activity of large networks of brain cells, Dr. Litt said.”

via A Brain-Recording Device that Melts into Place, April 18, 2010 News Release – National Institutes of Health (NIH).