NewScientist has a story about the “hydrogen economy” that has been resting on the horizon for a decade or more. Despite a great deal of enthusiasm for and research into hydrogen-based power systems, the technology seems just as far away from everyday use as it’s always been. A British startup, ITM Power, has recently claimed a breakthrough in lowering production costs by using a nickel catalyst (rather than platinum) with a membrane small enough for home use. But, even if their method is proven and adopted, it still wouldn’t address huge energy efficiency problems in the process. “The point was made forcefully by Gary Kendall of the conservation group WWF in a recent report called Plugged In (PDF, pgs. 135-149). Kendall, a chemist who previously spent almost a decade working for ExxonMobil, highlights how the energy losses in the fuel chain – from electrolysis to compression of the hydrogen for use to inefficiencies in the fuel cell itself — mean that only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the fuel does any useful work on the road.”
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A Buyer’s Guide for digital cameras from $100 Point-and-Shoots to $3000 full-frame DSLRs – and everything in between….
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I’ve been working on a side project with ASUS called WePC.com. The idea is pretty cool: ASUS is tapping the community for ideas on what they’d like to see from its users in future notebook designs. ASUS brought in several authors from around the web to talk about various aspects of computing. I wrote a handful of posts about everything from my…
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arcticstoat writes “Game developer Rockstar has revealed that the forthcoming PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will feature the controversial SecuROM 7 DRM system. Unlike some of EA’s recent titles, such as Spore and Mass Effect, GTA IV won’t limit the number of times that you can install the game, although SecuROM will be impossible to remove without leaving ‘some traces’ on your PC. Anyone hoping to avoid SecuROM by downloading the game form Steam will also be disappointed, as Rockstar says that all versions of the game will feature SecuROM, including digital versions online. On the plus side, Rockstar says that it’s ‘working with SecuROM to post information on our support pages regarding how to remove these inactive traces of the program for users who wish to do so.’ Has Rockstar gotten a better balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here?”
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cybergenesis2008 points us to a summary of research out of Harvard Medical School in which a set of genes known to affect aging in yeast was found to affect aging in mice as well. The genes, called sirtuins, perform two particular tasks; regulating which genes are “on” and “off,” and also helping to repair damaged DNA. As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases, leaving less time for the sirtuins’ regulatory tasks. The increasingly unregulated genes then become a significant factor in aging. Realizing this, the researchers “administered extra copies of the sirtuin gene [to the mice], or fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their mean lifespan by 24 to 46 percent.” We discussed the plans for this research a few years ago.
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A new analysis of botnets has come up with a possible reason for their prodigious ability to infect PCs – many anti-virus programs are near to useless in blocking the binaries used to spread them.
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KIdPanda writes “Prompted by pictures of man-made structures in the Utah desert, a SETI astronomer explains the sometimes-ambiguous difference between seeing the hand of God, alien intelligence, or nature. ‘In my photographs, Shostak’s SETI-trained eye — standing in for a pattern-crunching computer program — searched for an unexpected increase in visual order (or, in thermodynamic terms, a decrease in entropy caused by the rebellion of life against universal decay). A road or a tended field is mathematically simpler than a mountainous jumble or naturally varied vegetation. … But there’s an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design.”
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jammag writes “Ever since the GNewSense team pointed out that the Linux kernel contains proprietary firmware blobs, the question of whether a given distro is truly free software has gotten messier, notes Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. The FSF changed the definition of a free distribution, and a search for how to respond to this new definition is now well underway. Who wins and what solutions are implemented could have a major effect on the future of free and open source software. Debian has its own solution (by allowing users to choose their download), as do Ubuntu and Fedora (they include the offending firmware by default but make it possible to remove it). Meanwhile, the debate over firmware rages on. What resolves this issue?”
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TACOMA, WA—Michael Renfro, a 68-year-old retired CPA with an apple hovering in front of his face, announced Monday that he has filed a $15…
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WASHINGTON—President Bush collapsed in the Oval Office after spontaneously expelling a 3-pound kidney stone from his bladder, sources…
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Some clever DNA detective work has confirmed that some bones found under one of the side altars in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Frombork, Poland were in fact those of Nicholas Copernicus.
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WASHINGTON—President Bush collapsed in the Oval Office after spontaneously expelling a 3-pound kidney stone from his bladder, sources…
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CHICAGO—Subjects who drank five glasses or more showed an increased ability to recall each time their mothers had been unsupportive of boyfriends or husbands.
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PC World – If you’ve never heard of Ben 10: Protector of Earth, welcome to the club. If I said “Steven Seagle,” that might raise some eyebrows, except that I mean Steven T. Seagle, the American comics, TV, film, theater, video game, and animation guy, not the American movie actor turned deputy sheriff with a black belt in aikido and (oddly enough) a thing for Tesla coils (who also spells his name ‘Seagal’).
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AP – Consumer electronics have long been among the most popular holiday gifts, with fierce competition among shoppers for day-after-Thanksgiving deals on flat-screen TVs and laptop computers.
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WASHINGTON—The Federal Aviation Administration stated Wednesday that, according to all available evidence, airplanes are just as afraid of…
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nandemoari writes “According to a recent advertisement airing on American TV, Apple’s new Macbooks (well-received by most technology critics) are ‘the world’s greenest family of notebooks.’ It seems an indication that the Cupertino-based company is increasingly aware of a consumer base that demands green electronics. However, Greenpeace is less than enthused with Apple’s overall green performance. In their report (PDF), the environmentalists argue that Apple ‘needs to commit to phasing out additional substances with timelines, improve its policy on chemicals and its reporting on chemicals management.’” Ars Technica points out that Greenpeace’s research isn’t quite up-to-snuff, and it’s also worth noting that Greenpeace admitted to targeting Apple for the publicity in the past.
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AP – Online retailers are ramping up heavy-duty deals to turn skittish shoppers into buyers during the crucial Thanksgiving weekend and “Cyber Monday” but even so, online sales are expected to be fairly flat after years of strong growth.
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AP – Sears.com was inaccessible to U.S. shoppers for two hours on Friday in what was the most notable Web hiccup of the holiday gift-buying season’s official start.
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Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland
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merg717 writes “Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist challenged researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube (Science, 10 October, p. 186). By the 11 p.m. deadline this past Sunday, 36 dances — including solo ballet and circus spectacle — had been submitted online.” The vitamin D dance is particularly strange.
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Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland
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PC World – The U.K.’s advertising regulator banned a video advertisement for Apple’s 3G iPhone, saying Wednesday that the ad exaggerates the phone’s speed and is misleading.
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lkcl tips his in-depth article up at Advogato on the difficulties for the MVC programming model that are introduced by Javascript and AJAX, and solutions for them. He writes: “This article outlines how the MVC concept is made incredibly awkward by the gradual but necessary introduction of Javascript and AJAX. A solution is found in the form of Javascript Compiler Technology such as GWT or Pyjamas (PyPy’s JS backend or Rb2Js could be used, with some additional work). The article outlines how and why the traditional MVC patterns are fragmented by Javascript and AJAX, advocating that if a site is programmed purely in a high-level language that is then compiled to Javascript for the Web Browser sections, the same high-level source code can be executed either client-side on the browser, or server-side, or even both, depending on the requirements. The implications of this approach are discussed in depth.”
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TACOMA, WA—Michael Renfro, a 68-year-old retired CPA with an apple hovering in front of his face, announced Monday that he has filed a $15…
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Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland
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WASHINGTON—The Federal Aviation Administration stated Wednesday that, according to all available evidence, airplanes are just as afraid of…
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Matt Asay writes “On October 13, 2008, Hewlett-Packard sent a complaint to an open-source competitor, GroundWork, asking GroundWork to stop revealing HP’s ‘confidential’ pricing. CNET has posted the letter, which indicates that HP doesn’t want its pricing revealed, but which doesn’t question the veracity of the pricing (which, not surprisingly, is 82 percent higher than the open-source vendor’s). Does HP think its pricing is really a secret? It’s publicly available at GSA Advantage. Guess what? HP software costs a lot of money, but presumably feels that it can justify the high prices. Why try to hide the pricing information?”
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What are you thankful for this year?
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We delve into Far Cry 2 performance across multiple settings and DX versions. Beyond this we do a full top to bottom hardware analysis using the game. …
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