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Hmmm... If you're artistic, how about a budget version of David Hockney's latest experimentation.

Hello Scotch Tape and Pencil Lead! http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/20558/

"Big data sets are never complete," Crawford says (from source article -> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38775/page1/ ).

APK

P.S.=> Thus, you can NEVER, EVER have a perfect dataset, because you're never going to have every possible sampleable item, period...

... apk

The arxiv blog recently had a roundup of papers discussing this: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27212/ They fall into three groups: (1) Suggestions of how the experiment might have given a wrong result. (2) Theoretical arguments that constrain the interpretation and make the result seem implausible if taken at face value. (3) Theoretical papers saying what it could mean if it really was new physics. The Nature article seems to show that the Contaldi paper was based on a misunderstanding of how the experiment was done. However, the Nature article points to a new paper by Henri that wasn't included in the arxiv roundup: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.0239

Koomey's law only relates to the amount of power required to operate an electronic device. The very purpose of laws like Koomey and Moore is to describe advances in electronics. While perhaps the amount of energy involved in the unwinding of the mainspring of a mechanical computer can be analysed, I think you'll find that you'd be hard-pressed to get meaningful figures for the energy involved in the operation of an abacus or slide rule—which aren't even complete calculating devices and rely very heavily on the operator's brain to yield meaningful results. It will be decades before we can definitely point to an MRI of a functioning human brain and be able to say "it took x kilojoules to work through that reasoning process"—and even then the results are still incomparable.

I'm not typically the sort of person to dismiss unusual inquiries; in fact, I rather enjoy exploring them and finding new truths out of strange combinations of inputs. But this question is inherently bogus because pre-mechanical computers were operated in completely different ways. Transistors were direct replacements for vacuum tubes; they performed the same functions at an individual level, and the calculating machines that were made from each were equally Turing-complete. An ENIAC in the proper configuration and with sufficient memory, energy and time could conceivably emulate an iPad. Moreover, so could its components. The same cannot be said of a slide rule or abacus. They're not actually computing machines.

Arm looks attractive for its low power consumption, but Koomey's law show's that it is energy efficiency, not power that doubles every 18 months.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38548/?p1=A3

Intel is selling chips to build non-Arm (refrained from using "real") desktop computers, with low enough power the savings are simply not worth the tradeoff for most people.

>>New species can not be produced by keeping genome the same and modifying its expression, because without a chain of mutations genome remains compatible. As I said, nothing like Lamarck.

Why are you so focused on speciation? The main point of what we call Lamarckism is the so-called "Inheritance of Acquired Traits" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_of_acquired_traits), which is exactly what happens in certain situations.

I'm hardly alone in drawing the parallels between epigenetics and Lamarckism. Hell MIT researchers even call it as such - http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22061/

So any freshwater river going into ocean could provide a continual source of hydrogen that can, in turn, be burned to produce electricity.

Why not just use turbines to generate electricity directly?

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18567/

I am surprised that the utilities have not worked closely with USPS to get them electric trucks.

They're trying it. Buses too. Trains are being looked at for storage. There's a huge amount of different pilots being looked at around the world with some really cool ideas. BOMA doing large scale DR in Chicago. And on and on.

I get your point, limited supplies lead to hoarding. However, if you define hoarding as "spending very little" and the denominations of currency are discrete, then eventually this results in no spending. With bitcoin its just as easy and possible to spend 1 BTC as it is to spend 0.0000001 BTC. So you can hoard your bitcoins, and still spend very few of them.

So yes, deflation may happen, but the floor is much lower than it is with normal currencies.

Also, I am not, at the moment, convinced that most people are not spending bitcoins.

Krugman gets his data from a second article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38392/

Which says:
"According to bitcoinwatch.com, the best source of Bitcoin data, more than a million dollars' worth of bitcoins were traded on June 13."
"By early August, less than half a million dollars in bitcoins were being used in transactions; even the currency's value had been cut in half."

So they say the USD value of all bitcoin transactions (I am guessing per day) more than halved in this one month period. That shows that people are spending less. (note: they say transactions, which differs from trades. Transactions are when one entity gives bitcoins to another, theoretically in exchange for goods or service. This differs from trade volume, which is simply exchanging BTC for USD or whatever).

If look today though at bitcoinwatch.com I see there were 6,476 transactions in the past 24 hours involving 394,474.39 BTC, and the current value of the BTC is ~$6.50 USD, which gives us ~$2.5 million USD in BTC traded in the past day at an avg of $386 per transaction.

That seems like a lot per transaction, but without rawer data I can't say how much this differs from the median transaction size. Otherwise it looks like people are buying expensive things mostly, possibly drugs from The Silk Road.

It's currently not apparent to me how to get all the historical data and look at trends in transaction volume, but it seems good to me (at least compared to the low numbers JAMES SUROWIECKI uses.

The only caveat I can see is that we cannot know how many of these transactions are people moving money between different "wallets" they own (the bitcoin equivalent of an account) as the identity is anonymous. It could be the vast majority of these transactions is the result of people shuffling money from one hand or the other.

Naturally, I am probably missing something.

The article's outrageously biased. Most PalmOS PDAs without keyboards (that was, most of them) had the same basic form as the iPhone - a rectangle with a big screen taking up most of it - going as far back as the late '90s:

https://www.technologyreview.com/files/10990/0507palm_x600.jpg

And then they cherry-picked some tablets with handles and ruggedized ones with silly-looking corner bumpers. Most tablets and convertible laptops again had the iPad-like form years before: Big rectangle, screen taking up most of it. See here:

http://web.siat.ac.cn/~baoquan/img_research/tabletPC.jpg

Not much at all. Solar hydrocarbon. If you look at the reaction data, you'll find that the reaction H2+CO2 -> H2O+CO will occur with mild heating (from a solar concentrator). Once you get a mixture of H2 + CO, you have syngas, and from there you can make just about anything.

A little off topic but interesting nontheless:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27060/

It's Official: Apple Is Now More 'Open' than Google

Google promised that Android would be open source ...

a) changing the rate of a random process does not mean you make it non-random

b) decay properties may depend on temperature and pressure for certain decays, there seems a dispute about it (see http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24307/)

c) Still, without further information i have doubts about the Thorium-powered cars.

There's a story about National Gypsum out of North Carolina having this stuff back in 2/4/2010. So, this is not new. My guess is, the Chinese stole it.

Sort of. The /. story from six months ago was about Frederico Francisco's arXiv paper. What's new in TFA is confirmation by JPL's Slava Truysev. That barely gets a paragraph, though, after summarising the previous research.

I know nothing about the particular credentials of the person quoted; but Intel actually has its very own cultural anthropology research unit. Apparently, we are talking 100+ anthropologists and social scientists.

I have no idea if these are really high-powered types, or if they are basically the washouts of academia who don't want to admit that they have essentially moved into Intel's 'Theoretical Marketing' department; but Intel has way more of them than you'd expect from a chip company.

I think the idea of 'trucking around hydrogen' is akin to the idea we'll never have truly portable computers because nobody wants to carry around a power cord that long. Hydrogen should be produced at the station, possibly using one of these nifty techniques being developed @ MIT like this or this or this

Leaf http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/26067/

Mitsubishi http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/22/edta-2011-85-miles-is-the-best-case-scenario-for-mitsubishi-i/

If I want a urban rickshaw I'll buy a scooter with storage. If I want a car I'll buy something with 300+ miles range.

This has been done before..
All we need now is one printer that can print solar cells, Batteries and TFT panels.

self-powered, printable televisions, anyone?

This isn't really about native apps vs web apps, but rather what technology to use to build the front end appearance and behavior of actual apps. Apps that use HTML/CSS/Javascript for this task, instead of Java or Objective C or whatever, are thus known as "hybrid" mobile apps.

In other words, PhoeGap etc. allow one to build a front-end interface in HTML5/CSS/Javascript, then package that up as an actual native application for various platforms (leveraging the platform's web browser under the hood). The frameworks usually allow you to take advantage of various native APIs that aren't normally accessible through a web browser (ie, that a normal web app can't use) and store data locally (ie, run the app offline), while reusing the same code across various platforms (and possibly as an actual web application version, as well).

The amount of "platform-native" programming required to implement the app on various platforms is thus minimal.

Also, some of the performance concerns are not as much of a problem as you might imagine, due to hardware-accelerated CSS3 transitions, etc. on various platforms. (Others actually convert Javascript to native code, obviating some of the potential performance issues.)

One approach might be to write a regular web app first, targeted at "modern" smartphones (primarily iPhone and Android), then convert that to a PhoeGap application that can be targeted as a native app for those platforms (and more, such as Blackberry and Windows Phone 7).

For more about this, see:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37831/
http://www.appmobi.com/index.php?q=node/95
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Hybrid-Applications-iPhone-JavaScript/dp/0321604164

Well, there was talk about nausea-causing flashlights a while back. This flashlight however is not multicolored, so it'll miss some of the effectiveness.

Other application is to make cheap strobolight out of it. Perhaps feed it with blink-patterns via the USB connection.

If they had used a RGB-LED it would've made a better toy. :-)

Since most of the day time power consumption is air conditioning, we could simply make ice/chill water at night and use it to cool the home during the day.

Now you're talking crazy. Doing that would use more energy on average because you would be running a compressor constantly for a long period of time to cool down a large quantity of water. An AC unit, by comparison only runs intermittently and doesn't need to run as hard because it's only cooling the air 10-25 degrees (Fahrenheit) below ambient temperature rather than 50-70 degrees.

Wonderful theory buddy. Pity, these fools did not listen to you: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25352/

All consciousness relies on electrons. You cannot have consciousness without electrons. So this would be one place to look.

But you cannot say that you can understand consciousness given only an understanding of electrons -- they are only a link in the chain.

But basically, if you don't have quantum consciousness you can't have consciousness on higher scales. So on some level these particles have self recognition even if it's through us. This doesn't answer whether or not there is free will, but the math is clear that if there is consciousness on the large scale it will also have to exist on the quantum scale. It's also proven mathematically that if free will exists on the large scale that it also has to exist somewhere somehow on the quantum scale.

For this reason, the fact that the math supports it, it's worth doing research and experimenting on. The problem or fear I have is if we did discover what particle or wave function is responsible for consciousness, or how, we'd have governments around the world using these discoveries to enslave and oppress people. It's the kind of question that I'd personally want to know the answer to, but I also recognize that as soon as we find the answer, it will open pandora's box which governments and corporations intend to completely exploit.

I share that fear

If we found a way to for example give consciousness to inanimate objects, or a way to have complete control over life in some way, or if we discovered that quantum computers could be made conscious, it would change everything probably for the worst because governments would then use this technology to enslave rather than use it in a transhumanist fashion. It would be used to make the perfect cyborg slaves, who have the mix of human consciousness, with the absolute obedience of a programmable robot. In essence this discover could lead to the end of "free will" as we know it, and lead to the beginning of technological slavery.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that consciousness requires, in order to be able to affect physical reality, as a foundation, something with a non-discrete complexity like what we see in the brain.

And unfortunately no political party is truly anti slavery. So we'd be collectively fucked.

Sources Quantum Entanglement Can be a Measure of Free Will The same experiments that reveal the nature of entanglement can also be interpreted as a measure of free will, say researchers.

Do subatomic particles have free will?

This means that the particle cannot have a definite spin in every direction before it’s measured, Kochen and Specker concluded. If it did, physicists would be able to occasionally observe it breaking the 1-0-1 rule, which never happens. Instead, it must “decide” which spin to have on the fly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

When he wrote his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind in 1989, Penrose lacked a detailed proposal for how quantum processing could be implemented in the brain. Subsequently, Hameroff read Penrose's book, and suggested that microtubules could be suitable candidates for quantum processing. The Orch-OR theory arose from the collaboration of Penrose and Hameroff in the early 1990s. Microtubules are the main component of a supportive structure within neurons known as the cytoskeleton. In addition to providing a supportive structure, the known functions of microtubules include transport of molecules including neurotransmitters bound for synapses and control of the development of the cell. Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The tubulin dimers each h

All consciousness relies on electrons. You cannot have consciousness without electrons. So this would be one place to look.

But basically, if you don't have quantum consciousness you can't have consciousness on higher scales. So on some level these particles have self recognition even if it's through us. This doesn't answer whether or not there is free will, but the math is clear that if there is consciousness on the large scale it will also have to exist on the quantum scale. It's also proven mathematically that if free will exists on the large scale that it also has to exist somewhere somehow on the quantum scale.

For this reason, the fact that the math supports it, it's worth doing research and experimenting on. The problem or fear I have is if we did discover what particle or wave function is responsible for consciousness, or how, we'd have governments around the world using these discoveries to enslave and oppress people. It's the kind of question that I'd personally want to know the answer to, but I also recognize that as soon as we find the answer, it will open pandora's box which governments and corporations intend to completely exploit.

If we found a way to for example give consciousness to inanimate objects, or a way to have complete control over life in some way, or if we discovered that quantum computers could be made conscious, it would change everything probably for the worst because governments would then use this technology to enslave rather than use it in a transhumanist fashion. It would be used to make the perfect cyborg slaves, who have the mix of human consciousness, with the absolute obedience of a programmable robot. In essence this discover could lead to the end of "free will" as we know it, and lead to the beginning of technological slavery.

And unfortunately no political party is truly anti slavery. So we'd be collectively fucked.

Sources
Quantum Entanglement Can be a Measure of Free Will
The same experiments that reveal the nature of entanglement can also be interpreted as a measure of free will, say researchers.

Do subatomic particles have free will?

This means that the particle cannot have a definite spin in every direction before it’s measured, Kochen and Specker concluded. If it did, physicists would be able to occasionally observe it breaking the 1-0-1 rule, which never happens. Instead, it must “decide” which spin to have on the fly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

When he wrote his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind in 1989, Penrose lacked a detailed proposal for how quantum processing could be implemented in the brain. Subsequently, Hameroff read Penrose's book, and suggested that microtubules could be suitable candidates for quantum processing. The Orch-OR theory arose from the collaboration of Penrose and Hameroff in the early 1990s.
Microtubules are the main component of a supportive structure within neurons known as the cytoskeleton. In addition to providing a supportive structure, the known functions of microtubules include transport of molecules including neurotransmitters bound for synapses and control of the development of the cell.
Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The tubulin dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart, and which may contain delocalised pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2 nm, and Hameroff claims that these electrons are close enough to become quantum entangled.[11]
Hameroff further proposed that these electrons could become locked in phase, forming a state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.[12][13] Furthermore, he tho

Maybe it's something like this Touchless 3-D Fingerprinting with two polarized beams going at once to speed things up.

Wow, you can add 2 and 3 like that? Patent Approved!

- USPTO worker #217

2+3 = 5 through binary coding and bit addition? Novel and unobvious!

- Marshall Texas jury members

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Direct_conversion_of_energy

Aneutronic fusion reactions produce the overwhelming bulk of their energy in the form of charged particles instead of neutrons. This means that energy could be converted directly into electricity by various techniques. Many proposed direct conversion techniques are based on mature technology derived from other fields, such as microwave technology, and some involve equipment that is more compact and potentially cheaper than that involved in conventional thermal production of electricity.

This seems to be a main draw of He3 and you haven't even mentioned it.

This article http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/19296/page2/ cited in the wiki page also explains that the aneutronic reaction makes building a plant for He3+He3 much cheaper because the equipment isn't being bombarded by neutrons constantly.

Frankly I'm a bit skeptical that getting the He3 will be cheap but your whole argument rests on the utterly retarded concept that mining something from the moon is a boondoggle. In reality we could choose to mine H2O from the moon and dump it into the ocean and the knowledge we would gain would be worth every penny spent on it.

Very little is known about how TDCS works. Scientists theorize that the mild current primes the neurons for action but does not trigger the voltage spikes that neurons use to communicate. "Presumably, it is polarizing neurons and making them more or less likely to respond to inputs," says Warren Grill, a neural engineer at Duke University, in Durham, NC. "But what's happening at the level of the synapse, where the business of learning really takes place, we don't know."

Of course, given the opening sentence to that paragraph, it's probably not something you'd want to play with at home...

So open to our partners we'll even give them access to the servers themselves to poke around in your personal info directly.

On a serious note, the data center is pretty cool. Here's another source of pretty blue images that show better images regarding the evaporation cooling system.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37295/?a=f

You might have to 'skip' a couple HP ads but after about 2 or 3 they get the message that you're not interested.

Andy,

sorry, I lack the terminology to describe the batteries. They are hugh liquid storages of two different kind of chemicals, which react like in a normal battery.

The USA are leading in that technology ... perhaps you find it yourself if you google for it. The descriptions about those storages I got in the german issue of http://www.technologyreview.com/ (years ago).

Regarding water plants, yes I should have tried to find the proper english term and describe them as "pumped-storage hydroelectric"

Sorry but your claim that the USA already has such a plant at every feasible place is nonsense.
See below after my explanation regarding subsidization.

"In germany wind/solar plants are expensive because building them is subsidized." That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Subsidization makes things cheaper, not more expensive.

No it does not. That is main problem all over the world with subsidizing. If you reread my previous post, I tried to explain it, but perhaps it was not good enough.
I explain again a bit more elaborated: german energy companies are required by law to buy all wind and solar energy (and other renewables) at a premium price and supply the energy into the grid.
E.g. solar is payed with 16cent (or is it 30 cents even? Don't remember but you can google it) instead of the "fair" price of something like 3 cent. (This is he subsidization number 1)
Now I go and want to build a 100square yard photovoltaic plant on my roof. The cost would be, if I take the cheapest possible materials and build it myself perhaps $25,000. As this is quite a lot of money I perhaps consider to get a loan. With the estimated turn over of my solar plant I now perhaps "earn" $1000 a year and need about 15 years to pay back the loan. Not a bad deal so far.
Now the second subsidization comes into play: if I buy from a german company, if possible close to my hometown, the state pays 30% of the installation costs, up to an upper limit of $10,000.
Now I can not buy the very cheap $25,000 installation anymore (from china or switzerland), or I wont get the extra $10,000.
Now the clever Solar Inc. makes a master plan with the Green Energy Bank Inc like follows:
We give you a loan of $45,000, you build a solar plant with 120 square yards (instead of the original 100), you buy from Solar Inc instead from cheap chinese, now you get the $10,000 subsidization from the state. That $10,000 we put into an investment plan ... so after 25 years it is like $25,000. You don't pay back the complete loan during the next 25 years, but you only pay like 50%, so now you earn roughly $2000 a year with your plant. After 25 years you use the money from your investment plan to cancel/liquidate the loan.
Anyway, such constructs can be arbitrary complicated (like giving an extra loan to overhaul the roof, before you put the solar plant on top of it. That loan might be eligible for a income tax reduction as you "invest into your home")
Bottom line you did not buy a $25,000 solar plant but a $45,000 solar plant, with only 20% more yield.
That is how subsidization in europe/germany often works. It is a big business for the banks and not a big helper for the industry or the technology (in the first place).
Luckily the extra subsidizations from the state are cut down now. However the banking games still exist, with the goal to convince people to build bigger and more expensive plants than they would do usually. In the end those plants are much more expensive than they would be on a true/free market because the Companies producing them keep the price high.

Coming back to the pumped storage plants, you only need an area which is 10 yards higher than the pump/generator. You don't need a valley with a dam. Looking at wikipedia shows that you produce quite a nice amount of energy hydro-electric and also have a nice storage capacity (roughly 5% of your total energy pro

I'll leave aside your first point as its pretty moot. Counting (current and future) deaths that may or may not be directly or indirectly attributable to radiation fallout effects is as controversial as counting civilian deaths in war.

I think one of the issues people have is not whether nuclear energy can be delivered safely in theory. Most people accept that we can engineer decent solutions to technical problems. The problem is actually a regulatory one (the same point you make regarding stricter rules).

How is it possible that someone thought it was OK to build a string of nuclear plants of a style ill-suited to earthquakes, in a region of the world where 5 continental plates intersect? That was unlikely to be an engineering decision. It was more likely to be a politician's industry advisory body playing down the risks while trumpeting the up-side and greasing palms along the way. Yes, its the way of the world. And its precisely this that makes nuclear worrying. When it comes to engineering, I don't have a problem. When it comes to regulation, I have precisely zero faith in the ability of regulators to police this industry (or in fact many others (and I'm pro-regulation) but that's a whole other discussion).

A classic well-studied example of "political" decisions trumping engineering ones is the sorry saga of the space shuttle Challenger booster rocket O-rings.

On a different note, I'd like to point out one of the things that is constantly overlooked is the fact that virtually no nuclear plant is commercially insurable without massive government subsidies. Take away props like the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, and nuclear economics don't look so good.

If we're going to be spending trillions of tax dollars on anything, I'd like to see some money being thrown at retro-fitting coal stations with solar thermal kit (making use of the existing heat-conversion plant and (potentially) adding hot-salt heat storage for base-load capability).

I found one of the <tools> being used on you people. A simple internet forum can never overcome that kind of power. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Words can only go so far. Turn off your monitors!

1. The Today in Science listing of birth and death dates of scientists, and notable events. (For example, today is the anniversary of the publication of Einstein's paper on General Relativity, Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitästheorie.

2. Interactive science simulations from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

3. Science news articles at PhysOrg.com, New Scientist, and Technology Review.

I doubt it. The McEliese cryptosystem from 1978 is immune to attack even by quantum computers, whereas current quantum cryptography has already been broken and can be sampled without detection (if the sample rate is about the same as the noise in the system), but highly secure facilities are investing in QC, not McEliese. Why? Because nobody really cares that much, not at that level. Once you pass a certain point, people become far more vulnerable than technology, so improving the technology won't help security. All it might do is attract funding, which is why QC is so good - fully buzzword-compliant - and old tech that's superior is bad.

More detail here: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/35094/

“It also appears that one senior NOAA employee possibly thwarted the release of important federal scientific information for the public to assess and analyze,” he said, referring to an employee’s failure to provide material related to work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a different body that compiles research, in response to a Freedom of Information request. " Mann's manipulation of data and failure to provide information about his research have been a long standing joke. http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/ It was really no surprise that he wouldn't want to provide the information. What is a giant surprise is that he is still in a position of any responsibility. Well maybe not so much if you want trillions of dollars to be spent on changing the country's energy economy.

The one thing we know for certain is that the cost will not go down. When all the oil goes away, its replacement will cost more, and the oil companies want to be the ones collecting that money.

This seems a bit pessimistic. Coskata is one such potential replacement company that is currently ramping up production of their method for producing practically pure ethanol. Not only can it be done from cheap inputs such as human waste and used tires, but it only costs about $1 per gallon. Further, they are partnered with the automobile makers and not the fuel providers. It seems like some cause for hope from new players in the market. www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20056/ Further, they plan on licencing their technology so that companies can produce their own fuels from their own byproducts.

• New reactor paves the way for efficiently producing fuel from sunlight
• Sandia's Sunshine to Petrol project seeks fuel from thin air
• Making Gasoline from Carbon Dioxide

We need to stop conflating petroleum's source with its capacity as a "battery". We are always going to need hydrocarbons for plastics, oils, etc. Also, the energy density of gasoline, at ~45 MJ/kg, is orders of magnitude better than the best battery technology available.

It would be awesome to run reverse combustion at large-scale nuclear facilities. It would benefit from improved efficiency at the nuclear plants due to running the reaction on thermal energy rather than going through the relatively inefficient step of thermal to electrical conversion. This approach would be, by definition, carbon neutral. Hell, if we wanted to remove CO2 from the atmosphere we could just run the plants in overtime and pump the hydrocarbons back into the geological reservoirs we drained in the past (would the EPA have a problem with that? Hmm...)

The potential benefits are significant: a single point solution that retains all the current infrastructure investment in petroleum distribution/consumption, no issues with hydrocarbon "self-discharge" like batteries/ultracaps have, excellent energy density, etc. We will always need hydrocarbons, so why wean ourselves off of them?

...just don't conflate the use of hydrocarbons with their source. If we can make the source clean/renewable, then what further problems exist? I freely admit much more research & engineering is necessary in this field, but all of these prognostications engage in similar thought exercises (including TFA).

There is evidence that the universe is much larger than the observable universe (at least 250x), and is arguably infinite. Just because you can't see or measure it directly, doesn't mean you can't measure it indirectly: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/2015250/Universe-250-Times-Bigger-Than-What-Is-Observable, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/

Li-ion batteries in laptops and cell phones don't last long, but for automotive use they're using a different electrode (lithium manganese oxide instead of lithium cobalt oxide - see http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=26832) which they think will last a lot longer. I'd like to know when I can get the longer-lasting kind for my laptop. Or would they rather design in a short product life?

Coming in 2013 according to this article from last year.

Less practical, but this one should be just fine

Unfortunately its ingredients also make it an almost unaffordable unobtainium for now, with the first applications expected small enough to crown ... neither your house nor your next iPhone, but (according to Technology Review) probably your teeth for a lifetime.

There was an interesting piece on MIT's Technology Review site about how Facebook is doing something that VeriSign, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all tried and mostly fail at, which is providing a single id and single log in for the internet.

Only how easy is it to steal facebook ids if you host a site yourself and use them for authentication? I guess most people aiming at creating a single sign in solution have understood it needs to be two factor to be worth anything on the long run, and that has been far too complicated for most people. Of course this does not mean Facebook could not improve the log on service further, they probably have a better chance then anyone before them (first get the users and then create the service in a way that it would be used)...

There was an interesting piece on MIT's Technology Review site about how Facebook is doing something that VeriSign, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all tried and mostly fail at, which is providing a single id and single log in for the internet. There are, distressingly, a whole bunch of sites that have jumped on the Facebook Connect service as a way to sign in to their website for, for example, posting comments. And, of course, there's also all those annoying "Like" buttons that keep popping up everywhere. So long-term? I don't know, but I don't think we are getting rid of Facebook any time soon.

Fully disclosure: I briefly played around with Facebook a couple of years ago, but quit after a couple of months after getting sick of seeing spam about which Sex in the City character somebody I barely knew back in high-school is supposed to be. Or how they scored in a "know your one-hit wonders of the '80s" quiz.

I was getting 404 errors following the original URL.

Corrected URL below:
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/27021/?p1=MstRcnt

gone ins 60 microseconds

Kind of like the "security bypass" - it talks about a completely unrelated hack on the TPMS... unless it disappeared before I read it. (I'm talking about the "companion article").

Why didn't they just use a standard passive RFID setup? They're not making money selling batteries to customers... I'm confused.

If on the other hand the key has enough power to transmit its signal 100 meters (passive RFID can't do that) then it has enough power to have a real PKI. But I don't think that's the best idea for this use case.

Ummm.... no

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26472/?p1=A1 (How to hack the energy grid for fun and profit)

How much money in lithium batteries are required to run 50 miles AND have HVAC vs. how much money in ultra-caps to run typically less than several miles and run HVAC? And there is NO reason to have ultra-caps at the site. Generally any place that runs a bus only 52 miles a day will have loads of stops along the way and it will certainly have loads of high wattage lines.

And I just googled for this. Lo and behold it is already being done. In China. For the last several year (along with li-ion battery buses). It turns out to be MUCH cheaper to do vs. Chinese built li-ion.

On a side note, Drinky, there was a time that you used to put in responses with some intelligence behind it rather than just being a sarcastic asshole. You need to go back to that time.