#Hawaii s solar boom is so successful it s been blocked from further expansion Rooftop solar on a house in Hawaii.
William Walker and his wife, Mi Chong, wanted to join what s seen as a solar revolution in Hawaii.
they plunked down $35, 000 for a rooftop photovoltaic system. The couple looked forward to joining neighbors who had added panels,
to cutting their $250 monthly power bills and to knowing they were helping the environment.##
##Their plans shifted the day after the PV panels went up in early October. The Walkers learned from a neighbor about a major change in the local utility s solar policy.
It led to those 18 panels sitting dormant nearly three months later. Hawaiian Electric Co,
. or HECO, in September told solar contractors on Oahu that the island s solar boom is creating problems.
whether grid upgrades are necessary. If they are residents adding solar must foot the bill.
And starting immediately, contractors and residents would need permission to connect most small rooftop systems to the grid.
The new HECO policy was included deep in the text of emails the Walkers solar contractor had sent,
They re now paying $300 per month on a loan for the panels, plus the $250 electric bill.##
to keep people away from PV and keep them on the grid.####HECO officials called it a needed precaution.##
More than 4 percent of households have photovoltaics. Hawaii last year led the nation in the portion of its electricity that comes from solar, with 2. 6 percent.
The Aloha state burns oil to make electricity, and prices for the fuel have jumped in recent years,
igniting demand for alternatives. The state s tax credit for solar energy made it additionally appealing (Climatewire, May 6).
) The new struggle on Hawaii foreshadows what the rest of the country could face as solar moves closer to the mainstream
several involved in the debate said.####Hawaii is a crystal ball into what every other state is going to have to look at as they start reaching higher and higher levels of solar activity,
##I am from the future The Hawaii development comes amid battles in California, Arizona and Colorado over the future of net energy metering (NEM).
That policy##which exists in some form in 43 states and the District of columbia##lets households with renewable energy earn bill credits for surplus power delivered to the grid.
Utilities in states with growing levels of solar have argued that fixed fees and other changes are needed
because customers with net metering bill credits don t pay their fair share of transmission and distribution charges.
Energy Wire Continue reading Scientific American Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat i
#The NSA s $10 million secret deal to get RSA to use backdoored encryption algorithm RSA had been paid by the NSA to set the backdoored algorithm as the default method of random number generation.
A secret $10 million deal between the NSA and the security firm RSA has resulted in RSA incorporating a flawed algorithm for generating random numbers into its products,
creating a backdoor into encrypted communications.####That s the claim being made in an exclusive#Reuters#report#likely to make some question
Earlier this year documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that the NSA was promoting deliberately weakened or vulnerable cryptography,
In the spotlight was flawed a algorithm known as Dual ec drbg, or the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator.
Read Martijn Grooten s post###How the NSA cheated cryptography###for more information about it.
The deliberately crippled Dual ec drbg algorithm was being used as the default pseudo-random number generator a crucial component in RSA s BSAFE toolkit.
##What wasn known t until#Reuters#reported it was that RSA had been paid by the NSA to set the backdoored algorithm as the default method of random number generation.
or default, method for number generation in the BSAFE software, according to two sources familiar with the contract.
it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.
Some in the security industry view the payment as little more than a bribe. For instance in its#report,#CNET#quotes cryptography veteran Bruce Schneier, who is unimpressed clearly:##
##Now we know that RSA was bribed, ##said security expert Bruce Schneier, who has been involved in the Snowden document analysis
and power of state##and commercial##surveillance. 2013 was an extraordinary year for those of us who are interested in privacy and data protection.
What was seen previously as the domain of paranoid nitpickers has exploded into the public consciousness, shaking international ties and making many people reevaluate how they live their lives online.##
We, the searchable In Mid-january,#Facebook introduced Graph Search, a way for the average user to tap into the social network s web of interconnected human intelligence.
Instead, Facebook automated the process of querying its users relationships with one another, their tastes and everything else with a##public##setting.
In April Facebook#introduced##partner categories, ###letting advertisers target users not only on the basis of their##likes##on the site,
but also by correlating that with data about what they buy through other web services.####OK, now I m convinced Facebook is#trying#to be creepy,
##my colleague Derrick Harris#wrote. Limited glimpses Publicly posted information is one thing, but what about private posts and communications?
Most people were aware that law enforcement agencies and governments ordered web companies to give up data on individuals of interest,
but the scale of this trend has always been difficult to nail down. On this front, Google has led always the way,
and the January 2013 edition of its semiannual Transparency Report showed the numbers of such requests had increased 70 percent between 2009 and 2012.
Twitter, too, gave users#an indication of how often the feds knocked on its door. Facebook said at the time that it had#no plans#to release such information to the public
and Microsoft initially#hummed its way through calls for a Skype transparency report before#giving in#to pressure from privacy groups.
However, while Google covered itself with more glory than most on this aspect of transparency,
it found itself increasingly under fire in Europe over other privacy-related issues. The company was fined by a German privacy regulator#for the 2010 siphoning of people s passwords and communications by Google s Street view cars.
And it continued to get into#all sorts#of#trouble#over its#unified privacy policy. In the eyes of Europe s data protection authorities
the unification of Google s disparate services represented an attempt to do new and serious things with people s information without true permission,
connecting previously unconnected pockets of data without making this obvious to users or giving them a meaningful way to say no.
A lot of people were unhappy about Google search and Maps##and Google+##knowing about their Youtube commenting habits.
However, although European privacy laws are significantly stronger than those in the U s a February survey showed that#Americans are nearly as keen as Europeans on protecting their online privacy.
The Ovum study also demonstrated an overwhelming lack of trust in internet companies honesty about data protection;
which is interesting, because those companies clearly assumed the public had a very high tolerance for privacy invasion.
In May, Microsoft said its Xbox One console would have an#always-on microphone, constantly listening to whatever people say near it.
Google said Glass would gain the same functionality, which also became a feature of the#Moto X#smartphone.
Apps#got in on the act. All listening, all the time. Glass wasn t the only wearable computer with eavesdropping potential.
At our 2013 Structure Data conference, the CIA s tech chief, Gus Hunt, said the new breed offitness trackers#were both light on security
and heavy enough on sensor data to betray the user s gender, rough height and weight, and more.##
##What s really most intriguing is that you can be guaranteed 100 percent to be identified by simply your gait how you walk.
Now this could be a really good thing. Just as disturbingly, a study demonstrated how easy it was to#identify someone from just a handful of time and location-based data points.
Britain s#Guardian newspaper#ran a story alleging that the U s. carrier Verizon was handing over call records to the National security agency, America s signals intelligence operation.
Many don t recognize that our digital data##from cell phones, connected devices and our social media profiles##combined with powerful computing
and analytics can create detailed histories of our lives, our habits and our actions.####The next story was even more explosive.
It alleged that the NSA had#direct access to the servers#of the big U s. tech firms, such as Google, Microsoft and Apple.
This didn t just affect Americans##now all these companies users and customers, anywhere in the world, were clearly at risk of being spied upon by the U s. authorities.
Within days, European data protection regulators and activists were#demanding to know#what was happening with EU citizens data held on
and transmitted through American web services. As well they might. While Snowden had ignited a#debate in the U s.#about the constitutional protections that U s. citizens were supposed to be enjoying in their home country,
that, for us as citizens who use digital communications, #everything was not as it had seemed. Since the end of WORLD WAR II, mass communications have been subject to surveillance by a network of friendly, English-speaking intelligence agencies.
With the advent of the web, that data-gathering activity took on new dimensions. And now we knew about it.#
Slow clarity Early surveys#showed most Americans#weren bothered t that#about the NSA recording their cellphone metadata.
But the revelations kept on coming, at times shocking even industry experts. As of late December, we have seen apparently the key points of just#one percent#of the documentation Snowden snuck out of Hawaii.
involving malware and hacking into desktop and#mobile devices. It can also involve knocking on the door of Google or Facebook.
Even without the firepower that can be brought to a targeted investigation mass surveillance results in a searchable map of millions of people s links, who they know,
but many would argue that indiscriminately recording all this data and making it easily searchable constitutes a severe and widespread invasion of privacy.
A U s. federal judge has taken this view#in relation to the Verizon metadata. There are at least a few recorded cases of NSA employees using their power tostalk crushes
and ex-lovers###but these are just the cases where the culprits turned themselves in.
and other users who value their privacy. It s fair to assume any unencrypted communications are open to monitoring.
but the trust system that governs web security has#integral flaws that need addressing. As the closures of#Lavabit and the Silent Mail service#showed,
firms that make encryption easier by managing the user s keys also make the user less secure by becoming a target for the authorities.#
##which we now suspect to be related a fiber affair##American technology companies#freaked out. Google, Microsoft, Apple and others appeared utterly complicit with the NSA,
as though they were happily inviting them into their data centers for a look around, and perhaps a nice martini.
#However, even if it turns out they were entirely ignorant of the NSA s fiber-tapping ways,
Knowing that, many of the big web companies were scarcely encrypting the data they held in storage, let alone the connections between their data centers.
the likes of Facebook and#Apple#are now a whole lot more keen about#transparency when it comes to government data requests, perhaps in order torescue their public image.
The big U s. tech firms have banded also finally together##seven months after the Snowden revelations##to#demand a change in U s. intelligence tactics.
Fallout The post-Snowden months have seen a rash of interest in privacy-protecting#plug-ins,#search engines#and#anonymous surfing appliances,
Early warnings from IBM and Cisco indicate that some big U s. tech firms are already seeing a#significant drop-off#in orders
and Germany s big telcos to consider the merits of keeping local-to-local internet traffic#within their borders.
This has led to fears of a##balkanization##of the web, with unpleasant censorship potential. However, the web s globally interconnected nature makes this a tall order at best.
What does look set to happen is a legal and technical reinforcement of online privacy. The United nations is#working on a resolution#affirming that human rights apply online as well as offline,
and on the technical side the web may soon beencrypted by default. But what of the tech firms
whose services have been hijacked so successfully by the NSA and its partners? Facebook is still quietly doing
what it can to#stop users from protecting their privacy. And Google, which delighted privacy advocates in July by releasing an Android feature called#App Ops#that made it possible to turn off specific tracking functionalities in individual apps,
pulled that feature in a later Android update, claiming it had been included by accident. The online ad industry is also doing its best to ensure everyone remains trackable.
At the end of September, Stanford privacy advocate Jonathan Mayer#quit the working group#that has been steering the abortive#Do Not Track standard
a browser feature that s supposed to dissuade websites from tracking internet use with cookies.
Rather than doing what it says on the tin, Do Not Track now mostly comes turned off by default.
The ad industry, which lives off tracking people, won the day. Of course, we now know those same cookies can be hijacked by the NSA. And all over the world,
whereby#smart trashcans scoop up identifying information#from passing smartphone users, and retail chain Tesco started#scanning customers faces#as they stand in line to pay.
but they are colored all now by the knowledge that collected data may at some point be targeted by intelligence agencies and other authorities.
Sure, many suspected and some knew that the internet is a giant monitoring system, but anyone paying the slightest bit of attention must now realize that everything they do online
##and increasingly offline too##is enabled open to tech surveillance. Anyone carrying a mobile device should now understand that they are being tracked constantly.
Now we must address the fundamental questions of our time. Is it possible as#some suggest, to accept technological trends such as##big data##while also giving people the option of privacy?
Can we create popular internet business models that don t make the user a well-described product?
Are we heading into a world of data-driven authoritarianism? These are questions we are only now asking with seriousness and urgency.
The discovery has implications for understanding age-related diseases including cancers, neurodegenerative disorders and diabetes.##One way all mammalian cells produce energy is via aerobic respiration, in
which large molecules are broken down into smaller ones, releasing energy in the process. This mainly occurs in the mitochondria the##powerhouses##of cells.
Mitochondria carry their own genomes, but some of the cellular components needed for respiration are produced partly by the nucleus,
so the two must coordinate their activities. As we age, mitochondrial function declines, which can lead to conditions such as Alzheimer s disease and diabetes.
To investigate why this decline occurs, #Ana Gomes#at Harvard Medical school and her colleagues compared the levels of MESSENGER RNA (mrna) molecules that convey genetic information around a cell for the cellular components needed for respiration in the skeletal muscle of 6 and 22-month-old mice.
They found that the level of the mrna in the nucleus did not change much between the young and old mice,
whereas those from the mitochondria appeared to decline with age. Similar changes were seen in mice that lacked a protein called SIRT1 high levels
of which are associated with calorie restriction and an increased lifespan. These mice also had higher levels of a protein produced by the nucleus called hypoxia inducible factor (HIF-1a.
What was going on? It appears that communication between the nucleus and the mitochondria depends on a cascade of events involving HIF-1a and SIRT1.
and the two genomes communicate well, aging is kept at bay. But another molecule called NAD+keeps SIRT1 on the job;
if this aspect of aging could be reversed by increasing the amount of SIRT1 in the cells.
At the end of the week, markers of muscular atrophy and inflammation had dropped and the mice had developed even a different muscle type more common in younger mice.
##We found that modulating this pathway can improve mitochondrial function and age-associated pathologies in old mice,
and therefore it gives a new pathway to target that can reverse some aspects of aging,
of which significantly contributes to aging, and also that this problem can be ameliorated by boosting NAD+production with key intermediates,
such as NMN,##says#Shin-Ichiro Imai, at Washington University School of medicine in St louis, Missouri. Photo credit: W. U k Via New Scientist Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat s
#Mclaren aims to replace windshield wipers with fighter jet technology A new wiper-free windshield is being developed by Mclaren.
The car company, Mclaren is designing a sports car that uses a system adapted from fighter jets to keep a driver s vision clear in bad weather without the need for blades.##
##It is believed to involve high-frequency sound waves similar to those used by dentists for removing plaque from patients teeth.
is developing the method for its new supercar, expected to roll off the production line in 2015.
F1 car maker Mclaren is remaining tightlipped on the plans and refusing to reveal how the system will work
However, experts suggest it may make use of ultrasound to create tiny vibrations on the screen
The Woking-based firm s chief designer Frank Stephenson told#The Sunday Times#that the system was already being used by the military.
It took a lot of effort to get this out of a source in the military. I asked why you don t see wipers on some aircraft on
but a high frequency electronic system that never fails and is constantly active. Nothing will attach to the windshield.
Paul Wilcox, professor of ultrasonics at Bristol University s faculty of engineering,#told#The Sunday Times: The obvious way of doing it is to have an ultrasonic transducer in the corner of the windshield that would excite waves at around 30khz to bounce across the windshield.
Windshield wipers were invented in by the American property developer Mary Anderson who received a patent for her window cleaning device in 1903.
and Mrs Anderson noticed that drivers had to open the windows of their cars in order to see out of them.
and invented a swinging arm device with a rubber blade that was operated by the driver from within the vehicle using a lever.
but by 1916 windshield wipers had become standard on most vehicles. Via Daily mail#Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
#IBM unveils top 5 technology predictions for the next 5 years This year s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn.
IBM reveals its five big innovation predictions that will change our lives within five years.
now that IBM has made predictions about technology, and this year s prognostications are sure to get people talking.#
#We discussed them with Bernie Meyerson, the vice president of innovation at IBM, and he told us that the goal of the predictions is to better marshal the company s resources
##In a nutshell, IBM says: The classroom will learn you. Buying local will beat online. Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
A digital guardian will protect you online. The city will help you live in it. Meyerson said that this year s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn.
Machines will learn about us, reason, and engage in a much more natural and personalized way.
IBM can already#figure out your personality by deciphering 200 of your tweets, and its capability to read your wishes will only get better.
and adaptive learning technologies. IBM believes the technologies will be developed with the appropriate safeguards for privacy and security,
but each of these predictions raises additional privacy and security issues. As computers get smarter and more compact,
they will be built into more devices that help us do things when we need them done.
IBM believes that these breakthroughs in computing will amplify our human abilities. The company came up with the predictions by querying its 220,000 technical people in a bottoms-up fashion
Here s some more detailed description and analysis on the predictions The classroom will learn you Globally,
two out of three adults haven t gotten the equivalent of a high school education. But IBM believes the classrooms of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student,
providing them with a tailored curriculum from kindergarten to high school.####Your teacher spends time getting to know you every year,
##Meyerson said.####What if they already knew everything about how you learn?####In the next five years, IBM believes teachers will use##longitudinal data##such as test scores, attendance,
and student behavior on electronic learning platforms##and not just the results of aptitude tests.
Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will help teachers make decisions about which students are at risk, their roadblocks,
and the way to help them. IBM is working on a research project with the#Gwinnett County Public schools in Georgia,
the 14th largest school district in the U s. with 170,000 students. The goal is to increase the district s graduation rate.
And after a $10 billion investment in analytics IBM believes it can harness big data to help students out.##
##You ll be able to pick up problems like dyslexia instantly, ##Meyerson said.####If a child has extraordinary abilities,
they can be recognized. With 30 kids in a class, a teacher cannot do it themselves. This doesn t replace them.
It allows them to be far more effective. Right now, the experience in a big box store doesn t resemble this,
but it will get there.####Buying local will beat online Online sales topped $1 trillion worldwide last year,
and many physical retailers have gone out of business as they fail to compete on price with the likes of Amazon.
But innovations for physical stores will make buying local turn out better. Retailers will use the immediacy of the store
and proximity to customers to create experiences that online-only retail can t replicate. The innovations will bring the power of the Web right to where the shopper can touch it.
Retailers could rely on artificial intelligence akin to IBM s Watson which played#Jeopardy#better than many human competitors.
The Web can make sales associates smarter, and augmented reality can deliver more information to the store shelves.
With these technologies, stores will be able to anticipate what a shopper most wants and needs.
And they won t have to wait two days for shipping.####The store will ask if you would like to see a certain camera
##Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well Global cancer rates are expected to jump by 75 percent by 2030.
IBM wants computers to help doctors understand how a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA.
They could then figure out what medications will best work against the cancer, and fulfill it with a personalized cancer treatment plan.
The hope is that genomic insights will reduce the time it takes to find a treatment down from weeks to minutes.##
IBM recently made a#breakthrough with a nanomedicine#that it can engineer to latch on to fungal cells in the body
IBM envisions a#digital guardian that will become trained to focus on the people and items it s entrusted with.
and historical data to verify a person s identity on different devices. The guardian can learn about a user
and make an inference about behavior that is out of the norm and may be the result of someone stealing that person s identity.
With 360 degrees of data about someone, it will be much harder to steal an identity.##
##The city will help you live in it IBM says that, by 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 percent of urban humanity and by 2050,
where smarter cities can understand in real-time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need,
IBM predicts that cities will digest#information freely provided by citizens to place resources where they are needed.
Mobile devices and social engagement will help citizens strike up a conversation with their city leaders. Such a concept is already in motion in Brazil,
where IBM researchers are working with#a crowdsourcing toolthat people can use to report accessibility problems, via their mobile phones,
to help those with disabilities better navigate urban streets. Of course, as in the upcoming video game Watch Dogs from Ubisoft, a bad guy could hack into the city and use its monitoring systems in nefarious ways.
But Meyerson said, ##I d rather have linked the city. Then I can protect it. You have an agent that looks over the city.
The#latest issue of the medical journal#Annals of Internal medicine, looks at the research and clinical trials and penned an editorial with a headline worth reading:##
Stop Wasting Money on Mineral Supplements.#####The message may come as a surprise to many Americans##40%of us reported taking some sort of multivitamin or mineral between 2003 and 2006.
That s helped create a global vitamin industry, which sold $23. 4 billion of the stuff last year,#the#Wall street journal#reports.#
the medical journal editorial writes, sales continue to grow in the US and Europe. Here s more from the#Annals of Internal medicine#or you can check out#the full report yourself.
The large body of accumulated evidence has important and public health and clinical implications. Evidence is sufficient to advise against routine supplementation,
Most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is justified not, and they should be avoided##The evidence also has implications for research.
Antioxidants, folic acid, and B vitamins are harmful or ineffective for chronic disease prevention, and further large prevention trials are justified no longer##With respect to multivitamins,
the studies published in this issue and previous trials indicate no substantial health benefit. Via Slate Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat l
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011