In the meantime, I’ve scanned and uploaded a low-res video of a speech I gave on being a Serial Entrepreneur in Sydney at the June 2000 meeting of the “First Tuesday” group of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. I think the relevance has held up. Enjoy.

There are more than 2 million photos on Flickr tagged with Rome. They capture almost every nook and cranny, every column and doorway, of the old city. If you had a lot of computer power, and the right smart software, you could take these 2 million views and compile them into a single unified 3D portrait… The movie below does that same thing with huge piles of photos taken off of Flickr.

IBM makes the news with the first image of a complete molecule. It looks a lot like I thought it would…

Using an atomic-force microscope, scientists at IBM Research in Zurich have for the first time made an atomic-scale resolution image of a single molecule, the hydrocarbon pentacene. Atomic-force microscopy works by scanning a surface with a tiny cantilever whose tip comes to a sharp nanoscale point. As it scans, the cantilever bounces up and down, and data from these movements is compiled to generate a picture of that surface.

Solar satellites (a favourite of mine). Japan’s plan – a $21 billion solar-powered generator… to produce one gigawatt of energy, or enough to power 294,000 homes gains a few partners.

Mitsubishi and IHI are joining a research group containing 14 other countries to tackle the daunting task of getting Japan’s four square kilometer solar space station up and running in the next three decades. By 2015, the Japanese government hopes to test a small satellite decked out with solar panels that beams power through space and back to Earth…

What about Solar roads? Replacing the existing 25,000 square miles in the US would provide at least 3x the current electrical demand for roughly the same cost as the current road and power systems. The top layer is etched glass, the middle layer solar cells, the bottom layer power and data distribution. No discussion at all on how to store the power for night-time use. The plot would seem to call for a globe-spanning super-conducting ring…

The Solar Roadway™ is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels™ that collect and store solar energy to be used by our homes and businesses… The Solar Roadway™ becomes an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid.

Researchers at NASA and the Department of Energy recently tested key technologies for developing a nuclear fission reactor that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars… To generate electricity, the researchers used a liquid metal to transfer the heat from the reactor to the Stirling engine, which uses gas pressure to convert heat into the energy needed to generate electricity. For the tests, the researchers used a non-nuclear heat source. The liquid metal was a sodium potassium mixture that has been used in the past to transfer heat from a reactor to a generator… The system performed better than expected, generating 2.3 kilowatts of power at a steady pace.

The previously top secret reusable reentry vehicle for the Soviet “Almaz” manned military space station will form the backbone of a major new U.S./Russian commercial venture to carry paying research crews on one week missions into Earth orbit by 2013… The reusable Russian hardware purchased to initiate the venture was built more than 30 years ago as part of a large Soviet space reconnaissance program… In addition to buying several Almaz reentry vehicles, the company has also bought two complete Almaz space station hulls… The several Almaz reentry vehicles were never launched or returned manned because of conflicts in the Russian space program between the military and civilian sides…

Excellent essay in Edge on the interaction between digital evolution and analog economics anticipated by Von Neumann.

What prices are going up the fastest? Health care — the cost of maintaining human beings. What prices are going down the fastest? The cost of information and machines… Financial systems exhibit the Gödelian incompleteness characteristic of all sufficiently powerful formal systems: within the given system it is possible to construct statements (or financial instruments) whose value appears to be sound, but cannot be proved within the system itself…

Using light to switch circuits comes a step closer…

Demonstrating a fundamentally new optical phenomenon, researchers at Yale University have shown the second half of an optical force that could make silicon photonics devices–such as those used in high-speed communications, network cards, even video and TV cables–faster and more capable… Scientists theorized in 2005 that tiny beams of light confined on a silicon chip could attract or repel each other when placed in close proximity, similar to the electromagnetic forces between positive and negative charges. Last year a group led by Yale University professor Hong Tang first demonstrated the “attractive” side of this optical force. Now the group has demonstrated the second side of the force, repulsion, which makes its effects reversible… The accomplishment opens the possibility of using light to manipulate light in microphotonic devices, rather than using mechanical elements like microheaters or power-hungry optical crystals… The group used two identical waveguides–the optical equivalents of electronic wires, encasing the light beams moving through them–and suspended them in a central coupling region to allow them to move freely under the influence of the optical force. Then the researchers sent in a beam of laser light, split it in half, and forced one half through a longer path than the other. When the two halves of light recombined, they were out of phase because of having traveled different path lengths. The researchers found that when the light beams were out of phase, their waveguides repelled each other, but when the light was in phase, the waveguides pulled closer together.

The hard reality is that the minority of us who happened to have been born in a few powerful countries squandered half a billion years of stored photosynthesis to give ourselves a brief period of spectacular economic abundance, and by doing so, foreclosed the chance that anybody else would enjoy that same abundance in the future… All the extraordinary things our species has done with fossil fuels over the last three hundred years are functions, in effect, of the difference in chemical potential energy between a barrel of oil and a cloud of smoke… The great majority will make themselves believe in zero point energy and evil space lizards and any other absurdity you care to name, rather than gulp and take a deep breath and admit that the prosperity we’ve enjoyed for the last three centuries was bought at our grandchildren’s expense.

On the other hand, we may get ourselves and our descendants out of jail if the investment of this endowment in education and research allows us to discover a new process to capture energy before we run out of the wherewithal to roll it out. Looks like it will be down to the wire, and come from discoveries in biology rather than chemistry or physics.

You’ve got to hand it to Venter. After capturing the lead role in sequencing the human genome (one sample turned out to be his own) he spends a few years sailing around the world taking water samples and sequencing the unknown organisms within them. Now he has ExxonMobil backing his latest venture to engineer a fuel-producing algae.

ExxonMobil announced a commitment to invest $300 million over five to six years in Synthetic Genomics, which Craig Venter founded and now leads as CEO, and to spend an additional $300 million on a complementary internal algae program. The push is to take advantage of algae’s ability to efficiently transform sunlight into lipids that can be relatively easily converted into diesel, gasoline, and possibly even advanced hydrocarbons used to manufacture plastics, chemicals, and other products. By the barrel, algae fuel provides three to four units of energy for every unit used to make it — a ratio that approaches petroleum’s [falling] 5-to-1 level of efficiency… Venter’s company has been developing strains of bioengineered algae that ramp up the output of lipids and can in some cases produce hydrocarbons directly… A study in 2004 at the University of New Hampshire concluded that 30 million acres–a space the size of South Carolina–would be required to grow enough algae to satisfy U.S. transportation needs…

Another new algae to biofuel process – consuming CO2 to produce fuel; too good to be true?

Joule Biotechnologies grows genetically engineered microorganisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies… the new process, because of its high yields, could supply all of the country’s transportation fuel from an area the size of the Texas panhandle… The company plans to build a pilot-scale plant in the southwestern U.S. early next year, and it expects to produce ethanol on a commercial scale by the end of 2010. Large-scale demonstration of hydrocarbon-fuels production would follow in 2011… While algae typically produce oils that have to be refined into fuels, Joule’s microorganisms produce fuel directly–either ethanol or hydrocarbons. And while oil is harvested from algae by collecting and processing the organisms, Joule’s organisms excrete the fuel continuously, which could make harvesting the fuel cheaper…

CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising about 25% faster than the IPCC predicted only 2 years ago, and are on track to reach 450 ppm by 2040 instead of 2100; but the US Chamber of Commerce wants to put global warming science on trial.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change… complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect… to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court… In the coming weeks, the EPA is set to formally declare that the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for climate change endanger human health, and are thus subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act… “The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable,” said a recent letter to world leaders by the heads of the top science agencies in 13 of the world’s largest countries, including the head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the economist who came up with cap-and-trade in the 1960s, Thomas Crocker, said, “I’m skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon.” Crocker said he favors imposing a firm tax on emissions that would be easier to enforce.

Australia’s climate plan was defeated in the Senate where minority parties hold the balance of power. It’s still likely to pass in November.

Labor’s planned Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) would have reduced Australia’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020, or 25% of 2000 levels if other major developed countries agreed to similar cuts. Australia is the biggest per-capita emitter in the developed world, largely because of the country’s heavy reliance on coal-generated power.

This is the year to buy solar panels, as polysilicon prices drop punishing those that bought forward when prices quadrupled at $145 oil and countries (eg. Spain) pull their subsidies in the face of the credit crunch.

Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year… Until recently, panel makers had been constrained by limited production of polysilicon, which goes into most types of panels. But more factories making the material have opened, as have more plants churning out the panels themselves — especially in China… At the same time, once-roaring global demand for solar panels has slowed, particularly in Europe… Spain slashed its generous subsidy for the panels last year…

Some concern about China calling for a ban on rare earth exports, resources which they almost entirely control and which are vital to many high-tech products though their mining is environmentally damaging..

A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs. China mines over 95% of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia… The rare earth family are hard to find, and harder to extract… Each Toyota Prius uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements…

The European Union has begun a three-year process to phase out the use of traditional incandescent light bulbs. Starting today, old standard frosted light bulbs and clear bulbs of 100 watts and more will no longer be manufactured or imported into the EU. The EU estimates the switch from incandescent bulbs to more efficient ones will bring energy savings of 25 percent to 75 percent compared to the traditional bulbs.

Hot, dry geothermal is struggling to scale to commercial profitability.

Hot dry rock found deep underground is one of the most abundant potential sources of clean energy. Drilling holes into the rock, fracturing it, and pumping water through it to extract the heat, and then using that heat to generate electricity, could supply the world’s energy needs many times over… In practice, however, harvesting that energy is proving a challenge, in part because developers have located the first projects in earthquake prone regions…

Gunnar Grecksch, a geophysicist and hot-rock fracturing expert at the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geosciences in Hanover, Germany, says follow-on efforts in the U.K. and Japan failed for the same reason: the fracturing of the rocks was never sufficient. “Flow resistance is still the key problem,” he says. “In none of these projects were the flow rates in the range you need for a commercial system.”

The Economist rounds up the tradeoffs in the approaches to electric cars.

One is to accept the range limit and design small, thrifty vehicles specialised for city use. This has the virtue of simplicity and the vice of inflexibility. The second is to add a petrol-driven generator known as a “range extender”. This complicates the mechanics, but provides the driver with a security blanket, for he knows he will never be stranded if he can find a petrol station. The third answer is to keep the car all-battery, but to introduce a network of battery-exchange stations similar to the existing network of petrol stations, so that someone who is running out of juice can pull in, swap over and pull out.

According to Bosch’s calculations, a conventional internal-combustion-engined car can travel 1.5-2.5km on a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy. A hybrid with a combined electric and diesel engine would go up to 3.2km. But a battery-powered car can travel 6.5km.

GM is claiming 230mpg in city driving for the Chevy Volt. The calculation apparently doesn’t count the energy used to charge the batteries overnight, so on this basis any fully electric car gets infinite mpg.

The Volt, which will be introduced late next year, is designed to run for 40 miles from a single charge of a lithium-ion battery pack. After the battery is partly depleted, a small combustion engine is designed to kick in to recharge the battery and power the vehicle… The Volt is designed to be recharged at a standard electric outlet… that would reduce the cost of the first 40 miles of driving for some Americans to as little as 40 cents, the cost of recharging the car overnight in a garage…

Germany proposed spending 500 million euros in a program to encourage electric autos.

Volkswagen says it hopes to put its first electric cars on the market in 2013. Daimler is working with Tesla Motors of California on better battery and electric drive systems. Daimler and the utility RWE plan to unveil an electric car and charging station test in Berlin this year.

Chinese auto company BYD, part-owned by investor Warren Buffet, plans to bring an all-electric sedan in small numbers to the U.S. next year.

BYD plans to offer a few hundred of one of its most advanced cars in the U.S., the five-seat e6, which takes seven to nine hours to fully charge and has a 250-mile range…

According to the United Nations, by 2020 water use is expected to increase by 40% to support the food requirements of a worldwide population that will grow from 6.7 billion people to 7.5 billion people. The U.N. estimate is that 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with extreme water scarcity… We’ll be able to produce oil and water for decades, but it will cost significantly more to do so. This will result in much higher commodity prices as farming requires prodigious amounts of oil and water… Brazil, Russia, and Canada also have the greatest amount of renewable freshwater…

Bioethanol from corn turns out to be an inefficient way to convert fresh water to ethanol.

Environmental Science & Technology are reporting that production of bioethanol — often regarded as the clean-burning energy source of the future — may consume up to three times more water than previously thought… Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires the use of 263 to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump.

I’m pretty eagerly awaiting the CrunchPad – a stripped down wireless flat screen running nothing but a web-brower. The system was crowd-source designed by the founder of TechCrunch.

… we’ve decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm… case will be aluminum… a Linux based operating system and a Webkit based browser. The device boots directly into the browser…

Amazon’s early lead in ebooks is forcing rivals to adopt an open standard to compete. By the end of the year Sony will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard joining the growing constellation of other readers that support ePub. In my view all these closed devices and standards will lose the war to generic devices displaying html; as music eventually ended up with mp3.

Companies like Sony and Adobe do not want to abandon anticopying measures, fearing that piracy of books would run rampant. Rather, they want to push the e-book industry toward common standards to avoid a replay of Apple’s domination of the digital music business… Sony recently introduced two new, less expensive devices and announced it was dropping its price for new releases and best sellers to $9.99… Amazon, for its part, believes it can go it alone, without embracing industry standards.

Excellent Gizmodo essay on the whole standards game, and how Apple has cleverly used open standards like mp3, aac, H.264, WebKit, and now OpenCL to fight off being shut out of a de facto proprietary standard by a larger competitor.

Apple has actually always been a booster of MPEG’s H.264 codec, which is the default video format supported by the iPhone — part of the reason YouTube re-encoded all of its videos, actually — and gets hardware acceleration in QuickTime X with Snow Leopard. H.264 is basically becoming the video codec (it’s in Blu-ray, people use it for streaming, etc.). Why would Apple care? It means Microsoft’s WMV didn’t become the leading standard…. A sorta similar story with AAC, another MPEG standard. It’s actually the successor to MP3, with better compression quality — and no royalties — but Apple had the largest role in making it mainstream by making it their preferred audio format for the iPod and iTunes Store… Another bonus, besides AAC’s superiority to MP3: Microsoft’s WMA, though popular for a while, never took over.

Amazon committed a huge PR gaff flexing muscles as Big Brother, but Bezos was quick to apply damage control.

… hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books… had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for — thought they owned… apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price… the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

This conversation between Krugman the economist and Stross the Scifi author is surprisingly fruitful.

… maybe it was just my age or something, but things don’t seem to have changed as much in the last 30 years as myself as a sci-fi reader would have expected them to… The 20th Century, and going back to the 19th Century, the real visible vector of change technologically was transportation speeds… The whole world has shrunk to the scale of the English Home Counties in 1809 over about two centuries… it was sigmoid curve – we had a slow start, a very rapid period of improvements where we went at about 20 years from biplanes to supersonic jets. And then the curve stopped going up… where is my food pill, where are my jetpacks?

If you walked into a kitchen from the 1950’s it would look a little pokey, but you’d know what to do. It wouldn’t be that difficult. If someone from the 1950’s walked into a kitchen from 1909 they’d be pretty unhappy – they might just be able to manage. If someone from 1909 went to one from 1859, you would actually be hopeless…

There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about how the genome works. It’s not, as was widely thought in the 50’s and 60’s, a blueprint. It’s more like a very very messy snapshot of a running computer program. In fact, the bits we’ve been looking at and referring to as genes, the exons are, if anything, just the static data strings encoded in the program while it’s running…

The New York Times has got enormous web presence, four million or so people read it online and yield the corporation very little in the way of revenue in the process… the thing survives to some extent because people still like a piece of paper with their breakfast coffee but also to a large extent because you still can’t online get quite the visual quality of color advertisements for luxury goods that you can get in the New York Times Magazine. But you’re relying upon a very thin lag in technology to make the whole enterprise of creating and disseminating information viable.

If it was up to me, I’d figure what we’re looking at with copyright today is a smoking hole in the collective landscape. It doesn’t work… Now the best thing I’ve been able to come up with is an idea for doing this is a tax on bandwidth. Basically, if you have a mobile phone, if you have a broadband connection, if you have a modem connection, a chunk of what you pay goes in tax. The tax goes into a pool which is then distributed to content creators on the basis of some kind of sampling or rating mechanism that’s sampling the traffic that’s going across the network.

There are 24 Pirate Party organizations around the world: the Swedish Pirate Party gained a seat in the European parliament in May, while the German Pirate Party has an elected MP. A U.K. party has just registered to contest elections which must be held before June 2010.

It is proposing an exemption from copyright law for noncommercial file-sharing, which is essentially an extension of fair use. Under U.K. copyright law, fair use allows organizations such as schools and news agencies to use parts of a copyrighted work… The party will press for the length of the copyright on works to be reduced from the life of the owner plus 70 years to a shorter term… In May, government advisers estimated there were 7 million file-sharers in the UK.

Old media strikes back. The US college athletics Southeastern Conference (SEC), which has sold the rights to cover events to CBS for 15 years, will try to ban social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc) from all games.

Clay Shirky: “The idea that people can’t capture their own lived experience is a losing proposition.”

New rules from the U.S. Open state that tweeting is not allowed on court, and cautioning about off-court use.

The rules state that tweeting is not allowed on the court during matches. They also warn players about using Twitter away from the court, saying that sending “certain sensitive information” could be considered passing along inside information to gamblers.

Looks like video games aren’t that recession proof. July video games sales were down 27% from June, down 29% from last July; falling for the fifth month in a row. YTD numbers are down 14%. Hardware was off 37% from a year earlier. In July, consumers bought 252,200 Wiis, versus 202,900 Xboxes and 121,800 PS3s; with XBoxes up 17% over the previous July.

Slashdot frets about new games with targetted in-game advertising. The technology has been present in other games, for example in Far Cry 2, but not actually used.

In-game advertising provider Massive Inc., acquired by Microsoft in 2006, has signed up or renewed contracts with several publishers, notably EA, Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and Activision… Eagerly anticipated games like ‘Need for Speed: Shift’ will feature the technology that continuously collects ‘anonymous’ information about users, sends them to the Massive database for analysis, and downloads advertisements to be shown in the game. All that happens insidiously, without the users’ explicit consent and out of their control, which raises further concerns about privacy, security and quite frankly, customer abuse.

A Texas judge has upheld an earlier order for $200m damages due to patent infringement, tacked on $77m more, and ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word in the meantime. Microsoft will appeal.

Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the Redmond,Wash.-based software giant violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes… In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on i4i’s patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million in the case… Microsoft is now ordered to pay an additional $40 million for willful infringement, as well as $37 million in prejudgment interest. The new order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating, or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.

Microsoft has caved in to market demand and offered drivers facilitating Windows Server to the Linux kernel project under the dreaded GPL 2.0 open source license.

Microsoft made the move largely to help strengthen Windows Server as a host environment for Linux… Microsoft met all the requirements for inclusion of the code in the Linux kernel and said it will probably show up in version 2.6.32 of the kernel, which will be released about four or five months from now… Microsoft is now a full fledged Linux developer and will be responsible for maintaining its piece of Linux… the community has already submitted a couple of patches aimed at improving Microsoft’s code.

Google, Apple and AT&T. Apple has blocked Google’s voice and SMS apps from the iTunes store, and retroactively removed a couple of similar ones; apparently at AT&T’s request. Schmidt has resigned from the Apple board.

Why would AT&T care? Because of those free text messages and cheap international calls, of course. If these apps became popular, AT&T’s revenue could take a serious hit… This business has blown up in Apple/AT&T’s face. The Federal Communications Commission, in fact, is now sniffing around… In short, what Apple and AT&T have accomplished with their heavy-handed, Soviet information-control style is not to bury these useful apps. Instead, Apple/AT&T have elevated them to martyr status… They’ve put a rock in the river, but the water will just find a way around it.

Mobile top-up codes are in use in the 3rd world as a new financial instrument.

Essentially, a secondary market in top-up cards has been developed that enables small money transfers to be made quickly and easily. This informal money transfer system has proved so popular that these top-up cards are now sold among the diaspora in London as a handy way of remitting money to relatives. And Western Union is now planning to roll out a mobile money scheme in Africa to avoid being left behind.

David Pogue is trying to trigger a mass movement to force mobile carriers to drop their 15 second instruction message, which is primarily designed to stretch out billable time.

If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

Service records of soldiers campaigning in the 100 years war have been released online.

The detailed service records of 250,000 medieval soldiers – including archers who served with Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt… reveals salaries, sickness records and who was knighted.

The number of first-time venture capital investments in Q209 dropped to a 15-year low, but the total invested was up slightly over Q1 though still down 51% from a year ago.

The venture capital industry put $3.67 billion into 612 separate companies or deals during the second quarter, of which $1.5 billion… 141 deals were first-time investments. Biotechnology funding grew 54 percent to $888 million in 85 deals, software came flat at $644 million in 135 deals and Internet companies fell 15 percent to $524 million in 124 deals. Clean technology funding grew 15 percent to $274 million in 42 deals.

Ruben Unteregger has worked for a long time as a software-engineer for the Swiss company ERA IT Solutions. His job there was to code malware that would invade PCs of private users, and allow the wiretapping of VoIP calls — in particular, calls made through Skype. In the German-speaking areas of the country, the Trojans were called ‘Bundestrojaner’ because the Swiss government was involved with their development and use.

Surveillance blimps provide an eye in the sky.

The US Army this week showed off its latest high-tech blimp laden with powerful radar systems capable of detecting incoming threats 340 miles away. The helium-filled blimps or aerostats are designed to hover over war zones or high-security areas and be on guard for incoming missiles or other threats… the $1.4 billion JLENS is a large, unpowered elevated sensor moored to the ground by a long cable… they can stay aloft up to 30 days at a time providing 24-hour per day coverage over an extended area… aerostat with round-the-clock video and sound surveillance capability was parked several thousand feet above Kabul to monitor last week’s elections in Afghanistan… Military scientists in April got the go ahead to build a roughly 1/3-scale model of a stratospheric airship that if completed in-scale will basically house a floating 15-story radar system capable of detecting and tracking everything from small cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles to soldiers and small vehicles under foliage up to 300 kilometers away.

Lots of coverage of a hacking ring that allegedly stole at least 130m accounts from big retail companies.

Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, who once worked with the US secret service, is accused of working with two unidentified Russian conspirators to hack into the databases of retail chains, selling the information around the world… Gonzalez — known online as “soupnazi” — was formerly employed by the US secret service to track down hackers, but was found to have been passing information on investigations to criminals… They used an SQL injection attack to steal the data and used computers in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Latvia, Ukraine, and the Netherlands for storing malware and stolen data and launching attacks… They also allegedly installed backdoors and sniffers to intercept data in real time as it was processed by the victims and tried to hide their actions by accessing the victim networks through proxy computers, modifying their software so as to evade detection by antivirus programs and programming it to delete traces of the malware from victim networks, according to the indictment… Mr. Gonzalez had lived a lavish lifestyle in Miami, once spending $75,000 on a birthday party for himself…

Security breach at Network Solutions, the original global domain name registrar.

Network Solutions is investigating a breach on its servers that may have led to the theft of credit card data of 573,928 people who made purchases on… 4,343 of its nearly 10,000 e-commerce sites… It affects 573,928 cardholders whose name, address, and credit card number were exposed between March 12 and June 8… Credit card transactions were intentionally diverted by an unknown source from certain Network Solutions servers to servers outside… Affected consumers will get 12 months of free credit-monitoring services.

Research (pdf via Schneier) arguing that a six-digit PIN is the optimal web password provided a ‘three-strikes’ rule is in place.

…it takes about 25 kilobits — 3.2 kbytes — of data to code for a virus that has a non-trivial chance of killing a human. This is more efficient than a computer virus, such as MyDoom, which rings in at around 22 kbytes… It’s humbling that I could be killed by 3.2 kbytes of genetic data. Then again, with 850 Mbytes of data in my genome, there’s bound to be an exploit or two.

Swine flu continues to spread, with 1799 deaths in 177 countries as at 9 August. The deaths are predominantly in the Americas – 1579 of the total. Clearly the seasonal pattern in the chart below is something new, and in retrospect the timing was fortunate as it didn’t fall into the season where conditions for flu are optimal.

There was underlying disease in at least half of the fatal cases. Two risk factors seem of particular importance: pregnancy and metabolic condition (including obesity which has not been considered as risk factor in previous pandemics or seasonal influenza)… Swine flu has killed 165 people in Argentina, more than any nation with the exception of the U.S… Northern hemisphere countries have so far ordered more than one billion doses of swine flu vaccine… indigenous peoples appear to be at increased risk of severe disease…

The new H1N1 influenza virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, with a greater ability to infect the lungs than common seasonal flu viruses… the new swine flu strain can spread beyond the upper respiratory tract to go deep into the lungs — making it more likely to cause pneumonia… people who survived the 1918 pandemic seem to have extra immune protection against the virus…

A form of ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and threaten humans… Reston ebolavirus has only been seen in monkeys and humans previously…

More data on traces of drugs in city water supplies. Schneier points out that sampling sewage could track the drug use back to individual houses.

Scientists from Oregon State University, the University of Washington and McGill University partnered with city workers in 96 communities, including Pendleton, Hermiston and Umatilla, to gather samples on one day, March 4, 2008. The scientists then tested the samples for evidence of methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy, or MDMA… every one of the 96 cities — representing 65 percent of Oregon’s population — had a quantifiable level of methamphetamine in its wastewater.

A government test of fish pulled from nearly 300 streams in the USA found every one of them contaminated with some level of mercury… 27% of the fish had mercury levels high enough to exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for those who eat fish twice a week.

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence…

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person…

Good essay by a Canadian doctor on what can be learned from the natural experiment in healthcare that arose when the US and Canada parted ways 40 years ago. Telling.

Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics. Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%… we now live nearly three years longer, and our infant mortality is 20% lower… Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same.

The principle of the process… hygroscopic brine – saline solution which absorbs moisture – runs down a tower-shaped unit and absorbs water from the air. It is then sucked into a tank a few meters off the ground in which a vacuum prevails. Energy from solar collectors heats up the brine, which is diluted by the water it has absorbed. Because of the vacuum, the boiling point of the liquid is lower than it would be under normal atmospheric pressure… The evaporated, non-saline water is condensed and runs down through a completely filled tube in a controlled manner. The gravity of this water column continuously produces the vacuum and so a vacuum pump is not needed. The reconcentrated brine runs down the tower surface again to absorb moisture from the air.

The annual Manchester Summit has newly flagged the 20 best projects directed at ameliorating global warming. They range from the incremental to the bizarre (my ranking)…

• coaching consumers on lifestyle changes to reduce carbon footprint
• changing economic goal from GDP to some better measure of welfare
• “rocket” stoves for 3rd world cut timber use, pollution, cooking time
• universal access to family planning services
• solar panel rollout on domestic and commercial roofs
• “carbon mortgages” to finance addition of renewable power to homes
• capturing investor interest by issuing semi-government “energy bonds”
• “hot dry rock” geothermal produce 24/7 renewable base load
• marine current turbines produce cyclical but predictable base load
• ceramic fuel cells to produce domestic heat and electricity from natural gas
• grazing animals nomadically allowing grassland to regenerate
• leasing low-emission cars like the RiverSimple hydrogen vehicle
• “oxyfuel” and co-fired wood and coal for carbon-negative power plants
• converting waste to charcoal – “biochar” – and then burying it
• mirror arrays concentrating solar; 140km squared equals EU power needs
• sailing ships spraying mist (pdf) to seed stratocumulus clouds at sea
• a liquid-fuel thorium reactor industry – safer and cleaner than uranium
• artificial photosynthesis to turn CO2 to methanol liquid fuel using algae
• mid-ocean harvesting and digestion of kelp forests
• dumping lime into oceans to absorb more CO2

CNET reports on a push for a super-conducting grid across the USA to distribute new power sources from remote areas, like wind farms in the Oklahoma panhandle, to urban centres.

Direct current superconductor cables are also far more efficient because there is minimal loss during transmission–only three percent. Losses today during transmission and distribution can be more than 10 percent of the energy generated (pdf)… there are few installations of superconductor cables now in the U.S. for relatively short distances, a sign that utilities are more comfortable with using alternatives to aluminum or copper lines. But a long-haul direct current superconductor line is a big step… the cables would be placed underground, as gas pipelines are, and have nitrogen cooling stations every seven or eight miles…

A new solar-powered aircraft able to stay aloft through the night is nearing flight tests in Europe.

After further refinements on the ground, the Solar Impulse is scheduled to make its first test flights by the end of 2009. The first flight will see the plane launch from its current home at the Dubendorf airport; the second will see it take off from the Payerne air base less than two hours away… The aircraft will then take its first night test flight in 2010 to see if it can stay in the air for a 36-hour day-night-day cycle running solely on battery power without any fuel.

2008 was the first year that new power generation investment in renewables was greater than investment in fossil-fueled technologies…

$140-billion went into renewables worldwide in 2008, while $110-billion went into fossil fuels.

The winner of this year’s US high school science prize managed to isolate a strain of yeast bacteria that is remarkably efficient at consuming plastic.

Starting with a common yeast solution, feeding the yeast bits of plastic and selecting for those that munched a little, over time a strain was developed that degrades 40% of the plastic in only 6 weeks.

This is not good news. via SAR.

Reconstruction of sea levels over the past half-million years, based on Antarctic ice core records, implies that even if we were able to stop putting CO2 in the air today – and we’re not – we are already committed to a sea level rise of about 25 meters (80 feet). This estimate agrees with predictions based on data from the Middle Pliocene, 3.5 million years ago when CO2 levels were at today’s level.

Yucca Mountain was always a political, not a technical, solution; but it appears that science is having a come-back.

The area [Yucca] is seismically and volcanically active. More significantly, the repository would have an oxidizing environment — meaning materials there would be exposed to free oxygen in the air. Neither spent nuclear fuel nor canister materials are stable in such an environment in the presence of water… There’s no historical example showing that a lack of a plan for nuclear waste will halt the progress of nuclear energy… Within the next five years, almost every nuclear power plant will have dry-cask storage: the waste will be moved from storage pools to outdoor concrete-and-steel casks inside plant security perimeters. As an interim solution, that’s quite safe. But eventually the casks will corrode and break down and release radioactive material into the environment, though it will probably take hundreds of years. That’s why we need geological storage… We should set aside something on the order of a few decades to get this right. It will cost billions, but that’s part of the price of nuclear power.

Coda Automotive, a startup based in Santa Monica, CA, is attempting to be one of the first companies to sell a highway-capable electric sedan to the general public in the United States.

The car will have a range of 100 miles and will cost $45,000, although federal and state government incentives will bring the cost down to the mid-$30,000 range… The car will be built by the Chinese automaker Hafei, which makes about 200,000 vehicles a year. The electric sedan is a version of one that Hafei already makes, but it’s modified to use an electric motor and batteries instead of a gas engine… Coda hopes to distinguish itself with its battery system, which it developed in cooperation with Tianjin Lishen, a major lithium-ion battery maker based in China, and other companies that specialize in different aspects of the battery system, such as the electronic controls… Coda’s first battery packs will store about 34 kilowatt-hours of electricity and will be made up of 728 battery cells with lithium iron phosphate battery electrodes, which are known to be safer than conventional lithium-ion electrodes…

What auto recession? Prius remains oversubscribed, but the “new” GM will re-launch the Camaro.

The Prius plant has brought back overtime — a rarity these days, given Japan’s weak economy — and recruited workers from Toyota factories across the country… The company sold 110,000 Priuses in Japan in May — and there is a waiting list of several months… Toyota devotes three manufacturing lines in Japan to the Prius — two at Tsutsumi, and another at a subsidiary assembler. At full capacity, the two plants are able to make about 50,000 Prius cars a month, Toyota executives say, about 1.5 times the pace needed to meet its global sales target of 400,000 units…

People in Amsterdam who download a free application called Layar on their cellphones can look through the camera and see information about nearby restaurants, A.T.M.’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them… Applications like Layar… use a phone’s global positioning technology to determine a person’s location and use the phone’s compass to discern the direction the device is pointed. In this way, the phone can guess what the user is seeing. The augmented-reality application then pulls in information about points of interest in that sight line and displays it on top of the camera view… Novarama has developed a game called Invizimals that makes it appear as if the world is populated by formerly invisible creatures that can interact with one another. Sony plans to release Invizimals for the PSP handheld device this holiday season…

Tech is going feral in China. A cottage industry has sprung up to aid cheating students in exams for college places and the civil service.

The devices uncovered were reminiscent of those seen in spy movies: transmitters embedded in pencil erasers or watches, wireless microphone gadgets the size of a bean, earplugs as thin as a vein, and high-definition cameras shaped like buttons. The devices were able to bypass wireless shield and metal detectors… The spy devices are not cheap. One set of devices and answers was sold for 20,000 yuan (US$2,900), the average yearly income of a blue collar worker in a Chinese city… The industry is present in almost all major exams, from national English-level tests and college entrance tests to lawyer’s qualification tests and civil service tests… Selling spy-gear to exam cheaters could result in up to three years in jail…

The Spirit Rover lost the use of one wheel, and is stuck in sand, but a random wind gust cleared its solar panels of dust and it lives on, 2,000 (martian) days into a 90 day mission.

First consumer data-glove – the AnthroTronix AcceleGlove, for $499.

It comes with software that lets developers use Java to program it for any application they wish… When the user’s hand moves, the accelerometers can detect the three- dimensional orientation of the fingers and palm with respect to Earth’s gravity. Measured to within a few degrees, this information allows programs to distinguish even very slight changes in hand position.

The Guardian is claiming initial success in ‘crowd-sourcing’ the auditing of MP’s expense claims. Faced with over 457,000 pages of documents to sift through, they decided to enroll their public by distributing the documents to interested readers. So far 20,900 or so readers have scanned 175,000 pages looking for anomalous claims which they flag as requiring further investigation. I believe this will become commonplace in open democracies with nothing to hide.

Australian researchers have achieved storage densities of 1Tb per square centimetre in a matrix of gold particles that respond to lasers of different frequencies and polarization.

The material is being developed by researchers led by Min Gu, director of the Centre for Micro-Photonics at the Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia. The material is made up of layers of gold nanorods suspended in clear plastic spun flat on a glass substrate… Using three wavelengths and two polarizations of light, the Australian researchers have written six different patterns within the same area. They’ve further increased the storage density to 1.1 terabytes per cubic centimeter by writing data to stacks of as many as 10 nanorod layers…

A simple guide identifying any tree from its leaves is in prototype on an iPhone. This guy was just featured by Apple in one of its TV ads, and the business has exploded.

A team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation has created just such a device — a hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves… The field guide, now in prototype for iPhones and other portable devices, has been tested at three sites in the northeastern United States… The tree guide, and other electronic guides to nature being developed, may be used one day not only by backyard botanists, hikers and children on field trips, but also by scientists and volunteers to compile data for environmental inventories, or as part of species discovery… The program will probably show up first in educational kiosks at, for example, the Smithsonian, where people will be able to bring in a leaf to have it identified automatically…

Scientists have created the first genetically modified monkeys that can pass their new genetic attributes to their offspring… The researchers modified a lentivirus to carry a jellyfish gene known as GFP (green fluorescent protein) into the genetic material of the marmosets’ cells… that caused the animals to glow green under an ultraviolet light… Most important, eggs from one of the females and sperm from one of the males had the gene, and the researchers reported that the male’s sperm was used to produce at least one second-generation offspring with the gene — a male named Kouichi whose skin glowed green under the light… because the work marks the first time members of a species so closely related to humans have had their genetic makeup permanently altered, the research set off alarms that it marked a troubling step toward applying such techniques to people… In humans, researchers have tried to correct genetic defects in individual patients, but there has always been a strict prohibition against making changes that would be passed on…

More evidence emerges that restricting caloric intake to the point of malnutrition does prolong life… Articles in Science:

Each [rhesus monkey] in the experimental group was observed for up to six months to find out how much it ate when food was freely available. It then had the calorific value of this baseline diet cut, in three monthly tranches, until it had been reduced by a total of 30%… [Over 20 years,] 14 of the 38 control animals have died of age-related illnesses such as type II (late onset) diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Only five of the experimental animals so succumbed…

and Nature:

Dr Harrison and his colleagues picked a different molecule that has been seen to work on invertebrates: rapamycin. This substance, isolated originally from a strain of bacterium found on Easter Island—or Rapa Nui as it is known to the locals—acts by suppressing a particular signalling mechanism inside cells, called the TOR pathway. The TOR pathway, in turn, promotes protein production and inhibits the active destruction of parts of cells that are no longer needed… [lab mice experienced] a 38% increase in life expectancy for females and 28% for males.

Andy Kessler doesn’t think it is technology that has been holding back digitising records in the medical industry, but rather an unwillingness to be exposed to auditing of health care costs.

The truth is that these folks could have digitized the whole industry ages ago… The reason lies neither with cost nor with inadequate technology. Rather, the health-care industry’s reluctance to digitize its records is rooted in a desire to keep medicine’s lucrative business model hidden… With easy access to this kind of information, wasteful spending could be identified more readily, allowing payers, whether Medicare or private insurers, to stop reimbursing for expensive but unnecessary tests and procedures… With widespread use of electronic health records, it would be easier to expand preventive medicine, not only by educating patients about lifestyle changes but also by conducting mass screenings… As valuable as electronic health records are for streamlining costs, their biggest contribution will lie in moving medicine toward early detection.

Australian researchers claim success with novel tumour treatment.

The EnGeneIC method uses minicells to deliver a variety of agents to tumor cells, including both anticancer toxins and mechanisms for suppressing the genes that make tumors resistant to toxins… The minicells can be coated with an antibody that recognizes this receptor, so they are more likely to attach themselves to tumors than to the normal cells of the body. The tumor cells engulf and destroy the minicells, a standard defense against bacteria, and in doing so are exposed to whatever cargo the minicells carry… Though the minicells can be varied to attack different receptors and to import any gene of interest on elements called plasmids, the method still has several hurdles to jump.

WHO will probably revise its pandemic warning system to consider both extent and severity after the experience of swine flu – which should be the highest level based on its rapid and widespread transmission but is causing relatively few deaths.

Argentina is experiencing an unusual number of swine flu deaths.

With 1,587 confirmed cases and 43 deaths, one in every 37 confirmed swine flu cases – 2.71 per cent – in Argentina has been fatal.

First case of Tamiflu resistant swine flu. Responded to Relenza.

Danish health officials on Monday reported the first case of resistance in a patient treated with Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that is one of the key influenza treatments recommended by the World Health Organization… The patient was given another type of medication, Relenza, made by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.

Transportation accidents are by far the leading underlying cause of deaths of U.S. service members, and more people die from traffic accidents than from malaria each year in the developing world but the problem of road safety is being ignored by aid groups and international institutions… “Make Roads Safe: A Decade of Action for Road Safety,” concluded that $300 million spent globally on improving roads, campaigns to raise public awareness, and more traffic police could save 5 million lives between 2010 and 2020.

Hit by the economic downturn and fluctuating exchange rates, worldwide IT spending is expected to drop 6 percent this year, according to a new Gartner report… Spending will likely settle in at $3.2 trillion for 2009, compared with $3.4 trillion in 2008. Last year, IT spending had actually surged by 6.2 percent over 2007… Due to the ongoing recession, the projected 6 percent spending decline is greater than Gartner’s original forecast of a 3.8 percent drop, which the firm made in March… Hardware spending will see the sharpest drop at 16.3 percent, while software spending will ease down only 1.6 percent…

Often, soon-to-be-outmoded technologies experience a final wave of innovation as radical improvements that were always seen to cannibalise existing product are given a chance. This is happening right now in lightbulbs, where incandescents are fated to give way to LED, OLED and other solid state light emmitters. The NYT carries an industry press release as “news”.

There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades…

Kedrosky points out that online advertising is now pricier per eyeball than TV.

Marketers typically pay $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time ad. On Hulu, which began offering shows to the public in March 2008, an ad on the animated series “The Simpsons” costs $60 per thousand viewers…

In yet another example of a new entrant taking advantage of incumbent’s unwillingness to cannibalise profitable legacy products, Acer is close to passing up Dell and challenging HP/Compaq for PC industry dominance.

Last year, Acer’s market share grew by 3 percentage points, to 10.9 percent, while Dell gained just 0.1 percentage point, to 15 percent, according to the research company IDC. Acer has continued to narrow that gap this year, claiming 11.6 percent of the market to Dell’s 13.6 percent through the first quarter… Acer already ranks as the second-largest PC seller in Europe, behind H.P… Be it wireless technology or super-thin laptops with a long battery life, Acer often ships computers with new features before any other large PC maker. And when it spots a hot trend… netbooks, for instance… Acer follows in force, bombarding the market with low-cost products… H.P.’s revenue from the PC business has declined 19 percent in each of the last two quarters. Dell’s decline has been even more severe, with desktop sales falling about 30 percent each quarter. Acer’s overall revenue has fallen as well, but only 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Using crowd-sourcing, Netflix has announced that a team has won the $1 million prize awarded for improving its movie recommendation engine by 10% or more. The winning team was formed from several interim prize winners over the past years.

Netflix said that other contestants now have 30 days to try to do even better. If they cannot, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos will collect the $1 million.

China is serious about controlling the network access of desktops there. “Many people say” reporting from the NYT. It looks like US trade groups see this as an effort to wrest control of the PC market away from US suppliers. I’m sure Lenovo is on board though.

On May 19, the ministry issued a directive to computer makers that required the preinstallation of Green Dam on hard drives or a CD-ROM with installation software that usually is packaged with computers. The directive also requires that Green Dam be saved in backup files. The directive makes clear that the government intends to ensure universal use of Green Dam on new computers in China.

China will postpone:

China has indefinitely delayed enforcement of a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam-Youth Escort software that experts believe would have screened not just Internet pornography but also some online political content… Experts have warned that the Green Dam software poses security risks, and last week, the U.S. Trade Representative protested that Green Dam violates World Trade Organization rules…

Web 2.0 site Scribd.com – the “YouTube of documents” – will sell books in digital format, putting pressure on Amazon’s Kindle.

Scribd is offering publishers considerably more control over how their digital titles are sold. Simon & Schuster will sell its books on Scribd for 20 percent off the list price of the most recent print edition… Scribd will allow publishers to see what is selling and change their prices accordingly… Scribd also gives publishers 80 percent of revenue… The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites… letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework and recipes. About 60 million users a month read documents on the site, embed them in blogs and share links to texts over social networks and e-mail messages.