Air travel releases almost 800 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, pushing usever closer to our looming environmental catastrophe. NASA scientists want to do something about it, and teamed up with researchers in Germany and Canada to find a way to tackle the issue. Its findings claim that jets that use biofuels emit up to 70 percent less pollution and reduces the formation of water condensation trails (contrails) in their wake.
In order to test if biofuels were cleaner, NASA flew a DC-8 out of California’s Armstrong Flight Center that used different fuels on each trip. A trio of monitoring planes then flew into the CD-8’s wake at distances as close to 250 meters to suck up the exhaust for monitoring. One fuel that appears promising is a mix of hydro-processed esters and fatty acids produced from camelina plant oil. These initial tests believe that the amount of climate-causing emissions fell between 50 and 70 percent.
It’s not just what jet engines burn that contributes to climate change, however, but what condensation trails cause. If you’re unfamiliar, particles of soot pass out of the engine along with water vapor, and at such a high altitude, form ice crystals. The result is a long white trail of ice that takes a while to dissipate, and is the cause of the nonsensical chemtrails conspiracy theory.
The ice, as it lingers in the atmosphere, can form cirrus clouds, which then form a blanket layer over the Earth. That, unfortunately, raises the temperature of the air beneath it by up to 10 degrees celsius, magnifying localized warming. With fewer soot particles in the wake, these contrails don’t form as frequently, which should help the fight against climate change.
This article by Daniel Cooper originally appeared on Engadget, your source for this connected world.
with MobilEye on self-driving cars must have gone well, because the chip giant is buying its Jerusalem-based partner for $15.3 billion. The deal was first reported by Israeli business site
but has now been confirmed by the two companies. MobilEye is one of the largest players in autonomous vehicle tech and was in the news recently over a spat with Tesla following a fatal
in Florida. However, it recently teamed with Intel on BMW’s iNext self-driving platform, which the automaker aims to put into service by 2021.
The technology they’re working on isn’t just for BMW vehicles, though. The idea is to build a “scalable architecture” that can be used by any automaker, especially if they don’t want to build their own tech from scratch. As such, it could become a huge business for MobilEye, which may help explain the huge acquisition price. The deal is one of the largest acquisitions of an Israeli-based tech company ever.
Despite a recent PC renaissance thanks to Microsoft’s Surface and other devices, desktops are still losing ground to mobile devices. That has affected Intel’s bottom line while benefiting companies like Qualcomm, which makes the chips used in many smartphones and tablets. The situation has forced Intel into other areas like wearables, connected homes and “internet of things” devices, none of which has exactly taken off yet.
Autonomous cars, on the other hand, are one of the hottest things in tech, with virtually every automaker, tech company and even peripheral firms like Uber and Lyft working on (and fighting about) them. Even if fully autonomous cars don’t work out as planned (some critics think it’s a distant pipe dream), autopilot tech that aids drivers and prevents accidentsis available now on Tesla EVs and other cars. Ironically, MobilEye’s early success was due in large part to Tesla, and that partnership dissolved in a not-very-friendly way.
This article by Steve Dent originally appeared at Engadget.
Some Houston drivers are enduring marathon commutes rather than work for Uber.
Their commutes to Austin are two or three hours each way. They go days without seeing their children. But these drivers describe the decision as life-changing. They’re happier, less stressed and, for some, finances have been saved.
“I thank god that Ride Austin and Fasten came aboard,” said Yerica Garcia, who resorted to driving for the Austin ridesharing services last summer after one of her vehicles was repossessed. “If it was Uber, I would lose my house too.”
Garcia fell thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage last year. She blamed Uber for lowering prices and changing its commission split in Houston, which made it difficult to provide for her three children under the age of 10.
Yerica Garcia says her finances were saved after she began driving for Ride Austin, whose headquarters are shown above.
As Garcia’s troubles in Houston mounted, a battle was playing out in Austin. The city wanted drivers to be fingerprinted as a security measure. Uber and Lyft, unhappy with the decision, shut down their services in the Texas capital on May 9.
As quickly as Uber and Lyft left, new apps like Ride Austin and Fasten blossomed, providing alternatives for drivers and passengers. One of the apps, Get Me, tried to recruit Garcia as she waited to pick up an Uber passenger at Houston’s airport.
Meanwhile, Garcia feared losing her home, so she rolled the dice. One day in June, she left her children with her mother and trekked the nearly three hours to Austin.
She quickly found that the rates charged in Austin, and the portionthat the ridesharing service withheld, were far more favorable to her as a driver.
She has since driven mostly for Ride Austin. It does not take a cut of driver’s earnings with standard vehicles, instead keeping a $2 booking fee that it charges passengers. But drivers of SUVs and luxury vehicles — which are paid more per mile and minute — pay a 20% cut to Ride Austin. In Houston, Uber takes nearly 30% of most rides. Uber drivers in Houston receive 87 cents per mile today, a figure that’s dropped in recent years.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After that first day in Austin, Garcia began a new ritual. She’d leave Houston at the crack of dawn on Thursday, and return home on Sunday. With money so tight, Garcia would park in an Austin Wal-Mart or apartment complex and sleep in her Nissan Pathfinder.
Today, Garcia has nearly caught up on her mortgage payments. She says she makes $1,200 a week in Austin. There’s no need to sleep in her car now. She splits an apartment with three other drivers who travel to Austin because of the better pay.
“I’m so happy,” Cesar Gomes said of driving in Austin. “You’re working hard, but you see the money.”
One of them is Cesar Gomes. He heard from Garcia last summer how she made $350 in a single day. He was stunned. He was used to making maybe $200 driving for Uber in Houston.
Gomes shared the news with a buddy, Vitor Lopes, and they made a plan.
So one morning last September they caravanned from Houston to Austin. They drove in the city all day, raking in money. Afterward, they celebrated with burgers at a local food truck. Gomes talked of splurging on a gift for his children.
“We were so happy,” Gomes said.
The next month, Gomes and Lopes, flush with cash, both bought new SUVs to use on the Austin ridesharing services.
Today, Gomes spends Thursday through Sunday working in Austin. He said he no longer stresses about whether his Uber rating is high enough, or if he’ll have enough money for his three kids. He likes the nonprofit aspect of Ride Austin, the service he spends most of his time driving for.
Vitor Lopes moved to Austin this year because of the better ridesharing pay.
Lopes has gone a step further — he moved to Austin in February.
Pending legislation is expected to open the door for Uber and Lyft to return to Austin in the months ahead. But drivers like Lopes and Gomez aren’t interested.
“We don’t need Uber,” Lopes said. We don’t want Uber.”
CNNMoney (Washington) First published March 8, 2017: 5:13 PM ET
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Modern 3D video games require a ton of processing power to look good and respond to player input quickly. That’s why most of the web-based games you see today are at best stripped down versions of their PC or console counterparts. The team behind the Firefox web browser would like to see that change, however. Mozilla released a version of the browser that includes WebAssembly – a new technology that enables high-resource apps like games, computer-aided design, video and image editing and scientific visualization to run in a browser almost as fast as they do on your local computer. It will also speed up existing web apps that use JavaScript.
With WebAssembly, developers will be able to code a game or app and know it will run in the same way on any supported browser, regardless of platform. Consumers get the convenience of using a web browser to run any WebAssembly-enabled game or app, regardless of platform or operating system.
WebAssembly is a low-level programming language that allows other, higher-level computer languages like C or C++ to run in a web browser. WebAssembly apps are parsed and compiled before they even hit your browser, which means that much of the heavy lifting has already been done. By comparison, a javascript app often pulls a bunch of code into the browser, then figures out how best to run it on your system, slowing the whole process down. Google and Microsoft’s browsers will support WebAssembly, though Firefox is the first browser to include the technology, thanks to Mozilla’s lead role in the research.
As WebAssembly matures, the Mozilla team hopes to bring it to mobile, as well. Imagine playing the modern version of Doom or running a CAD app on your Mac or PC, then loading it up onto your smartphone as you head out on your morning commute. All of this without plugins or the need to sacrifice speed for the convenience of the web.
The Firefox beta, available today for Mac, PC and Linux, also includes improvements to Wi-Fi portal detection and better warnings for insecure logins.
China is rather irate that South Korea is starting to install the US’ THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile defense system to protect against North Korean threats. To that end, it’s punishing the South with retaliatory policies… including one that targets video games. Chinese officials have frozen new licenses for games made in South Korea, preventing any more titles from launching in the country.
That’s not a huge issue in the short term, but it could be damaging in the long run for developers with games that are likely to rake in a lot of cash in China. Netmarble’s Korean blockbuster Lineage 2: Revolution, for example, is being adapted for the Chinese market. If it’s denied, that leaves a lot of money on the table — the title has already made the equivalent of about $100 million since launch.
And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s a resolution in sight. It’s doubtful that South Korea will withdraw THAAD any time soon, and China hasn’t given any indication that it’s going to reconsider the ban. Korean game studios may have to either be content with catering to the home crowd or shift their international plans to other countries.
While the rush to keep pace with Moore’s Law is getting rather "chaotic", researchers at IBM announced on Wednesday that they have drastically reduced the space required to store a bit of information down to that of a single atom.
This tiny advancement in storage technology, is a big deal. Given that modern hard drives need about 100,000 atoms to store a single bit, this development could shrink the size of future storage mediums by an order of magnitude. IBM figures that it can store the entire iTunes catalog (all 35 million tracks) onto a disk the size of a credit card by using this technique.
A single atom of holmium credit: IBM Research – Almaden
The system uses atoms of holmium seated atop a magnesium oxide surface, which keeps the atom’s magnetic poles stable — even in the presence of other magnets. The orientation of these poles determines whether the atom constitutes a 1 or a 0. To write to this storage system, a microscopic needle induces a current to flip the atom’s orientation. Reading the information, conversely, is simply a matter of measuring the magnetic current passing through each atom, which varies depending on which pole is facing up.
But don’t expect this technology to show up in the next iPhone, mind you. It currently requires a liquid nitrogen-cooled tunnelling electron microscope operating in a vacuum to work. The study was published today in the journal Nature.
