Stephan: Here is some potentially very good news, and important news as the earth's temperatures rise because of human greed and stupidity.
Cooling Chip
It goes without saying, cooling technologies like air conditioners, freezers, and refrigerators have significantly improved our lives over the last few decades. But the chemicals underlying these technologies have also proved to be very detrimental to the environment, harming the ozone layer and polluting water sources.
The good news is that, in recent years, scientists have been hard at work improving the devices that keep us, and the things we consume, cool. One of the most promising of these technologies comes from Phononic, a startup based in Durham, North Carolina, which has been using a material called bismuth telluride to make ‘cooling chips.’
As reported by Euronews, these chips can be as small as a fraction of a fingernail or as big as a fist depending on how many coolants are needed. When electricity runs through the chips, the current takes heat with it, cooling one side of the chip while heating the other one up, explains Tony Atti, the startup’s co-founder.
So far, the cooling chips have been used to manufacture compact freezers for vaccine transportation and for ice cream at convenience stores. A more recent use involves […]
Stephan: The development of this grift was inevitable and utterly predictable. Freedom of Speech does not extend to propagating disinformation that can harm a person's, or a population's wellbeing. But the Congress has been unwilling to create law requiring factual accuracy. That failure assured digital mercenaries would arise. Nations with hostile intentions towards another nation, create and hire such people, and corporations, or rich individuals or groups use them as well. This disinformation seeks to cripple us in some way because it is being created to further an agenda, not foster wellbeing.
Doing SR, finding reliable sources, has become much more difficult.
Empty vaccine vials at a vaccination site near Munich in May. Online disinformation campaigns targeting everything from vaccine manufacturers to elections have become a booming business. Credit: Matthias Schrader/Associated Press
In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.
A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.
But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.
Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence […]
Stephan: I predicted that roads that charged EV batteries were the future, and wrote it up in my novel Awakening. I have done several earlier stories on this (see SR archive) but this is the one that will, I think, become the norm if it tests out as well as is claimed.
Credit: Kalocsai Tamás / EyeEm/Getty
Roads that can charge electric cars or buses while you drive aren’t a new concept, but so far the technology has been relatively expensive and inefficient. However, Indiana’s Department of Transport (INDOT) has announced that it’s testing a new type of cement with embedded magnetized particles that could one day provide efficient, high-speed charging at “standard roadbuilding costs,” Autoblog has reported.
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), INDOT has teamed with Purdue University and German company Magment on the project. They’ll carry out the research in three phases, first testing if the magnetized cement (called “magment,” naturally) will work in the lab, then trying it out on a quarter-mile section of road.
In a brochure, Magment said its product delivers “record-breaking wireless transmission efficiency [at] up to 95 percent,” adding that it can be built at “standard road-building installation costs” and that it’s “robust and vandalism-proof.” The company also notes that slabs with the embedded ferrite particles could be built locally, presumably under license.
Eloise Marais, Associate Professor in Physical Geography at UCL - IDEAS.TED.COM
Stephan: Jeff Bezos probably pays less in taxes than you do. And where his ex-wife is giving billions to foster wellbeing. He is creating a uber-rich person's fantasy space ride costing millions. This is a manifestation of the wealth inequality cancer that is consuming America. And it is an environmental disaster.
The commercial race to get tourists to space is heating up between Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. On July 11, Branson ascended 80 km (49 miles) to reach the edge of space in his piloted Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spaceplane, while Bezos’ autonomous Blue Origin rocket launched today on July 20, coinciding with the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Although Bezos launched later than Branson, he set out to reach higher altitudes — about 120 km, or 74 miles.
Blue Origin Launch Credit: Alamy
The launch demonstrates a new type of offering to very wealthy tourists: The opportunity to truly reach outer space. Tour packages will provide passengers with a brief 10-minute frolic in zero gravity and glimpses of Earth from space. Not to be outdone, later in 2021, Elon Musk’s SpaceX will provide four to five days of orbital travel with its Crew Dragon capsule.
What are the environmental consequences of a space tourism industry likely to be? Bezos boasts that his Blue […]
Paul Lewis, Head of Investigation - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: You have probably heard about the Pegasus spyware scandal. Here is the best story I have found that lays this complicated tale out in detail.
Companies such as NSO operate in a market that is almost entirely unregulated. Illustration: Guardian Design
Our investigation shows how repressive regimes can buy and use the kind of spying tools Edward Snowden warned us.
Billions of people are inseparable from their phones. Their devices are within reach – and earshot – for almost every daily experience, from the most mundane to the most intimate.
Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and location, activating their microphone to record them in real time.
Such are the capabilities of Pegasus, the spyware manufactured by NSO Group, the Israeli purveyor of weapons of mass surveillance.
NSO rejects this label. It insists only carefully vetted government intelligence and law enforcement agencies can use Pegasus, and only to penetrate the phones of “legitimate criminal or terror group targets”.
Yet in the coming days the Guardian will be revealing the identities of […]
