Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image - NYTimes.com

Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image - NYTimes.com: "Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found."

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However, BoingBoing links to a responding piece by Diego Doval

a lot of lead bullets: a response to the new york times article on data center efficiency

Ottawa casts wary eye on Chinese telecom giant - The Globe and Mail

Ottawa casts wary eye on Chinese telecom giant - The Globe and Mail: "A May 8 presentation for the Department of National Defence, written by the Communications Security Establishment and titled “Supply Chain Threats to Canada,” devotes three pages to Huawei and discusses “proposed measures” that could be implemented. Ottawa’s computer and communication networks depend heavily on telecom companies."

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The Globe and Mail reports on security fears that Huawei could manufacture hardware that facilitates spying by the Chinese government.

Neil Young: Piracy Is 'The New Radio,' Way To Get Your Music Heard

Neil Young: Piracy Is 'The New Radio,' Way To Get Your Music Heard: ""It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio," Young said in January. "I look at the radio as gone ... Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around ... That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.""

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An interesting view of online music and music piracy. But, will his idea of a new high quality music standard not also be subject to piracy?

Does Google Know More About You Than You Think? Take this test. - Forbes

Does Google Know More About You Than You Think? Take this test. - Forbes: "But Google, more than likely, already knows a great deal about you. It’s not right all the time, but with me, it was pretty accurate, pegging me for a 25-34 year old male interested in Finance, Strategy Games, Travel and Louisiana. And shopping, too for my sins. Granted, all that stuff is pretty easy to figure out while I’m constantly googling directions to restaurants in New Orleans, but still, they about nailed my essential character, or at least the ads I’m likely to see.

Click here to see who Google thinks you are.

Did they get it right? Let us know in the comments."

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Follow the link to the article which contains a link to Google which will allow you to see what assumptions Google is making about you.

Why Modern Innovation Traffics in Trifles - WSJ.com

Why Modern Innovation Traffics in Trifles - WSJ.com: "What's behind innovation's turn toward the trifling? Declinists point to several possible culprits: America's schools are broken, investors and executives have become shortsighted, taxes are too high (sapping the entrepreneurial spirit), taxes are too low (preventing the government from funding basic research). Or maybe America has just lost its mojo."
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Interesting article on the issue of innovation.

Hardware is dead | VentureBeat

Hardware is dead | VentureBeat: "I go to China every four or five months for work. I have to visit all the corporate headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai, but the highlight of every trip is the day I spend at Hua Qiang Road North in Shenzhen. Pretty much every piece of electronics we use today is sourced and manufactured within 100 miles of Shenzhen, and Hua Qiang is the city’s electronics shopping district.

On my last trip, in July, I met a ‘procurement’ consultant, and he told me which of the 50 mega malls in the area to visit to buy tablets."

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/09/apple-says-new-iphone-5-feature-gives-life-meaning.html

 

September 12, 2012

Apple Says New iPhone 5 Feature Gives Life Meaning

Posted by Andy Borowitz

SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—Apple rocked the gadget world today with the news that the iPhone 5 includes a new feature that gives shape and purpose to previously empty and meaningless lives.
As Apple explained at its launch of the device, the new feature is an improved version of its personal assistant, Siri, that has been endowed with a quality missing from the previous model: empathy.

In a demonstration before a hushed crowd of Apple enthusiasts, an app developer named Josh asked the new Siri, “Why didn’t my parents love me?”
Siri’s response, “Your parents were too self-absorbed and narcissistic to recognize your essential beauty and value as a human being,” brought many in the Yerba Buena Center audience close to tears.
Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook closed out the launch with perhaps his boldest claim to date about the company’s new phone: “We believe that the iPhone 5 will make your current relationship obsolete.”
Wall Street rallied on the news, with tech analysts expecting millions of Apple customers to purchase an iPhone 5 to replace their existing boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse.
But in the words of Apple devotee Tracy Klugian, who was present at today’s launch, such expectations are overdone: “Most Apple snobs I know started putting their Apple products before their relationships a long time ago.”

"Living in the Shetlands, I didn't understand the impact of what we were doing," he says. "I didn't understand the impact on the real world. And now that I'm here in Spalding, and I've been a lot in London, I kind of see that the world does go round and it's not about hiding in a bedroom."
What seems incredible, even now (and maybe, especially, to Jake), is how a slightly troubled teenager living on the two-sheep island of Yell, in the Shetland Isles – a place as isolated and remote as anywhere on Earth – came to find himself at the heart of a radical global political movement.
But then, maybe that's the point. When I met Gabriella Coleman in Edinburgh she'd spent the previous evening meeting one of her contacts, who lived in a remote croft in the Scottish countryside. "He cooked me pheasant," she said. Olson, too, found that a disproportionate number of contacts she met "lived in out-of-the-way places".
For Jake, living in the Shetlands, the internet became his everything. It was where he made friends and socialised. "It's where I learned almost everything I now know. The thing I miss the most is Wikipedia. I mean, at school I learned to knit. I'm actually a pretty good knitter now." Jake had a somewhat difficult childhood, and that (combined with the knitting lessons) led him to drop out of school at 13, shortly after his stepfather was killed in an accident.

from the Guardian "Anonymous: behind the masks of the cyber insurgents" 

• Carole Cadwalladr
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 8 September 2012 21.47 BST

Hundreds of cyber attacks blamed on group that hacked Google in 2009 - The Globe and Mail

Hundreds of cyber attacks blamed on group that hacked Google in 2009 - The Globe and Mail: "Although the hackers were never publicly identified, the incident heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over growing evidence that a significant number of cyber attacks against U.S. institutions originated from China.

“It was big news at the time, but what people don’t realize is that this is happening constantly,” said Eric Chien, a manager in Symantec’s research group. “They haven’t gone away, and we wouldn’t expect them to go away.”

Symantec said on Friday the hackers behind Operation Aurora have focused on stealing intellectual property, such as design documents from defense contractors and their suppliers, including shipping, aeronautics, arms, energy, manufacturing, engineering and electronics companies."

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