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Bitcoin is not over yet. But the pseudo-currency is close enough to collapse to merit an early retrospective. My prediction is controversial. Many fervent fans are persuaded that this government-free currency is for real. Their ardour may keep it going for a while, but equally bitcoin could disappear very quickly - that’s the way with speculative bubbles. So now is the moment to learn some economic lessons before the whole phenomenon is forgotten. Here are five. Click headline to read more-- 
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Netflix’s next expansion could take the video service to Germany and France: Netflix is currently in the process of building out a European PR team based in Amsterdam that will help the company with its planned expansion into continental Europe, and two recently posted job listings for positions on that team suggest that both Germany and France are high on the list of targeted countries. One of the ads lists this as required language skills: “Ability to speak/write English. Dutch, the Nordic languages, German and French are a plus.” Netflix is already available in the Netherlands, the U.K. and Ireland as well as the Nordics. The other ad contains the same requirements with a slightly different wording. Altogether, Netflix is looking to fill eight positions in Amsterdam, according to its jobs site. Click headline to read more--
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European Internet users could risk being charged extra money for accessing online services like Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Skype and Whatsapp if a European draft regulation on net neutrality isn't amended before March, European civil rights groups warned Tuesday. Civil rights groups EDRi (European Digital Rights), the German Digitale Gesellschaft, the French La Quadrature du Net, the Austrian Initiative fA1/4r Netzfreiheit as well as the Brussels based Access Now group together launched a campaign called SaveTheInternet.eu aiming to amend or block the regulation. The European Union is currently preparing a net neutrality law. Net neutrality in principle means that all traffic on the internet is treated on an equal basis without regard to the type or origin of the content. However, the European Commission's net neutrality proposal allows ISPs to charge extra for delivering "specialized services" -- and by not defining the term, could allow them apply the label to services such as Skype, YouTube and Whatsapp that compete with their own offerings, and charge customers to access them, the groups warned. Click headline to read more--
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Although Obama’s recent Executive Order on Climate Change Preparedness* only applies to US government departments and agencies I suspect the concept will quickly be adopted by many other governments around the world. Not only government departments but also most public funded organizations such as schools, universities, hospitals etc. will be required to develop Climate Change Preparedness Plans. President Obama’s Climate Change Preparedness order is a welcome recognition of the fact that we are pretty well past the point of no return in terms of slowing down or stopping climate change. Most universities and other organizations who are attempting to wrestle with climate change today for the most part are only undertaking token mitigation initiatives such as recycling paper, installing high efficiency light bulbs or deploying energy efficient heating and cooling. I liken these efforts to throwing pillows off the Titanic. Sure, they may slow down the rate of sinking by a miniscule amount, but it is not going to change the ultimate outcome. The real focus of our efforts should be manning the lifeboats. Most people fail to understand that it is the cumulative CO2 emissions that cause climate change, and not our current emission rate. If magically we were to stop all emissions today, the system has already a baked in global average temperature increase of almost 2C due to the cumulative emissions produced by humans since the start of the industrial age. To put that in perspective in the late 1700s, prior to the industrial age, when the average global temperature was .8C cooler than now, New York City Harbor would routinely freeze over*. In many years people could walk across the ice from Staten Island to Manhattan. If New York harbor routinely froze over when the world was .8C cooler than it is now, imagine what the world is going to be like when we are 2C or even 4C warmer than today! Even if we could develop a global consensus on the seriousness of climate change, the global effort to eliminate virtually all sources of CO2 would be staggering. To stabilize global temperatures at 2C we would have to build the clean energy equivalent of a new nuclear power plant very day for the next 50 years*!! Its time to face reality and realize that building this amount of clean energy power simply is not going to happen. We really need to think seriously about manning the lifeboats and preparing for eventual dramatic changes that will happen with a rapidly warming climate. Click headline to read more--
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Global mobile Internet service revenue is estimated to have grown 23.4 percent to roughly $300 billion, according to ABI Research, as wireless broadband subscriptions jumped 28.8 percent and the smartphone share of total subscriptions advanced by 6.6 percent to capture 27.5 percent of the overall pie. Despite the big numbers in mobile Internet, global wireless service revenue is estimated to have grown just 3.2 percent to slightly over $1 trillion. In 2014, however, mobile Internet related revenues will power ahead with growth in the 13 to 15 percent range. ABI noted that LTE is providing some upsell opportunities with multi-device plans and increased data quota plans, but by and large, 4G has not reversed the declining average revenue per user (ARPU) trend in most countries. Click headline to read more--
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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS has topped a UK security agency’s security assessment of mobile and desktop operating systems. GCHQ‘s information security arm ‘CESG’ reviewed eleven of the most popular “end user” OSes against a 12-point list of security criteria. Google’s Android, Apple’s Mac OS X and Microsoft’s Windows 7, 8 and RT were among the systems compared. A report detailing CESG’s findings was published late last year. Click headline to read more--
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We just noted how Congress had introduced a bill to give up its own Constitutional powers, abdicating them to the administration and the USTR to give it the full power to commit the US to massive trade agreements like the TPP and TAFTA/TTIP, and blocking Congress' ability to oversee the process and make sure all interests are represented. Instead, if fast track authority is granted, Congress will only be able to give a "yes or no" vote on the agreements, and once the USTR comes back with an agreement, the pressure will be immense to vote yes. Thankfully, many in Congress are already signalling that they're not at all comfortable with abdicating their responsibilities. On the House side, Reps. Rosa Delauro, Louise Slaughter and George Miller put out a statement decrying the inevitable end result of this process, specifically highlighting the fact that these modern trade agreements cover a hell of a lot more than "trade." Fast Track procedures would allow the President to sign a potential Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other free trade agreements before Congress votes to approve them even though the Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority over trade. The process would also guarantee the pacts could come to the floor without giving Members of Congress the opportunity to amend them despite the fact these agreements will include binding obligations that touch upon a wide swath of non-trade policy matters under the authority of Congress. As their statement also notes, "Our constituents did not send us to Washington to ship their jobs overseas, and Congress will not be a rubber stamp for another flawed trade deal that will hang the middle class out to dry." Click headline to read more--
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Gilles Bregant, the director general of France’s Agence Nationale des Frequences (ANFR), has presented his review of the year and the agency’s roadmap for 2014, without reportedly mentioning the planned 700MHz spectrum auction, raising concerns that the tender will not meet its previously set deadline, local news agency Les Echos reports. However, complicating things further, according to the article, the EUR1.4 billion (USD1.91 billion) proceedings from the spectrum sale have already been assigned to the army, as outlined in the 2015 military budget. According to TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in June 2013 officials in Elysee, Matignon and Bercy confirmed President Francois Hollande’s decision to allocate frequencies in the 700MHz band to telecom services. The Ministry of Finance, the President’s Office and the Prime Minister’s Office decided to assign the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) and Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (Arcep) with the task to auction the 700MHz spectrum to telecommunication services by the end of 2014, in order to ‘generate revenue for the state as quickly as possible, by the end of 2014 or in early 2015’. Arcep is expected to launch an auction for the spectrum band in November 2015, with projections that the tender could generate up to EUR3 billion for the treasury. Click headline to read more--
cyberinfos's curator insight,
October 7, 2014 4:57 PM
Creatoria, Agence de communication au Maroc à Casablanca
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European commissioners are considering scrapping a binding target for renewable energy from 2030, a move that would please big utility companies but mark a retreat on one of its signature environmental policies. The EU’s 2030 energy and climate targets, which the commission is due to propose on January 22, are stoking acrimony among countries and between commissioners. Governments, industry and green groups are lobbying the commission intensely over the goals. A target for how much power European countries should derive from renewables is one of the most bitterly debated parts of next week’s package. The UK, which is increasing its use of nuclear power, opposes a binding goal. Germany, which is shutting down its reactors, is the most powerful voice in favour of an obligatory target. A proposed compromise, at the heart of discussions over the 2030 package, envisages that a renewables target, of up to 27 per cent, would be non-binding. However, people close to the talks added that the arguments hinge on whether such a non-binding renewables target would need to be given credibility by stronger rules on efficient networks. That would mean binding objectives related to energy infrastructure, smart grids and cross-border interconnectors. This compromise for 2030, if accepted in the face of German opposition, would represent a significant change from the EU’s 2020 targets. Those included binding goals that EU states should cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels and derive 20 per cent of their power from renewables. Measures to improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent were only aspirational. For 2030, the tougher and quantifiable action would be required on more technical aspects of upgrading infrastructure. “It’s a bottom-up approach that is being considered now,” said one person involved. Click headline to read more--
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When the world’s first Bitcoin ATM went live in a Vancouver coffee shop last fall, it created a global media buzz and racked up over $100,000 of transactions in eight days. Still, I thought, what a dumb idea. While intrigued by Bitcoin, I didn’t see the point of putting an ATM in a place like Canada, which has a stable banking system and where you can easily obtain the crypto-currency by other, cheaper means. In a few months, I predicted, the bitcoin ATM would end up forgotten in a corner of the coffee shop like a cobweb-covered Frogger game. But I also resolved to go see firsthand how the ATM was doing once the initial hype had died down. In late December, that’s what I did. Click headline to read more--
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It’s by now a no-brainer to say that what we think about climate change is often influenced by what we know of weather change. On a cold day many of us are much less ready to agree that the climate is changing than we are on a warm one. But now researchers have gone a stage further, trying to establish just why we react to these topical prompts rather than to the evidence of long-term change. And In a series of surveys, they have found that we often respond to the most accessible and immediate information – whether on temperature or something else – that we can find. The research, published in Nature Climate Change, was completed by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. One survey examined several possible influences on perceptions of the climate, for example testing 686 people on whether individual words could alter their reactions on a very warm day. But the researchers found that speaking of “global warming” rather than “climate change” made little difference. Click headline to read more--
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The controversial RedTube case in Germany has provoked an interesting response from the Ministry of Justice. Although it says the question will ultimately be answered by the European Court, the Ministry says that it believes the mere viewing of copyright infringing streams is not illegal under current law. Panic spread across Germany last month when an estimated 10,000 Internet users received threatening letters from a lawfirm acting on behalf of porn producers. The alleged offenses apparently took place on RedTube, a streaming video site which from a technical viewpoint is not unlike YouTube. With no uploading taking place, how did the copyright holders obtain the IP addresses of alleged offenders when RedTube insists nothing was handed over? With that still a mystery and RedTube outraged at this attack on their users, in December the company obtained an injunction to halt the trolls in their tracks. However, an important question still remained unanswered. Is merely viewing a copyrighted stream without permission illegal under current law? With the controversy storming on the question was posed to the German Government and the Ministry of Justice has just delivered its opinion. The Ministry concludes that the mere viewing of a copyrighted stream without permission is not in itself an act of copyright infringement. This opinion puts the Government completely at odds with the adult companies behind the thousands of cash settlement letters sent out last year. It also draws a line in the sand between streaming (legal) and regular downloads (illegal). Click headline to read more--
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Last week, Salon ran an article, “Thanks for killing the planet, boomers!,” where I argued that it’s wholly unrealistic to assume humanity will undertake the massive, world-changing, economy-disrupting policy solutions needed for us to even stand a chance of long-term survival. Given that our local political and economic systems are as fragile, stalled and polarized as they’ve been in most of American history, these predictions only seem more dire, and the problem only more intractable. Which is why I’m constantly amazed by the notion that our technology will somehow save us, what I’ve come to consider the deus ex machina defense. I’ve never considered myself much of an “environmentalist”: Growing up in Boston, I’d often playfully argue with friends in favor of littering. Cities, I’d suggest, are probably the least “natural” places in the world: paved over, built up, masked in a haze of gasoline fumes, tunneled to make rivers of sewage. To suggest that my candy wrapper was somehow disrupting nature or harming the earth seemed totally facile and absurd (and oftentimes, still does). No, I’d argue smugly, littering just keeps the trashman employed. Even worse, I will recycle only as much as the local statutes require. I’m certainly not about to go out of my way to keep a few plastic bottles out of a landfill if it’s inconvenient. Crises like this are system-wide, and solutions need to be considerably larger than the guilt-motivated actions of self-righteous upper-middle-class Americans, who make marginal changes to their behavior while still happily contributing to the underlying First World problems of overconsumption and waste. Still, I was always receptive to the idea of global warming: I’m no climatologist, but serious scientists with academic and professional bona fides have been voicing their extreme, sober concerns for my entire life. When scientific consensus is strong and widely acknowledged, I defer to it in matters of science. Climate change is no exception. But global warming (as it was called when I was a kid) seemed enormously far off, an abstraction, just one of many Big Problems that humanity would eventually be forced to confront. And even if the problem was unfathomably large, our technological solutions, our deus ex machinas, would themselves be unfathomably powerful. Click headline to read more--
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If you were walking through the woods and came across this looming in the distance, you would probably think that it was just a large stack of cut logs. From all angles, it seems like a normal pile of firewood. However, as you get closer, you’ll see that something doesn’t look quite right. It’s not just a bunch of logs, but something much, much better. Check this out. Click headline to read more and view more pix--
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We spoke with the World Bank VP and Special Envoy for Climate Change, Rachel Kyte, about how fighting climate change became central to the World Bank's development agenda, and why they turned to scientists for advice. Click headline to read the interview--
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Steven Lipsky's phone was busy on the morning of Christmas Eve. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General had just released its report concluding the EPA was justified in intervening to protect drinking water from hydraulic fracturing in Weatherford, Texas, despite assertions to the contrary from the oil and gas industry and Congressional Republicans. In 2010, Mr. Lipsky alerted the agency to his contaminated well water and the fact that he could light his water on fire. An EPA investigation determined that Range Resources' hydraulic fracturing activities caused the contamination. Republican senators had quickly initiated an investigation of the report, questioning the agency's motivation and the validity of its findings. So does Mr. Lipsky feel vindicated? No, he does not, and he says he won't until the entire story is told and the truth is completely revealed. Additionally, Lipsky wants to see an end to the $3 million defamation lawsuit filed by Range Resources against him. Steven Lipsky speaks out about the dangers facing his neighbors: Click headline to read the transcript or watch video clip of interview--
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The National Broadband Network is "critical" to the future of the Northern Rivers, and opposition to wireless towers should not hinder its rollout, according to Lismore City Council's economic development manager. Mark Batten said while some people would always oppose the towers, he said it was "immaterial" whether the NBN took the form of fixed wireless towers or fibre cable, saying he was satisfied with the safety of fixed wireless technology. "Some people just don't want them (towers) anywhere near them - does that mean it shouldn't happen? In my humble opinion, no," Mr Batten said. He likened the NBN to the 21st century version of rail and road. "The business superhighway analogy may be clichéd but it is nonetheless, an absolute truism," he said. "Business and industry will concentrate around accessible ports. They always have and always will. "That's why it's critical regional centres like Lismore City, the historical business capital of the Far North Coast, embrace this. "It's a catalyst for the delivery of much better health and education, wealth creation and retention, population retention, jobs growth, and community wellbeing. Click headline to read more--
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Email, that daily workflow staple, is becoming a real problem in this post-Snowden era. Or rather, it always has been an issue—but many of us are just becoming aware of just how big of one it is. Service providers can be forced to hand over customer data to government agencies or might shut down to avoid doing so; accounts can get hacked; communications can be intercepted—we all know now what goes on in the NSA. But the most widely trusted method of encryption, industry veteran Pretty Good Privacy, has a pretty steep learning curve, both in understanding the abstract concepts involved and the actual step-by-step process. Why can’t it just be easy? This is the challenge that the LEAP Encryption Access Project might just meet. Established by a grant from the Open Technology Fund, LEAP is a nonprofit group of developers working to make encrypted digital communication easy, and free. It has a core staff of five developers working full-time on the project and another handful working part time, and eventually they hope it will be run by volunteers, with its source code overseen by anyone and everyone. But the beta version should be ready to try out in the next few weeks. LEAP isn’t itself an email service provider. It’s encryption software that you download and install and then use in conjunction with an email client like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or Outlook. But what makes LEAP different from other secure email setups, like the PGP interface Enigmail for instance, is that it automates the key-exchange part of the encryption process, which is probably the most cumbersome component. LEAP also makes sure that the service provider never has access to your data, because the encrypting and de-encrypting all happens on your computer. Significantly, LEAP also encrypts message metadata in addition to the content of the messages themselves. Unfortunately, all this security does have a slight trade-off. Click headline to read more--
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Double-digit growth means high-speed fiber links are becoming more common in Europe and America. Copper lines keep getting faster, though, and some network operators aren't eager to pay for upgrades. Fiber-optic broadband is becoming less of a rarity. Subscriptions to the high-speed networking service grew 13.9 percent from June 2012 to June 2013, according to newly released statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which monitors economic trends in North America, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and some other developed countries and regions. That growth means fiber-optic links now are used for 15.8 percent of broadband connections in the OECD area. Of course, usage varies widely by country. Japan leads with 68.5 percent penetration of fiber-optic links, with South Korea close behind at 62.8 percent. Sweden is in third place at 35.9 percent; the US is in 14th place with an estimated 7.7 percent. The fastest growth in new connections is taking place in Mexico, with a 290 percent increase in fiber connections from 2012 to 2013. The UK grew at 172 percent; Chile at 171 percent; New Zealand at 141 percent; Australia at 121 percent. Click headline to read more--
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Italian telecoms regulator the Autorita per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (Agcom) has ordered cash-strapped mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Bip Mobile and its mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) Telogic to increase the number of mobile number portability (MNP) requests processed from 500 to 15,000 per day. The move has been prompted by Bip Mobile’s abrupt decision to halt its services over Christmas after running up debts to its suppliers of around EUR8 million (USD10.9 million). The reseller initially attempted to pin the blame on network operator partner 3 Italia, but backed down after the threat of legal action. The increased number of ports is required so that the MVNO can transfer its 220,000-strong user base to other operators within a 15-day window. No decision has yet been made regarding how to deal with the remaining credit on Bip customers’ accounts.
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Massachusetts' electricity producers over the years have weaned the state from coal-generated power to a more eco-friendly mix of natural gas, hydropower and a growing list of alternative sources from wind to solar power. The shift earned the state first place in the American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy 2013 Clean Energy Report and second place in clean energy technology. But despite such successes, the state's energy grid still faces challenges. Massachusetts uses more coal-generated electricity than some of its New England neighbors. A lack of infrastructure is making it difficult to bring in more natural gas. And although state law now mandates the use of alternative fuel sources, the lower pollution options are less cost effective than traditional fossil fuels. The increased use of natural gas to generate electricity has been an economic and environmental solution in the commonwealth, according to Mike DiMauro, an engineer with the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, a non-profit, public corporation that works with the state to provide advice and funding to municipal utilities. "Some of [the reason for natural gas reliance] was cost, some of it was the availability of natural gas, and of course there are the pollution aspects of it," he said. According to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, generating electricity with natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide, less than a third of the nitrogen oxides, and 1 percent of the sulfur oxide generated by coal. "As far as fossil fuel emissions go they are the lowest emissions you can have while burning fossil fuels," DiMauro said. But the commonwealth uses coal at a higher rate than neighboring states. Click headline to read more--
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On November 7th 2013, the Beijing city government announced sweeping changes to car ownership in the near future [1] that fundamentally shifted the future outlook for the city’s and perhaps the country’s transportation system. This announcement was arguably the biggest environmental news item of 2013. But, it was barely – if at all – covered by most news sources. So what was this grand piece of news? Well, in short, the City of Beijing introduced a law that will:
Beijing’s announcement was a dramatic one because almost nobody has included this type of potential action in their modeling of the future Beijing transportation system (besides the Chinese government agency responsible for this law, of course). The ramifications of this law are – in a word – massive. It means that almost all of the large international organizations and many private organizations that have been trying to get a handle on the future outlook of the world’s transportation systems could be off in their projections. Click headline to read more--
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For Toyota, the future of cars is vapor -- in a good way. At the Consumer Electronics Show, the automotive company on Monday talked up its big bet for electric cars: fuel cell technology, which boasts no emissions but water vapor. The cars will hit the market in 2015, Toyota said. While a competitor like Tesla uses pure battery power to make its vehicles run, Toyota's offering -- the first of its kind to be put on sale for consumers -- uses hydrogen to generate electricity on board the car. In layman's terms, here's how it works: Pure hydrogen is pumped into the tank and combined with air to create water, a reaction that also produces electricity. The fuel cell channels the electricity to a drive motor, powering the car. "We didn't reinvent the wheel; we just reinvented everything that turns it," said Bob Carter, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota. The company initially unveiled the fuel cell vehicle at last year's Tokyo Motor Show, but Monday marked the car's North American debut. At the convention center, the company displayed two cars: a four-door blue sedan and an engineering prototype, or a "mule," covered in camouflage that Toyota used for testing in North America. The company said that the car can travel 300 miles on one tank of fuel, and that fill-up time would take about 3 to 5 minutes. It added that it can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 10 seconds. Click headline to read more--
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Water company officials still do not know how long it's going to take remove an unknown amount of a hazardous chemical that contaminated water for potentially 300,000 people. West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre said the company is still learning about the chemical and how to remove it from the 1,500 miles of pipeline that could be affected. The do-not-use order is the largest that West Virginia American Water has ever issued, McIntyre said. "We haven't had a situation like this where we've had a 'do-not-use' (advisory) of this magnitude," McIntyre said. He stressed the company is not positive the water is dangerous, but they determined there's the possibility. The substance doesn't have a "high lethality," but they didn't want to take any chances, he said. McIntyre explained the company has a filtration process that is able to clean their water, taken from the Elk River for a large treatment center. The process is extensive but does not address this particular chemical, known as crude MCHM. The company was notified by local emergency services personnel about the leak about noon Thursday, McIntyre said. They knew about the leak all afternoon, but felt confident their filtration process was doing a sufficient job of cleaning the water, he said. At about 4 p.m., McIntyre said the company determined the chemical had "overwhelmed" the plant's capacity to keep it out of the water. He said they made that decision after they were able to smell a black licorice odor on water that had already passed through the system. He acknowledged the company may not have been able to detect the chemical without the overwhelming odor, and they know very little about its properties. He said he spoke with a toxicologist who said some test results in rats led the expert to believe it would take consuming a "considerable" amount of the substance to have a negative affect on a person. Those tests are on a small scale and there haven't been many, he said. He also didn't quantify "considerable." The chemical isn't one that typically spills in water, McIntyre said. Because of this, the company doesn't know how much of can be safely be in the water or how to get rid of it. Click headline to read more--
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When was the last time you heard an update about the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the evening news? Yeah, that’s what I thought. You might take the silence to mean that everything’s fine, but it’s not. In fact, if the little blips and pieces of news coming out of Japan are any indication, things are far from fine, and are getting worse by the second. Those of us in other countries, even on the other side of the world, may soon get our own taste of nuclear fallout. Click headline to read more--
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