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We tend to think of such events as occasional, inconvenient blips. But in fact they are becoming increasingly common, and will only get more frequent and severe. This is because our electricity systems are more fragile than is commonly supposed, and are getting frailer. Unless we act, blackouts will become a regular, extremely disruptive part of everyday life.

The vulnerability of such systems is demonstrated by the Italian blackout of 2003. The event began when a falling tree broke a power line in Switzerland; when a second tree took out another Swiss power line, connectors towards Italy tripped and several Italian power plants failed as a result. Virtually the whole country was left without power. It says something when a nation can be brought to a halt by two trees falling outside its borders.

The project, which cost a total of $1.8 billion to construct, received a million-dollar loan from the Loan Programs Office. Under its “SunShot” initiative (so-named in the spirit of president John F. Kennedy’s “moon shot” program), the DoE provides guaranteed loans to unproved ventures in solar power in the hopes of promoting innovation and making the technology more cost-effective.* Although Agua Caliente (owned by U.S. energy giant NRG Energy and partner MidAmerican Solar) is now the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the world, it probably will not hold that distinction for long. Other massive solar panel facilities, such as Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One in California’s Mojave Desert, are rapidly springing up across the Southwest.

the 11,000 mile Lunar equator

will beam microwave and laser energy to giant energy conversion facilities on Earth. These beams will travel to semiconductors and inverters which will convert that energy to clean electricity to the grid that will power households, businesses and factories.

Shimizu’s plan uses Earthly materials, ceramics, water, glass, concrete, oxygen and solar cells. They would not ship water from Earth, they will make user of the Moon’s own resources and reduce the lunar soil using hydrogen shipped from our planet and then extract the water for use in construction.

Wheeler's latest revision doesn't entirely ban Internet fast lanes and will leave room for some deals, including public-interest cases like a health care company sending electrocardiography results.But unlike his initial proposal last month, Wheeler is seeking to specifically ban certain types of fast lanes, including prioritization given by ISPs to their subsidiaries that make and stream content, according to an FCC official who wasn't authorized talk about the revisions publicly before the vote. The FCC would retain powers to review any prioritization deals that may pose public harm.

The European Space Agency's satellite array dubbed “Swarm” revealed that Earth's magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than previously thought, decreasing in strength about 5 percent a decade rather than 5 percent a century. A weakening magnetic field may indicate an impending reversal, which scientists predict could begin in less than 2,000 years. Magnetic north itself appears to be moving toward Siberia.

There is a good chance the weakening magnetic field that the Swarm satellites observed will not lead to a full flip. Indeed, Glatzmaier notes that there have been several false starts over geologic history. The intensity of Earth's magnetic field, though waning, now equals its average strength over millions of years. The field would need to weaken at its current rate for around 2,000 years before the reversal process actually begins.

It is hard to know how a geomagnetic reversal would impact our modern-day civilization, but it is unlikely to spell disaster. Although the field provides essential protection from the sun's powerful radiation, fossil records reveal no mass extinctions or increased radiation damage during past reversals. A flip could possibly interfere with power grids and communications systems—external magnetic field disturbances have burned out transformers and caused blackouts in the past. But Glatzmaier is not worried. “A thousand years from now we probably won't have power lines,” he says. “We'll have advanced so much that we'll almost certainly have the technology to cope with a magnetic-field reversal.”

If there’s one thing that needs constant reminding, it’s the explicit purpose of the copyright monopoly. Its purpose is to promote the progress of human knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.

[Congress has the power] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

has the power, and not the obligation

According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO's area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO's disposal have become -- and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks. The unit is "akin to the wunderkind of the US intelligence community," says Matthew Aid, a historian who specializes in the history of the NSA. "Getting the ungettable" is the NSA's own description of its duties. "It is not about the quantity produced but the quality of intelligence that is important," one former TAO chief wrote, describing her work in a document. The paper seen by SPIEGEL quotes the former unit head stating that TAO has contributed "some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen." The unit, it goes on, has "access to our very hardest targets."

By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.

I'm a historian who studies burial in the early middle ages, and the burial of women with weapons is one of my specialties! I'm in the process of publishing research about a woman buried with a spear in the 6th century, and am excited to see this important topic being discussed here outside the ivory tower at Tor.com.

The key thing to note is the word 'settlers': the article is arguing that women migrated from Scandinavia to England with the invading Viking army in the 9th century. Several of these women, the article notes, were buried with weapons, but they are still far outnumbered by the armed men. Most of the women settlers mentioned in the study were buried with 'traditional' female outfits: brooches that held up their aprons.

the commission will put the newly-freed blocks of spectrum up for auction. If, as expected, the spectrum is more valuable when used for mobile services than broadcast television, then the FCC should reap significantly more from these traditional auctions than it had to pay for the spectrum in the original reverse auctions, producing a tidy profit for taxpayers.

last year the company described a prototype solid state lithium superionic conductor battery in an article in the journal Nature Materials that was based on a three dimensional framework. And just this month the company announced plans to introduce several new lines of hybrid and all electric vehicles over the next three years (after also announcing that the Prius hybrid now accounts for ten percent of all sales). The sticking point has been and remains, the batteries used in such vehicles which can account for up to half their cost to consumers.

The new battery, first described last year, uses Li10GeP2S12 in a layered three dimensional framework where cells are sandwiched together to create a stack of seven tiers with each having a voltage of four volts for a total of twenty eight at normal temperatures. The result, they say is a battery with five times the output density of previous varieties. To demonstrate its progress in refining the battery, the prototype was demonstrated recently to a group attending a green technology seminar as a power source for an electric scooter.

Could a state actor be at play? U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, without offering any proof, said he believed the assaults were carried out by Iran in retaliation for tightened economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

only a handful of groups out there that have the technical ability or incentive

“The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. 

Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends. The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:

According to a new report from Der Spiegel based on internal NSA documents, the signals intelligence agency's elite hacking unit (TAO) is able to conduct sophisticated wiretaps in ways that make Hollywood fantasy look more like reality. The report indicates that the NSA, in collaboration with the CIA and FBI, routinely and secretly intercepts shipping deliveries for laptops or other computer accessories in order to implant bugs before they reach their destinations. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA's TAO group is able to divert shipping deliveries to its own "secret workshops" in a method called interdiction, where agents load malware onto the electronics or install malicious hardware that can give US intelligence agencies remote access. While the report does not indicate the scope of the program, or who the NSA is targeting with such wiretaps, it's a unique look at the agency's collaborative efforts with the broader intelligence community to gain hard access to communications equipment. One of the products the NSA appears to use to compromise target electronics is codenamed COTTONMOUTH, and has been available since 2009; it's a USB "hardware implant" that secretly provides the NSA with remote access to the compromised machine.