The FBI finally agrees with culture jammers. Online advertising has gotten so bad that the FBI now suggests everyone should make use of tracking blocking software, also known as ad blockers. During the last big consumerism celebration in December, the FBI noticed malicious actors paying for ads to solicit unaware
Continue readingTag: technology
Things Are Good: Futuristic Fusion Finally Fires Up
Fusion power has been just a decade away for decades, or at least that was the joke. Yesterday it became outdated because it was revealed that nuclear fusion was ignited, stabilized, and proven to work reliably. Fusion energy is carbon-free energy production which has the potential to revolutionize how we
Continue readingThings Are Good: NASA Starts Spotting Super Methane Emitters
Natural gas, AKA methane, is really bad for the planet, and since it occurs some places “naturally” we need to find these new sources to stop them emitting. A classic example of “natural” methane production is a garbage dump in which the organic compounds mix together and release natural gas,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use This App to Avoid Shady Companies
Too many companies say they care about an important issue, sponsor events, and then turn around and fund organizations (or politicians) that actively fight the important issue. This behaviour by corporations is unethical and wrong. One person got so sick of companies claiming to be in favour of issues only
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Farewell to a great environmentalist
I was saddened to read this week of the death of British environmental scientist James Lovelock. He had a good run, dying at the great age of 103. In a statement, his family expressed what his loss meant publicly and privately: “To the world, he was best known as a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Adams examines the evidence that COVID-19 remains infectious far longer than assumed by politicized public health messaging. And Ted Raymond reports that Ottawa has already seen more COVID deaths in 2022 than in 2021, confirming that the end of public health protections
Continue readingThings Are Good: Find Products That Last a Lifetime (and those that don’t)
Having to buy things is always a nuisance, but sometimes things are needed, so when that happens be sure to get things that last. That’s the premise of Exit Reviews, a new site that asks people to review products once the product breaks. Thus, you can research which products last
Continue readingThings Are Good: Let’s Green the Gaming Industry
Games are fun and we should play more of them! That being said, we should also be conscious of the impact our technological-driven gaming has on the environment. Ben Abraham recently launched a new project called Greening the Game Industry to promote the concept of sustainable gaming. The project stems
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Drones Logistics Redefined Blood Delivery in Rwanda
Delivering good is always a challenge, and it’s a particularly hard challenge in a mountainous country like Rwanda. An ambitious company known as Zipline noticed that drones could solve this geographic challenge by just going over the terrain. And if it works, they should deliver one of the most time
Continue readingmark a. rayner: Darkness and its delights
Essay: 3:30 min read “Wait, wait, what are you doing?” “I’m, you know, acting,” I said to my acting professor, Fred Euringer. “No, no, you… The post Darkness and its delights appeared first on mark a. rayner.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michela Antonelli et al. study the disease profile of post-vaccination COVID, concluding that full vaccination helps to reduce both the number and duration of symptoms. But Elizabeth Yuko points out that the result is still a significant risk of debilitating long-term conditions.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Carbon Capture Solutions from Students get Funding
The best thing to do to prevent climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels, until that happens we need to find ways to extract carbon from the air to reduce the speed of climate change. Of course, carbon removal needs to be powered by renewable systems themselves. The XPrize
Continue readingDJ Kelly | Ward 4: Opinion: The machine is always right in Alberta’s municipal elections — and that’s wrong
Originally published in the Calgary Herald Opinion section on November 30, 2021. The day after Calgary’s municipal elections, the results said I lost Ward 4 by 52 votes. With it that close, I felt compelled to request a recount, just to be sure. What I thought would be a simple
Continue readingThings Are Good: Not Using Fossil Fuels is Better Than Technopostivism
The COP26 news coverage has focussed on pledges from counties to cut their emissions (which is good) and on funding for new technologies to suck carbon out of the air (which isn’t so good). Increasingly scientists, ecologists, and activists have been calling out that technical solutions are a distraction from
Continue readingThings Are Good: Digital Violence Exposes NSO’s Tools Targetting Activists
NSO made the news again due to their tools being used to spy on Bahraini and Hungarian activists, which obviously isn’t good. NSO is a cyber security organization that focuses on offensive rather than defence; they sell hacking tools and exploits to target individuals. Anyone with enough money can buy
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Real Smart City Lacks Smart Technology
A few years ago Silicon Valley mega corps thought all cities should be made “smart” by tracking all citizen data. There was a concentrated effort by Google to violate privacy rights in Toronto and bullying the city into a finance deal which only benefit the advertising giant. Torontonians protested and
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Startup Wants to Help Predict Floods
For years engineers tried to prevent flooding, then they realized they can’t stop nature. Now instead of trying to stop it, we try to mitigate flooding by creating spaces that can absorb a lot of water (parks along rivers are an example of this). Still, these attempts don’t always work
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Cheap Material for Producing Power from Waste Heat
Machines produce a lot of waste heat, and if we can capture that heat we can convert it into electric energy. Capturing thermal energy is currently inefficient because of thermal dynamics and the lack of super capacitors. Not to be deterred by these obstacles, researchers have found ways to efficiently
Continue readingThings Are Good: Experimenting on Digital Twins Helps us Understand Reality
It’s hard to predict the future, but with enough data we can at least get better at it. That’s exactly what digital twins are all about. By using as much real world data as possible to model out anything from a building, to a person, to a city in a
Continue readingScripturient: Is Bigger Better? In TVs, Maybe Not.
I read on several websites that for a distance of about 3.6 m (12 ft) from the screen to the viewer, the optimum size of a television should be 85 inches (220 cm, measured on the diagonal). That’s also the distance between someone sitting on our couch and our current
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