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…
technology
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Right to Repair in Europe
One of the largest markets in the world will soon be demanding manufactures to let consumers repair what their products. You may have bought a product like a cellphone that…
How Satellite Alerts Save Forests
Information is key to success, and that’s especially true when it comes to fighting deforestation. Organizations and governments trying to protect our forests need to know where the illegal activity…
Happy New Years
Community My New Years Resolution for our society is to no longer worship at the twin altars of individualism and technology but rather to embrace the saviour of community. From…
Tired of Google’s Control Over Your Life? Try These Instead
I’ve been using Duck Duck Go instead of Google search for years and don’t regret it. There are less ads and the search results include more diverse sources – plus…
Graphene as a Limitless Power Generator
Graphene has long been heralded as an amazing new material that can change entire industries and revolutionize the economy. Notably this has yet to happen. Yet. At the University of…
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…