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the reporter's notebook of Christopher Mims

March 9, 2010 • 9:33 am 0

From Wardriving to iPhones

“There are some extremely interesting and exciting apps coming down, one built on our technology, that will allow people to further integrate the virtual and real world,”
Technology Review

The real story here is Skyhook. They had a fleet of vans cruising the streets of the U.S., mapping wi-fi hotspots, back when Street View was just a glimmer in Sergey’s eye. Now they’re in every iPhone on the planet.

Filed under: information technology, Technology Review, , , , , ,

February 25, 2010 • 1:38 pm 0

In the U.S., Walking Uses More Fossil Fuels Than Driving

It turns out that a Honda Civic expends less than half of the energy a person does to move one pound of itself one mile.
Change.org

Worse: our food system is so dependent on fossil fuels that it’s entirely possible that it takes more oil to make the food that allows a person to walk a mile than would be expended in simply driving that mile.

This isn’t a result I expected when I started playing with the numbers, so it’s an object lesson in why it’s important to do the math.

Filed under: change.org, green technology, , , , ,

February 22, 2010 • 11:03 am 0

Radical Ways to Recover Wasted Energy From Your Car

Eighty-five percent of the energy in a gallon of gas is squandered in even the most efficient gasoline-powered cars – all the more reason to recapture as much of that waste as possible.
GOOD magazine

Good’s editors came up with the idea for this one. It’s an interesting take on the problem of fuel efficiency – we all know smaller, lighter cars and the electrification of the drive train are the ultimate solution, but a certain amount of waste is inevitable. So: how can we recover it?

Filed under: GOOD magazine, green technology, , , , , , , , ,

February 10, 2010 • 6:07 pm 0

Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb

Could methane-digesting bacteria and an Arctic cap of fresh water prevent a climate catastrophe?
Scientific American

Sometimes a researcher is willing to talk about their work even before it’s peer reviewed. This can be tricky: whatever you think of peer review, papers are almost always better after experts have read them and demanded that they be revised. In this case I think it turned out all right, because Elliott is an especially smart scientist, and also I managed to catch him right after he’d presented his work at a meeting to 30 of the most knowledgeable researchers in his field.

Filed under: climate change, Scientific American, , , , , ,

February 10, 2010 • 6:00 pm 0

What’s Inside the iPad’s Chip?

Cost and power efficiency may have pushed Apple to create its own microchip
Technology Review

There has been a lot of speculation about why Steve Jobs thinks the A4 chip at the heart of the iPad is so special. This piece is more of the same, but it comes from better-informed sources.

Filed under: information technology, Technology Review, , , , ,

January 19, 2010 • 11:46 am 0

New Clean-Fuel Rules For Ships Will Lead to More Warming

…Ironically, this eco-motivated change will undo one of our strongest, if accidental, defenses against climate change.
Popular Science

It’s weird that I had to be sitting in a conference room at NCAR to find this out. You would think it would be news! Just goes to show how little even the journalists who cover this beat really understand the consequences of increasing earth’s radiative forcing even just a little.

Filed under: climate change, green technology, Popular Science, , , ,

January 19, 2010 • 10:17 am 0

China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plans

It’s official: China’s next supercomputer, the petascale Dawning 6000, will be constructed exclusively with home-grown microprocessors.
Technology Review

I really hope this works out. Because the last audacious technology project I covered – the Iceland Deep Drilling Project – didn’t.

Filed under: information technology, Technology Review, , , , , , , ,

December 22, 2009 • 11:30 am 1

The People’s Processor: China Builds One of Its Own

People’s Processor: Embrace China’s Homegrown Computer Chips
Wired

Credit is due to Tom Halfhill on this one, who despite being mentioned only once in the piece, has written thousands of words about the Loongson processor and even traveled to China to really break this story open for Microprocessor Report. His insight was invaluable and there is probably no one else in the West who has thought as much about what a homegrown family of MIPS-compatible CPUs could lead to – especially when it’s backed by the full might of the Chinese government.

Filed under: featured, information technology, Wired, , , ,

December 2, 2009 • 3:39 pm 1

Free Solar Panels

World Changing Ideas: 20 Ways to Build a Cleaner, Healthier, Smarter World
Scientific American

If you live in California or Arizona and you have a south-facing roof, there is a startup – possibly even startups – who would like to meet you. Their goal is simple: stick solar panels on your roof at no cost (or virtually no cost) to you. Really.

Filed under: green technology, Scientific American, , , ,

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