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Comment Its always a Bum on the Seat (Score 1) 45

This is literally how we solved the "kit" problem in the takeaway online ordering sector when the owner didnt want another piece of "expensive" hardware in their stores, especially when we couldnt guarantee them more orders by accepting our service. People were literally using an app or the website for us to use an Indian call center to ring up the takeaway restaurant and place your order for you. The illusion of technological advancement is sometimes as important as the concept itself.

Comment Sad really... (Score 2) 331

by CrumpyGunt (#59277926) Attached to: Analyst: Strike at GM 'Is Really About the Switch to Electric Cars'
I fully appreciate its taken the advent of modern computing and automation to get to where the modern EV is, but a statement like "he found that the Golf had 125 more moving parts than its electric counterpart" makes me wonder where exactly could we have been with this technology had it been the driving force of the 20th Century, excuse the pun..
Earth

Earth's Oceans Are Getting Hotter and Higher, And It's Accelerating, UN Report Warns (npr.org) 331

Posted by BeauHD from the good-news-for-people-who-like-bad-news dept.
According to a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ocean warming is accelerating and sea levels are rising more quickly. "The report is a synthesis of the most up-to-date climate science on oceans and ice, and it lays out a stark reality: Ocean surface temperatures have been warming steadily since 1970, and for the past 25 years or so, they've been warming twice as fast," reports NPR. From the report: Sea levels are also rising increasingly quickly "due to increasing rates of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets," the report states. The report also discusses a relatively new phenomenon in the oceans: marine heat waves. That's a big deal for coastal communities whose economies rely on fish and other seafood. Marine heat waves in recent years drove a cascade of changes in marine life off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, which in turn led to disastrous seasons for commercial fishermen.

Rising water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have also affected weather in that region. When sea surface temperatures are unusually high, it helps fuel larger, wetter tropical storms. For example, Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Depression Imelda came inland and dropped incredible amounts of rain on Texas in the past two years. The U.N. panel's report suggests multiple actions that local, state and national leaders can take to slow ocean warming and rising, and to adapt to its impacts. First and foremost, the authors reinforce what has been known for decades: Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main driver of changes in the world's oceans, and the global economy must undergo a dramatic transformation to reduce those emissions. [T]he report also notes that if greenhouse gas emissions are immediately and dramatically curtailed, some impacts of ocean acidification could be avoided this century.

Comment Re:The main power drain is your TV (Score 1) 66

by CrumpyGunt (#59230274) Attached to: Sony's PS5 and Microsoft's Xbox Join the Fight Against Climate Change
Afraid this is factually inaccurate. A 50 inch LED TV pulls less than 100W (a 32 inch is around 55W) whereas an XBONEX idles around 60W but in reality will draw well over 250W when under load at 4k. Given how this compares to a modern gaming rig though, I'm actually pretty impressed with how little power most consoles actually use.
Earth

Ask Slashdot: Could Climate Change Be Solved By Manipulating Photons in Space? (9news.com) 382

Posted by EditorDavid from the bright-ideas dept.
Slashdot reader dryriver writes: Most "solutions" to climate change center on reducing greenhouse gas emissions on Earth and using renewable energy where possible. What if you could work a bit closer to the root of the problem, by thinking about the problem as an excess number of photons traveling from the Sun to the Earth?

Would it be completely physically impossible to place or project some kind of electrical or other field into space that alters the flight paths of photons -- which are energy packets -- that pass through it? What if you could make say 2% of photons that would normally hit the Earth miss the Earth, or at the very least enter Earth's atmosphere at an altered angle?

Given that the fight against climate change will likely swallow hundreds of billions of dollars over the next years, is it completely unfeasible to spend a few billion dollars on figuring out how to manipulate the flight paths of photons out in Space?
Here's a recent news report along those lines: A group of Swedish researchers believe that a cataclysmic asteroid collision from hundreds of millions of years ago could have the answers to solving climate change... Researchers have been discussing different artificial methods of recreating post-collision asteroid dust, such as placing asteroids in orbits around Earth like satellites and having them "liberate fine dust" to block warming sunlight, thus hypothetically cooling our warming planet. "Our results show for the first time that such dust at times has cooled Earth dramatically," said Birger Schmitz, professor of geology at Lund University and the leader of the study. "Our studies can give a more detailed, empirical based understanding of how this works, and this in turn can be used to evaluate if model simulations are realistic."

The research is still a ways out from practical use, however. Scientists are understandably wary about recreating a prehistoric dust storm. Speaking to Science Magazine, Seth Finnegan, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley said that the results of the study "shows that the consequences of messing around in that way could be pretty severe."
The university's press release does say their research "could be relevant for tackling global warming if we fail to reduce carbon dioxide emissions." But what do Slashdot's readers think of these ideas?

Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Could climate change be solved by manipulating photons in space?

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