Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: Human abuse of resources (Score 1) 193

All people should try to live circulair, meaning that you take care of the waste you produce. When you go somewhere, do not leave your waste without properly disposing it so that it can be recycled. With the moon, we have a chance to start fresh. We massively polluted the earth, let's not start polluting the moon because it is to expensive to remove our waste. And it is idiotic to deliberately sent it there.

Comment Re: Do Not Fuck With The Ocean or Atmosphere (Score 1) 109

According to https://www.worldometers.info/... on average we put 4.79 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere per person (babies included) in the world (in 2016)... For a western person this is easily double that amount. Let's round that of to 10 ton of CO2 per person who can finance to off set their carbon footprint. It is much more in USA and Canada and less in Europe and other developped countries. As burning 1 liter of diesel produces 2.7 kg of CO2, 10 tons of CO2 is the equivalent of 3700 kg of diesel fuel. The average family of 2 adults, 2 kids uses about 15 tons of diesel to sustain their life style in a year. Including their direct use, but also all the energy used by factories and farms (fertilizer!) to produce buildings, transport and consumable goods and food. 15 tons of diesel per year is what it takes a family to live in our modern world and that should either be replaced with other sources of energy, or be produced as biofuel in a environmental neutral way. Alternatively we can try to sequester the amount of CO2 on a yearly basis to keep the balance. Biofuel has the advantage that our current infrastructure is based almost entirely on the use of liquid fuel. One way of producing biofuel is to grow algae. They naturally produce oily fats that can be used as diesel fuel. For this one needs sun light, water and nutrients (fertilizer). Ok, I researched the use of Algae to sequester CO2 a bit: Chlorella is a micro algae that would make an excellent candidate. It needs a few minerals, CO2, sunlight and water. People know it from aquaria that turn green, it is not difficult to cultivate. For every kg dry algae it takes about 2.7kg of CO2 out of the atmosphere. A production system could produce up to 0.4 grams per liter water per day. So what would it take to bind the amount of Co2 is produced per year per capita(person) in the world? In the western world about 10-12 tons of CO2 per capita per year. So we would need to produce around 4000kg of dry chlorella algae per person per year. We might be able to pump this back into old oil wells to permanently reduce CO2, but we can also just turn it into usable biodiesel or food, reuse it and keep the current levels. Per day per person we would need to produce 11kg of chlorella. This would take a volume of at least 27500 liters of water. Note that the water is not wasted entirely. Just a small amount is used for pumping algae out and evaporation etc. A whole system (bioreactor) to offset the footprint of a person could for example be build inside a 40ft seacontainer. Power consumption for pumps (Air needs to be pumped in) and (artificial) light is not free, also the minerals need to be resupplied( per year about 150 kg of minerals (f/2 medium)). One could attempt to just dump this amount of fertilizer in the ocean and hope that the algae there would do their best, but that proces is very hard to keep in control. Also it will be much harder to harvest biofuel from it. The catch is that 150kg of mineral fertilizer needed for the amount if produced algae per person per year is very expensive and not available at this scale in an environmentally neutral and economical way. Perhaps reusing the algae waste (digistate) as fertilizer (it contains all the minerals an algae needs) could work if we find a way to free up the minerals for new algae to grow...

Comment Re: Plastic is evil (Score 5, Interesting) 290

In Amsterdam, the Netherlands we have waste separating machines which separate metal and plastics etc from garbage for recycling. The rest we burn, the exhaust is filtered and washed. The heat from the furnaces we use to generate electricity. The leftover ashes and slak we use for road construction. This is still not considered to be entirely "green", but landfills are not in use anymore in the Netherlands. Further more, there is a lot of effort to reduce waste. You can call a service that will pick up old furniture and other items (for example building materials) for free or minimal cost. They take care of re-use or disassembly for recycling. More than half of the waste is not burned, but recycled.
Google

Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65

An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"
Hardware Hacking

Grad Student Invents Cheap Laser Cutter 137

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jansen, a PhD student and member of the RepRap community, has constructed a working prototype of an inexpensive table-top laser cutter built out of old CD/DVD drives as an offshoot of his efforts to design an under $200 open-source Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printer. Where traditional laser cutters use powerful, fixed-focus beams, this new technique dynamically adjusts the focal point of the laser using a reciprocating motion similar to a reciprocating saw, allowing a far less powerful and inexpensive laser diode to be used. The technique is currently limited to cutting black materials to a depth of only a few millimeters, but should still be useful and enabling for Makers and other crafters. The end-goal is to create a hybrid inexpensive 3D printer that can be easily reconfigured for 2D laser cutting, providing powerful making tools to the desktop."
Handhelds

New Handheld Computer Is 100% Open Source 195

metasonix writes "While the rest of the industry has been babbling on about the iPad and imitations thereof, Qi Hardware is actually shipping a product that is completely open source and copyleft. Linux News reviews the Ben NanoNote (product page), a handheld computer apparently containing no proprietary technology. It uses a 366 MHz MIPS processor, 32MB RAM, 2 GB flash, a 320x240-pixel color display, and a Qwerty keyboard. No network is built in, though it is said to accept SD-card Wi-Fi or USB Ethernet adapters. Included is a very simple Linux OS based on the OpenWrt distro installed in Linksys routers, with Busybox GUI. It's apparently intended primarily for hardware and software hackers, not as a general-audience handheld. The price is right, though: $99."
Image

The Virtual Choir Project 58

An anonymous reader writes "Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre has successfully created a virtual choir using the voices of 185 people who posted their performance on YouTube. The piece that's performed is called 'Sleep,' composed by the conductor himself in 2000. Anyone can join in — all you need is a webcam and a microphone."
Displays

AU Optronics Asks For US Ban On LG LCD Sales 155

eldavojohn writes "After a lengthy patent case, complete with countersuits, AU Optronics has asked for an injunction against all LCD products made by LG. While this may not sound serious, LG is the number one manufacturer of LCDs used in LCD TVs, laptop PCs and desktop monitors. A quarter of global LCDs shipped in March were LG brand. The bizarre part of the story is that LG Display struck first against AU Optronics way back in 2006 with a patent suit to the tune of $690 million, and in 2009, when the case finally went to court, AUO filed counter-claims of patent infringement that are now coming to fruition. So before you call AUO a patent troll, keep in mind that LGD shot first."
Handhelds

Nokia Releases Qt SDK For Mobile Development 76

An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has released its unified Qt-based SDK for cross-platform development for Symbian and MeeGo (plus Maemo) devices. The blurb reads: 'Today sees the release of the Nokia Qt SDK, a single easy-to-use software development kit (SDK) for Symbian and Meego application development. Developers can now develop, test, and deploy native applications for Nokia smartphones and mobile computers. The beta version of the SDK is available for download from today, ready for developers to kick off development for new devices, including the just-announced Nokia N8.'"
Bug

Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak 320

MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"
Space

New Europe-Wide Radio Telescope To Look For ET 49

astroengine writes "A new radio telescope is under construction, consisting of 44 stations (each consisting of several antennae) spread across Europe. The pan-European Low Frequency Array is half built and already returning unprecedented observations of cosmic radio sources. The best thing is, when it's complete, SETI will be able to use the array to seek out transmitting extraterrestrial civilizations in these untapped low radio frequencies."
Slashdot.org

Slashdot Discussions Now Include Roulette Video Chat 192

It's been a long time coming, but we're pleased to announce the latest updates to our discussion software. We've been paying a lot of attention to what other websites have been doing in the space, and as we are only too happy to steal good ideas, from now on all Slashdot stories will now be accompanied by a Roulette-style webcam video chat. In testing, we've discovered that Slashdot users are amazingly likely to engage in informative, troll-free discussion when presented with the video image of one of their peers. This new addition to Slashdot nicely rounds out and improves the discussion experience for all users.

Slashdot Top Deals

Nobody said computers were going to be polite.

Working...