The New York Times caught lying in Tesla Model S review

models_coldweathertesting10The New York Times has been caught lying in a recent review of the Tesla Model S, outed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Musk was quite diplomatic about this and just laid out the facts, never accusing the Times of outright lying, but I’m not diplomatic and I call it as I see it).  Even before Mush presented this evidence, he tweeted about the test to which the reporter replied, “It happened just the way I described it” (link).

So, who do you believe?  The reporter, John Broder, is no fan of electric cars and an earlier article indicates a clear bias.  The thing is, after the TV entertainment show Top Gear created a misleading and negative review of the Tesla Roadster, Tesla Motors got smart and started equipping press cars with, well, let’s just call it the ‘Special Reviewer Option Pack A’, or to describe it briefly, data logging to capture information about the car throughout the review.  It’s that information that Musk is using to contradict Broder’s story.  He never fully charged the car, and even left his final charging station when the car was saying it could only go half the distance he planned.  Even then, the car exceeded that estimated range before it finally ran out of juice (well done, Model S!).

The data is difficult to ignore, and Elon Musk’s blog post will probably lead to John Broder’s firing (or if it doesn’t, I’ll lose all respect for the New York Times).  But this focus on the data got me thinking…what if the data could be falsified?  I do not believe that was done so, I fully believe in Tesla’s data…but as a society, we’re placing more and more reliance in data, in pictures, in videos…all of which can be falsified.  We’re entering a new world where to defend yourself, your word alone will not be enough…you’ll need your own set of data to back up your claims.  This is where wearable computing may come in…imagine a personal datalogger that just works in the background, until those times you need it.  You wouldn’t need to capture all the data your accusers did…just enough data to cast doubt on that evidence.

It used to be one person’s word against the other’s in court…and to win, you attack the credibility of the other witness.  There’s a new witness in court…it’s data.  Better have your own to defend you.

UPDATE – one of the New York Times editors has posted a reply here, basically saying that there were “Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test.”  A fair look into the issue…it helps restore my confidence in that newspaper.

Drobo 5N – first impressions

Drobo5nToday was ‘new toy day’ in my office, as I took delivery of a new Drobo 5N (~$600 on Amazon).  I loaded it with three 2TB WD ‘red’ drives and a 32GB SSD accelerator drive and got to work.

Think of the Drobo 5N as a giant hard disk on your network (access it like any network share), with the added benefit of having redundancy in case of drive failures.  For example, I have three 2TB drives in mine, and it’s able to tolerate the failure of one drive, meaning I have 4TB usable space.  Pretty straightforward (but still not substitute for regular backups to an external USB drive!).  By creating different ‘shares’ (like folders on a drive), and creating user accounts on the Drobo, you can control access on a user by user basis.

I was really impressed with the initial unboxing…Apple users will feel right at home here (except the box and packing materials are black, not white!).  Very nice presentation, and the real surprise was that rather than being wrapped in a plastic bag inside, the Drobo 5N was tucked nicely inside a reusable cloth shopping bag (black, of course)!  Apart from the external cardboard box and a smaller one inside, the only other packing materials were two vacuum formed plastic inserts which were nicely marked for recycling.  I love seeing companies pay attention to the little details like they’ve obviously done here.

It took a little bit to get to a usable state, though that was mostly just waiting for it to configure itself…not surprising considering the storage space here, and not a big deal at all as user intervention was not needed.  After that, it was a simple matter of setting up shares and users.  All in all, great product so far…I’ll report back on it after using it for a while, as well as compare it to my other NAS drives, an HP Windows Home Server and an older Netgear ReadyNAS NV+.

UPDATE – mapping network drives was a bit odd with this.  At first I tried doing it with the normal Windows 7  ‘map network drive’ function but had some permission errors…so I then used the Drobo dashboard software to map the drives and sync the shares with my existing NAS.  The mapping didn’t reconnect next time I logged in to Windows…but I was then able to use the traditional ‘map network drive’ in Win7 and that’s working now.  Not quite sure what was going on before.  Apart from that, there’s little to report.  The Drobo 5N just sits quietly (very, very quietly) with a few pretty glowing green lights and serves up files when needed.  Exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Humorous Skyfall trailer

Ok, now that I’ve finally seen Skyfall (well, I didn’t catch it when it first hit the theaters, so decided to wait for the iTunes release and watch it on my home theater setup), I watched a trailer I’ve seen posted many times to the web, an ‘honest’ movie trailer put together by some fans(or not?).  Funny, but massive spoilers so don’t watch it without seeing the movie first.  As for the movie…I liked it, but I’d say Casino Royale is still my all-time favorite.

What our cities would look like at night without light pollution

1671812-inline-darkened-skies-006Artist/photographer Thierry Cohen has created some really cool images which show what several major cities worldwide would look like if there was no artificial lights (nor moonlight) masking the starry skies.  The result is really cool and can be viewed at his website.  He did this by shooting images of the night sky in places with similar latitude but no city lights, then overlaid them onto darkened photos of the cities themselves.  Very cool.

Clean coal power – for real this time!

new.coal_.techx299The idea of ‘clean’ coal power has really been more of a marketing ploy and not something that environmentalists would agree with…until now, that is.  Researchers at Ohio State University have proven a new clean coal technology in a 25kW facility ran for one week…far from the megawatt scale needed for industrial uses but no small feat and a great step towards that goal.  The next step is a one megawatt demonstration plant already in the planning stages.

So how does it work?  Burning coal is a messy process, producing lots of gaseous byproducts that are difficult to separate and manage.  This new process (“chemical looping”) reacts with materials rich in oxygen, like iron oxide (ie, rust).  The energy in the coal breaks the bond between the oxygen and iron, which produces nearly pure CO2 as a byproduct (the other being iron metal and a mineral known as wustite).  So, it still produces the greenhouse gas CO2, but that CO2 is nearly pure, meaning it’s much easier to contain it (at which point it can be used for industrial purposes or stored underground to not contribute to global warming).  The pure iron is then burned in a separate process, which produces heat to generate steam and drive turbines to generate electricity.

This is expected to result in only small increases in the cost of electricity…whether it can be scaled up to power plant levels quickly enough is the real question.

(via TechnologyReview)

Slow climate change by working less!

Now here’s an idea I think we could all accept.  The Center for Economic and Policy Research has released a paper (PDF link) that looks at the impact that working fewer hours would have on climate change.  It assumes that working less would also result in decreased consumption, which then decreased factory output, etc…and finds that reducing work hours by an annual average of only 0.5% over the rest of this century would eliminate 25-50% of the global warming that has not yet already been ‘locked in’ (or in other words, reduce the warming yet to be caused by future greenhouse gas emissions).  The estimated impact to personal impact is a reduction of 10-25%, in exchange for increased leisure time.

Now, we just need a catchy slogan for this.  Post any ideas in the comments below, let’s make this happen! 🙂

(via Inhabitat)

Vuzix Smart Glasses

VuzixM100-product-showcaseThis is going to be a fun year for geeks who have no fashion sense.  Joining the Google Glasses this year will be the M100 Smart Glasses (maybe they’ll think of a cooler name?) from Vuzix.  It’s essentially a head-mounted computer, with a 720p HD camera, bluetooth connectivity to your smart phone, and a WQVGA display (that’s a mere 240 lines of resolution, less than the original iPhone’s 320 lines if held horizontal) in your field of view.  That display, while small, is comparable to a four inch smartphone viewed about 14″ away.  Battery life is just so-so…8 hours when used as a handsfree headset for your phone, or two hours if the display is active (and only about half an hour if you’re also using the camera).

So, why would you want one?  Well, like the Google Glasses, it’ll really come down to the software applications yet to be written for these devices.  It’s a small step towards truly Augmented Reality, but a cool one, and I can’t wait to see what software developers create for these.  Give it a couple years, and as software matures and battery life improves, I think you’ll see a lot of people wearing things like this.

(via Slashgear)

Water-wise farming technique

Michigan-State-University-Water-Retention-SWRT-Researchers at Michigan State University designed some techniques using water retention membrane (a fancy word for plastic sheets, I think) buried under the soil to help retain water where the plants need it, without inhibiting their growth.  It worked well, increasing yield to around 150% of normal.  We’ll be needing more clever ideas like this in the coming years as global warming increases its impact on our way of life.  Read more here.

Solar power news

The solar power industry continues to make some big advances, in the labs at least.  First up, scientists were able to make silicon crystals at a much lower temperature using liquid metal (read more here)…this has the potential to substantially lower the cost of solar panels, eventually.

A study published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal attempted to answer the question, what is more efficient at transforming solar energy into miles driven in a car – solar (PV) panels, or biofuels?  PV panels handily bested biofuels in this comparison.  Considering future demands for food with a growing planetary population, and given this new information, it seems that we should be more focused on growing food to eat rather than to be converted into liquid fuel for cars.

Last but certainly not least is some cool technology from Wysips, a transparent solar panel!  Well it’s 90% transparent, but really, at that point who’s going to notice.  Sure, it doesn’t produce as much electricity as a conventional PV panel…but it DOES make otherwise unproductive surfaces a valuable part of a building’s energy supply, with no architectural or visible impact.  Imagine a skyscraper using this on their windows, for example.  Or, in the example at the link above, imagine the glass on your iPhone recharging the phone itself when outdoors.

Using DNA for data storage

Scientists have figured out how to use DNA for data storage, by storing the data in ternary format (zeros, ones, and twos) rather than binary (ones and zeros) like typical computers.  This isn’t just theoretical…they stored and retrieved an audio recording of Martin Luther King, and other information as well.  This has the potential to store massive amounts of data in a very compact space for long periods of time…it’ll be interesting to see how this technology is applied in the coming years.  Read more here.

This does make me wonder though…if we can manipulate DNA to this level…do we then have the potential to create new forms of life?  We’re a long ways away from understanding the entire DNA code and being able to ‘program’ a new strand of DNA to do something, but that won’t stop people from trying.

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑