Log'N'Rock: Log'N'Rock News

The social network and Washington State sue a marketing firm over claims that it deceived users by hiding 'Like' buttons.

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A European Parliament rapporteur stands down in protest as a controversial anti-piracy agreement is signed by several countries.

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With half the world online by 2016, the web economy in the G20 countries is set to nearly double in size to $4.2tn (£2.7tn), research suggests.

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Twitter says it now has the technology to censor tweets on a country by country basis, as it continues to expand internationally.

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New radar facilities are being installed in Great Britain in order to "unlock" large sections of potential wind farm area for development. Because of potential interference, dozens of wind farm projects have been blocked by the Ministry of Defence (MOD). But now, the MOD has tested these new radar systems, and is satisfied that they will not suffer adverse effects from wind turbines.

One recent installation of a new Lockheed Martin air defense radar has let to the Ministry withdrawing its objection to five offshore wind farms that had been stalled over the issue. Wind farm developers are underwriting the cost of these new radar systems, but that investment could allow them to build as many as 4 gigawatts of additional wind farms.

image: CC-BY 2.0 by Ken Hodge

via: NA Windpower

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/EcoGeek/~4/y9_XBB_pDfQ

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Japanese home and business owners with solar power installations sold 2,150 GWh of electricity back to their power utilities last year, a huge 50 percent increase over the amount sold back to the grid in 2010.  The sellers collectively made a nice $1.2 billion off their surplus electricity.

The Japanese government has a feed-in-tariff scheme that requires the utilities to purchase the extra power which was small beans compared to the average 884,000 GWh of electricity that those utilities sell to customers per year.

The government is set to introduce even more subsidies for domestic renewable energy power developers. The new scheme will include electricity from solar, wind, small hydroelectric, biomass and geothermal plants, but only solar panel owners with systems of 10 kW or less will still be able to sell their excess power.

via Reuters

 

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/EcoGeek/~4/lpt3EfjfnSk

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Intel is paying $120m (£76m) for RealNetwork's video patents. Experts say it undermines claims that a "patent bubble" has burst.

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Rights campaigners have criticised plans to ask search engines to demote illegal sites in order to fight piracy.

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Cyber-attack on our digital lives is a growing problem according to the US Army's Cyber Command, which is recruiting "world class cyber warriors".

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The FBI asks contractors to suggest a system that can "scrape" information from social networks to build alert maps.

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Symantec advises customers to stop using its pcAnywhere program after stolen source code exposes serious vulnerabilities.

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Google's Android operating system's share of the global tablet computer market rises sharply at the expense of Apple's iOS, research suggests.

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For the first time researchers achieve the "cloaking" of a three-dimensional object to make it invisible as viewed from any angle.

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What if a wind energy technology could be beautiful, silent and as much a threat to flying creatures as trees?  A lovely new design called Windstalks by New York design firm Atelier DNA accomplishes all of those things.

The concept resembles tall cattails that generate electricity by moving with the wind.  Each stalk is a 180-feet-tall carbon-fiber flexible poll that is a foot wide at the base, tapering to two-inches wide at the top.  Each is secured in a 33 to 66-feet-wide concrete base.  The stalks are outfitted with layers of electrodes and ceramic discs made from piezoelectric material.  As the stalks blow in the wind, the bending motions compress the discs and an electric current is generated.

The concept won the Land Art Generator competition sponsored by Masdar City. For the Masdar design, Atelier envisioned a wind farm featuring 1,203 stalks covering 280,000 square feet that could function like a park. The bases of the stalks would be sloped to collect rainwater and foster plant growth below and the stalk network would use a hydroelectric pumped water storage system for storing excess energy for times when the wind was slow or stopped.

Atelier expects the design to generate the same amount of electricity as a conventional wind turbine with the advantage of being able to be installed in much denser arrangements.  Like vertical axis wind turbines, the Windstalks will be able to generate more energy in a smaller area than horizontal axis wind turbines that need lots of space between each unit.

via Discovery News

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/EcoGeek/~4/dEiWURaSOYk

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Ubuntu's lead developer outlines plans to replace menu controls with a "head-up display" box into which users type commands.

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