Babbage

WHEN it transpired that Google had gleaned hundreds of gigabytes of information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks while gathering data for its Street View maps around the world in 2007-10, the company swore this was an accident. It pinned the blame on an engineer leaving a bit of test code switched on. Several countries (and a handful of cities) took action against what they saw as violations of privacy, with some levying fines on the internet giant. America's Federal Trade Commission looked into the matter, too, though it did not accuse Google of ill intent. Now the country's telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) has been less charitable.

Continue reading "Sniffing problems" »

WHEN Google launched Wave, its collaborative-working platform, in May 2009 it was meant to change the way people worked. E-mail, chat and office software would all be rolled into one seamless whole. In the event, consumers didn’t know what to do with it and a year later the project was scrapped. On April 30th Google Wave ceased to exist. But Wave lives on.

In November 2010 Google invited several outside experts to ponder what to do with Wave. The company had two options. The flop could either be locked away in its code vault, the company trying hard to forget about all the money and effort that went into it.

Continue reading "Where source code goes to die" »

TOWARDS the end of “Toy Story 3”, with Andy having left for college, his much-loved toys from childhood mistakenly face destruction in the maw of a moving-grate garbage incinerator. If, in real life, the plant had been built prior to 1989, the plastic toys would have produced a nasty dose of dioxins and furans—toxic emissions from combustion taking place in the presence of chlorine—as well as heavy metals and dubious organic compounds. Until then, few people were aware that such chemicals presented a serious health hazard, capable of upsetting the immune system, damaging the liver and causing cancer. Unwittingly, municipal incinerators were among the worst offenders.

Continue reading "Difference Engine: Talking trash" »

WHEN industrialists use enzymes to speed up chemical reactions, they generally take care to attach those enzymes to solid surfaces and run the chemicals past them. Enzymes are expensive, and not to be thrown away lightly. Yet millions of householders do precisely that whenever they wash their clothes. Lots of washing powders contain enzymes, but these never get recycled. Instead, they are just flushed down the drain.

Chandra Pundir and Nidhi Chauhan, biochemists at Maharshi Dayanand university in Haryana, India, propose to do something about that.

Continue reading "Please rinse and return" »

GEEKS love games. Spending hours on end planted in a seat programming or developing websites as part of their jobs, they often pass their idle hours plopped into a couch engrossed in a game or sitting on a commute, lobbing birds about.

Dick Talens and his business partner, Brian Wang, decided to turn geeks' obsessive game-based behaviour into its own reward. Mr Talens is the chief technology officer of Fitocracy, one of several sites devoted to "self-tracking" and the use of "gamification" to entice members to achieve goals or perform tasks. In his firm's case, you earn points by turning spare tyres into six-packs. Mr Talens, to judge by photos, has succeeded.

Continue reading "Down, and roll me 20" »

GETTING the equivalent of 106 mpg (2.2 litres/100km), the Nissan Leaf electric car would seem a motoring skinflint’s dream come true. Even an advanced plug-in hybrid like the Chevrolet Volt (Opel/Vauxhall Ampera in Europe), with an energy consumption equivalent to 61mpg, sounds pretty miserly, too. Yet, for all their frugality, neither has been selling particularly well, despite the present sky-high price of petrol (see “Priced off the road”, July 15th 2011).

With big-ticket items like motor cars, consumers have learned to do their calculations carefully.

Continue reading "Difference Engine: Tailpipe truths" »