Video: Al Gore on 'Peril and Opportunity: Solving the Climate Crisis and Reinvigorating Democracy - Stanford University

Photo: Mary Vincent

On April 23, 2013, Al Gore gave a riveting and engaging Stanford University lecture on the topic 'Peril and Opportunity: Solving the Climate Crisis and Reinvigorating Democracy' during the 1st Annual Stephen H. Schneider Memorial Lecture, and a full video of his lecture is below.

Al Gore highlighted several examples from his new book: The Future Six Drivers of Global Change. For background, the Drivers are:

1. Earth, Inc Ever increasing economic globalization has led to the emergence of what Gore labels "Earth Inc." - an integrated, holistic entity with a new and different relationship to capital, labor (outsourcing and robo-sourcing), consumer markets, national governments than in the past. Over the last 25 years, coal production has increased 133%, but jobs have decreased 33%. By 2016 Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple devices will replace 1 million workers with robots. Federal officials believe cybersecurity is a more important national-security issue than terrorism. In 1975, corporations spent $100 million lobbying - in 2010, they spent $3.5 BILLION. 50% of Senators and 40% of House Reps become lobbyists when they retire. "In yet another illustration of the dangerous imbalance in political decision making, a truly shocking 80% of all U.S. antibiotics are still allowed to be legally used on farms in livestock feed and injections in spite of grave threats to human health".
2. Global Mind The worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions have led to the emergence of "the Global Mind" which links thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases.
3. Shift in Balance of Power The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting more profoundly than at any time in the last five hundred years - from a U.S-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets. In 2013, the economy of developing nations will exceed that of developed nations for the first time.
4. Growth A deeply flawed economic compass is leading us to unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet's strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species. The GDP metric excludes pollution flows. A survey of global executives reveals 80% are not willing to trade long term sustainability for next quarter's earnings target. Over the last 40 years, we have lost more than 1/3 of the arable land on Earth.
5. Reinvention of Life and Death Genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions are radically transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture, and molecular science - and are putting control of evolution in human hands. Almost all the seeds in the world now belong to one company - Monsanto.
6. Relationship between Humanity and the Earth There has been a radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth's ecosystems along with the beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide. Global warming pollution traps the equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima bombs in the lower atmosphere every 24 hours. More than 65% of the US suffered from drought conditions in 2012.

References: Climate One Video on Climatologist Stephen Schneider's work.

Video: Stephen Schneider Climate One Montage

Photograph by Megan Seldon

Al Gore spoke at Stanford University last night April 24, 2013 on the topic: 'Peril and Opportunity Solving the Climate Crisis and Reinvigorating Democracy'. 
Here's a video excerpt and article.

Prior to Al Gore's talk, this video montage of Climatologist Stephen Schneider's work was shown. What are you and your politicians doing to address and solve the climate crisis?

Artrage 4 hits the streets

Artrage has released version 4 of its painting program, available for both Apple's MacOS X and Microsoft's Windows 8.

If it's run on on a Surface Pro tablet it makes full use of the touch capabilities and of course it fully uses pen systems on non-touch systems.

The package is easy to use (even for a non artist) and it doesn't take much time to get used to the various controls and painting techniques such as smearing and blending of oil paints and watercolours that flow into each other.

There's also nice features such as stencils (which can be painted on, but the paint only applies to the empty spaces on the stencil) and stickers that are just stuck onto a painting.

A nice feature is tracing where an image is loaded as the background - but not as part of the image being painted - and then it can be traced. When it's saved, it's only the tracing and not the original image, though the same process could be achieved using layers.

Artrage also fully supports Wacom features available with some of their stylus' such as Pressure, Tilt, Barrel Rotation, and the Airbrush Wheel.

It's available for $49.90 from the Artrage Store. There is also a version available for Apple's iPhone/iPad.

Opensignal launches iPhone app

Opensignal the company behind Opensignal Coverage Maps has released an iPhone app available on the iTunes store.

The Android app (available in Google Play) has been around for some time and the iPhone app is unfortunately a poor cousin in terms of functionality due to the limitations of Apple's restrictions in iOS.

The iPhone app is more of a WiFi locator app, though it does have access to Opensignal's coverage data as a map overlay. This is pulled from Opensignal rather than being able to read any information (apart from signal strength and connected network) from iOS itself.

In order to better coverage data, users will still have to download the Android app and use that to map WiFi and cellular signals which are directly exposed in the underlying operating system.

Opensignal could release a Blackberry app as much of the underlying network is also exposed, though whether they will do this is as yet unknown.

HP Leaps ahead

HP has collaborated with Leap Motion to being Leap's 3D motion control to HP workstations.

Initially HP will bundle Leap Motion's Controller with their workstations and in future embed the controller hardware and software within the workstations.

Leap Motion have just announced the availability of their Software Development Kit (SDK) which will allow 3rd parties to add motion control to their applications.

Initially motion control will used to control the operating system itself, though apps will be available through Leap Motion's Airspace app store.

The stand-alone Leap Motion controller (which is attached to a PC/Mac through USB) is available for pre-order from Leap Motion for $79.99 (plus shipping).

RFEL announces HALO for video processing applications

RFEL Ltd a UK company has announced it's HALO video processing system based on FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) designed for military and counter terrorism use.

The HALO system is offered in a ruggedised enclosure, board only OEM unit and system on module unit for value add systems integrators. As the system uses FPGAs, new functionality can be added to the module at anytime. HALO supports the following video features: -

• Intelligent fusion of multi-modal imagery, such as from a visible and IR sensor.
• Image stabilisation, even when the platform is subject to severe vibration, and when imagery is sparse in features or of low contrast.
• Contrast enhancement to maintain high performance operation in marginal lighting conditions -- visible and IR.
• Noise reduction for optimising operation in low ambient light and for ensuring robust image fusion.
• Digital zoom, lens distortion correction, image overlay and support for compression standards.

It supports voltages from 4V to 27V DC.

Netflix dumps Silverlight

Netflix the video on demand service has dropped Microsoft's Silverlight in favour of using HTML5 vide extensions.

Though Microsoft have said they will support Silverlight until 2021, Netflix have been ready to migrate for a while and users can be unhappy with the browser extension that can be troublesome to install.

The video extensions Netflix will use are Media Source, Encrypted Media and Web Cryptography API which will be implemented in Google's Chrome browser and ARM based Chromebook and are likely to be native to other browsers soon. As the extensions are part of the W3C HTML5 specifications, users wont have to install any browser plug-ins to support them.

Redbull Amplifier an accelerator for music start-ups

Redbull Amplifier is a new type of accelerator that will plug music start-ups that might just change the face of music into Redbull's global channels.

Applications close on April 22nd 2013 and then will be screened by a panel of experts including Mercury-nominated Ghostpoet; former hip-hop mag editor and Red Bull Music Academy’s own Davide Bortot, Venturebeat’s Ciara Byrne, and SoundCloud’s Dave Haynes.

Anyone can apply (with as many ideas as they want) as long as their product is innovative, and enhances the music experience for fan or artist (or both).

Applications should entered on-line at Redbull Amplifier.

Zigbee targets Internet of Things

The Zigbee Alliance has published its latest spec allowing huge numbers of Zigbee devices to directly connect which is seen necessary for future Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Zigbee (the path a bee flies) is an IEEE standard (IEEE 802.15.4) and the new IP Direct Internet Connection addition adds support for network and security layers and an application framework that is scalable with IPv6 connected devices. The Zigbee Alliance state it is the first IPv6 open wireless mesh standard.

The main advantages of Zigbee against other systems is that it's very low power, automatically meshes new nodes and supports a wide range of standards such as 6LoWPAN, IPv6, PANA, RPL, TCP, TLS and UDP as well as supporting end-to-end encryption. It operates in the licence exempt 2.4GHz band as well as other bands in other regions.

NVidia delays Tegra4 and revenues will be "flat"

NVidia the chipmaker famed for its high performance graphics cards and now low power Tegra smartphone chips has delayed the introduction of the Tegra4 for about 3 months so it can ensure the integrated LTE is fully ready (in the Tegra4i version). The Tegra3 is used is tablets like Google's Nexus 7.

LTE is seen as a must have for next generation tablets and integrated on to the CPU rather than a separate radio chip.

The delay will give Qualcomm who are already market leaders in the integrated CPU market with their Snapdragon series of cores - and they already have a 4 core chip on the market which will be used in high-end devices like Samsung's Galaxy S4 (in Europe at least).

Though NVidia has been reasonably successful with its Tegra3 chip, it's been a difficult journey with them having to make significant re-designs along the way to fix design issues with the chip. Getting the Tegra4i right will mean long term cost savings.

Range Networks may offer commercial GSM services

Range Networks are mostly known for developing the open source GSM networking stack based on the OpenBTS platform (initially a GNU product as a software defined radio), it has famously been known for creating a working GSM (DCS1800) network at Burning Man.

Though currently supporting GSM (2G) and 2.5G networks, Range Networks are working on both 3G WCDMA and LTE networks.

Systems have been deployed in a research station Antarctica and a cattle ranching cooperative in Patagonia as well as a couple of hundred other rural environments.

The company has been self funded by the owners, but attracted funding in December 2010 and more recently a series A round which should help Range commercialise their systems and offer them to Tier 1 type operators for rural use. A core GSM network can be built for less than $100,000 while a base-station costs between $30,000 - $40,000 (both are around 1/3 the cost of current commercial offerings). The development will include SS7 connectivity and IMS functionality to connect to existing networks, though GSM endpoints appear as SIP endpoints.

Range are also competing with the advantage that all their systems are developed in the US (while competitors like ZTE are Chinese) which might appease the US Government who don't want US operators to rely on Chinese equipment which may have security issues and back-doors available to the Chinese Government.