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Thursday, May 23, 2013

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UCLA Develops Transparent, Electricity-Generating, Solar Cell Windows

Elliot Chang writes "A team from UCLA has developed a new transparent solar cell that has the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. In short, they've created a solar power-generating window! Described as 'a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC)' that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light instead of traditional visible light, the photoactive plastic cell is nearly 70% transparent to the human eye — so you can look through it like a traditional window."...

Author Strips Naked To Protest Book Piracy; Probably Works As Well As Anything Else

Not quite sure what to make of this, but ZDNet has the story of Brazilian author Vanessa de Oliveira stripping naked in public to protest infringing copies of her books , both printed and digital, in Peru. She wrote "NO TO PIRACY" (or, rather, "NO A LA PIRATERIA") in red ink on her front and back, and disrobed in a public place (in front of the Governmental Palace in Lima, Peru) with lots of cameras and press around. Obviously, there is video, though, of course it is certainly NSFW (depending on your place of work):

The ZDNet piece provides some rough translations of what de Oliveira had to say on the matter, including claims that there is no book piracy in Brazil (totally not true) and that infringement of books "endangers culture" (also empirically not true).
If it's not obvious, this is clearly a publicity stunt around her...

G-Prize To Recognize Innovation In Synthetic Biology

An anonymous reader writes "The inaugural G-Prize contest, conceived and exclusively sponsored by Gen9, was launched to foster creative and innovative approaches for using synthetic DNA libraries to constructively advance industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, biofuels and agriculture. Winners of the inaugural G-Prize will receive a free library of up to 500 GeneBits DNA constructs. Each GeneBits construct is a double-stranded gene fragment from 500 to 1,024 base-pairs in length, with error rates better than 1:2,500."...

Economists: US Poverty On Track To Hit Highest Level Since 1960s

First time accepted submitter eentory writes "According to economists and other experts surveyed by the Associated Press, the U.S. poverty rate is on track to hit its highest level since the 1960s. The consensus among those surveyed is that 'the official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent.' Just a 0.1 percent increase would put the poverty rate at its highest since 1965."...

Feds Wait Until Late Friday To Admit That, Yeah, They Ignored The 4th Amendment

While Senator Wyden has been banging the drum about privacy violations committed by the federal government under the FISA Amendments Act for quite some time, the rest of Congress seems perfectly content to stay ignorant and pretend that there's no possible way that the feds might be abusing the powers that let them spy on nearly anyone without much (if any) oversight. So it's interesting that Wyden was finally able to squeeze out of the Director of National Intelligence an admission that, oh yeah, the feds violated the 4th Amendment . As covered by the always awesome reporting by Spencer Ackerman at Wired:

The head of the U.S. government’s vast spying apparatus has conceded that recent surveillance efforts on at least one occasion violated the Constitutional prohibitions on unlawful search and seizure.
The admission comes in a letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassifying...

Harsh Tweet Gets Fan Kicked Out Of Nerd Rapper's Show

We talk an awful lot about the need for artists to connect with their fans in order to succeed. One of the easiest tools to use in this effort is Twitter. In fact, Twitter is so easy to use, it has almost become the default method for many artists to communicate and connect. Unfortunately, it has an equal ability to cause strife between an artist and a fan. This is the lesson that one nerd rapper, MC Chris, learned recently.

It all started when one fan, Taylor, sent a tweet complaining about the opening act of an MC Chris concert . This tweet was then read by MC Chris while he was preparing to go on stage. It all went down hill from there.

"I was in my green room checking on my Twitter," he said. "During the show, someone tweeted something negative about Richie. And I don't have a...

GEMA Hikes Venue Performance Royalties 500%, Threatens Germany's Underground Club Scene

GEMA is killing the music industry. Despite needing artists to survive, GEMA seems particularly hellbent on destroying any venue these artists might use to make money in its quest to secure even more money. It takes a certain level of diabolical shortsightedness and greed to "elevate" yourself above the rest of the PROs into "Most Hated" status. Considering other PROs have done such endearing things as shakedown the Girl Scouts and non-profit charities for spare change, GEMA has its work cut out for it.
Maybe it's the famous German industriousness that has provided GEMA with the impetus to turn Youtube into a massive collection of "Sorry, this content is not available in your country" messages. Maybe it's some form of corporate sociopathy that has turned it into a self-destructive monster capable of destroying artists' futures in the name of artists' "rights."
The latest move by GEMA has sparked protests, a...