Friday Fustian Furciferous

The US would like to sell Cuba Internet service and equipment, but we have had little success so far. China has won the first round — they financed and installed Cuba's undersea cable, supplied backbone equipment and public WiFi access centers and will provide equipment for the forthcoming home DSL rollout. 

That being said, Cuba has very little connectivity today and most of what they have and plan to install is already obsolete by today's standards, so they will be buying a lot of equipment in the future.

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VW may not be the only unethical corporation to use software to cheat testing...

The European Commission says it will follow up on evidence that Samsung and another TV-maker use software that alters their screens' power use during tests. 

 The BBC reports: "One study indicates that some Samsung TVs nearly halve their power consumption when a standardised test is carried out. Another accuses a different unnamed manufacturer of adjusting the brightness of its sets when they "recognise" the test film involved. Samsung has denied any wrongdoing. It acknowledged that it used software that altered its televisions' performance during tests, but said this was the effect of a general energy efficiency feature that came into effect during normal use and had nothing to do with the testing process."

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This coming Christmas a lot of toy drones are going to be leaving store shelves...

When Congress passed the FAA Modernization Act in 2012, it gave the agency until September 30, 2015 to fully regulate commercial drones for use in the United States.

 Well, it's October 1, and we're left with a patchwork of regulatory band-aids, quasi-legal "guidelines," and a small drone rule that still hasn't gone into effect yet.

 This news shouldn't surprise anyone. The agency has missed most every milestone—both internal and lawmaker mandated—that has been set for it. 

The last two years have been fraught with lawsuits, confusion on enforcement within its own local offices (some FAA agents have told pilots they can't post videos on YouTube, for example), and various conflicting guidelines as to who can fly a drone where, and for what purposes.

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 During the early 90's there were a few people who "homesteaded Dotcom names that big corporations paid big bucks to acquire from them. Some of these homesteaders became very wealthy.

Sanmay Ved bought "Google.com" even though it only lasted a minute.

BGR reports:We've all been there: It's nearly 2 in the morning and you're cruising around the Internet looking for new domain names to purchase.

 I mean, talk about a cliched night, right? 

Now imagine that during the course of your domain browsing, you unexpectedly discover that the holy grail of domain names — Google.com — is available for purchase for the low, low price of just $12.

 Testing fate, you attempt to initiate a transaction.

 Dare I say, you're feeling a little bit lucky. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the transaction goes through and the vaunted and the highly valuable Google domain is in your possession.

 While this might read like a ridiculous plot summary from some horrible piece of nerd fiction, this series of events above, believe it or not, actually happened to former Googler Sanmay Ved earlier this week.

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 "Smaller transistors and less transistors Woz!," said Steve to his partner.

IBM scientists have discovered a way to replace silicon semiconductors with carbon nanotube transistors, an innovation the company hopes will dramatically improve chip performance and get the industry past the limits of Moore's law.

According to the Times:
  In the semiconductor business, it is called the 'red brick wall' — the limit of the industry's ability to shrink transistors beyond a certain size. On Thursday, however, IBM scientists reported that they now believe they see a path around the wall. Writing in the journal Science, a team at the company's Thomas J. Watson Research Center said it has found a new way to make transistors from parallel rows of carbon nanotubes.

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The city of love of the flower children of the sixties has a very real problem today...

The city of San Francisco averages 200 injuries per year and 30 deaths. This is almost double the number of Barcelona, Catalonia, which has about the same population. 

The city started a Vision Zero program, aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminate pedestrian deaths by 2024. 

But after a year-long Vision Zero education push called Safe Streets SF, whose key message is that pedestrians always have the right of way, the results have been modest.

 Now a series of banners on light poles in the South of Market neighborhood with the message:

 'Slow down! We live here!' are trying to convince drivers to respect people on foot.

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