Gérard Mourou has already won a Nobel for his work with fast laser pulses. If he gets pulses 10,000 times faster, he says he can modify waste on an atomic level. If no solution is found, we're already stuck with some 22,000 cubic meters of long-lasting hazardous waste.

Mourou was the co-recipient of his Nobel with Donna Strickland for their development of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) at the University of Rochester. "We think that in 10 or 15 years’ time we will have something we can demonstrate. This is what really allows me to dream, thinking of all the future applications of our invention."

It would be good news, though, as then we'd really only have the operational risk of a nuclear power station. Protecting all the waste is already a very expensive and hazardous business.

See https://bigthink.com/the-present/laser-nuclear-waste/

#environment #nuclearenergy #pollution #nuclearwaste

E-readers have long been a part of our lives. Moreover, many people prefer to read books and magazines in electronic format. According to the website Statista, the e-reader segment is expected to reach 1,182.8 million users by 2026. However, take your time if you want to buy the e-book now. Colour screen technology for e-book readers are changing right now. Many IT businesses such as software development company MLSDev are developing more user-friendly and innovative screens for e-book readers. Here it is, six of the best non-backlit technologies that will change the way we read.

Certainly, for comics and magazines especially, colour is just essential. One of the delaying factors for colour ePaper has been that it is not as crisp and sharp as black and white.

See https://goodereader.com/blog/technology/6-upcoming-color-epaper-technologies

#technology #epaper #eink #reading #ebooks

Solar power is expected to reach 10 percent of global power generation by the year 2030, and much of that is likely to be located in desert areas, where sunlight is abundant. But the accumulation of dust on solar panels or mirrors is already a significant issue — it can reduce the output of photovoltaic panels by as much as 30 percent in just one month — so regular cleaning is essential for such installations.

Attempts at waterless cleaning are labor-intensive and tend to cause irreversible scratching of the surfaces, which also reduces efficiency. Now, a team of researchers at MIT has devised a way of automatically cleaning solar panels, or the mirrors of solar thermal plants, in a waterless, no-contact system that could significantly reduce the dust problem, they say.

Other groups have tried to develop electrostatic based solutions, but these have relied on a layer called an electrodynamic screen, using interdigitated electrodes. These screens can have defects that allow moisture in and cause them to fail, Varanasi says. While they might be useful on a place like Mars, he says, where moisture is not an issue, even in desert environments on Earth this can be a serious problem.

The new system they developed only requires an electrode, which can be a simple metal bar, to pass over the panel, producing an electric field that imparts a charge to the dust particles as it goes. An opposite charge applied to a transparent conductive layer just a few nanometers thick deposited on the glass covering of the solar panel then repels the particles, and by calculating the right voltage to apply, the researchers were able to find a voltage range sufficient to overcome the pull of gravity and adhesion forces, and cause the dust to lift away.

See https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311

#environment #solarpower #greenenergy #solarpanels

It is ironic (tragic?) that in 2022, the communication between modern RCS Messages and iMessage will be the ancient unencrypted SMS system. But that's what we have to live with for now, so it is good to see Google at least trying to improve compatibility of the experience from the Android side.

As one commentator says, it would be interesting if WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal could figure out how to incorporate RCS from the iPhone side, especially. The problem is though that RCS is a carrier level enabled service.

See https://9to5google.com/2022/03/10/google-messages-new-features/

#technology #mobile #messaging #iMessage #Messages

I tested accessing the site as it loads just as any other normal site is expected to load. It makes one realise again that for many hosting projects, you often don't need external paid hosting.

You can use a Pi as long as you also have a domain name you can point to your home, and something to handle the incoming web requests securely (see my YouTube video about how I handle hosting from home at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZRG2sezIl4).

Hosting with a cloud provider is pretty cheap if you are just doing something small, but once your storage needs really grow (photo or video site for example), or you need to run a bunch of services, it can get quite costly. One, or more, Pi's may well do the trick from home!

See https://opensource.com/article/22/3/run-drupal-raspberry-pi

#technology #raspberrypi #selfhosting #blog #drupal

Browser maker Brave has developed a new way to ground "bounce tracking," a sneaky technique for bypassing privacy defenses in order to track people across different websites.

Bounce tracking, also known as redirect tracking, dates back at least to 2014 when ad companies were looking for ways to avoid third-party cookie blocking defenses. "Bounce tracking is a way for trackers to track you even if browser-level privacy protections are in place," explained Peter Synder, senior director of privacy at Brave, on Tuesday.

To curtail privacy intrusions of this sort, Brave software engineer Aleksey Khoroshilov and senior software engineer Ivan Efremov devised a defense called Unlinkable Bouncing. Unlinkable Bouncing is available in Brave Nightly, the company's experimental build, and is expected in the upcoming version 1.37 release.

See https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/09/brave_bounce_tracking/

#technology #privacy #bravebrowser #tracking

Tales of Raspberry Pi SD card corruption are available online by the fistful, and are definitely a constant in Pi-adjacent communities. It’s apparent that some kind of problems tend to arise when a Raspberry Pi meets an SD card – which sounds quite ironic, since an SD card is the official and recommended way of booting a Pi. What is up with all of that? The linked article below expands more about this.

Certainly in the future with newer models many may be wanting to consider rather SSD drive enclosures with an embedded Pi. But the quality of SD cards and even PSU's do also make quite a difference.

See https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/raspberry-pi-and-the-story-of-sd-card-corruption/

#technoloft #raspberrypi #sdcard

A groupware solution is a must-have, whether you're working in a small organization, a medium-sized company, or a large enterprise. It promotes collaboration and glues teams together. Are you looking for an open source alternative to the big players? Maybe EGroupware can replace Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace in your team soon.

Apart from its own modules, EGroupware integrates other well-known open source applications, including Collabora Online, Rocket.Chat, Guacamole, Jitsi, and BigBlueButton. The groupware also supports computer telephony integration (CTI) with Asterisk/Placetel.

EGroupware offers two editions:

• The free Community Edition (CE) is developed under the GPLv2 and contains basic functions without limitations.
• The Enterprise Line (EPL) offers additional features and applications, especially for companies or large organizations, and extended vendor support.

This article shows how to install EGroupware on your own server and how to set up the groupware solution for your organization. If you're not too keen on hosting the software yourself, EGroupware provides a SaaS solution hosted in German data centers.

See https://opensource.com/article/22/3/open-source-egroupware

#technology #opensource #alternativeto #office365 #egroupware

Modern MacBooks feature exceptional battery life, but like most batteries, they will degrade over time. Around a year after you buy a MacBook, its battery begins to show some performance issues, and their ability to hold a charge diminishes the longer you use them. There’s not much you can do to stop this process from happening, but there is an app that can help reduce the speed at which your MacBook’s battery degrades.

AlDente’s free tier lets you set both a lower and upper limit on how much your MacBook can charge. If you set these limits between 20 and 80%, you’ll be able to maintain your MacBook’s battery health for much longer. You can also force your MacBook to run on battery power, even when it’s connected to a charger. Whenever your MacBook hits the 80 percent charged mark, AlDente will make it switch to battery power until it reaches the lower end of the charging limit.

With Apple's Optimised Battery Charging, MacOS will try to find out your charging and working schedule and prohibits charging above 80% for a couple of hours overnight. If you have an unregular schedule, this will not work, and it will still charge up to 100%, just a little bit later. With AlDente, you take full control over your MacBooks charging behaviour.

See https://lifehacker.com/use-this-free-app-to-make-your-macbooks-battery-last-lo-1848616014

#technology #batterylife #batteries #macOS #macbook