Sunday, May 25, 2014

podcast story: Oceanic @ The Long Now

Sylvia Earle, Tierney Thys: Oceanic - The Long Now
"Two-thirds of global fisheries are overfished. Eating a tuna, Earle points out, is like eating a wolf or a tiger. It is a magnificent predator often decades in age. We no longer commercially harvest wildlife on land. Why do we do it in the sea?
...
A sea-going photosynthetic bacteria named prochlorococcus was identified as recently as 1986, yet it may be the most abundant species on Earth, responsible for half of all the oxygen in the atmosphere"

Oceans significantly getting more acidic, due to increased CO2 dissolved in water, affecting ecological balance... 



data visualization: Eurostat

Eurostat - Tables, Graphs and Maps Interface (TGM) map:



Eurostat - Tables, Graphs and Maps Interface (TGM) graph



Ok, it is a "graphic" or "chart", not a "graph"

but it is an interesting visualization.

A proof that "pie" chart is useless for comparison.

Maps out of sync with table data, that is not quite good...



Some interesting data, too; 100 is Europe's average GDP/capita

1. Luxembourg, 263
2. Norway, 195
Ireland = 129, more than Germany = 123
USA = 152
Japan = 105

Drones

A near-miss on 20000 ft with a passenger airplane...

Things are getting serious...



podcast: American Drones Moving In At Home | On Point with Tom Ashbrook:



Big and lethal American drones have changed the equation of global power projection in the last decade. Raised big moral and legal and strategic questions in skies around the world. Now, a swarm of smaller drones is chomping at the bit to flood America’s skies. The FAA is still working out the rules, but some aren’t waiting. We had a near-miss with an airliner just reported in Florida. They’re calling it the Wild West up there. And it’s just begun
About Us | 3drobotics.com
3D Robotics develops innovative, flexible and reliable personal drones and UAV technology for everyday exploration and business applications.

Now working with Google on 3D mobile project "Tango"...

3D mobile: Google Project Tango

Kinect-like features in an Android device (phone or tablet).
Coming soon, likely to be released to select developers at Google I/O conference in June, as an 7" tablet with 2 cameras and distance sensors, to track 3D view of environment, for indoor navigation, gaming, and whatever comes next...

ATAP Project Tango – Google:
current prototype is a 5” Android phone containing highly customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3-dimensional motion of the device as you hold it while simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the phone to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second updating its position and orientation in real-time combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.
Project Tango