Brian Gongol
Google plans to spend multi-millions on renewable energy
Three reasons (likely all simultaneously true) come to mind: First, Google is a huge consumer of electricity, and thus wants to find cheaper ways to get one of its main inputs for production of bits and bytes. Second, they may very well believe that finding new sources of energy is important either to national or global security, or perhaps to mitigating climate change. Third, and perhaps least likely to be seen due to the first two, Google may have reache the point at which it has too much available capital to get a reasonable rate of return from doing anything new on the Internet. That is, it's now more valuable for Google to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into industries well outside its core Internet business than it is for them to either buy new companies or fund innovations in related markets. It certainly doesn't mean that the Internet has peaked, but it does mean that Google's financial minds have concluded they'll get a better return on investment from plugging dollars into renewable energy than into fighting spam. That's a rather significant business statement.
Russian pilots say they've found a local Twilight Zone
They claim that interference in a certain area causes their compasses to go haywire -- which is certainly plausible, given a concentration of magnetic metals in a certain area.
Firefox update released
Fixes three "high-impact" vulnerabilities
Turning wastewater into gold
China places $17 billion order with Airbus
Meanwhile, Minneapolis was hosting a demonstration flight of the Airbus A380, which looks like it belongs in a parallel universe, too. It was a pitch for Northwest Airlines, no matter what anyone's protests to the contrary.
China shows off its first photos from the Moon
