Stuxnet: 21st-century cyber weapon of mass destruction

Out of all over-the-top movies, Stuxnet actually makes the Die Hard 4.0 scenario less unrealistic:

McClane takes Farrell to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., where Farrell is questioned. FBI director Miguel Bowman (Cliff Curtis) is uninterested in his surmise: Farrell believes that the terrorists are mounting a "fire sale" (where "everything must go") attack, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the nation's computer-controlled infrastructure.

A more detailed description of Stuxnet @ wikipedia. Scary shit.

Statistisch onderzoek en de PVV

Flocking Starlings

Large flocks of Starlings flock above Utrecht these days. They already have a place on our blog, but I made a video of some small flocks above our house today,

This Utrechter did a better job and had a larger flock,

Festo SmartBird

Here is the inside:

Festo was featured before on the blog with their uber sleek flying helium penguins.

Rainbow reddit

Man vs Robot - Earl, the Robotic Bowler

EARL, the Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher

It's a fun contest but I think before you can really say machines > humans, the machines will have to operate at human scale and not as these huge powered robotics system.

Comparing deaths from energy production

This diagram from a NewScientist article shows how fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear.

A blogger has also compiled the following list which also includes renewable energy.

Energy Source - Death Rate (deaths per TWh)

Coal – world average - 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China - 278
Coal – USA - 15
Oil - 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas - 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass - 12
Peat - 12
Solar (rooftop) - 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind - 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro - 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) - 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear - 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)