The Daily Nerd (February 26th, 2014)

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The Daily Nerd (February 26th, 2014) #

One of my all time favorite books is the 1952 novel “City” by Clifford D. Simak. It is a yarn spun of a distant future where humans have utterly vanished from the planet, and the Earth is inhabited by an intelligent society descended from our domesticated canine friends. The dogs regale their young pups with tales of the websters (humans) who once inhabited the world. After the telling of the tales, the pups are always full of questions: “What is Man? What is a city? What is a war?” As their elders calmly tell them, “There is no positive answer to any of these questions.”

Boeing Seeks To Certify Biodiesel For Jet Fuel Around The World

Tens of thousands of flights carry millions of passengers around the globe on a daily basis. Needless to say, the environmental impact of this is fairly large — but both airlines and aircraft makers are keen to reduce that impact and lower their own costs, too. Biofuel is the current buzzword in the airline industry, and as Reuters reports (via Navigant Research), it’s one area aircraft maker Boeing is keen to explore. Specifically, Boeing aims to seek approval for the use of “green diesel” in jet fuel.

GNU Hurd Is Enjoying User-Space Device Drivers

In the name of freedom, GNU Hurd has the ability to run device drivers from user-space via the project’s DDE layer. DDE is an interesting feature and does allow for some interesting possibilities although conventional wisdom advises against accessing and controlling your GPU, network, and disk drivers, along with other components, from user-space. This also includes running Linux kernel drivers in Hurd’s user-space.

Japanese company proposes to build solar power cells on the Moon to provide clean energy to Earth

Harnessing the sun’s power is nothing new on Earth, but if a Japanese company has it’s way it will build a solar strip across the 11,000 mile Lunar equator that could supply our world with clean and unlimited solar energy for generations. The Shimizu Corporation has set it’s sights high, 238,900 miles to be exact. Their plan is to build a sustainable source of renewable energy on the Moon’s surface.