Continue reading »]]> A powerful enough solar flare could knock out our power grids, disrupt our GPS satellites, and bring the global economy to a halt, warns a British scientists.

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt.

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This isn’t the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before ? and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England.

Much of the planet’s electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms. But the world is still not prepared for a truly damaging solar storm, Hapgood argues in a recent commentary published in the journal Nature.

Hapgood talked with the Los Angeles Times about the potential effects of such a storm and how the world should prepare for it.

Q: What exactly is a solar storm?

A: I find that’s hard to answer. The term “solar storm” has crept into our usage, but nobody has defined what it means. Whether a “solar storm” is happening on the sun or is referring to the effect on the Earth depends on who’s talking.

I prefer “space weather,” because it focuses our attention on the phenomena in space that travel from the sun to the Earth.

Q: People often talk about solar flares and solar storms in the same breath. What’s the difference?

A: Solar flares mainly emit X-rays ? we also get radio waves from these things, and white light in the brightest of flares. They all travel at the same speed as light, so it takes eight minutes to arrive. There are some effects from flares, such as radio interference from the radio bursts.

But that’s a pretty small-beer thing. The big thing is the geomagnetic storms (on Earth) that affect the power grid, and that’s caused by the coronal mass ejections (from the sun).

Coronal mass ejections are caused when the magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere gets disrupted and then the plasma, the sun’s hot ionized gas, erupts and send charged particles into space. Think of it like a hurricane ? is it headed toward us or not headed toward us? If we’re lucky, it misses us.

Q: How are solar flares and coronal mass ejections related?

A: There’s an association between flares and coronal mass ejections, but it’s a relationship we don’t quite understand scientifically. Sometimes the CME launches before the flare occurs, and vice versa.

Q: What happens when those particles reach Earth?

A: There can be a whole range of effects. The classic one everyone quotes is the effect on the power grid. A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid. If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete failure of the power grid ? it happened in Quebec back in 1989. If you’ve got that, then you’ve just got to get it back on again. But you could also damage the transformers, which would make it much harder to get the electric power back.

Q: How else could people be affected?

A: You get big disturbances in the Earth’s upper atmosphere ? what we call the ionosphere ? and that could be very disruptive to things like GPS (the network of global positioning system satellites). Given the extent we use GPS in everyday life (including for cellphone networks, shipping safety and financial transaction records), that’s a big issue.

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Continue reading »]]> Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we’re using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.

Just call this week’s column the something borrowed edition. Rather than do a formal review — the sort of cookie-cutter project that can be over and done with in a week, frankly — we asked three staffers to not just test new products, but to live with them. For starters, our very own jet-setting Darren Murph used Verizon Wireless’ new Jetpack MiFi 4620L to get work done on the go, while our new editor Jon Fingas traded in his Sony clock radio for an iHome dock that promised to play nice with his non-Apple device. Rounding things out, Sharif took a $4,000 3D projector for a weeks-long spin because, well, why not?

Continue reading IRL: Verizon Jetpack MiFi 4620, iHome iC50 and Epson’s EH-TW9000 3D projector

IRL: Verizon Jetpack MiFi 4620, iHome iC50 and Epson’s EH-TW9000 3D projector originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 May 2012 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading »]]> Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan warned Friday that the US and Europe were not doing enough to resolve the core causes of the global economic slowdown.

The global economy remains deep in crisis and Europe and the United States are doing little to resolve its core causes, Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Ali Babacan warned Friday.

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Mr. Babacan, a former foreign minister and Turkey?s point-man for economic policy, said neither the US nor the eurozone countries have yet to deal with the underlying causes of the global economic slowdown: a weak financial sector, weak corporate balance sheets, risky public financial positions.?

Speaking at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Babacan warned that this year will be a year of reckoning for the European Union, and he pointed to the recent collapse of the Dutch government over the budget austerity measures as a harbinger for Europe?s coming fiscal battles.?

?2012 will be test year for European countries,? he said. ?2013 will be test year for American economy. After the elections [the new administration] will find very difficult decisions on the table right away. There has to be serious fiscal adjustment and a medium term plan to deal with the deficit. So far, there is no credible plan to deal with deficit.?

Babacan said developed countries need to undertake serious structural changes including reforming social security and labor markets: ?It is absolutely necessary for serious reforms, especially in many European countries, absolutely necessary and urgent.?

Babacan is a founding member of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan?s Justice and Development Party and considered a leading member of the ?Neo-Ottomanism? movement, moving Turkey?s foreign policy away from a predominantly Western focus to integration and activism in its immediate neighborhood ??the territories of the former Ottoman Empire.

Babacan contrasted the Western economic turmoil, with Turkey?s booming economy which he said grew at 9.2 percent growth rate in 2010, and 8.5 percent in 2011.

?We entered this crisis with a strong banking system and strong public financial structure. During the crisis when many countries were asking for fiscal stimulus programs.? We followed a very different route. We did just the opposite. We announced fiscal consolidation program. And we overperformed,? he said.

He said Turkey?s economy was far more open than many European countries, which had made Turkish companies more dynamic and more competitive in global markets. And he argued that Turkish growth was more sustainable because he said it didn?t come on the back of government spending, but rather private sector growth.

In the coming years, he said, ?We will have lower growth ??though better than everywhere else in Europe ??but slower than before. Growth is high, but it?s also sustainable growth.?

?Tight fiscal policies will continue, in good days or in bad days,? he said, ?but we don?t believe in economic growth through public spending.?

Islam, democracy, and capitalism

Turkey has shown how Islam and democracy and capitalism can cooexist peacefully, Babacan said.?

?When people observe a functioning example, people are more encouraged to ask for more in their own countries,? he said. ?We have been talking with leaders: Change is coming, you can no longer have a closed regime with an open society ??satellites, social media, the Internet ??you have this kind, this kind of society moving forward and you are running this closed regime, this is not sustainable, this cannot continue.?

?We have advised these leaders to lead this change, or you will be pushed by change anyway,? he said. ?

Babacan addressed several of the long-running disputes in the region, such as the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, the status of the split island of Cyprus, and the violence in neighboring Syria. He said Turkey was strongly supportive of the six-point peace plan pushed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, but he said Turkey was strongly against any sort of military intervention or sending weapons to the embattled Syrian opposition forces.

He also said the Syrian opposition is coalescing into a viable alternative to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

?We need to see visible, verifiable, and indisputable change in the country,? he said. ?The primary responsibility to end the violence will rest with the Syrian regime.?

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HP’s TouchSmart sub-brand and its other AIOs should be no stranger to many PC advocates, but in case you’ve never come across one before, the company’s laid all of them out on one side of its Global Influencer Summit in Shanghai. Models range from the TouchSmart IQ770 launched back in 2007, all the way to the recently shipped Z1 workstation and even the just-announced t410 Smart Zero Client; but the real gem of the booth is that little beige HP 150 right in the middle — it’s one of the first-ever touchscreen PCs, dating back to 1983, powered by an 8MHz Intel 8088 chip, ran MS-DOS and cost a mere $3,995.

Whilst on the topic, HP’s Vice President of Industrial Design Stacy Wolff shared some interesting stats: his team found that much like laptops, there are very different screen size preferences across different regions, with the US showing strong interest in 20-inch and 23-inch HP AIOs, whereas China much prefers 20-inch over 21.5-inch and 23-inch. With the big jump in AIO market penetration in each region between 2008 to 2012 (almost doubled in Japan and the US; and an even bigger leap for other markets), HP predicts that these machines will continue to steadily increase market penetration across more price points — this was illustrated with what it conveniently calls the “AIO wedge” on a chart. Feel free to take a gander at our gallery for more tidbits.

Visualized: HP’s all-in-one PCs over the years, one from 1983 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 16:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pop star Rihanna has been offered over $1 million to pose naked for Playboy, according to MTV UK. Whether it actually happens is another story.

According to site, Playboy CEO Hugh Hefner is keen for Rihanna to shed her clothes for his iconic publication and is said to have made a secret offer.

A big offer. Lindsay Lohan-sized.

MTV cites anonymous sources claiming Rihanna is interested in posing nude for the men’s magazine, but is concerned how her fan base will react.

Something hasn’t seemed to bother her when it comes to remixes with Chris Brown, or Tweeting pics of obvious drug use, or anything for that matter.

Fans also love her slightly reckless, eff-the-world antics. Just saying.

“Rihanna and Hef are in top secret discussions at the moment. He sees Rihanna as the best music star to have on the cover,” a source says.

“Rihanna has got naked many times before and is very self-assured about her body. She already Tweets topless photos and doesn’t get paid for it. Here she would be earning more than a million for exactly the same thing.”

No one can dispute that.

The source added that RiRi is expected to decide soon, with Hefner convinced her issue will be a best-seller due to the singer’s worldwide success.

After the Lindsay Lohan Playboy photos broke sales records for the mag, which had been slipping of late, Hef may know what he’s talking about.

“She is at the top of her game right now – beautiful, sexy and with huge international appeal. Playboy is not a sleazy porn magazine either.”

“Unlike other magazines, it allows the stars to get nude in a classy and sophisticated way. That aspect appeals to Rihanna’s creative side.”

They continued with the note that: “Her concern is that she doesn’t alienate her army of young fans who could think this is a little too risque.”

Okay, this report is obviously fake. Everyone knows Rihanna has a Navy, not an army.

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