Month: December 2018

Enlarge (credit: Logitech)

Update, Dec 21, 2:47pm: In response to customers' frustration, Logitech issued another statement today with instructions on how to enable private local API controls. The company created a new XMPP beta program that will give users access to the local controls that were removed in the most recent Harmony Hub firmware update. Logitech plans to release an official firmware update with XMPP controls in January.

Original story

Many users of Logitech's Harmony Hub smart home hub and remote were recently met with a nasty surprise. The device's latest firmware update, version 4.15.206, reportedly cuts off local access for Harmony Hubs. As a result, many users who created home automation and smart home systems using third-party APIs haven't been able to control many, and in some cases, all of their connected IoT devices.

Enlarge (credit: Rafael Matsunaga)

Estimates of the economic impact of climate change have generally been perceived as conservative, failing to capture the full damage. The debate is understandable, given the incredible array of factors that have to be not just considered, but quantified. As research has made progress toward more realistic estimates, another interesting question can be asked: what if the worst-case scenario is bad enough that it prevents us from reaching the worst-case scenario?

That is an awkward way of saying that if climate change slows economic growth, our emission of greenhouse gases should also slow. With climate change, you hear a lot about “positive feedbacks”—processes that amplify change, like warming permafrost releasing greenhouse gases that cause more warming. This could be a negative feedback, limiting the potential for warming.

A new study by University of California, Irvine’s Dawn Woodard, Steven Davis, and James Randerson takes a shot at figuring out how important this could be. Working from previously published numbers, they connect the dots and estimate the amount of greenhouse gas emission that could be prevented by the end of the century due to the impact of climate change itself.

SpaceX

SpaceX may not have launched a rocket on Tuesday (it has yet to confirm a new launch date for the GPS 3 mission), but it did finally get a chance to show off its new Dragon spacecraft that will carry humans into orbit.

Not only did Vice President Mike Pence visit the company's processing hangar at Launch Pad 39A on Tuesday, but the company also released new photos of the spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket.