new Google search algorithm

Google has overhauled its search algorithm, the foundation of the Internet's dominant search engine, to better cope with the longer, more complex queries it has been getting from Web users.

Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search, told reporters on Thursday that the company launched its latest "Hummingbird" algorithm about a month ago and that it currently affects 90 percent of worldwide searches via Google.

"Hummingbird" is the company's effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the Internet, said Singhal from the Menlo Park garage where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceived their now-ubiquitous search engine.

Page and Brin set up shop in the garage of Susan Wojcicki -- now a senior Google executive -- in September 1998, around the time they incorporated their company. This week marks the 15th anniversary of their collaboration.

Oceans storing heat

The oceans are becoming a repository for almost all of Earth’s excess heat, driving up sea levels and threatening coastlines, according to a leaked draft of the most comprehensive United Nations report addressing climate science.

Temperatures in the shallowest waters rose by more than 0.1 degree Celsius (0.18 degree Fahrenheit) a decade for the 40 years through 2010, the study found. Average sea levels have increased worldwide by about 19 centimeters (7.5 inches) since 1901 and researchers said it’s “very likely” the system of ocean currents that includes the Gulf Stream will slow in the coming decades.

The findings are detailed in a 2,200-page report that will guide UN envoys as they devise a new treaty to fight climate change by 2015. It was obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to the report who declined to be further identified because it hasn’t been published. The UN declined to comment.

“The Earth is absorbing more heat than it is emitting back into space, and nearly all this excess heat is entering the oceans and being stored there,” the report’s authors wrote. “Changes have been observed in ocean properties of relevance to climate during the past 40 years, including temperature, salinity, sea level, carbon, pH and oxygen.”

It’s “extremely likely” mankind is responsible for more than half of the observed temperature rises since the 1950s and it’s “virtually certain” the global rate of sea-level rise has accelerated over the past two centuries, according to the summary document. Those main points are little changed from an earlier version that was leaked by the blogger Alec Rawls on the website www.stopgreensuicide.com in December.

The latest version of the summary includes a lower forecast for temperature rise from 2016 through 2035 of 0.3 degrees to 0.7 degrees Celsius, compared with 0.4 degrees to 1 degree in last year’s version. Both versions conclude that there’s “very high confidence” the Greenland Ice Sheet has lost mass and “high confidence” the same has happened to the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The two ice sheets contain more than 99 percent of the planet’s freshwater ice, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

HECO could charge more for solar

Hawaii's solar energy boom has grown to the point where rooftop photo­voltaic panels are providing all of the electricity consumed during some daylight hours in about 13 percent of Oahu neighborhoods, the Hawaiian Electric Co. said.

The high level of PV penetration, far beyond what is occurring anywhere on the mainland, is the result of a doubling of solar power generating capacity in Hawaii nearly every year since 2005. The rapid growth has put Hawaii at the forefront of an evolving effort by utilities nationally to accept greater amounts of intermittent solar energy into their electrical grids.

While HECO is taking steps to integrate more solar energy, that could result in added costs for some new solar customers. If HECO determines improvements are needed in a certain area to accommodate additional amounts of solar energy, new solar customers may have to bear the cost.

This week HECO began contacting its Oahu customers planning on installing PV systems, as well as PV contractors, to make sure the customers are informed of any equipment upgrades they may have to pay for.

The upgrades to the Oahu grid are necessary, HECO says, because of the rapid growth in solar installations.

The latest numbers from HECO, unthinkable just a few years ago, show that solar energy provides all of the minimum daytime power needs for 54 circuits, or neighborhoods, out of the 416 circuits on Oahu. The threshold has been reached on 26 out of Maui's 132 circuits and 17 of 143 circuits on Hawaii island.

"Those are impressive figures. Saturation on some of those circuits is higher than any other area in the country," said Tim Lindl, attorney for the nonprofit Interstate Renewable Energy Council based in Latham, N.Y.

Roughly 5 percent of HECO's customers on Oahu and Maui, and 4 percent of its customers on Hawaii island, have installed PV systems, according to data from the utility. That compares with about 1.5 percent of the customers served by California's two largest electric utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Southern California Edison.

*** [10/19/13]

Two weeks ago, this column covered concerns on the part of consumers that had contracted to install solar systems and on the part of industry leadership. In the meantime, the state Legislature held an informational hearing during which it questioned HECO about its procedural changes and also heard testimony from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, the Hawaii Solar Energy Association and the Hawaii PV Coalition, ending with a directive to work on a solution and report back next month.

HECO acknowledged that the transition to new procedures on Sept. 6 left many customers that had followed all the company's rules in what the solar industry calls "solar limbo." This then caused a significant slowdown for many solar installers.

HECO announced on Sept. 6 that consumers wanting to install solar systems first had to get HECO to confirm that the grid in their neighborhood could handle the added solar power. HECO said if the grid needed an upgrade to handle more solar power, the consumers installing new solar systems would have to pay for those upgrades.

This week, I had the opportunity to interview Peter Rosegg, a spokesman for HECO. He said that at the informational hearing, all parties agreed that safety cannot be compromised. Responsible solar installers also acknowledged the utility's statement that too much solar on a circuit without proper protective equipment risks the safety of customers and utility crews and damage to customer electronics and utility equipment such as lines, transformers and substations. Still, many solar industry leaders are skeptical, saying that HECO is heavily overplaying concerns about safety, reliability and grid penetration.

Delays both for HECO customers and the solar industry are frustrating and costly. The impact of the changed procedures, from the solar industry's point of view, include 30 percent to 75 percent of their jobs postponed; "millions" lost in revenue; "millions" in commitments to vendors; warehouses full; lost hours for employees; continued payment so as not to lose skilled and hard-to-find electrical journeymen; and six weeks of confusion.

In response, and in an effort to work with the Hawaii Solar Energy Association and PV Coalition, HECO has pledged to try to help some 1,000 customers who may have committed to bank loans, obtained building permits and ordered solar equipment but had not yet notified the utility in advance as is now required.

While HECO is a major reason for the slowdown, the solar industry is also in the midst of an inevitable industry consolidation. The combination of federal and state tax credits together with bonus depreciation in recent years has fueled a dramatic, unsustainable proliferation in the number of companies in the market. Concurrently, as the Great Recession resolves, investment capital, once vying for solar projects, may be pulling back in favor of other competing opportunities.

During the last legislative session, strong consideration was given to reducing state credits now in place. It didn't happen. Legislators should let it go. Federal credits begin to phase down at the end of 2016. Tapering state credits now while HECO is also in transition on its policies and its grid is a dangerous prospect. The phasing out of additional federal Safe Harbor and bonus depreciation benefits together with industry consolidation portend substantial headwinds for solar.

The big picture is that modern civilization is quickly realizing that the health of the planet and its inhabitants is, in part, dependent on our collective ability to move beyond petroleum toward a consortium of clean, renewable energy options including not only solar, but also wind, geothermal and hydroelectric sources. HECO's ability to support this transition to the maximum extent possible is a critical step. The task is huge, but essential. As a society, we will get there in time.

arranging facebook photos

For some reason, facebook is not allowing me to arrange the photos in my albums.

In the past, I could just go to photos/Albums/ then to whatever album I wanted to edit. Once there, I could click-drag the photo to where I wanted it to go.

But now it drags, but the photo doesn't stay there.  (This is on firefox, btw.  I think the problem also occurs on the other browsers, but I didn't check them all.)

Anyway I found a way that seems to get it working.

What you do is put the cursor on the picture you want to move and click the star icon (highlight) on the top right.  That hulks up the picture to a bigger size.  Then click it again to restore the picture to the original size.

For some reason, that seems to set facebook back to where you can drag the picture and it'll stay there.

updating Netflix Queue (My List) on iPad

The Netflix Instant Queue has become My List, but forgive me if I refer it to the queue since it's faster to type.  (Well, it's still Instant Queue on the Roku.)

Anyway, I built up my queue to nearly 500 items.  The problem is that it would take a long time to update on the ipad and sometimes it just wouldn't show up.

The queue seems buggy on the app.  Sometimes adding an item doesn't appear.  And deleting an item doesn't remove it.  [And sometimes it does.]

Plus you can't rearrange the items in the queue in the app.

So I generally do my searches and adds/deletes on the computer.  But again, the changes made on the computer doesn't mirror automatically on the ipad.  However it does update fairly quickly (within a minute it seems) on the Roku.

I thought maybe I had too many items in the queue and overloaded the app.  So I deleted the items and started added some back one by one.  But same problem (though the list wouldn't stall and lock up

Closing the app and restarting it didn't work.  However closing the app and totally shutting down and restarting the ipad worked.

But here's what I found seems to work the easiest.  Go to kids mode, then exit kids mode.  And that seems to update the queue!

I see there's a few apps that allow you to arrange the queue on the ipad.  Maybe I'll be trying one of those one of these days.