FCC’s Chairman Hints at Move Towards Net Neutrality


Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler speaks in Washington, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler speaks in Washington, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Jose Luis Magana/AP



Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler may be moving the country closer to the notion of network neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally.


On Wednesday, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Wheeler hinted that he would support regulations that would treat broadband operations like telephone companies and other “common carriers,” opening the door for the agency to more tightly regulate internet service providers. The idea is to find a new away to prevent ISPs from building “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” for content that travels over their networks.


“We’re going to propose rules that say that no blocking, no throttling, [no] paid prioritization, all that list of issues, and that there is a yardstick against which behavior should be measured,” Wheeler said during a public interview at the event, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.


Although Wheeler did not explicitly endorse reclassifying broadband providers, he did say that the Title II standard is a better standard for judging what constitutes “just and reasonable” behavior, the Times reports. The FCC will vote on the new proposal on February 26th, he said.


Supporters of network neutrality argue that slow lanes will damage innovation and give larger companies an unfair advantage. They say that Title II regulation—a reference to a section of the 1934 Communications Act, which established regulations for the telephone industry—is the best way to protect the net. But critics of Title II classification worry that tighter regulations will destroy the freewheeling nature of the internet, while cutting into service providers’ profits and making it harder for them to invest in infrastructure.


If Wheeler does vote in favor of Title II regulation, it would certainly be a shift. In April, the chairman backed a draft proposal that didn’t reclassify internet service providers, and allowed “commercially reasonable” prioritization of network traffic.


The proposal set off a firestorm of controversy and protest that lasted several months. Last November, President Barack Obama issued a statement in favor of reclassification, and just last week, Google argued that its high-speed fiber internet service would benefit if all service providers were reclassified.


During the interview, Wheeler said that he he had an “a-ha moment” over the summer when he realized that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 applied Title II classification to wireless phone providers, but exempted them from many of its provisions.


Wheeler did say that there are times that prioritization “makes a whole heck of a lot of sense,” The Verge reports. But he also said that he opposed paid prioritization.



Terrorists Can’t Kill Charlie Hebdo‘s Ideas


People in Nice, in southeastern France, hold posters reading 'I am Charlie' as they gather to express solidarity with those killed in an attack at the Paris offices of weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015.

People in Nice, in southeastern France, hold posters reading ‘I am Charlie’ as they gather to express solidarity with those killed in an attack at the Paris offices of weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015. Lionel Cironneau/AP



“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”—JFK


I don’t want to talk about technology or cars for a minute.


I promise to get back to talking about the Challenger Hellcat, and whatever awesomely ludicrous thing Elon Musk comes up with next, soon.


But with continuous live blogs and hands-on reports of wearables and televisions streaming out of Las Vegas, we must stop and consider the horror of what has happened in Paris. A barbaric and unforgivable act, committed by uncivilized thugs hellbent on stifling any dissent and criticism they deem unworthy.



Jordan Golson


Jordan Golson is a technology and automotive reporter based in Durango, Colorado.




Masked men armed with rifles stormed the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris and killed 12 people. The dead included four political cartoonists, editor in chief Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier and two police officers.


The three gunmen fled after a firefight with police, and are reported to have now been identified. One of the slain officers had been named Charbonnier’s bodyguard after he received numerous death threats from Islamic extremists.


The attack appears to have been in response to the magazine’s frequent publication of cartoons mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad. One gunman reportedly shouted, “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad, we have killed Charlie Hebdo” as he jumped into a getaway car.


Although the shooting occurred at Charlie Hebdo, it was an attack on all journalists. More than that, though, it was an attack on all of us, because it was a direct offensive on a way of life, on freedom of speech, and on the storied tradition of speaking truth to power.


Journalism is, almost by definition, sharing information that might offend or cause discomfort to someone. As Finley Peter Dunne famously said, the job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Journalists are hardly alone in this; writers, artists and musicians have long courted controversy, especially when commenting on religion. Iran called for the assassination of author Salman Rushdie following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, while artist Andres Serrano enraged many with his anti-Christian piece Piss Christ.


Whether it’s an interview with a CIA whistleblower who alerts us to widespread government surveillance who some consider a traitor, or reporting the details about an upcoming Apple product launch, it’s difficult to write anything of consequence that won’t upset someone (as most comment sections on the Internet show).


Satire is a particularly pointed form of social commentary, used for thousands of years to illustrate the hypocrisy, greed, and absurdity of the powerful. It isn’t all as elegant as that written by Aesop and Miguel de Cervantes, or even Stephen Colbert. Some is awkward and clumsy, and some of it is flat-out bad. You can argue, and many have, that the cartoons printed in Charlie Hebdo fall into this category. That is beside the point. Satire is an essential tool for revealing hard truths about our world. It must be protected in all its forms.


A man holds up an edition of Charlie Hebdo magazine as people gather on the Place Royale in Nantes, western France, on January 7, 2015, to show their solidarity with the victims of the attack on the offices of the satirical weekly in Paris.

A man holds up an edition of Charlie Hebdo magazine as people gather on the Place Royale in Nantes, western France, on January 7, 2015, to show their solidarity with the victims of the attack on the offices of the satirical weekly in Paris. Muhammad’s speech bubble in the cartoon reads, in French, “A hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing.” Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images



Another bit of satire has been in the news recently, that of the North Korea-mocking movie The Interview. The film, a buddy comedy about two “journalists” hired by the CIA to kill North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, so enraged North Korea that—if you believe the U.S. government—it aimed an army of hackers at Sony Pictures Entertainment and stole sensitive data to embarrass Sony and force the company to withdraw the film.


It worked, sort of: several theater chains declined to show the film amid security fears. After much back and forth, Sony released the film online and in a small number of theaters. It has since become Sony’s highest grossing video on demand release.


The stereotyping verges on outright racism throughout the film and, in the long run, The Interview will likely be more meaningful for the future of movie distribution than as effective political satire. But, improbably, many more people are now familiar with North Korea’s disappointing record on human rights and its inability to feed itself than before the film was released.


The attack on Charlie Hebdo is ultimately about control. Masked cowards wanting to decide what we can and can’t see. Wishing to tell us what to believe in and what to hold dear.


This is nothing new, of course. There have always been radicals looking to force their view of the world on others. But this struck me dumb. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, and the slain were writers. Authors and artists and other so-called intellectuals have always been the first to stand in the public square and call out evildoers, knowing the price they could pay for these necessary actions. Charbonnier and his staffers paid that price today. We all did.


The attack on Charlie Hebdo is ultimately about control. Masked cowards wanting to decide what we can and can’t see.


The goal of terrorism is to make us feel helpless and scared, to cower in the face of threats. To make us choose to live our lives in a way other than how we wish. To question our very existence.


When I heard the news of the massacre, I questioned mine. But probably not in the way that the terrorists wanted.


Nothing I have ever written has angered someone to the point of violence. I hope it never does. At times like this, I wonder what impact my writing—about cars and Apple, mostly—really has on the world. Or that of my colleagues, spending time in the desert to bring you the latest on über-thin televisions and self-driving cars. But personal expression—whether it’s a movie, a speech, a painting or a blog post—is given value by its reader. We write to be read. We write to have an impact on the world. Sharing hands-on impressions of the latest smart wristband may not change the world, but it has value. It matters in its way.


Today, all journalists have been attacked. Our colleagues in Paris have been brutally murdered for something they created with pen and ink (or their digital equivalents). Something they created that was simultaneously harmless and harmful, inane and enraging.


And with their tragic and indefensible deaths, we have been enraged. The cartoons in Charlie Hebdo may have been graceless and intentionally provocative and not funny. Tech journalism may sometimes be unimportant and vapid and self-indulgent. But all speech plays a part in creating a civilized society, whether from Demosthenes and Bill O’Reilly, Marshall McLuhan and Lawrence Lessig, or TechCrunch and Gizmodo.


As Charbonnier said two years ago, “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.” We all have an obligation to stand with him, to tell truth to power, and to forever ensure that our fellow journalists did not die in vain.


May the ideas live on. Je suis Charlie.



FCC’s Chairman Hints at Move Towards Net Neutrality


tangled network cables


Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler may be moving the country closer to the notion of network neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally.


On Wednesday, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Wheeler hinted that he would support regulations that would treat broadband operations like telephone companies and other “common carriers,” opening the door for the agency to more tightly regulate internet service providers. The idea is to find a new away to prevent ISPs from building “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” for content that travels over their networks.


“We’re going to propose rules that say that no blocking, no throttling, [no] paid prioritization, all that list of issues, and that there is a yardstick against which behavior should be measured,” Wheeler said during a public interview at the event, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.


Although Wheeler did not explicitly endorse reclassifying broadband providers, he did say that the Title II standard is a better standard for judging what constitutes “just and reasonable” behavior, the Times reports. The FCC will vote on the new proposal on February 26th, he said.


Supporters of network neutrality argue that slow lanes will damage innovation and give larger companies an unfair advantage. They say that Title II regulation—a reference to a section of the 1934 Communications Act, which established regulations for the telephone industry—is the best way to protect the net. But critics of Title II classification worry that tighter regulations will destroy the freewheeling nature of the internet, while cutting into service providers’ profits and making it harder for them to invest in infrastructure.


If Wheeler does vote in favor of Title II regulation, it would certainly be a shift. In April, the chairman backed a draft proposal that didn’t reclassify internet service providers, and allowed “commercially reasonable” prioritization of network traffic.


The proposal set off a firestorm of controversy and protest that last several months. Last November, Barack Obama issued a statement in favor of reclassification, and just last week, Google argued that its high-speed fiber internet service would benefit if all service providers were reclassified.


During the interview, Wheeler said that he he had an “a-ha moment” over the summer when he realized that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 applied Title II classification to wireless phone providers, but exempted them from many of its provisions.


Wheeler did say that there are times that prioritization “makes a whole heck of a lot of sense,” The Verge reports. But he also said that he opposed paid prioritization.



Terrorists Can’t Kill Charlie Hebdo’s Ideas


People in Nice, in southeastern France, hold posters reading 'I am Charlie' as they gather to express solidarity with those killed in an attack at the Paris offices of weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015.

People in Nice, in southeastern France, hold posters reading ‘I am Charlie’ as they gather to express solidarity with those killed in an attack at the Paris offices of weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015. Lionel Cironneau/AP



“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”—JFK


I don’t want to talk about technology or cars for a minute.


I promise to get back to talking about the Challenger Hellcat, and whatever awesomely ludicrous thing Elon Musk comes up with next, soon.


But with continuous live blogs and hands-on reports of wearables and televisions streaming out of Las Vegas, we must stop and consider the horror of what has happened in Paris. A barbaric and unforgivable act, committed by uncivilized thugs hellbent on stifling any dissent and criticism they deem unworthy.



Jordan Golson


Jordan Golson is a technology and automotive reporter based in Durango, Colorado.




Masked men armed with rifles stormed the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris and killed 12 people. The dead included four political cartoonists, editor in chief Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier and two police officers.


The three gunmen fled after a firefight with police, and are reported to have just been arrested at the time of publication. One of the slain officers had been named Charbonnier’s bodyguard after he received numerous death threats from Islamic extremists.


The attack appears to have been in response to the magazine’s frequent publication of cartoons mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad. One gunman reportedly shouted, “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad, we have killed Charlie Hebdo” as he jumped into a getaway car.


Although the shooting occurred at Charlie Hebdo, it was an attack on all journalists. More than that, though, it was an attack on all of us, because it was a direct offensive on a way of life, on freedom of speech, and on the storied tradition of speaking truth to power.


Journalism is, almost by definition, sharing information that might offend or cause discomfort to someone. As Finley Peter Dunne famously said, the job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Journalists are hardly alone in this; writers, artists and musicians have long courted controversy, especially when commenting on religion. Iran called for the assassination of author Salman Rushdie following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, while artist Andres Serrano enraged many with his anti-Christian piece Piss Christ.


Whether it’s an interview with a CIA whistleblower who alerts us to widespread government surveillance that some consider a traitor or reporting the details about an upcoming Apple product launch, it’s difficult to write anything of consequence that won’t upset someone (as most comment sections on the Internet show).


Satire is a particularly pointed form of social commentary, used for thousands of years to illustrate the hypocrisy, greed, and absurdity of the powerful. It isn’t all as elegant as that written by Aesop and Miguel de Cervantes, or even Stephen Colbert. Some is awkward and clumsy, and some of it is flat-out bad. You can argue, and many have, that the cartoons printed in Charlie Hebdo fall into this category. That is beside the point. Satire is an essential tool for revealing hard truths about our world. It must be protected in all its forms.


Another bit of satire has been in the news recently, that of the North Korea-mocking movie The Interview. The film, a buddy comedy about two “journalists” hired by the CIA to kill North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, so enraged North Korea that—if you believe the U.S. government—it aimed an army of hackers at Sony Pictures Entertainment and stole sensitive data to embarrass Sony and force the company to withdraw the film.


It worked, sort of: several theater chains declined to show the film amid security fears. After much back and forth, Sony released the film online and in a small number of theaters. It has since become Sony’s highest grossing video on demand release.


The stereotyping verges on outright racism throughout the film and, in the long run, The Interview will likely be more meaningful for the future of movie distribution than as effective political satire. But, improbably, many more people are now familiar with North Korea’s disappointing record on human rights and its inability to feed itself than before the film was released.


The attack on Charlie Hebdo is ultimately about control. Masked cowards wanting to decide what we can and can’t see. Wishing to tell us what to believe in and what to hold dear.


This is nothing new, of course. There have always been radicals looking to force their view of the world on others. But this struck me dumb. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, and the slain were writers. Authors and artists and other so-called intellectuals have always been the first to stand in the public square and call out evildoers, knowing the price they could pay for these necessary actions. Charbonnier and his staffers paid that price today. We all did.


The attack on Charlie Hebdo is ultimately about control. Masked cowards wanting to decide what we can and can’t see.


The goal of terrorism is to make us feel helpless and scared, to cower in the face of threats. To make us choose to live our lives in a way other than how we wish. To question our very existence.


When I heard the news of the massacre, I questioned mine. But probably not in the way that the terrorists wanted.


Nothing I have ever written has angered someone to the point of violence. I hope it never does. At times like this, I wonder what impact my writing—about cars and Apple, mostly—really has on the world. Or that of my colleagues, spending time in the desert to bring you the latest on über-thin televisions and self-driving cars. But personal expression—whether it’s a movie, a speech, a painting or a blog post—is given value by its reader. We write to be read. We write to have an impact on the world. Sharing hands-on impressions of the latest smart wristband may not change the world, but it has value. It matters in its way.


Today, all journalists have been attacked. Our colleagues in Paris have been brutally murdered for something they created with pen and ink (or their digital equivalents). Something they created that was simultaneously harmless and harmful, inane and enraging.


And with their tragic and indefensible deaths, we have been enraged. The cartoons in Charlie Hebdo may have been graceless and intentionally provocative and not funny. Tech journalism may sometimes be unimportant and vapid and self-indulgent. But all speech plays a part in creating a civilized society, whether from Demosthenes and Bill O’Reilly, Marshall McLuhan and Lawrence Lessig, or TechCrunch and Gizmodo.


As Charbonnier said two years ago, “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.” We all have an obligation to stand with him, to tell truth to power, and to forever ensure that our fellow journalists did not die in vain.


May the ideas live on. Je suis Charlie.



Beer, bread yeast-eating bacteria aid human health

Bacteria that have evolved to eat their way through yeast in the human gut could inform the development of new treatments for people suffering from bowel diseases.



Led by Newcastle University, UK, and the University of Michigan, the study shows how microbes in our digestive tract have learned to unravel the difficult to break down complex carbohydrates that make up the yeast cell wall.


Evolving over the 7,000 years humans have consumed fermented food and drink, the ability of strains of Bacteroides thetaiotomicron (Bt) ­­­to degrade yeasts is almost exclusively found in the human gut.


Publishing their findings in Nature, the international research team say the discovery of this process could accelerate the development of prebiotic medicines to help people suffering from bowel problems and autoimmune diseases.


The study, led by Professor Harry Gilbert at Newcastle University, Professor Eric Martens, of the University of Michigan, and Dr Wade Abbott of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has identified the complex machinery that targets yeast carbohydrates.


This has provided a better understanding of how our unique intestinal soup of bacteria -- termed the microbiome -- has the capacity to obtain nutrients from our highly varied diet.


"People are very interested in developing dietary regimes where good bacteria are of benefit," explained Professor Gilbert.


"When you have certain bacteria dominant in the gut these microorganisms can produce molecules which have health promoting effects.


"There's a lot of interest in developing prebiotics. The more you understand about how complex glycans are degraded the more you can think about developing sophisticated prebiotics that target the growth of specific beneficial bacteria."


The research involving scientists from Newcastle, Australia, Canada, USA and Belgium has unraveled the mechanism by which Bt, a dominant member of the human microbiome, has learned to feast upon difficult to break down complex carbohydrates called yeast mannans.


Mannans, derived from the yeast cell wall, are a component in our diet from fermented foods including bread, beer, wine and soy sauce.


It is hoped the research could aid a better understanding of how to provide nutrients to specific organisms in the microbiome. Indeed, given that Bt has been granted Orphan Designation by the FDA for Paediatric Crohn's Disease (ThetanixTM), yeast mannan may have health promoting effects on the microbiome by stimulating the growth of Bt.


Professor Gideon Davies, of York Structural Biology Laboratory at the University of York, who contributed to the work, said: "The ability of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron to degrade yeast cell wall components may be of importance in fighting off yeast infections and in autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease."


Professor Spencer Williams, of the University of Melbourne, who also contributed to the research added: "Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron is an important part of our microbiota, the community of bacteria that live within us.


"By consuming carbohydrates that we can't, which they convert to short-chain fatty acids that they secrete into our distal gut, these bacteria establish a symbiosis that nourishes the cells that line our gut wall and provide important immune signals that establish a healthy immune response."




Story Source:


The above story is based on materials provided by Newcastle University . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Forget the selfish gene: Evolution of life is driven by the selfish ribosome

Since the discovery of how DNA encodes genetic information, most research on the evolution of life has focused on genes. According to the "selfish gene" theory, cells and organisms exist simply as packages to protect and transmit genes. New research challenges this idea, proposing instead that if anything is "selfish" it must be the ribosome. That up-ends everything we think we know about the evolution of life and, in fact, the function of ribosomes themselves.



What came first in the evolution of life? Until now, scientists have answered the question with three letters: DNA. But In a father-daughter collaboration published in Journal of Theoretical Biology, Dr. Meredith Root-Bernstein, Aarhus University, Denmark, and Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, Michigan State University, USA, provide evidence that the question should rather be answered with the word: Ribosomes.


The ribosome is a large and complex molecule found in all living cells. It contains the machinery for translating the genetic information from DNA into the proteins that perform all the work of the cell and make up most of its structure.


"Ribosomes are made of three protein-encrusted RNA strands that textbooks tell us are purely structural, but we show that ribosomal RNA once acted as the genes, mRNAs and tRNAs required to make its own components -- and gave rise to these structures in modern cells," says Dr. Meredith Root-Bernstein.


What does DNA want?


The father-daughter research collaboration started when Meredith was re-reading her father Robert Root-Bernstein's 1989 book Discovering.


"Halfway through the book, inspired by the discovery strategies my father discusses there, I looked up and asked "what does DNA want?" It may sound strange to anthropomorphize a large molecule. However, the selfish gene theory is commonly expressed in a scientific short-hand as "DNA wants to replicate itself." But I wondered if this is really what DNA wants," Dr. Meredith explains.


When organic chemists anthropomorphize molecules, they say that molecules "want to be in their lowest energy conformation." This means that when they have energy molecules can move into different conformations, but they have a resting position that they come back to.


The resting position of DNA is very tightly curled up. It is so hard to unravel that researchers do not fully understand how the various helper molecules uncurl and unzip it for replication and translation.


Thus, as Meredith realized, from the organic chemistry point of view, the answer to "what does DNA want" is: It wants to sit curled up in a knot. DNA does not want to replicate or translate.


The conclusion that DNA was unlikely to be the dynamic mover of evolutionary processes led to the next question: So who does want to do replication and translation?


The selfish ribosome


To Meredith and Robert Root-Bernstein the answer is clear: the ribosome. Its resting position is "ready to translate DNA into proteins." And not only are ribosomes found in all cells of all organisms, they are almost identical in all living species.


Ribosomes are composed of two types of molecules: proteins and RNA. RNA is structurally very similar to DNA and exists in three forms. One form of RNA is ribosomal RNA or rRNA, which according to textbook knowledge is purely structural, forming the scaffold or skeleton of the ribosome "machine." Two other kinds of RNA, messenger RNA or mRNA and transfer RNA or tRNA, are outside the ribosome and help the ribosome "machine" to put together proteins from DNA instructions. mRNA transcribes the genetic information from DNA and carries it to the ribosome. tRNA translates the mRNA message into amino acids, which are strung together on the ribosome to make a protein.


Inspired by Discovering, Meredith turned the selfish gene idea around. What if ribosomes are "selfishly" trying to reproduce themselves? Did ribosomes recycle ribosomal RNA to interact with proteins--creating the mRNAs and tRNAs we know today-- and invent DNA as securely stored assembly instructions? If this were the case, then the rRNA sequences should match the sequences of mRNAs, tRNAs, and DNA encoding ribosomal proteins.


This new hypothesis was tested by Robert, comparing ribosomal RNA to databases of all the RNAs, DNA and proteins of the bacteria E. coli.


If ribosomes want to reproduce themselves, the rRNA would have to contain three things that no one has ever noticed before. First, it must contain the "genes" encoding its own ribosomal proteins so as to be able to form a working "machine." Second, it must contain the mRNAs needed to carry its own genetic information to the "machine." Finally, it had to encode the tRNAs necessary to translate the mRNAs into proteins.


Meredith and Robert Root-Bernstein showed that the structure of the rRNA shows startlingly good matches to all of these structures in E. coli.


"We have demonstrated that rRNA contains the vestiges of the mRNAs, tRNAs and "genes" that encode its own protein structure and function. Ribosomes are not simply the passive translators DNA," says Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein.


We're all homes to ribosomes


The selfish ribosome model closes a big theoretical gap between, on the one hand, the simple biological molecules that can form on mud flats, oceanic thermal vents or via lightning, and on the other hand LUCA, or the Last Universal Common Ancestor, a single-celled organism.


Dr. Meredith Root-Bernstein adds: "Maybe the selfish ribosome puts a new spin on feeling kinship with other creatures. We are all just different kinds of homes to the ribosomes!"



Intel Invests $300 Million in Internal Diversity Initiatives


intel-wafer-feat


Intel has joined the chorus of corporate giants publicly acknowledging that women and minorities are underrepresented in the tech world. This week, the chip maker said it will invest $300 million to encourage more diversity inside its organization, while announcing concrete goals it hopes to hit by the year 2020.


In the midst of other announcements at this week’s CES trade show in Las Vegas, including a collaboration with Oakley to make new wearables and a tiny hardware module called Curie meant for wearables the size of a button, CEO Brian Krzanich said Intel would use that $300 million to help improve the pipeline for women and minorities, actively support the hiring and retention of diverse candidates, and fund programs that support the positive representation of women and minorities in technology and gaming industries.


“We’re calling on our industry to again make the seemingly impossible possible by making a commitment to real change and clarity in our goals,” Krzanich said in a statement. “Without a workforce that more closely mirrors the population, we are missing opportunities, including not understanding and designing for our own customers.”


To get the ball rolling, Intel will partner with organizations within the industry, including the International Game Developers Association, the E-Sports League, the National Center for Women in Technology, and others. The company will also collaborate with minority-serving elementary schools and computer science and engineering programs at colleges for the effort. And by 2020, Krzanich has vowed, the company should have a “full representation” of women and minorities at Intel—meaning it will be more representative of the available talent in America, including closing the gap at the leadership level.


The presence of the gender and diversity gap has long been an issue in the world of tech, and recently, activists have pushed big-name companies to at least be more transparent about the composition of their workforces. Many companies—including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and others—have complied, making their internal diversity reports available for scrutiny. But the next step is finding ways of actually changing the makeup of these companies. Intel, it appears, is taking its first step in that direction.



Learners, Teachers, and Technology: Personalization in 2015 and Beyond


empty-classroom-flickr-trancedmoogle

trancedmoogle/Flickr



Many key questions about learning in the classroom can be boiled down to, “What should I do next?” From a teacher’s viewpoint, this question can mean, “Which topic should I teach next?” or “Do students need more review or are they ready to move on?” For a student, “what should I do next?” can mean, “Which math problem should I do next?” or “Which topic should I study next?”


It is possible to answer these student questions without much thought about any particular student. The student should do the next problem on the pre-printed math curriculum worksheet. He or she should move on to the next topic in the district scope and sequence and move to it at the same time everyone else does in order to stay on track for the year.


However, since 2012, the term “personalized learning” has changed the “what should I do next?” conversation. If you type “personalized learning” into Google Trends, you’ll see searches for it by month, displaying that the term has skyrocketed in the previous two years. For example, the most frequent search count for the term “personalized learning” in 2012 is lower than the least frequent search count in 2014.


The Department of Education’s 2014 definition of personalized learning is as follows:



  • Personalization refers to instruction that is paced to learning needs, tailored to learning preferences, and tailored to the specific interests of different learners. In an environment that is fully personalized, the learning objectives and content as well as the method and pace may all vary.

  • The promise of personalization is that learning and instruction can be varied based on the individual. Despite the hype, two big questions remain: who makes the decisions and how are they made? In discussions of personalization there are three candidates to make the decision: teachers, students, and technology.


The Student as the Decision Maker


Some advocates of personalized learning (for example, Barbara Bray here) emphasize the role of the student in driving learning decisions. In this view, students actively participate in the design of their learning, including how and what they learn. They bring their interests and background to bear on the decision of what to do next. On the other hand, others like Benjamin Riley, caution that students don’t have awareness of research-based learning progressions that detail the paths most likely to lead to in-depth understanding of complex concepts. In other words, how students make decisions about what to do next may not lead to the best learning outcomes.


Technology as the Decision Maker


On the other hand, many technologists use the term “personalized learning” to mean largely technology-based systems. These use data-driven approaches to serve content and activities to students based on statistical and instructional models. The technology allows the use of big data to investigate the learning outcomes of students who take path A versus path B through content. Even more, the technology-based systems can look at how these outcomes vary for students with a variety of characteristics and interests. Finally, the technology allows personalization to scale to a whole classroom whereas making separate paths for 30 students is a big request to make of a teacher.


However, the promise of these systems outstrips the current reality. Most current systems at scale are personalizing based solely on skill levels – not interests or preferences. Those with experience in statistics know that building models that involve dozens of variables and the interactions between those variables is a non-trivial exercise. The ability to do this and obtain results that educators would find reasonable has yet to be demonstrated. Finally, as Mike Caulfield cautions, structured discussion is key to learning, particularly learning how to talk and think like experts in a given field. If every student is working at his own pace on his own path, it is not clear how these interactions happen.


The Teacher as the Decision Maker


The third option for the decision maker is the teacher. Teachers are already making hundreds of decisions per day in the classroom. Teachers are the people best positioned to help students make connections between content and students’ lives, as well as lead instruction such as the structured discussions described above. However, personalizing to the level described by advocates of personalized learning, for all students requires far more time and tracking than is possible for most teachers. Realistically, teachers cannot create unique problem sets for all the students in their classroom.


In the end, there needs to be a sophisticated blending of learner, teacher, and technology. When does it make sense to give the learner choice and when does it not? When is it helpful to have technology systems provide content personalization and which decisions are best left to teachers? Do we create systems in which teachers provide the content guidelines within which the system chooses activity or systems that recommend guidelines within which teachers and students choose activity? I hope in the next years we can come to understand the roles and responsibilities that each has in improving learner outcomes.


Kristen DiCerbo is a principal research scientist at Pearson’s Center for Digital Data, Analytics, & Adaptive Learning.



The Podcasts You Need to Listen to This Week


SO MANY PODCASTS. My phone’s about to cave in under the weight of all the shows I’ve downloaded but haven’t listened to yet. Even so, we here at WIRED are always on the lookout for more. Got any great recommendations? Please leave ’em in the comments of this post, or just tweet them at me. In the meantime, here are three shows I’ve been loving lately.


Reply All


replyall

The Internet is made up of a lot of stuff: ideas, memes, companies, and awesome weirdos. This podcast covers them all; launched in November as part of the Gimlet Media network, it’s the strongest and most entertaining new show I’ve heard. Clocking in at a nice, brisk 20 minutes, the show examines stuff like the world of domain name speculators, an app that wants to be “Instagram for doctors” (medical professionals use it to share case photos with each other), and Larry Shippers—the One Direction megafans/conspiracy theorists who believe 1D’s Louis and Harry are in a secret romantic relationship. Listen here.


Call Chelsea Peretti


callchelsea

For the past couple of years, comedian, writer, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-star Peretti has masterminded this loose, funny, freeform call-in podcast. As Peretti’s schedule has gotten busier, her show has become more sporadic, but recent episodes have been great. Her interactions with callers are mostly unscripted (and many of the callers are far from professional radio personalities), so the podcast comes off as part improv comedy, part old-school AM radio. It’s sarcastic, silly, strange, and a lot of fun. Listen here.


Death, Sex & Money


dsm

Longish conversation-based podcasts are my jam. For whatever reason, I find it therapeutic to listen to people talk about the trials, triumphs, mistakes, and decisions that have helped them move ahead. On her terrific WNYC show, Anna Sale interviews celebrities and regular folks alike about some of life’s touchiest subjects, trading on her innate gift for getting people to open and up and share intimate details. Her guests’ stories reveal personal joys and pains, and you always feel privy to a greater understanding of the survival tactics that help people persevere. Listen here.



Open Source Databases Keep Chipping Away at Oracle’s Empire


open-source-database

Getty Images



The three fastest growing databases of 2014 were all open source, according to a new report from DB-Engines, a site that tracks popularity in the rapidly changing database marketplace.

The ever popular new-age database MongoDB topped the list again this year, with Redis, a tool for managing data, and ElasticSearch, which provides the foundations for building your own search engine, as runners up.


The lesson, both this year and last: if you want to gain traction in the database management system market, its a good idea to open source the thing, making the code freely available to the world at large.


The flagship product from software giant Oracle has dominated the database landscape for years, and it’s still sitting pretty at the top of the DB-Engines ranking, followed closely by MySQL, a database the company acquired as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2009. But the market has diversified in recent years, thanks to new data management techniques pioneered by the likes of Google and Amazon.


Drawing on these techniques, so-called “NoSQL” databases ditch the traditional relational database structure of storing data in neat rows and columns and enable developers to spread data across hundreds or thousands of servers—or develop much simpler applications that don’t as much structure. Oracle has tried to break into this field with its own Oracle NoSQL database and Oracle Big Data Appliance, but the real action remains in the world of open source, according to DB-Engines.


DB-Engines_Ranking_Open_Source_vs__Commercial_DBMS


The DB-Engines ranking system was created by the Austrian technology consulting firm Solid IT to help its developers decide which new technologies were worth learning about and which were marginal. To rank databases, Solid IT analyzes data from many sources, such as Google Trends, LinkedIn, and various job listing sites, and assigns each system a score. To determine the fastest growing database systems, the company looked at which ones had the biggest change in their scores.


Closed source databases like Oracle, Microsoft SQL, and IBM DB2 are still enormously popular, according to DB-Engines, but the fastest growing databases are all open source. And according to a separate report, open source overall databases are gaining traction faster than closed source databases.


Last year’s biggest movers were MongoDB, the more traditional database PostgreSQL and Cassandra, a big data system open sourced by Facebook. This year, MongoDB is still growing faster than any other database system. It’s now the 5th most popular database overall.


Redis, which took second place, has long been the third most popular NoSQL database on DB-Engines, and its popularity is continuing to grow. Unlike systems like Cassandra and Hbase, which focus on juggling enormous amounts of data, Redis is designed to help developers handle small amounts of quickly changing data, such as whether a particular user is logged in or not, and what’s in their shopping cart.


But according to Solid IT co-founder Matthias Gelbmann, it’s starting to be used for more than just that. “We often see, that once Redis is installed for caching, and people see the speed and reliability of it, they start moving more and more functionality there,” he wrote in a blog post about the DB-Engines rankings.


Meanwhile, ElasticSearch provides another piece of the data puzzle: it makes it easier to actually find all the information that you collect. Not unlike closed source products from companies like Autonomy, ElasticSearch can be used to index internal documents and other files so that companies can create their own internal Google-style search engines.


A similar piece of software called Solr actually ranks higher on the DB-Engines list. But ElasticSearch, the newer of the two open source search engine platforms, had more growth in 2014. This suggests the two products might finally be on their way to displacing closed source alternatives.



The Robotification of Society is Coming


Robots look cute and safe - for now.

A LEGO Mindstorms robot. Robots look cute and safe – for now. Rhett Allain



I didn’t invent the word “robotification”. It already exists. But here is my version of the definition.



Robotification: The process by which tasks normally performed by humans are replaced with machines of some kind. These machines could be mechanical or electronic. Past tense: robotified.



You might think robotification is something that will happen in the future. Nope. It’s already started. Scholars might debate the exact beginning of the robotification of Earth, but we should all agree that it has already started. Just take a moment and look around you. How many things do you interact with that were once done by humans but are now performed by machines?


Here are some examples.



  • The ATM – which stands for Automated Teller Machine. Do not call it an ATM machine – that’s redundant.

  • Robot arms in car factories. Yes. This is what most people think of when they hear “robot”. Actually, these are pretty dumb as far as robots go.

  • Google self driving cars – well, any self driving car. It doesn’t have to be made by Google.

  • WolframAlpha. This is sort of like a robot that answers questions and gathers data. It’s also a lot like Siri or Ok Google.

  • Self checkout at the grocery store. Oh sure, you are doing part of the work – but a machine is also replacing a human at least in part.

  • Watson – the computer. This is the robot-computer that competed in Jeopardy!


Of course there are also examples of robots that are actual robots.



Robots and computers (which I will just call robots from now on) can’t take over everything right now – but they are making progress.


Are Robots Going to Take My Job?


Yes. I think eventually, robots will take over your job. If you work in the fast food industry, I think at this point the whole restaurant could just be run by robots. I’m not trying to insult fast food workers – I’m just trying to tell the truth. A robot can make some chicken nuggets and a robot can take your order. Robots can clean up and they don’t make many mistakes.


Fine, but what about higher level jobs? What about an accountant? I think the days are numbered for accountants. Can a robot read? Yup. Can a robot calculate? You bet. Can a robot follow the rules associated with taxes and payments and stuff? Absolutely. Just look at online programs like TurboTax. What about musicians and artists? Yes, robots can sort of create music already.


Will we have robot physics professors? I don’t know. I guess eventually robots will be smart enough to help humans learn, but this seems like a difficult task (it’s tough even for humans to teach humans). What about writing a blog post that uses video analysis to analyze the motion of the Millennium Falcon? Well, that might be the last job that robots take over.


I think this video has a nice summary of robots taking over our jobs.


See. I’m not the only one that thinks robots are going to take over.


When Will the Robots Finish Their Takeover of Society?


Who knows. Some changes are slow. The industrial revolution didn’t happen overnight. The conversion from horse transportation to automobiles took some time also. But what about the information revolution? That seems like it was much faster. If you think back to 1995, how many people were using the Internet in some way? Not many. In just 20 years, the Internet is everywhere. So, these changes can sometimes be fast.


What Will We Do When the Robots Take Over?


I think this depends on how the robots take over. I can see three futures.


Star Trek Robot Future. In Star Trek, there are surely robots. But I think the robots just do jobs so that the humans can do different things. It’s sort of the like the invention of farming. Once humans invented farming, they could have some people farm and other people do other things like art and theater and plan how to take over the world. In Star Trek, the robots are like that. They let humans do human things. It’s awesome. Plus they have transporters.


RoboCop – WALL-E Future. In both of these movies, the big corporation is in charge. If robots are created and used by businesses so that they can be more profitable, then this is what we could get. I fear that this might be the case. Maybe Taco Bell will build the first fully robot restaurant. Before we know it, Taco Bell controls everything and everything is done for profit. In this case, we could end up as either rich multi-trillionaire CEOs or as peasants that do whatever Taco Bell wants. FYI – I am just using Taco Bell as an example. I’m not saying Taco Bell is evil.


Terminator – Matrix Future. Maybe the robots get to a point where they don’t even need humans. Maybe they decide that humans just get in the way and need to be eliminated (or controlled). Next thing you know we have terminator robots. Yes, this is bad. Oh, this is what Ultron does too – but in that world at least they had the Avengers to fight him.


I guess there is one other optional future. What about a future where WE become the robots? What if we figure out a way to incorporate robots and humans together to make something that isn’t human and isn’t a robot. This could end up like the Star Trek Borg or maybe something else.


What Can We Do to Prepare for Robotification?


Here is the important part. I think we could try to prevent robotification, but it might be too late. Just imagine trying to get everyone to stop using smart phones. Yes, that would be difficult.


Instead, I think the best plan is to educate in a way that is perpendicular to the direction of robotification. What does that even mean? Well, at first robots will take over simple things. So, we shouldn’t educate people to focus on simple things – robots will do those jobs. However, this also means that we shouldn’t be “job training” in education – especially in higher education. Unfortunately, this is what many administrators are pushing for. “Make the students ready for the real world.” But the real world is the future and the future is unknown. Preparing for the real world is preparing for the past. The past will be robots.


If colleges and universities stick with the “real world ready” strategy, they will be graduating students that will have to compete with robots. Guess what… robots will probably be cheaper and better than many college graduates.


As I’ve said many times, college isn’t about getting ready for a job. A university degree is about learning to be more human. This means that humans that work on a college degree should take all sorts of classes. They should learn to paint and write a poem. They should be able to explore the world with science. They should practice communicating and reflecting on our past. These are the things that make us human.


Maybe in the future we will have robots to take care of the things that we don’t want to do. This will leave us time to be more human. We can explore the universe and create things. It will be awesome. But what about money? Who needs money when you have robots.



The Robotification of Society is Coming


Robots look cute and safe - for now.

A LEGO Mindstorms robot. Robots look cute and safe – for now. Rhett Allain



I didn’t invent the word “robotification”. It already exists. But here is my version of the definition.



Robotification: The process by which tasks normally performed by humans are replaced with machines of some kind. These machines could be mechanical or electronic. Past tense: robotified.



You might think robotification is something that will happen in the future. Nope. It’s already started. Scholars might debate the exact beginning of the robotification of Earth, but we should all agree that it has already started. Just take a moment and look around you. How many things do you interact with that were once done by humans but are now performed by machines?


Here are some examples.



  • The ATM – which stands for Automated Teller Machine. Do not call it an ATM machine – that’s redundant.

  • Robot arms in car factories. Yes. This is what most people think of when they hear “robot”. Actually, these are pretty dumb as far as robots go.

  • Google self driving cars – well, any self driving car. It doesn’t have to be made by Google.

  • WolframAlpha. This is sort of like a robot that answers questions and gathers data. It’s also a lot like Siri or Ok Google.

  • Self checkout at the grocery store. Oh sure, you are doing part of the work – but a machine is also replacing a human at least in part.

  • Watson – the computer. This is the robot-computer that competed in Jeopardy!


Of course there are also examples of robots that are actual robots.



Robots and computers (which I will just call robots from now on) can’t take over everything right now – but they are making progress.


Are Robots Going to Take My Job?


Yes. I think eventually, robots will take over your job. If you work in the fast food industry, I think at this point the whole restaurant could just be run by robots. I’m not trying to insult fast food workers – I’m just trying to tell the truth. A robot can make some chicken nuggets and a robot can take your order. Robots can clean up and they don’t make many mistakes.


Fine, but what about higher level jobs? What about an accountant? I think the days are numbered for accountants. Can a robot read? Yup. Can a robot calculate? You bet. Can a robot follow the rules associated with taxes and payments and stuff? Absolutely. Just look at online programs like TurboTax. What about musicians and artists? Yes, robots can sort of create music already.


Will we have robot physics professors? I don’t know. I guess eventually robots will be smart enough to help humans learn, but this seems like a difficult task (it’s tough even for humans to teach humans). What about writing a blog post that uses video analysis to analyze the motion of the Millennium Falcon? Well, that might be the last job that robots take over.


I think this video has a nice summary of robots taking over our jobs.


See. I’m not the only one that thinks robots are going to take over.


When Will the Robots Finish Their Takeover of Society?


Who knows. Some changes are slow. The industrial revolution didn’t happen overnight. The conversion from horse transportation to automobiles took some time also. But what about the information revolution? That seems like it was much faster. If you think back to 1995, how many people were using the Internet in some way? Not many. In just 20 years, the Internet is everywhere. So, these changes can sometimes be fast.


What Will We Do When the Robots Take Over?


I think this depends on how the robots take over. I can see three futures.


Star Trek Robot Future. In Star Trek, there are surely robots. But I think the robots just do jobs so that the humans can do different things. It’s sort of the like the invention of farming. Once humans invented farming, they could have some people farm and other people do other things like art and theater and plan how to take over the world. In Star Trek, the robots are like that. They let humans do human things. It’s awesome. Plus they have transporters.


RoboCop – WALL-E Future. In both of these movies, the big corporation is in charge. If robots are created and used by businesses so that they can be more profitable, then this is what we could get. I fear that this might be the case. Maybe Taco Bell will build the first fully robot restaurant. Before we know it, Taco Bell controls everything and everything is done for profit. In this case, we could end up as either rich multi-trillionaire CEOs or as peasants that do whatever Taco Bell wants. FYI – I am just using Taco Bell as an example. I’m not saying Taco Bell is evil.


Terminator – Matrix Future. Maybe the robots get to a point where they don’t even need humans. Maybe they decide that humans just get in the way and need to be eliminated (or controlled). Next thing you know we have terminator robots. Yes, this is bad. Oh, this is what Ultron does too – but in that world at least they had the Avengers to fight him.


I guess there is one other optional future. What about a future where WE become the robots? What if we figure out a way to incorporate robots and humans together to make something that isn’t human and isn’t a robot. This could end up like the Star Trek Borg or maybe something else.


What Can We Do to Prepare for Robotification?


Here is the important part. I think we could try to prevent robotification, but it might be too late. Just imagine trying to get everyone to stop using smart phones. Yes, that would be difficult.


Instead, I think the best plan is to educate in a way that is perpendicular to the direction of robotification. What does that even mean? Well, at first robots will take over simple things. So, we shouldn’t educate people to focus on simple things – robots will do those jobs. However, this also means that we shouldn’t be “job training” in education – especially in higher education. Unfortunately, this is what many administrators are pushing for. “Make the students ready for the real world.” But the real world is the future and the future is unknown. Preparing for the real world is preparing for the past. The past will be robots.


If colleges and universities stick with the “real world ready” strategy, they will be graduating students that will have to compete with robots. Guess what… robots will probably be cheaper and better than many college graduates.


As I’ve said many times, college isn’t about getting ready for a job. A university degree is about learning to be more human. This means that humans that work on a college degree should take all sorts of classes. They should learn to paint and write a poem. They should be able to explore the world with science. They should practice communicating and reflecting on our past. These are the things that make us human.


Maybe in the future we will have robots to take care of the things that we don’t want to do. This will leave us time to be more human. We can explore the universe and create things. It will be awesome. But what about money? Who needs money when you have robots.



Adventures in Mapmaking: Mapping a Fracking Boom in North Dakota


US oil production has been booming the past few years, due in large part to North Dakota’s Bakken formation, a rock layer tapped through fracking. Each well travels down about two miles, then turns horizontally and snakes through the rock formation for another two miles. There were 8,406 of these Bakken wells, as of North Dakota’s latest count. If you lined them all up—including their vertical and horizontal parts—they’d loop all the way around the Earth.


As a journalist digging into the long-term potential for shale oil—how much oil it might supply, and at what economic and environmental costs—I wanted to create a map showing the extent of this drilling boom to help me look for trends. In this post, I’ll explain how I did that, but first I want to say why this matters.


If there is a lot less oil and natural gas available at affordable prices, this could be good news or bad news, depending on your values, and how the country reacts. If we have a realistic sense of the size of the resource available, and plan for the long term, we could make a smooth transition away from oil and gas, toward other options with much lower greenhouse gas emissions, such as wind and solar, and also make stronger efforts for energy efficiency. On the other hand, if our estimates and forecasts for oil and gas are too optimistic, we could wind up in a bind, dependent on fossil fuels that are significantly more expensive than we’d expected.


In a recent feature for Nature, “The Fracking Fallacy,” I reported on differing forecasts for the future of shale gas. If the US continues to try to extract natural gas as fast as possible, and also to export as much as possible, this could lead to much higher energy prices that would likely have a large impact on the economy. As one researcher I spoke with put, we could be “setting ourselves up for a major fiasco.” I’m also following fracking trends in my ongoing data journalism project, The Frack Lab.


How long can North Dakota’s boom continue? And how will it fare if oil prices remain around their current relatively low price, of about $50 a barrel? It could be that companies have stopped drilling in some areas, or started drilling in new areas. It could be that they’re drilling at much higher density in areas that are particularly attractive—especially since oil prices have dropped drastically over the past six months. Tracking how many wells have been drilled in recent months, and where they’ve been drilled, could show how companies are responding to lower oil prices. I wanted to do this to supplement my own reporting, but also to let anybody who’s interested explore the data more easily.


Oil well pads indicate fracking activity in the Bakken formation.

Oil well pads indicate fracking activity in the Bakken formation. Seth Haines / USGS



There are some maps out there already, including an online interactive map from North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources (ND DMR), and other groups have created their own maps of fracked wells across the nation, like the non-profit FracTracker. To get an impression of the extent of the boom, there are the mind-bending graphics in this New York Times piece, showing a tangle of lines obscuring the sky. But I haven’t seen any interactive maps out there that let ordinary citizens easily explore the extent of this boom.


To make my map (see a larger version here), I took the same data the New York Times used and plotted it out using the open-source program TileMill, creating an interactive map that allows you to, um, drill into the data. It appears the New York Times used a large shapefile available from the ND DMR, for nearly all horizontal wells, showing their curvy paths in detail. To get this file, I went to their ArcIMS Server, and clicked on the button in the upper-right, which opened up a list of shape files. The one I used was “Horizontals_Lines.zip”. I unzipped it, created a new project in Tilemill and added the shapefile as a layer.


On top of this layer, I’ve added the locations of each wellhead, with the most recently drilled ones highlighted in red. This wellhead data is available only through ND DMR’s basic subscription at $50 a year. If you’re into this kind of data, it’s definitely worth the price, since it gives you access to all sorts of details—monthly production rates for each well and well files that give extensive details, including which rock layer the well is tapping. (Yes, I’m obsessed.)


With the wells drilled during 2014 highlighted in red, it’s clear that drilling has contracted to focus mainly on a core area in the center, rather than pushing out into new areas.


Also, North Dakota allows drillers to put new wells on “confidential” status, typically for about six months. I’ve marked those in orange. The details on these wells—where exactly each horizontal well threaded its way through the rock, when the wells started producing oil, and how much they yielded—is kept private until confidential status expires. Since the horizontal well paths are kept private, they don’t show up on this map, so you’ll see lone orange dots with no horizontal wells—not because they’re not there, but because the data isn’t available yet. Since most wells get put on confidential status initially, the locations of these wells gives you an idea of where companies have been drilling most recently.


From afar, it’s just a forest of lines. But if you zoom in, you’ll see that some areas have wells tightly packed in, whereas other areas have a solo wells. From what I’ve read—such as in assessments like those from geologist David Hughes in his recent report “Drilling Deeper”—the densely drilled areas are those where wells yield the most oil. These are the “sweet spots,” as the industry calls them.


To help distinguish the drilling hotspots from the less attractive areas, I’ve made all the wellhead location markers partially transparent. This is because companies often drill several wells on a single “pad,” an area of they clear where they set up the drilling rig and park all the trucks that bring in the millions of gallons of water that they pump into the wells at enormous pressures to fracture the rock, and the thousands of tons of sand that the water forces into those fractures. (The sand stays behind, holding the cracks open so that the oil and gas will continue to flow out.)


Even when you zoom in as close as the web version of this map will allow, what looks like a single well could actually be a few wells nearly on top of each other, so to show the real density of the wells, I had to make the markers partially transparent.


The companies are able to drill out from the pad at an angle, so as they tunnel down, they’re also veering off to the side. Then when they approach the horizontal rock formation they’re targeting, they turn the drill so it travels horizontally. They’re able to drill with amazing accuracy, steering through rock layers that are often just 50 feet or so thick, with the well typically staying within 10 feet or so of its target path. If you look around, you can see where these pads are, with a bunch of wells radiating from them, then all turning and running parallel to each other.


There are also large areas that have been drilled in the past, but have few red dots. These seem to be areas where companies have ceased drilling in the past year or so. My guess is that these did not yield enough oil to be profitable—even before the price drop that started this summer. The orange dots are fairly tightly clustered in the center, and in a few outlying areas. You don’t see orange dots around the edges of the area that has been drilled so far. This also suggests that in more recent drilling, companies are concentrating on the central core, and a few smaller outlying areas that are also attractive. The data here are up-to-date as of December 17.


This map alone won’t answer those big questions I had, about how long the boom in North Dakota might last. But tracking how the boom is unfolding is one crucial part of understanding the potential for the long-term.



CES 2015 Liveblog Day 4