Much ado about Nothing – HTTPS and Ion Cannons

Technology news was a real mixed bag this morning. Google’s official move to HTTPS forced searches was front page for the last few days, but is it news?

Chrome Plated Ion Cannon
I can’t mention Ion Cannons without including this pic. Sorry.

No. Not really. We mentioned the Google HTTPS move with a heap of sarcasm back in October 2011 when the HTTPS only work began. Back then it wasn’t very exciting news either, all it means is that services ‘spying’ on Google searches can no longer do that with such ease.

Technically it’s also paving the way for some innovation down the road but that’s a wait and see spin off from the move. In all honesty I’d rather spend 8 mins watching the team handle search quality issues and see what sorts of discussions go on behind the scenes:
[jwplayer mediaid=”3559″]

How’s that for transparency?

Ion Cannons?

I’m shooting this news piece down but it’s not really that bad of a headline.

Twin Creeks Technologies has successfully built a particle accelerator so powerful (100mA at 1 MeV) that it can produce solar panel medium at 200 micrometer thickness at very low costs. Here’s an image of the ‘Hyperion Particle Accelerator’:
Hyperion Particle Accelerator

The result is an estimated cost of $0.40 per watt for domestically manufactured solar panels. This is currently almost half the price of solar panels which are built in Chinese factories and shipped across the ocean in diesel burning ships.

So I will grant this headline some reprieve, it’s far more interesting than Google’s announced HTTPs only for search queries, but is it just an attempt by solar panels to get back into the spotlight (oh man) after the recent news about heat-conversion LEDs? It certainly would be nice to have a cheap solar panel solution if we are able to abundantly produce light from free heat energy? 🙂