Experienced commercial pilot Chris Goodfellow, writing at Wired:

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca.

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.

Fifteen years ago, that wouldn’t have been possible. In my mind, it’s an elegant demonstration of how the spread of geographic information has changed the world for the better.

Dirk Hanson, writing for Nautilus:

[Sandia National Laboratory physicist Jeff] Tsao calculates that, as a result, light represents a constant fraction of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) over time; the world has been spending 0.72 percent of its GDP for light for 300 years now. […]

The Sandia group forecasts that “the developed countries are nearing a saturation point in average illuminance, but plausible arguments can be made that the saturation point may yet be a factor of 10 or more higher.” Even a factor of 10 is small compared to the distance we’ve come, and may be reached in the not-too-distant future.

Damian Carrington, reporting for the Guardian:

Scientists knew many creatures avoid power lines but the reason why was mysterious as they are not impassable physical barriers. Now, a new understanding of just how many species can see the ultraviolet light – which is invisible to humans – has revealed the major visual impact of the power lines. […]

Dr Nicolas Tyler, an ecologist at UIT The Arctic University of Norway and another member of the research team, said: “The flashes occur at random in time and space, so the power lines are not grey and passive, but seen as lines of light flashing.”

He said the discovery has global significance: “The loss and fragmentation of habitat by infrastructure is the principle global threat to biodiversity – it is absolutely major. Roads have always got particular attention but this will push power lines right up the list of offenders.” The avoidance of power lines can interfere with migration routes, breeding grounds and grazing for both animals and birds.

Ferris Jabr, writing an op-ed for the New York Times:

Why is it so difficult for scientists to cleanly separate the living and nonliving and make a final decision about ambiguously animate viruses? Because they have been trying to define something that never existed in the first place. Here is my conclusion: Life is a concept, not a reality.

It’s a thought provoking argument, and controversial, judging by this Twitter thread and others. Well worth a read.

Love it or hate it, daylight savings time is back in the U.S. Personally, I prefer DST. Mike the Mad Biologist explains why I’m not alone in a little more detail:

Every time we go on or off Daylight Saving Time, like clockwork (forgive the pun), there is a flurry of articles defending or attacking Daylight Saving Time (‘DST’). Well, put me in the supporters of Daylight Saving Time camp–I HATE going off it. Living in Boston, I don’t actually know very many (any, really) people who like ‘leaping back.’ Why?

Well, it’s the longitude, baby.

Josie Garthwaite, writing for Smithsonian:

In the Kelabit Highlands of Borneo, for example, pollen samples dated to about 6,500 years ago contain abundant charcoal evidence of fire. That alone doesn’t reveal a human hand. But scientists know that specific weeds and trees that flourish in charred ground would typically emerge in the wake of naturally occurring or accidental blazes. What Hunt’s team found instead was evidence of fruit trees. “This indicates that the people who inhabited the land intentionally cleared it of forest vegetation and planted sources of food in its place,” Hunt explained in a statement about the study.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, some highway interchanges are pretty impressive.

Randall Munroe rounds ‘em up. Spoiler: Wild mammals barely make an appearance.

Being only about mammals, this is obviously biased. (Including insects, for example, would change the picture dramatically, as would bacteria, which Munroe notes in the image’s title tag.) But it does say something about our preference for similar forms of life, both for consumption and companionship.

The World Resources Institute has assembled a comprehensive web map that tracks deforestation and aforestation since 2000. Adjust the interval to see trends over time. 

One thing I like is that it isn’t limited to the tropics. Discussions about deforestation often focus on that region of the world, as though it houses the only remaining “pristine” ecosystems. Global Forest Watch also trains the spotlight on temperate—and developed—countries, which play a significant but often overlooked role.

John Coté and Marisa Lagos, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Tech giant Google has agreed to donate $6.8 million to San Francisco to fund free Muni passes for low- and middle-income youth, under a deal brokered by Mayor Ed Lee, city officials said Thursday.

Good on them. This probably won’t do much to stem the animosity many in the city have for Google, but it’s a start. Still, it highlights a cascading series of civic problems.

1. This sort of thing should probably be covered by the city’s budget, which should be funded by taxes. 
2. Problem is, Google isn’t based in San Francisco and so doesn’t have to, or actually can’t, pay taxes to the city. So they donate. But in donating they get to pick and choose which parts of the city they support. Not saying this is a bad choice, but still, they have that luxury.
3. What this really reveals are the shortcomings of local governance. Cities are increasingly smaller parts of regions that have much bigger problems. Regional governments aren’t designed for the way we live today.

Yours truly, writing at NOVA Next about perovskite, a new photovoltaic that’s been getting a fair amount of press:

The road from the laboratory to the rooftop can be filled with unexpected speed bumps, something known all too well by researchers and manufacturers of copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS, a photovoltaic material that’s just recently available on the market. In fact, the story of CIGS could be viewed as a cautionary tale, one that might temper some of the excitement surrounding perovskite.

John McDuling, writing for Quartz:

In a note published this morning, the investment bank posits that Elon Musk’s electric car company, which will unveil its plans to build  the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery pack facility this week, is poised to disrupt the $1.5 trillion electric utility industry. Tesla doesn’t just make high-performance automobiles, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas argues, it’s also producing a mobile fleet of electrical grid storage.  The 40,000 Tesla vehicles already on the US roads contain about 3.3 gigawatts of storage capacity, roughly 0.3% of US electrical production capacity and 14% of US grid storage, he estimates.

Europe. And the U.S., but mostly Europe.

Frank Swain:

The Pyrenean ibex was a type of Iberian wild goat that lived in Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain. No one is sure what caused the species to decline, but the last surviving individual, a female named Celia, was crushed to death under a falling tree in January 2000.

Shalani Ramachandran, reporting for the Wall Street Journal:

Netflix Inc. has agreed to pay Comcast Corp. to ensure Netflix movies and television shows stream smoothly to Comcast customers, a landmark pact that could set a precedent for Netflix’s dealings with other broadband providers, people familiar with the matter said.

In exchange for payment, Netflix will get direct access to Comcast’s broadband network.

Previously, these peering agreements didn’t involve money. After all, Netflix pays for their connection to the larger internet and so do consumers. By extracting payment from Netflix, Comcast is essentially double-charging for traffic that consumers already paid for. This gives Netflix a priority slot in the process, but it also violates the principle of net neutrality says that providers like Comcast shouldn’t prioritize one source of traffic over another. 

Many people have predicted (and feared) that the day would come when a content provider would pay an internet provider for priority access to broadband subscribers. Now that it’s here, I can’t help but wonder why it happened now and with Comcast, especially when you consider that Netflix and Verizon have also been duking it out over the same issue (arguably in a more public way).

The answer, I think, is that Netflix is using Comcast’s bid to buy Time Warner to its advantage. As a part of the buyout approval process, both the FCC and the Department of Justice will be scrutinizing Comcast’s moves and market power in the coming months. Having made this payment, Netflix can make the case to either the FCC or the DoJ that pre-Time Warner Comcast has used its dominance in broadband—about 27 percent of the market—to extract payments from content providers like itself. Netflix could argue that if the Time Warner deal goes through, Comcast will have nearly 50 percent of the market, and its bargaining power to demand such payments will further increase. 

Netflix’s deal with Comcast is defensive in two ways—one, it helps ensure that the streaming media company doesn’t lose customers because of poor video quality, and two, it’s an attempt to convince the government that Comcast and its peers need to be reigned in. How the government reacts to it will almost certainly shape the future of the internet.

I wasn’t surprised that cities are responsible for the majority, but the degree of concentration is striking.

There’s some debate in the Reddit thread about whether this actually represents where the economic activity is taking place—in other words, do people commute from cities out to worksites? I don’t think accounting for that would change things substantially. Gizmodo seems to have some issues with it, too, but they don’t specify what they are.

And while the map is thought-prokoving, I think it’s unfair to rural regions. After all, without them, cities couldn’t exist.

Alissa Walker, writing for Gizmodo:

Two North Dakota cities are in the top five thanks to a burgeoning oil industry that’s building instant cities in the Great Plains. The explosive increase in oil production has transformed Williston and other cities into boom towns with dramatic population spikes. In Williston, a city on the edge of the Bakken Oil Fields, the population has doubled in the last five years, from 14,700 in the 2010 census to over 30,000 people today. The growth is akin to the way the Gold Rush quickly urbanized parts of California in mid-1800s.

I wonder if North Dakota’s urbanization will persist. California has lots going for it, including fertile farmland, ocean access, and warm weather. Those and more helped it remain relevant long after the gold rush was over. 

Slick web map from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Annalee Newitz:

As people lose jobs in the middle of the country, and the income disparity between city dwellers grows beyond anything we’ve known in this generation, it’s handy to have a caricature to blame. Because who really wants to do all the mental math to figure out that it’s not just a few shitty techies, but in fact an economic system that over-rewards some people while under-rewarding almost everybody else? It’s easier to hate over-simplified symbols than it is to challenge our whole troubled economy.