China is speeding up efforts to design and build a manned deep-sea platform to help it hunt for minerals in the South China Sea, one that may also serve a military purpose in the disputed waters.

Such an oceanic “space station” would be located as much as 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) below the surface, according to a recent Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg. — Bloomberg

The National Security Agency is researching opportunities to collect foreign intelligence — including the possibility of exploiting internet-connected biomedical devices like pacemakers, according to a senior official.

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When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things — billions of interconnected devices — would be “a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza,” [Richard Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director] replied, “Both.” — the Intercept

Scientists think they have found a smart way to constrain carbon dioxide emissions - just turn them to stone.

The researchers report an experiment in Iceland where they have pumped CO2 and water underground into volcanic rock.

Reactions with the minerals in the deep basalts convert the carbon dioxide to a stable, immobile chalky solid.

Even more encouraging, the team writes in Science magazine, is the speed at which this process occurs: on the order of months. — BBC

"For us it's a prototype. For us, a prototype means it will have another life,”

“Right now, our summer house operates at a scale of something maybe like furniture or something like a small building, but a prototype is something that has a resonance, it's something that lives beyond its four months here, that will occur on a different scale, in a different place.” — Archinect

Copenhagen has become the first city in the world to attempt to monetize its, and others’, data through a city data market.

Traffic snarl-ups, home break-ins, whether it rained or snowed, and how much electricity the city dwellers use each day is among the data to be traded for cash, city officials announced. Interestingly, the city, which is partnering with Hitachi on the project, also wants to incorporate others’ data. — Network World

The growing interest in blockchain has morphed its concept into something new. Before, the blockchain was simply the spine of the bitcoin network, but today the technology is being used on a burgeoning list of distributed ledgers with varying degrees of openness, security and complexity.

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Ethereum, a public blockchain platform created by Russo-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin...proposes to do away with middlemen everywhere, not just in finance. — Wired

Hackers may be pickin’ up good vibrations from your phone. All the better to surveil you with, my dear.

Researchers at the Electrical and Computer Engineering school of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered that the vibration motor in your devices can operate like a microphone, according to the researchers’ paper. That means, if a hacker rewires your vibration motor (which TechCrunch reported could be executed “in a minute or two”), they can listen to what you’re saying. — Medium

So a lot of us own or lease cars...But when the talk turns to autonomous cars – and it always does – I sigh. Our overcrowded highways really could use a break from human stupidity, and that human factor is behind nearly all of the fatalities and injuries and property damage we see strewn across our roads every day. Get rid of the human behaviour to save the human body! This is where autonomous cars make sense; but not all the world is a crowded, urban highway. — driving.ca

With the new mayor focusing our attention on smart development and social equality, 2016 will be a banner year for the London Festival of Architecture. Election watchers will be familiar with many of this year’s hot topics: community spaces, social housing, docklands renewal. But considering the theme this year is ‘community’, there will be something for every tribe of Londoner. Out of 300 events, we’ve picked the 10 must-sees. — thespaces.com

Liverpool's Riba North will have conference facilities and a gallery "at its heart", a spokeswoman said.

It will open in August with an exhibition of designs for Liverpool that were never built.
The centre, which will be housed in the Broadway Malyan-designed Mann Island on the city's waterfront, "will offer a magnificent opportunity to display Riba's historic collections, telling hundreds of years of the UK's extraordinary architectural history", Duncan said. — bbc.com

[Airbnb] says it will spend the next several months reviewing how hosts and guests interact on the site and what it could do to ensure users are treated more fairly. [...]

"The bottom line is that the design of platforms dictates the decisions that people make on them. Even if there’s implicit bias, [Airbnb has] an enormous amount of ability to change the extent of discrimination on the platform." — washingtonpost.com

A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.

“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said. — theguardian.com