The Wastebook

Nasa’s Map-Based Population Estimation Tool

Kottke found a cool NASA tool: NASA has built a service for estimating populations, part of which is a map hosted by Columbia on which you can draw a circle or a shape and the map will give you an estimate of the population contained by the shape. First, you look at the map. Then you draw a shape on the map. Then the map tells you how many people live in your shape. Check it out here

The Waffle House Index

The Waffle House (supposedly) serves FEMA with big, greasy, data following hurricanes: If a Waffle House reports in to FEMA that it’s open and operating, that’s a green indication, so the community is bouncing back. Yellow means that it’s operating in a limited capacity without a full menu. Finally, red means the restaurant isn’t open — and presumably things are bad. via TNW

Europe is Pushing Cars Electric

Electric cars seem like the future. I’ve seen more and more Tesla’s around. That weird BMW. Some Volts. Hybrids are so common that they’ve become unremarkable. Though I did come across the hybrid that most defies logic yesterday. I worked on launching this monstrosity. It seemed just as bad then as it does now. Now there’s a push in Europe to go completely electric. First, Volvo announced the…

The New Handbook For Cyberwar Is Being Written By Russia

Buzzfeed on Russia’s Cyberwar:: One US intelligence officer currently involved in cyber ops said, “It’s not that the Russians are doing something others can’t do. It’s not as though, say, the US wouldn’t have the technical skill level to carry out those types of attacks. It’s that Russian hackers are willing to go there, to experiment and carry out attacks that other countries would back away…