California might soon make it practical for small internet providers to deliver speedy broadband, not just well-heeled incumbents. Ars Technicareports that the state Assembly and Senate have unanimously passed legislation that will create a statewide open fiber network that promises truly fast internet access from smaller ISPs, particularly in rural or otherwise underserved areas.

The strategy will devote $3.25 billion to the construction of a “middle-mile” network that won’t directly connect customers, but should make it much easier for ISPs to launch or upgrade their service. Another $2 billion will help those providers establish last-mile connections to users.

Governor Newsom has yet to sign the legislation into law, but that’s considered a formality when he made agreements on details with legislators.

The network met resistance from larger ISPs that lobbied to block the reach of the open fiber network. It might have a significant impact on internet access in the state, however. While state and federal governments have pushed for improved rural broadband coverage for years, the focus has usually been on merely offering service rather than upgrading quality. This could bring truly competitive speeds to underserved areas and ensure they can access the same services as people subscribed to major broadband companies.

Source: Engadget – California’s upcoming open fiber network could make fast broadband more accessible

The best part of waking up is, of course, hot bean juice in your cup. But, as Dr. Kate “The Chemist” Biberdorf explains in her new book It’s Elemental, if you want to consistently enjoy the best cuppa joe you can craft — perfectly caffeinated and not too bitter — a bit math is necessary. And it’s not just coffee. Biberdorf takes readers on a journey through mundane moments of everyday life, illustrating how incredible they actually are — if you stop to examine about the chemistry behind them.  

Excerpted from It’s Elemental by Kate Biberdorf, Copyright © 2021 by Kate Biberdorf. Published by Park Row Books.

Coffee and tea are much more potent sources of caffeine than soda. In one cup of coffee, you are likely to ingest around 100 mg of caffeine, but it can be up to 175 mg with the right coffee beans and technique. The whole process of making coffee beans (and coffee itself) is pretty fascinating if you’ve never given it much thought. For example, espresso makers and percolators get the most caffeine out of lighter roasted beans, but the drip method is the best way to get the most trimethylxanthine from darker beans. However, in general, light and dark roast coffees typically have the same relative number of caffeine molecules in each cup of coffee (excluding espressos).

Let’s look at the roasting processes to determine why that is. When the beans are initially heated, they absorb energy in what we call an endothermic process. However, at around 175°C (347°F), the process suddenly becomes exothermic. This means that the beans have absorbed so much heat that they now radiate the heat back into the atmosphere of the roasting machine. When this happens, the settings have to be adjusted on the equipment, in order to avoid over-roasting the beans (which sometimes results in burnt-tasting coffee). Some roasters will even toggle the beans between the endothermic and exothermic reaction a couple of times, to achieve different flavors.

Over time, roasting coffee beans slowly change from green to yellow, and then to a number of different shades of brown. We refer to the darkness of the bean as its “roast,” where the darker roasted coffee beans are much darker in color than the lighter roasted beans (surprise, surprise). Their color comes from the temperature at which they are roasted. Lighter beans are heated to about 200°C (392°F) and darker roasted beans to about 225–245°C (437–473°F).

But just before the beans start to, for lack of better words, lightly roast, the coffee beans go through their first “crack.” This is an audible process that occurs at 196°C (385°F). During this process, the beans absorb heat and double in size. But since the water molecules evaporate out of the bean when under high temperatures, they actually decrease in mass by about 15%.

After the first crack, the coffee beans are so dry that they stop readily absorbing heat. Instead, all of the thermal energy is now used to caramelize the sugars on the outside of the coffee bean. This means that the heat is used to break the bonds in the sucrose (sugar) into much smaller (and more fragrant) molecules. The lightest roasts—like cinnamon roast and New England roast—are heated just past the first crack before being removed from the coffee roaster.

There is a second crack that occurs during the roast, but at a much higher temperature. At 224°C (435°F), the coffee beans lose their structural integrity, and the bean itself starts to collapse. When this happens, you can usually hear it by a second “pop.” Dark roasts are typically categorized by any beans that have been heated past the second crack—like French and Italian roasts. In general, due to the hotter temperatures, darker beans tend to have more of their sugars caramelized, while lighter beans have less. The variation in flavor due to these methods is wild, but it doesn’t really affect how they react in the body— only the taste.

Once you purchase your perfectly roasted coffee beans, you can do the rest of the chemistry at home. With an inexpensive coffee grinder, you can grind up your coffee beans to a number of different sizes, which will definitely affect the taste of your morning coffee. Small, fine grinds have a lot of surface area, which means the caffeine (and other flavors) can be extracted from the miniaturized coffee beans with ease. However, this can often result in too much caffeine being extracted, which gives the coffee a bitter taste.

On the other hand, coffee beans can be coarsely ground. In this instance, the insides of the coffee beans are not exposed to nearly the same degree as finely ground coffee beans. The resulting coffee can often taste sour—and sometimes even a little salty. But if you partner up the correct size of coffee grounds with the appropriate brewing method, you can make yourself the world’s best cup of coffee.

The simplest (and easiest way) to brew coffee is to add extremely hot water to coarse coffee grounds. After they have soaked in the water for a few minutes, the liquid can be decanted from the container. This process, called decoction, uses hot water to dissolve the molecules within the coffee beans. Most current methods of coffee brewing utilize some version of decoction, which is what allows us to drink a cup of warm coffee instead of chomping on some roasted beans. However, since this method does not contain a filtration process, this version of coffee—affectionately referred to as cowboy coffee—is prone to having coffee bean floaters. For that reason, it’s usually not the preferred brewing method.

By the way, did you notice that I was avoiding the term boiling? If you’re trying to make halfway decent cup of coffee, the hot water should never actually be boiled. Instead, the ideal temperature of the water is around 96°C (205°F), which is just below boiling (100°C, 212°F). At 96°C, the molecules that provide the aroma of coffee begin to dissolve. Unfortunately, when the water is just four degrees hotter, the molecules that give coffee a bitter taste dissolve as well. That’s why coffee nerds and baristas are so obsessed with their water temperature. In my house, we even use an electric kettle that allows us to select whatever temperature we want our water to be.

Depending on how strong you like your coffee to taste, you may be partial to the French press or another steeping method. Like cowboy coffee, this technique also soaks the coffee grounds in hot water, but these grounds are a little smaller (coarse versus extra coarse). After a few minutes, a plunger is used to push all of the grounds to the bottom of the device. The remaining liquid above the grounds is now perfectly clear and deliciously tasty. Since the coarse coffee grounds are used in this method, more molecules can dissolve in the coffee solution, providing us with a more intense flavor (compared to cowboy coffee).

Another technique: when hot water is dripped over coffee grounds, the water absorbs the aromatic molecules before dripping into the coffee mug. This process, appropriately called the drip method, can be done manually or with a high-tech machine, like a coffee percolator. But sometimes this technique is used with cold water, which means that the fragrant, aromatic molecules (the ones that give your coffee its distinctive smell) cannot dissolve in the water. The result is called Dutch iced coffee, a drink that is ironically favored in Japan, and takes about two hours to prepare.

Source: Engadget – Hitting the Books: The correct way to make coffee, according to science

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving subscription is finally available after multiple delays — and it might be a better value if you’d rather not commit to a purchase. Electreknotes that an updated Tesla mobile app now offers an FSD subscription for $199 per month to most users, or $99 if you bought Enhanced Autopilot before it was discontinued. You can cancel at any time, so you’re not tied to a minimum obligation past that first month.

You will need the relevant FSD computer (aka HW3.0). If your EV doesn’t have the hardware, you’ll need to buy it for $1,500 before subscribing.

This has been a long time in coming. Elon Musk first revealed plans for the subscription in April 2020, but Tesla missed stated goals to launch the feature in late 2020, early 2021 and even a “sure thing” launch in May.

The monthly outlay still isn’t a trivial expense, and it would still make more sense to pay the $10,000 upgrade price if you fully intend to use the FSD package for the life of your car. You’d start overpaying just 50 months into the subscription. Still, this might give you an excuse to try the not-quite-autonomous feature to see if it’s worth the investment. It might also make sense if you only think you’ll want FSD for short stints, such as a lengthy road trip where you’d rather let the car handle lane changes and traffic lights.

Source: Engadget – Tesla offers a Full Self-Driving subscription for 9 per month