Tech Crunch: Uber’s API Now Lets Other Apps Add a “Ride Request Button,” But Not Competitors Too

Uber’s latest growth strategy is to colonize the mobile app landscape with its new Ride Request Button. Launching this week, iOS and Android app developers can more easily plug in an SDK with a few lines of code to add a Ride Request Button to their apps that deep-links into Uber’s app.

In exchange for the literal traffic, Uber will pay U.S. developers $5 for each first-time rider they refer. Previously, developers had to hassle with building custom deep-linked integrations. One catch is that Uber’s policy bans developers from also integrating hooks into any other competing car service, like Lyft.

Utility Dive: Is TASC Splintering the Rooftop Industry?

From Maine to Hawaii, dozens of states have regulatory proceedings open that concern the value of solar, whether it be a net metering docket or an attempt to find a more comprehensive valuation mechanism.

The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) has been a major intervenor in a number of such proceedings since its founding in April 2013, aggressively lobbying for the preservation of retail rate net metering and other pro-solar policies.

TASC’s backers say its tactics get results, but others decry its behavior in regulatory dockets as counterproductive to utility-solar dialogue.

Inside Climate News: Exxon Likely to Miss NY Climate Probe Deadline

ExxonMobil Corp. will probably miss a Dec. 4 deadline for turning over to New York state prosecutors almost four decades of documents on climate change, according to people familiar with the attorney general's investigation of the fossil fuel giant.

It may take Exxon into next year to fully comply with a subpoena issued last month by the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, according to the sources, who said they couldn't comment on the record because they aren't authorized to discuss the investigation. The delay reflects the sheer scope of the records investigators are seeking on the company's climate science research and communications about it, they said.

New York Times: Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Denial

Future historians -- if there are any future historians -- will almost surely say that the most important thing happening in the world during December 2015 was the climate talks in Paris. True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming. But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.

Then again, they might not; we may be doomed. And if we are, you know who will be responsible: the Republican Party.

Scientific American: Cooling Panels Pull Heat from Buildings, Beam It Into Space

Air-conditioning accounts for nearly 15 percent of building energy use in the U.S. today. The number of days with record heat could soar in the coming decades. These two facts present a difficult problem: In a warming world, how can we cool our homes and workplaces while reducing energy use?

Researchers at Stanford University say part of the solution is a material that sucks heat from sun-drenched buildings and radiates it into outer space.