As electric cars catch people's interest more and more every passing day, a team of students from Eindhoven University is taking a big leap into the future and embarking on a Euro trip in a solar-powered vehicle. What makes the project even more interesting is the fact that this vehicle is a full-fledge home with a living area, shower, cooking range, and even an infotainment system.
Dubbed Stella Vita, this mobile home is designed by the Solar Team, a team of ambitious students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who, according to their website, "innovate without preconceptions and pressure of market demands".
For decades, Kenya and surrounding countries focused on hydroelectric power and oil-fueled thermal stations, but lately they’ve awakened to the potential of their vast underground energy resources. The region sits astride the Great Rift Valley, an area where tectonic plates meet, bringing the magma at the Earth’s core closer to the surface. It’s one of the world’s most active volcanic zones—Mount Kilimanjaro lies at its heart—with dozens of hot springs hinting at the intense heat lying just below. Kenya gets nearly half of its electricity from geothermal plants, more than any other country, according to researcher Fitch Solutions, and it’s on track to increase that to almost three-fifths by 2030.
Royal Caribbean has announced a 9 month long "ultimate world cruise" to sail in December 2023 on its Serenade of the Seas (see tour of the ship below). COVID should be a distant memory by then and the world should be wide open.
I had two reactions
a) One of excitement - similar to that when I booked my first round the world ticket on Pan Am in the 1980s (in the end, I did 3 of those trips. The tickets were valid for 12 months so I could plan business and short vacations as part of the itinerary)
b) The other of horror - 9 months at sea, lining up for buffets, with patchy satellite wi-fi and rushed excursions at every port? Besides, you have to be retired, and comfortably so given the price, to think about the complete package.
In fact, when I heard about it, I joked it would be better to get on a tanker in Asia and sail to the LA area and get paid to enjoy time on the water as you await a slot at one of the clogged ports there.
However, my wife went through the fine print. You don't have to sign up for the entire 9 months. You can join for just one of the 4 segments:
Round the Horn: Americas & Antarctica Expedition: December 10, 2023 — February 11, 2024, 64 Nights, 36 destinations
Wonders of Asia & the Pacific Expedition: February 11, 2024 — May 9, 2024, 87 Nights, 40 destinations
Middle East Treasures & Marvels of the Med Expedition: May 9, 2024 - July 10, 2024, 63 nights, 44 destinations
Capitals of Culture Expedition: July 10, 2024 — September 10, 2024, 63 Nights, 40 destinations
Besides, we happened to be driving by the Port of Tampa today and I found out Serenade is spending the next few weeks making our fair city its home base. I am already feeling a bit more loyal and thinking this may be a bit more manageable, especially on one of 3 segments which only last 2 months. Yes, laugh at the "only 2 month" part, but compared to 9?
When I joined Gartner in the mid-90s, analysts qualified for a sabbatical for every 5 years of tenure. Of course, they did away with the policy before I qualified. Well, may be I can finally have my sabbatical 3 decades later on the Serenade?
Not so fast.
Royal Caribbean will prioritize those who book the entire cruise. They will also prioritize their elite Crown and Anchor members. The Serenade is one of the their older (20+ years in 2023) and smaller ships. Then there is the sticky issue of a non-refundable deposit 2 years in advance. Lots to think about.
In the end, it may end up becoming a bonus for Margaret more than a sabbatical for me. She has certainly earned it.
Readers, think of similar for your spouses. Even better, find reasons for your employers to sponsor this dream trip!
Spyce’s new food robot makes both salads and warm bowl food, and holds 49 separate recipes. Serving dishes are placed on a conveyor belt that runs underneath the dispensers, which automatically portion out the proper ingredients for each dish. There is also a plancha searing station to cook and dispense proteins and vegetables as well as a superheated steamer to cook pastas. The Infinite Kitchen can make up to 350 bowls in an hour, with the average bowl costing $11.
It is a bound version of posters from Fifty-Nine Parks which "believes that public lands and the art of printmaking are traditions worth preserving. Each of Fifty-Nine Parks’ posters are beautifully screen printed in the United States and represent artists from around the world. The poster series is archived by the Library of Congress, and a portion from each poster sale is donated to support the conservation of American public lands."
Creative Director JP Boneyard is interviewed here and says their posters are inspired by the original WPA (Work Projects Administration) posters of the 1930s.
That inspired me to create my own art - a montage of the posters of the Parks we have been to.
It also reminded me there are so many other ways these stunning parks are memorialized - like the brochures we have picked up from National monuments, national historic sites, national battlefields and national seashores. In addition to the 63 main parks, there are another 360 of these
And the trusty National Geographic guide, the Parks passport where you can get stamps from the locations you visit and the annual America the Beautiful Pass which makes it so easy to enter any of the increasingly crowded locations
Additionally, there are gorgeous videos like the one below and Ken Burns' series
Wondering if it’s worth upgrading to a higher class of service on your next flight? If you’re flying with Emirates, you’ll be able to virtually experience the airline’s cabins to see what they’re like before making your decision.
Boutros Boutros, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing and Brand says “In 2018, we were the world’s first airline to introduce advanced web VR technology on our digital platforms, offering our customers an immersive opportunity to learn about the fantastic Emirates experience…We’ve continued to invest and develop that experience, and today we are delighted to be the first airline to launch a fully-fledged Oculus VR app.”
In the Microsoft annual report, Satya Nadella identifies a handful of examples of innovation he is obviously proud of. I also found videos which provide additional perspective on each.
NASA’s Mars mission achieved a milestone in space exploration when the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity completed the first powered flight on another planet—a feat that would not have been possible without 12,000 developers on GitHub who contributed code to the open source software that powered the flight.
When a 1,300-foot ship blocked the Suez Canal and disrupted global shipping, our partner Blue Yonder used Microsoft AI technologies to help its customers find alternate sources for more than $500 million worth of products and parts affected by the delay.
Team Rubicon—a nonprofit organization that responds to humanitarian crises around the world—set up 169 COVID-19 response sites across the United States in just 30 days, using Dynamics 365 to manage the deployment of thousands of volunteers.
Surgeons at Mt. Sinai Health System in New York and Kyabirwa Surgical Centre in Uganda have together performed more than 500 surgeries using mixed reality technology that enables doctors in New York to provide annotated recommendations that appear in the field of vision of their Ugandan colleagues—even though they are thousands of miles apart.
Anheuser-Busch InBev—the world’s largest brewer—used Azure Digital Twins to create a comprehensive digital model of its breweries and supply chain. Synchronized with its physical environment, this model replicates the complex relationships between natural ingredients and the brewing process, enabling brewmasters to make adjustments based on real-time conditions.
Li-Fi stands for Light Fidelity and is to Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) as lidar is to radar. That is, Li-Fi uses light to do what Wi-Fi uses radio waves to do: provide "last meters" over-the-air delivery of internet service from a router to a user's computer, handheld device, or other inter net-connected gizmo.
There are many benefits and a few drawbacks. Data transmission is speed-of-light speedy, so the time it takes for messages to go back and forth (latency) is vastly lower than with Wi-Fi (0.5 millisecond versus perhaps 20.0 ms). Huge amounts of data can be exchanged quickly (theoretically up to 14 times faster than Wi-Fi), making the technology ideal for virtual- and augmented-reality applications. Li-Fi can be used where radio waves can't reach or where their presence is problematic some hospital equipment and medical patients can't tolerate radio interference, for example.
A quartet of houses designed by local firm Logan Architecture and built from 3D-printed concrete by construction tech company ICON has completed in Austin, Texas.
The four dwellings have ground-floor walls built using ICON's Vulcan construction system, which uses a robotic armature to layer Portland-cement-based material Lavacrete into striated surfaces.
"3D-printing technology provides safer, more resilient homes that are designed to withstand fire, flood, wind and other natural disasters better than conventionally built homes," said the company.
Rather than presenting a straightforward analysis, the new volume is organized around 10 factual essays, written by Lee, each explaining a different aspect of the technology and its potential impact over the next two decades. Each of these is then paired with a short work of speculative fiction by Qiufan, each set in a different country, with narratives centered around the same themes Lee identifies. The effect is a bit like reading an issue of McKinsey Quarterly and then watching an episode of the dark sci-fi TV series Black Mirror.
NASA just took an important step toward making flying taxis a practical reality. The agency has started flight testing with Joby Aviation's electric VTOL aircraft to help model and simulate future airspace with these taxis in service. The dry run began quietly, on August 30th, and will last through September 10th. The effort will include noise check using 50 microphones to gauge the "acoustic profile" of the air taxi throughout the course of a given flight.
This is the first eVTOL test as part of an Advanced Air Mobility campaign meant to spot gaps in the Federal Aviation Administration's rules and ensure the agency is ready for commercial use of flying taxis alongside delivery drones and other unconventional aircraft. The data from the flight program will help with a fuller set of campaign tests in 2022 involving both other taxis and more complicated flight situations.
Not just for a lazy day in the sun..as DMG Media describes
The British Airways i360, or the “donut on a stick” as locals call it, opened five years ago to offer bird’s eye views across the South Downs and English Channel (see video below)
Now, for the first time passengers can take the usual 138 metre ride in the viewing pod, before stepping into the tower itself and climbing a further 30-metres to an open-air platform.
Called the i360 Tower Top Climb, up to six guests can get together to climb the maintenance ladders within the tower, accompanied by two expert BA i360 technicians who will explain how the attraction operates, and take plenty of photos of the day.
The retired Gen. James M. Holmes, formerly of Air Combat Command, said the service might procure two iterations of the NGAD fighter: one with a longer range and payload for the Indo-Pacific theater, and another version optimized for shorter distances in the European theater.
NGAD will replace the F-22 Raptor sometime in the 2030s. The Air Force describes it as a family of flying platforms—both crewed and uncrewed—all working together to shoot down enemy planes. The service turned heads last year when it revealed it had designed, built, and flown the centerpiece of the program, the NGAD manned fighter, in just one year's time.
Like its signature marketplace, Amazon is trying to establish its health-related offerings as indispensable. The main way it’s doing that is by providing services that are integral to your everyday healthcare routines.
The company made three major announcements in this regard: an update to its Halo wearable, a new subscription service for independent seniors, and a roaming home robot with similar monitoring capabilities for aging adults.
Robots consistently dispense the same amount of food every time, resulting in less waste and tighter control over ingredients. Robots can also operate dangerous machinery like a deep fryer or pizza oven without getting injured. And especially important in our ongoing pandemic, not only do robots not get sick, but they create more social distance for other human workers inside a kitchen.
All of these reasons help explain why we are starting to see more food-creation robots come to market. XRobotics and Middleby both make commercial pizza-assembling robots. Last week, Hyphen unveiled its Makeline automated food assembly system for fast casual restaurants like Sweetgreen. And while Miso Robotics’ Flippy is already working the fryer at White Castle, the company recently announced a new automated drink dispenser for QSR drive-thrus.
Amazon is bringing its cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology to two new Whole Foods locations next year, the company has announced. One of the stores will be in Washington, DC, while the second will be in Sherman Oaks, California. When they’re open, customers will have the option of paying at a traditional self-checkout or customer service booth, or having the new technology automatically bill them when they leave the store.
Rocky Mountaineer’s inaugural Rockies to the Red Rocks route, traveling from Denver to the outdoor playground of Moab, Utah. The Canada-based Rocky Mountaineer train company, which has been around for more than three decades, is known for multi-day rail journeys that snake through the Canadian Rockies, with stops in destinations like Whistler and Banff in carriages that are at least half glass. Inside, the experience involves tablecloths, cocktails, plush leather chairs, and expert hosts who narrate the voyage.
Software entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who is known for his penchant for emerging technologies, has announced the launch of Colossal, a bioscience and genetics company. The organisation has been co-founded by Dr. George Church, a world-renowned geneticist and biotech entrepreneur, that will focus on the area of species de-extinction.
Working towards this goal, Colossal will be employing CRISPR technology and creating a “practical, working model of de-extinction”, a press release said. The revolutionary gene-editing technology will be used towards projects aimed at fighting the ill effects of climate change and aiding the restoration of extinct ecosystems.
With this, the company will be breaking new ground and will be the pioneer in applying advanced gene-editing techniques to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra, to begin with. The website of the organisation says that it will be “bringing back the woolly mammoth within the next 5 years”.
Mike Rowe talks about his new show "How America Works"
"This is us taking a single topic like logging and saying, "Okay, maybe you've heard some things about logging. Maybe you have formed some opinions about it." Rather than telling you how to think about the industry, we just introduce you to the regular people who put bread on the table by getting us the lumber we need to build the desk you're sitting at right now and the one underneath this glass, right? We just make it as personal as we can. We do the same thing with energy. We do the same thing with electricity. We go to the Hoover Dam and we just spend a day with people who are trying to repair and maintain the turbines, which provide electricity for about a sixth of the country. We do the same thing with waste management, just by hanging out with some garbage people for the better part of a day.
And people will be surprised by the degree of sophistication that informs all of these vocations. They'll be surprised by the passion that these workers feel for their jobs.
People are very confused about energy in general. And look, this is headline news, right? And the show doesn't try to be political or polemic, but you can't help but make the point: When it comes to energy, a lot of people think about electricity as being fundamentally clean, whereas maybe coal or oil they might think of as fundamentally dirty. What most people don't really understand though, is that their Tesla or their Prius that they plug in and feel great about plugging in, uses electricity and that electricity doesn't come from the electricity tree. It comes from a turbine and that turbine is spinning, and in the vast majority of cases, the energy that's being used to spin that turbine is being provided by natural gas or oil. And so what I hope we learn from the series is the way that we all are truly interconnected. You can't just arbitrage the part of the workforce that makes you uncomfortable in the equation."
The government of the impoverished Central American nation aims to spend up to $75 million as part of a plan to hand out $30 to people who sign up to an e-wallet called Chivo, or “Cool.” That software-based system would allow an estimated 2.5 million Salvadorans to buy goods or pay for services in U.S. dollars or bitcoin, El Salvador’s two official currencies as of Sept 7.
President Nayib Bukele has said that adopting bitcoin will help attract foreign investment, foster more and cheaper financial services and lower the cost of sending and receiving remittances, which reached a high of almost $6 billion last year. The 40-year-old president also wants to lure foreign investors to develop geothermal power from volcanoes to supply the large amounts of electricity needed for mining the cryptocurrency.
Google announced it will be applying AI advancements, including a new technology called Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to improve Google Search. At the company’s Search On event, the company demonstrated new features, including those that leverage MUM, to better connect web searchers to the content they’re looking for, while also making web search feel more natural and intuitive.
One of the features being launched is called “Things to know,” which will focus on making it easier for people to understand new topics they’re searching for. This feature understands how people typically explore various topics and then shows web searchers the aspects of the topic people are most likely to look at first.
Three popular travel destinations are celebrating 50 year birthdays.
Disney World, Orlando
Disney World began celebrating the property’s 50th anniversary, with confetti cannons turned up to full blizzard, the only setting that Disney Parks marketers have. The promotional event will last at least 18 months and will include new roller coasters for Epcot and the Magic Kingdom; a new high-end hotelmeant to simulate travel on a “Star Wars” galactic cruiser; two new fireworks extravaganzas; limited-edition merchandise; and MagicBand+, wearable technology that will unlock (for a price) interactive experiences.
Dubai opened Expo 2020 in an extravagant ceremony Thursday that bathed the site’s signature central dome in light, a symbolic beacon for the city-state’s hopes that the world’s fair will draw tourists despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Delayed a year by the virus, Expo 2020 has over 190 countries taking part in the event that will last six months. The futuristic extravaganza, complete with individual pavilions feels like an entire city, built on what were once rolling sand dunes on Dubai’s southern edges.
After spending $7 billion on the site, Dubai hopes it will attract new businesses and draw more foreigners to buy properties in the commercial hub of the United Arab Emirates.
You dont need to travel much anymore given its over 30K stores around the world, but it is also celebrating its 50th birthday and the brand is synonymous with travel.
The American lawn has been around for generations, but lately there has been a trend — though not a very big trend just yet — of people going in other directions. Why spend all summer fussing over a lawn when you could turn that space into a vegetable garden and have something to show for it? Why not throw down landscaping blocks and turn your front yard into a patio? How about letting wildflowers grow crazy just to see what happens?
Eight states will roll out a feature allowing users to add driver’s license and state IDs to Apple Wallet for iPhone and Apple Watch to use at security at participating airports, Apple announced Wednesday.
Arizona and Georgia are the first states to adopt the feature and Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah will follow, though the company did not specify a timeline.
Alexa, Amazon’s ubiquitous voice assistant, is getting an upgrade. The company revealed some of these changes in a virtual event today. One of the most interesting developments is that users can now personalize their Alexa-enabled devices to listen for specific sound events in their homes.
Amazon also unveiled new features and products, including additional accessories for Ring and Halo devices, and access to invite-only devices such as the Always Home Cam and a cute home-roving, beat-boxing robot called Astro.
Alexa’s latest capabilities are part of the Amazon team’s work on ambient computing—a general term that refers to an underlying artificial intelligence system that surfaces when you need it and recedes into the background when you don’t. This is enabled through the connected network of Amazon devices and services that interact with each other and with users.
Talk of artificial intelligence, quantum technology, hypersonic missiles, cyber weapons and other “undersea capabilities” may have been missed in the fanfare (and shock) of Australia’s plan to build its first fleet of nuclear submarines, but such things are also listed as part of the new technology-sharing AUKUS pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The fields are not new, and not just the domain of the AUKUS trio; many also appear in China’s latest five-year plan, for example. But experts say some of these technologies could disrupt the traditional battlefield before Australia’s nuclear submarine fleet is even online.
Istanbul has installed wind turbines that generate electricity using the air turbulence generated by traffic.
ENLIL is a vertical turbine developed by Istanbul Technical University and tech firm Devecitech have been placed on roadsides in Turkey’s largest city to harness the wind generated by passing vehicles, and to soak up solar energy at the same time.
The Marker unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is being developed by Russia’s equivalent of DARPA, the Foundation for Advanced Studies (FPI). It is armed with a 7.62mm machine gun and a pair of guided anti-tank missiles, and has been involved in several development projects.
According to the report, the tests were carried out in the Chelyabinsk region with two wheeled vehicles and one tracked. The longest journey was 100 kilometers which took over five hours, including on-road and off-road elements. The operator only needed to select the start and end points; the robot found its own route, creating a map as it went using cameras and other sensors. It automatically avoided obstacles while sticking to the fastest route.
Also during the pandemic, People magazine began covering instructors such as Rigsby and Arzón like celebrities (which they sort of are — some of Arzón’s rides can attract 20,000-plus riders, or roughly the capacity of Madison Square Garden). And talent agencies signed up instructors, including Emma Lovewell (UTA), Tunde Oyeneyin (ICM), and Rigsby and Ben Alldis (A3).
Despite the voluntary recall of Peloton’s two treadmill models in May after the death of a child (a $165 million hit to future revenue, according to company predictions) and a recently revealed data breach (since patched), the company is moving ahead.
When Peloton opens its new 20,000-square-foot London exercise studios and broadcast center later this year — it opened a hugely upgraded $50 million New York facility in 2020 — one feature will make Peloton’s media aspirations clear: a huge street-level window allowing passersby a peek into the control room.
To borrow a phrase from another form of wagering, teams and leagues are all in. Every major league has partnerships with sportsbooks and data companies. To pick one team among dozens, the Chicago Cubs’ deal with DraftKings exceeds $100 million a year. In Washington, D.C., a 20,000-square-foot sportsbook resides inside Capital One Arena. Ted Leonsis—owner of the Wizards, Mystics and Capitals, and a known sports gambling evangelist—told The Washington Post he has only one regret: He wishes the facility were bigger. The athletes, not unreasonably, want a piece of the action, too. Collective bargaining agreements may soon hinge not on salary caps, but on how to split gaming revenues.
Travel has grown difficult thanks to virus-related complexity, uncertainty, cancellations, delays, border restrictions and testing requirements. As a result, many travelers booking a beach getaway or other trips are turning to professionals to help them with plans. Travel advisers—don’t call them travel agents anymore—are cool again.
“With the pandemic, our credibility and our necessity have gone off the charts, and I think we’re now advocates,” says Jennifer Wilson-Buttigieg, co-president of Valerie Wilson Travel, a New York-based leisure and corporate travel agency that is a unit of Frosch International Travel. “Travel is possible. It’s just difficult.”
Business, through online inquiries or telephone calls, is up for travel agencies of all types and sizes, from large companies like InteleTravel to two-person operations and even to newly opened companies. According to a flash poll conducted by ASTA, the American Society of Travel Advisors, in early March, 76 percent of travel advisers are seeing an increase in customers in 2021, compared to before the pandemic, and 80 percent are hearing from travelers who have never worked with a travel adviser before.
“Reverse logistics”—the process of handling returned merchandise—has become increasingly complex. Retailers have to determine whether each returned item is fit to go back on shelves, can be refurbished, or must be scrapped. Stores have used disparate technologies and even manual systems to do this, to little effect: Some 5 billion pounds of merchandise go to waste annually. goTRG oversees more than 45 million returned items per year for Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, and others, using sophisticated software and a fleet of massive warehouses. After integrating specifics about each retailer’s catalogs, goTRG’s artificial intelligence determines the most profitable outcome for every item. Products may be refurbished, donated, recycled, or used for parts—all within goTRG facilities. “Our goal,” says cofounder and CEO Sender Shamiss, “is to convince retailers to give products a second life.”
Two years ago, DeJesus became the first umpire in a regular-season game anywhere to use something called the Automated Ball-Strike System. Most players refer to it as the “robo-umpire.” Major League Baseball had designed the system and was testing it in the Atlantic League, where DeJesus works. The term “robo-umpire” conjures a little R2-D2 positioned behind the plate, beeping for strikes and booping for balls. But, for aesthetic and practical reasons, M.L.B. wanted human umpires to announce the calls, as if playacting their former roles. So DeJesus had his calls fed to him through an earpiece, connected to a modified missile-tracking system. The contraption looked like a large black pizza box with one glowing green eye; it was mounted above the press box. When the first pitch came in, a recorded voice told DeJesus it was a strike. He announced it, and no one in the ballpark said anything.
Josh Ketrick, cofounder and CEO of cultivated-meat company Eat Just, talks to McKinsey. I had profiled him when the company was called Hampton Creek in my 2016 book on automation, Silicon Collar.
"Our basic research and development work on chicken applies pretty cleanly to beef, pork, and seafood. But it’s really the infrastructure—namely the bioreactors—that is the core unit of operation necessary to make more of it.
Part of the challenge is there’s not a company that we can go to and say, “We would like to get one of your hundred-thousand-liter bioreactors.” They have to be built from scratch. So we can’t just plug in; we have to build it. That takes capital. It takes time.
I would say the second-most-important thing that we need to do to make different kinds of cultivated meat for more people is to continue to improve how we communicate this to consumers.
We shouldn’t take this as a given—that just because we believe this is a better way of making meat safer, healthier, and more sustainable that every consumer is also going to think that. We need to directly address their concerns.
In our research, we’ve seen that there’s a concern about the word “cell,” there’s a concern about the process, there’s a concern about the idea that this might be genetically engineered, and what does that mean for my own health, for the environment? So as a part of our communication process, we need to directly address these issues."
Stroll has signed off on an ambitious 400,000 square foot campus plan to be built on the land he has acquired around the current premises.
This will include a factory, wind tunnel, conference centre, auditorium, heritage department and other offices.
As well as being fully sustainable, it will feature state-of-the-art 5G facilities and the latest technology to ensure that Aston Martin can be right at the forefront of the latest advances.
I agree with ZDNet partly because my iPhone is still pretty new and my iPad Mini is due for a refresh and it is my travel device and I expect more travel in the next few months.
"Apple had a few significant misses with its product rollouts at its "California Dreaming" event. One of those misses is that the iPad Mini 6, which has 5G data capabilities, cannot make phone calls.
Despite this, the iPad Mini 6 is not only the most exciting product Apple has launched this year, but it is one of the most exciting new products that Apple has released in years, period. It belongs in a class of other groundbreaking Apple products, such as the current-generation M1 iPad Pro and the Apple Silicon M1 chip itself that powers its new Macbook and Mac Mini line."
Part of the 2022 F-150 Lightning’s genius is that it looks, well, so ordinary. There’s none of Tesla’s Cybertruck silliness, just solid F-150 SuperCrew form and functionality, with the added benefit of extra lockable storage. standard all-wheel drive, and sizzling acceleration. The other part is, in the best Ford tradition, it’s affordable. Prices start at less than S42,000 for the work-spec model and less than $55,000 for mid-spec versions, which is slightly less than what today’s average F-150 buyer spends on their truck and that’s before tax incentives.
Hiram Lodge, the manipulative crime lord who targets the fictional town of Riverdale, sits back in his office chair. After plotting his latest scheme with a cohort over submarine sandwiches, he takes a bite of a Doritos chip, holding the bag in clear view of the camera while looking away pensively.
Frito-Lay, which got the snack on the CW Network's teen drama Riverdale with the help of the No.1 product placement company BEN, hopes audiences noticed enough to crave their own bag of Doritos, but not so much that they became annoyed. That's the delicate balance companies strike when using product placement, which is becoming an even more popular form of advertising thanks to factors including increasingly sophisticated data collection and the rise of streaming and mobile video.
A billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens chosen to join him blasted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket ship and soared into orbit, the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space.
Within three hours the capsule had reached its final cruising orbital altitude of just over 363 miles (585 km) - higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope, and the furthest any human has flown from Earth since NASA's Apollo moon program ended in 1972, according to SpaceX.
Sweden’s SSAB says it has “produced the world’s first fossil-free steel” and has started delivering it to the Volvo Group, its first customer.
The news represents the latest development for the Hybrit project, which was set up in 2016 and is owned by SSAB, energy firm Vattenfall and LKAB, a mining and minerals group. Both Vattenfall and LKAB are owned by the Swedish state. The idea underpinning Hybrit is to use “100% fossil-free hydrogen” rather than coal and coke in steel production.
Fortunately Bedrock is here to drag that mapping process into the 21st century with its autonomous underwater vehicle and modern cloud-based data service.
The company aims to replace the standard “big ship with a big sonar” approach with a faster, smarter, more modern service, letting companies spin up regular super-accurate seafloor imagery as easily as they might spin up a few servers to host their website.
The company (NoTraffic) claims its cloud- and artificial-intelligence-based traffic control system can halve rush-hour times in dense urban areas, reduce annual CO2 emissions by a half-billion tons in places like Phoenix/Maricopa County, and slash transportation budgets by 70 percent.
Here's how it works: Sensors perceive, identify, and analyze all traffic approaching each intersection, sharing data to the cloud. Here light timing and traffic flow is adjusted continuously, prioritizing commuting patterns, emergency and evacuation traffic, a temporary parade of bicycles—whatever. Judicious allocation of "green time" means no green or walk-signal time gets wasted.
Coulson had recently outfitted a huge Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter with equipment that could drop 3,000 gallons of water or fire-retardant chemical—about 10 times what the more commonly used Bell 412 helicopter can unload- in a little more than two seconds. Unlike a fixed-wing firebomber such as a Boeing 747 or Lockheed C-130 Hercules, which can carry similar loads, a Chinook doesn’t have to return to an airport to refill. It can stick up water from a river or lake and shuttle back and forth to a fire, dramatically multiplying the tonnage it drops per hour.
The Chinook had another potential advantage: It could fight fire at night. The company had spent a decade working out how pilots could safely fly these copters low to the ground in darkness using night vision goggles
In exchange for lower room rates, one hotel brand is charging for other perks — like early check-in or pool access — that guests pay for only if they want it.
“By going to an a la carte menu, it allows people to customize their experience and get exactly the product that they want when they want,” MCR Hotels Chairman and CEO Tyler Morse recently shared with Yahoo Finance Live. “Consumers always have a choice in the matter.”
The model is being piloted in several independent, non-branded MCR Hotels, Morse said, and feedback has been positive, so far. The new pricing strategy isn’t dissimilar to how airlines began charging for luggage, he said, noting it took some time for flyers to accept the ancillary fees.
No gondolas in this Venice but a street named Piazza Di Luna and over a dozen pizza places. And several beaches the Italian namesake does not offer including Caspersen which is famous for its collection of fossilized shark teeth which wash ashore continually.
Plenty of Orthodox churches and restaurants serving saganaki and gyros to cheers of opa. Also celebrates its history of sponging and diving. Gorgeous Fred Howard park and beach as a bonus.
Named after the Gaelic interpretation of Edinburgh, Dunedin hosts an annual Highland Games with Scottish pipes and other traditions. The quaint downtown and pier hosts several pubs, parks and monuments. A short ferry ride takes you to really nice beaches at the Caladesi and Honeymoon islands.
The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined his vision for a 5-million-person "new city in America" and appointed a world-famous architect to design it.
Now, he just needs somewhere to build it -- and $400 billion in funding.
The former Walmart executive last week unveiled plans for Telosa, a sustainable metropolis that he hopes to create, from scratch, in the American desert. The ambitious 150,000-acre proposal promises eco-friendly architecture, sustainable energy production and a purportedly drought-resistant water system. A so-called "15-minute city design" will allow residents to access their workplaces, schools and amenities within a quarter-hour commute of their homes.
NASA’s Perseverance rover today completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California received data that confirmed the historic milestone.
The core is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, making it available for retrieval in the future. Through the Mars Sample Return campaign, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are planning a series of future missions to return the rover’s sample tubes to Earth for closer study. These samples would be the first set of scientifically identified and selected materials returned to our planet from another.
Innovations highlighted in Satya Nadella's annual shareholder letter
In the Microsoft annual report, Satya Nadella identifies a handful of examples of innovation he is obviously proud of. I also found videos which provide additional perspective on each.
October 21, 2021 in Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)