2020 – Page 39 – Impact Lab

Alternative Transportation, Elon Musk, Mass Transit, Science & Technology News, Transportation

The Boring Company: Elon Musk shares stunning station image and bus details

August 2, 2020

The Boring Company founder Elon Musk shared the image with the caption “coming soon.”

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunnel-digging venture, is getting ready to unveil its first public tunnel.

On Wednesday, Musk shared a new image with his 37 million Twitter followers. The new concept render appears to show one of the three stations planned for the Las Vegas Convention Center project. The two tunnels are designed to take 4,400 attendees per hour in one of two directions over a distance of nearly a mile. The work is part of a planned redevelopment of the center, and the tunnels are expected to be ready for the annual Consumer Electronics Show early next year.

Continue reading… “The Boring Company: Elon Musk shares stunning station image and bus details”

Business, Current Events, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Why you need to plan for failure as much as you do success

August 1, 2020

Many champion a company’s ability to overcome failure. But how often do you recognize the need to build failure into your business plan?

There’s rarely a straight path from Point A to Point B, as any business owner will tell you. Creating a strong, marketable app might take three iterations and a major pivot between the second and third. Becoming the industry leader in customer service likely came on the back of a near-miss PR disaster, when a renewed focus boosted the team’s work.

What’s often missing in this discussion, of course, is the space needed to make those kinds of mistakes. For small-business owners, especially those getting started or struggling to get by, having enough in savings can be the difference between having to close or having another six months, year, or more to keep pursuing their goals.

According to a 2018 study, nearly 40 percent of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense without selling an item or borrowing money. Even before a pandemic, a looming recession, and rental housing crisis highlighted the problem. In a tight financial spot, how can entrepreneurs avoid the worst while positioning themselves for the best?

Continue reading… “Why you need to plan for failure as much as you do success”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

Why College is never coming back

August 1, 2020

Here’s some great news: one of America’s most broken industries is finally being exposed as a sham. And make no mistake, the end of college as we know it is a great thing.

It’s great for families, who’ll save money and take on less debt putting kids through school. It’s great for kids, who’ll no longer be lured into the socialist indoctrination centers that many American campuses have become. And as I’ll show you, it’s great for investors, who stand to make a killing on the companies that’ll disrupt college for good.

But Stephen, how can you be against education?! I love learning, but I hate what college has become. As recently as 1980, you could get a four-year bachelor’s degree at a public school for less than $10,000. These days, it’ll cost you $40,000 at a minimum, $140,000 for a private school, or well over $250,000 for a top school.

College costs have ballooned beyond all reason. They’ve risen even faster than healthcare costs, which is really saying something. Kids are burying themselves in debt—$1.6 trillion at last count—in order to attend college.

When I wrote about this last year, I had little hope things would change anytime soon. Why? It’s a tough sell to convince an 18-year-old kid not to attend the four-year party all his friends are going to, especially when the US government is financing it through student loans.

But a Lightning Bolt of Disruption Just Fried the Business Model of College.

Continue reading… “Why College is never coming back”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

This chart predicts which colleges will survive the Coronavirus

August 1, 2020

Universities are an expensive operation with a relatively inflexible cost structure, and it’s forcing many schools to make poor choices

Our fumbling, incompetent response to the pandemic continues. In six weeks, a key component of our society is in line to become the next vector of contagion: higher education. Right now, half of colleges and universities plan to offer in-person classes, something resembling a normal college experience, this fall. This cannot happen. In-person classes should be minimal, ideally none.

The economic circumstances for many of these schools are dire, and administrators will need imagination — and taxpayer dollars — to avoid burning the village to save it. Per current plans, hundreds of colleges will perish.

There is a dangerous conflation of the discussion about K-12 and university reopenings. The two are starkly different. There are strong reasons to reopen K-12, and there are stronger reasons to keep universities shuttered. University leadership needs to evolve from denial (“It’s business as usual”) and past bargaining (“We’ll have a hybrid model with some classes in person”) to citizenship (“We are the warriors against this virus, not its enablers”).

Continue reading… “This chart predicts which colleges will survive the Coronavirus”

Aviation, Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Travel

U.S. airlines face end of business travel as they knew it

July 31, 2020

Impact of virus threatens industry’s engine of sales, profit

Road warriors turn to video conferences while CEOs eye budgets.

U.S. passenger totals plummeted more than 95% at the peak of the pandemic-related travel collapse.

U.S. airlines hammered by the catastrophic loss of passengers during the pandemic are confronting a once-unthinkable scenario: that this crisis will obliterate much of the corporate flying they’ve relied on for decades to prop up profits.

“It is likely that business travel will never return to pre-Covid levels,” said Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas, an aviation consultant. “It is one of those unfortunate cases where the industry will be permanently impaired and what we lost now is gone, never to come back.”

Continue reading… “U.S. airlines face end of business travel as they knew it”

brain hacking, brain-computer interfaces, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News

Elon Musk claims his Neuralink chip will allow you to stream music directly to your brain

July 31, 2020

Brain-computer interface could also give people ‘enhanced abilities’

Elon Musk‘s mysterious Neuralink startup is working on a brain-computer interface that will allow wearers to stream music directly to their brain, the technology entrepreneur has claimed.

Mr Musk, who also heads SpaceX and Tesla, is set to reveal new information about the mysterious startup next month but has been slowly releasing details over Twitter in recent days.

Responding to computer scientist Austin Howard, Mr Musk confirmed that Neuralink’s technology would allow people to “listen to music directly from our chips.”

Continue reading… “Elon Musk claims his Neuralink chip will allow you to stream music directly to your brain”

government, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Hope Probe: UAE spacecraft blasts off in first ever mission to Mars

July 31, 2020

Mission had been delayed twice due to bad weather

The United Arab Emirates has launched its first mission to Mars, the first of three missions to the Red Planet to take place this month.

The Hope Probe launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center for seven-month voyage, facing off bad weather which caused the mission to be delayed twice.

The mission originally intended to leave Earth on 14 July.

Continue reading… “Hope Probe: UAE spacecraft blasts off in first ever mission to Mars”

3D Printer, Food, new technology, Science & Technology News

KFC is working with a Russian 3D bioprinting firm to try to make lab-produced chicken nuggets

July 30, 2020

The restaurant chain says it’s the meat of the future

KFC is trying to create the world’s first laboratory-produced chicken nuggets, part of its “restaurant of the future” concept, the company announced. The chicken restaurant chain will work with Russian company 3D Bioprinting Solutions to develop bioprinting technology that will “print” chicken meat, using chicken cells and plant material.

KFC plans to provide the bioprinting firm with ingredients like breading and spices “to achieve the signature KFC taste” and will seek to replicate the taste and texture of genuine chicken.

It’s worth noting that the bioprinting process KFC describes uses animal material, so any nuggets it produced wouldn’t be vegetarian. KFC does offer a vegetarian option at some of its restaurants; last year it became the first US fast-food chain to test out Beyond Meat’s plant-based chicken product, which it plans to roll out to more of its locations this summer.

Continue reading… “KFC is working with a Russian 3D bioprinting firm to try to make lab-produced chicken nuggets”

Electric Vehicles, Entertainment, Science & Technology News

eSkootr is a high-speed electric scooter racing series launching in 2021

July 31, 2020

It’s basically Formula E for micromobility

A group of Formula One and Formula E drivers are starting a new racing series that will pit competitors against each other on ultra-fast custom-built electric scooters. The series — dubbed “Electric Scooter Championship,” or “eSkootr” — is set to launch in 2021, and the launch video shows riders whizzing through city streets on Tron-style vehicles and wearing matching neon-accented gear.

There are, unfortunately, few other details about the series, like how it’s being funded or who the competitors will be. All the organizers say is that the “category’s affordability removes the high barrier to entry seen in most other motorsport series, and its versatility means the series can recruit from a truly diverse cross-section of competitors – including racing drivers, cyclists, skaters, snowboarders, motorcyclists, and even esports racers.”

Whoever does compete will be putting themselves in a remarkably risky position, though, as the scooters are allegedly going to be capable of outrageous top speeds of around 100 kilometers per hour (about 62 miles per hour). They will feature large platforms, fat tires, and full suspensions in order to handle going that fast — at least, according to the launch video. But those kinds of speeds carry great risk even with a purpose-built vehicle and top-tier protective gear. As for where the scooters will come from, organizers say they have “already partnered with a recognized high-technology provider” to build them and will “reveal the prototype later this year,” though they don’t name the company.

Continue reading… “eSkootr is a high-speed electric scooter racing series launching in 2021”

Crime Prevention, Engineering, Great New Product, Science & Technology News

Proteus becomes the world’s first manufactured non-cuttable material

July 30, 2020

That’s as far as an angle grinder made it through this Proteus non-cuttable bar

Researchers from the UK’s Durham University and Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute claim they’ve come up with the world’s first manufactured non-cuttable material, just 15 percent the density of steel, which they say could make for indestructible bike locks and lightweight armor.

The material, named Proteus, uses ceramic spheres in a cellular aluminum structure to foil angle grinders, drills and the like by creating destructive vibrations that blunt any cutting tools used against it. The researchers took inspiration from the tough, cellular skin of grapefruit and the hard, fracture-resistant aragonite shells of molluscs in their creation of the Proteus design.

Continue reading… “Proteus becomes the world’s first manufactured non-cuttable material”

Coronavirus, Economy, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Op-ed: Let’s double down on PPP and save America’s endangered small businesses

July 29, 2020

KEY POINTS

We’re working to pass legislation that does two things: First, make Paycheck Protection Program funds available to eligible businesses through at least the end of this year, and second, authorize a second round of forgivable loans to the businesses most severely impacted by the pandemic.

We want to double down on PPP because, despite its bumpy beginning, it has clearly worked and staved off millions of business closures and job losses.

Continue reading… “Op-ed: Let’s double down on PPP and save America’s endangered small businesses”

Analysis, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Trending

Touchless transit payments increased 187% since April: Visa

July 29, 2020

Visa released new data on Thursday that found contactless transactions for transit fares increased 187% through the end of June, up from an all-time global low in April. The company now works with more than 500 cities globally to implement or expand contactless payment solutions.

To further engage in this trend, Visa announced a new global partnership agreement with Cubic Transportation Systems to “enable the delivery of next generation fare payments and new mobility solutions to Cubic’s customers based on Visa’s global payment standards and frameworks,” according to a company press release.

Visa also announced a milestone of 150 total partners in its Visa Ready for Transit certification program, up from 100 partners in October 2019. The Visa Ready for Transit program fosters collaboration with fare system solutions providers and consultancies to simplify transit agencies’ implementation of contactless fare systems.