Having the AI self-driving car know where to drop off human passengers is a puzzling problem not high on the priority list of developers.
Determining where to best drop-off a passenger can be a problematic issue.
It seems relatively common and downright unnerving that oftentimes a ridesharing service or taxi unceremoniously opts to drop you off at a spot that is poorly chosen and raft with complications.
Continue reading… “AI autonomous cars and the problem of where to drop off riders”
Not all job boards are created equal, but some are capable of getting you where you want to go.
Consider this: Freelancers are expected to become the U.S. workforce majority in the near future. That means we can expect to see more and more freelancing job boards appear. That’s not to say we need them. Take a look at the Google search results for “freelance jobs.” You’ll find hundreds of websites that can connect you with prospective clients.
The problem, however, is that not all job boards are created equal. Some are a bit suspicious, causing both freelancers and businesses to question their legitimacy. Others are meant only for seasoned veterans. There are also boards capable of finding work quickly for freelancers, but they won’t get paid very much. Consider it the “price of entry” to the freelance realm.
These obstacles make finding freelance work more complicated than it has to be. That’s why I’ve put together a list of 18 freelance sites to help entrepreneurs find their next gig. Each of these sites is reputable and can be used by freelancers of all experience levels, empowering people to make the most of their skills in a shaky economy.
Continue reading… “18 freelance sites to find your next gig”
Steve Jobs said it would be bigger than the PC. Some dubbed it the most hyped product since the Apple Macintosh. An era of secrecy bubbled up in the year 2000 about an invention that would change the world as people knew it. People speculated it was a hydrogen-powered hovercraft, or a device that would break the rules of gravity itself.
Continue reading… “Exclusive: Segway, the most hyped invention since the Macintosh, ends production”
Distractions at home and difficulty communicating with colleagues during the pandemic contribute to output declines, according to Globant.
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused companies to make the sudden and drastic shift to remote work, something had to give, and for US employees surveyed by Globant, that something was productivity.
Globant, a digital transformation company, surveyed 900 US senior-manager level and below employees in April and found that nearly half (49%) said they had decreased output, according to its report released this week.
Distractions from the home environment and difficulty communicating with colleagues were the top two contributors to decreased productivity, Globant found.
Continue reading… “Survey: 49% of remote workers report a drop in productivity”
Garth Brooks’ June 27 performance will air live at hundreds of drive-ins across the US.
(CNN)Garth Brooks might be headed to a drive-in concert near you.
The country singer announced on Thursday that he is going to perform at a drive-in theater on June 27. But here’s the best part for his fans: The concert will air live at 300 drive-ins across the country.
“They’re going to run it just like a regular concert, but this is going to be all over North America, one night only,” Brooks said on “Good Morning America.” “We are excited because this is a reason to get out of the house, but at the same time you get to follow all the Covid rules from every individual state and you get to have fun and stay within the guidelines of social distancing … we’re calling it ‘social distancing partying.'”
Continue reading… “Garth Brooks is hitting the road for a drive-in concert”
View of a serving robot at restaurant Dadawan on May 28, 2020 in Maastricht, Netherlands. Robots will serve food and drinks to the customers as well as to measure body temperature before customers enter the restaurant. Restaurants and cafes will re-open in The Netherlands on June 1st. as part of the Coronavirus lockdown ease.
Robots have been hired to greet customers, take their temperatures and serve them drinks at a restaurant in the Netherlands.
Dadawan, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Maastricht, reopened on 1 June as part of measures to ease lockdown restrictions in the Netherlands. And to help with social distancing, the restaurant has hired three robots named Amy, Aker and James. The humanoid robots have mechanical arms, torsos and LED-lit faces and take on some of the customer-facing tasks to reduce person-to-person contact.
Continue reading… “Robot waiters serve drinks and take temperatures at this Dutch restaurant”
Martian city for the desert outside Dubai
Dubai is a city where firefighters use jetpacks, archipelagos are built from scratch, and buildings climb into the clouds; a slick metropolis in the middle of a vast red desert. First-time visitors would be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled onto a film set for a sci-fi movie.
Now Dubai is set for what must be its most other-worldly architectural project yet.
In 2017, the United Arab Emirates announced its ambition to colonize Mars within the next 100 years. But architects are already imagining what a Martian city might look like — and planning to recreate it in the desert outside Dubai.
Mars Science City was originally earmarked to cover 176,000 square meters of desert — the size of more than 30 football fields — and cost approximately $135 million.
Intended as a space for Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) to develop the technology needed to colonize Mars, architects Bjarke Ingels Group were asked to design a prototype of a city suitable for sustaining life on Mars — and then adapt it for use in the Emirati desert.
Continue reading… “Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai”
Chief Economist on U.S. recovery and how we’re ‘standing at the bottom of the canyon’
She had been working as a concierge services coordinator at a nonprofit performing arts organization in New York City for four years before the closure of entertainment venues across the city destroyed demand for her skills.
“Job hunting is already incredibly tough without a global pandemic,” she told Yahoo Money.
The coronavirus pandemic and response have left millions of Americans like Laura without a job and caused employment income loss for nearly half of the households across the country, according to research from the Household Pulse Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Continue reading… “Coronavirus caused income loss for nearly half of American households”
Remote workers have a new found flexibility
Can you remember three months ago? In just 90 days, things have changed dramatically. Just 90 days. Yet, in that short amount of time, the way we think about where we live and how we live has completely changed.
In the latter part of those 90 days, I have heard from many people that the pandemic has forced their hand and has actually inspired investment in new technology or motivated a change in operations. These changes are adding up to huge impacts.
One of the big changes is the work-from-home policy. What started as a way to keep employees safe at home is now turning into the most popular work trend across the country, inspiring companies everywhere to step away from very large real estate construction projects and lease deals.
When office real estate is expensive and the country is facing an economic meltdown, and a work-from-home trend falls from the sky, it would be silly not to take it, right?
This Margins article reports that 40% of all venture capital funding in Silicon Valley actually goes to landlords instead of product development, and admits that even though it’s a big number, it is probably very conservative.
Continue reading… “How working from home is changing the way we think about where we live”
Flying with masks, for cabin crew and passengers, will become common practice.
Things might be better, or things might be worse, but if there’s one thing that is certain, travel will never be the same again.
Everything will change. It has to. Even if a vaccine is discovered for the novel coronavirus, the way in which we move around and see the world will be forever altered.
After an initial run of discounted fares, flying is likely to be more expensive post-COVID-19.
The big question is: how?
Continue reading… “Travel after coronavirus (COVID-19): Six ways it will change forever”
An artist’s impression of a proposal by Dutch company Hardt Hyperloop to build a hyperloop system linking Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to major European cities is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on June 10, 2020.
LONDON (Reuters) – Passenger-packed pods speeding through vacuum tubes linking Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to European cities could prove a viable low-carbon alternative to short-haul flights, according to a study published on Wednesday.
Although hyperloop technology, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel at airline speeds, has not yet proven feasible in large-scale operations, the airport said it was seriously exploring it as a potential form of sustainable transport.
“We are genuinely interested in where hyperloop could go,” said Hassan Charaf, head of innovation at Royal Schiphol Group, which owns and operates the airport, one of Europe’s busiest.
Continue reading… “Dutch study shows hyperloop may be substitute to short-haul flights”
A new MIT-fabricated “brain-on-a-chip” reprocessed an image of MIT’s Killian Court, including sharpening and blurring the image, more reliably than existing neuromorphic designs.
MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors—silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.
The researchers borrowed from principles of metallurgy to fabricate each memristor from alloys of silver and copper, along with silicon. When they ran the chip through several visual tasks, the chip was able to “remember” stored images and reproduce them many times over, in versions that were crisper and cleaner compared with existing memristor designs made with unalloyed elements.
Their results, published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, demonstrate a promising new memristor design for neuromorphic devices—electronics that are based on a new type of circuit that processes information in a way that mimics the brain’s neural architecture. Such brain-inspired circuits could be built into small, portable devices, and would carry out complex computational tasks that only today’s supercomputers can handle.
Continue reading… “Engineers put tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses on a single chip”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.