2020 – Page 50 – Impact Lab

Business, City Planning, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping

How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail

June 22, 2020

The work-from-anywhere revolution will accelerate the coming of a post-digital age for shopping, argues Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet.

Throughout history, cities have played a central role in the evolution of retail. From the grand bazaars of ancient times to the opulent department stores of the 1800s to the venture-backed start-ups of the 2000s, cities have offered the stage, the audience, and ultimately, the financial prosperity to power retail through the ages.

But in major developed economies like the United States, we are set to see an outbound migration from cities the likes of which we have not experienced since the 1950s. Just as the IBMs and Microsofts of the world did 40 years ago, migrating to the boundlessness of the suburbs, today’s corporate giants are rethinking location once again, except this time encouraging their employees to live and work wherever they like.

On May 21st, Facebook announced that it would give its employees not only the freedom to work from home permanently, but also to spin a globe and point to wherever they’d like “home” to be. Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale… I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.” That same day, Shopify and Twitter both made similar announcements. Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said he expects most of the company’s employees to choose the work from home option, adding: “The choice is really, are we passengers on this tidal wave of change? Or do we jump in the driver’s seat and try to figure out how to build a global world-class company by not getting together that often?”

Continue reading… “How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail”

Business, Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, Robots, Science & Technology News

The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot

June 22, 2020

Hotels, planes, and restaurants want your dollars back. Here are some of their plans to make it safe.

It’s something we look forward to all year: summer vacation. This time-honored tradition is an opportunity to get away from the stress of our daily lives and see new places, dip our toes in cool waters, or simply tune out the rest of the world for a few days. But this year, the continuing threat of Covid-19 has thrown that grand tradition for a loop, threatening to cancel it like a pool with bad pH levels.

And it’s not just wannabe-tourists who are suffering the loss of their vacations. As a result of Covid-19, 4 million people in the hospitality industry have lost their jobs. More than $21 billion in revenue has also been lost.

The question of “Is it safe to travel this summer?” is on the minds of many, and while there isn’t a clear answer yet, freaky googly-eyed robots are here to help us whenever we arrive.

Continue reading… “The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot”

Automation, New Inventions, Robotics, Science & Technology News

This wearable robotic arm can hold tools, pick fruit, and punch through walls

June 22, 2020

Doc Ock, is that you?

We’ve always had a soft spot for supernumerary robotic limbs here at The Verge, but this latest example of the genre is one of the most impressive we’ve seen to date. Designed by researchers at the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada, it’s a hydraulic arm that sits on the wearer’s hip and uses a three-fingered manipulator to carry out a range of tasks.

Continue reading… “This wearable robotic arm can hold tools, pick fruit, and punch through walls”

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

The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy

June 22, 2020

A worker paints over a Louis Vuitton storefront, boarded up after the coronavirus outbreak, on March 30 in San Francisco.

The wealthiest American households are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings even as their lower-income counterparts are spending a lot more freely when they emerge from weeks of lockdown. That decline in spending by the wealthy could limit the whole country’s economic recovery.

Researchers based at Harvard have been tracking spending patterns using credit card data. They found that people at the bottom of the income ladder are now spending nearly as much as they did before the coronavirus pandemic.

“When the stimulus checks went out, you see that spending by lower-income households went up a lot,” said Nathan Hendren, a Harvard economist and co-founder of the Opportunity Insights research team.

However, the wealthy are not matching them. “For higher-income individuals, that spending is still way far off from where it was prior to COVID and it has not recovered as much,” Hendren said.

That’s potentially crippling because consumer spending is a huge driver of economic activity. In fact, so much of the country’s economy depends on shopping by the top income bracket that the wealthiest 25% of Americans account for fully two-thirds of the total decline in spending since January.

Continue reading… “The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy”

3D Printer, Environment, Green Friendly, Housing, Science & Technology News

This 3D printed house reduces carbon emissions and takes 48 hours to build!

June 21, 2020

The construction industry contributes to 39% of global carbon emissions while aviation contributes to only 2% which means we need to look for alternative building materials if we are to make a big impact on the climate crisis soon. We’ve seen buildings being made using mushrooms, bricks made from recycled plastic and sand waste, organic concrete, and now are seeing another innovative solution – a floating 3D printed house!

Prvok is the name of this project and it will be the first 3D printed house in the Czech Republic built by Michal Trpak, a sculptor, and Stavebni Sporitelna Ceske Sporitelny who is a notable member of the Erste building society. The house is designed to float and only takes 48 hours to build! Not only is that seven times faster than traditional houses, but it also reduces construction costs by 50%. No bricks, cement, and concrete (responsible for 8% of CO2 emissions alone!) are used which means it reduces carbon emissions by 20% – imagine how much CO2 could be reduced if this was used to build a colony. A robotic arm called Scoolpt designed by Jiri Vele, an architect and programmer, will be used in 3D printing and can print as fast as 15 cm per second.

The 43 square meter home will have all the essentials – a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It will be anchored on a pontoon and is designed in a way that owners can live in it all year round. Prvok is partially self-sufficient and is equipped with eco-technologies that enable it to recirculate shower water, use a green roof, and host reservoirs for utility, drinking, and sewage water. Each detail and element of the house has been thoughtfully added after making sure it can last for 100 years in any environment. Prvok is an example of what the future of hybrid houses that work for you and the environment could look like.

Continue reading… “This 3D printed house reduces carbon emissions and takes 48 hours to build!”

Coronavirus, Economy, Employment, Science & Technology News, Trending

Say goodbye to six-figure starting salaries – with these exceptions

June 21, 2020

KEY POINTS

Starting salaries for newly minted college graduates are lower almost across the board as a result of the economic fallout from Covid-19.
However, some entry-level positions in tech still pay near six figures, according to new data from Glassdoor.
Some entry-level job offers and internship opportunities are being rescinded, another survey found.

Those armed with a newly minted college diploma are entering the worst U.S. job market in modern history, with unemployment spiking to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Continue reading… “Say goodbye to six-figure starting salaries – with these exceptions”

Alternative Transportation, Aviation, Science & Technology News, Transportation

How close is urban air mobility to becoming a reality?

June 21, 2020

eVTOL vehicle

So far, Uber is sticking publicly to its stated goal of beginning limited aerial ridesharing service in its pilot cities by 2023. And at least one of its vehicle partners, Joby Aviation, remains committed to certifying and operating its electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxi by 2023.

The U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program, which is intended to help accelerate the certification of commercial eVTOL vehicles by providing access to testing resources and a government early-adopter market, is likewise targeting the fielding of a “small handful” of vehicles in 2023.

Uber planned to conduct flight tests on an experimental vehicle over a U.S. city later in 2020 but has not provided an update on whether the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted these plans. These flights, of a piloted vehicle without passengers, are intended to demonstrate the low noise of eVTOL vehicles, which is critical to achieving the public acceptance needed to begin commercial service.

Continue reading… “How close is urban air mobility to becoming a reality?”

Automation, Automobiles, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Who will own the cars that drive themselves?

June 21, 2020

Self-driving Uber vehicles in a lot in Pittsburgh. One vision of the future sees fleets of cars hailed as people need a lift and less private vehicle ownership.

Fleets of vehicles roaming streets waiting to be hailed are more efficient. But the coronavirus has made people think twice about the future of car ownership even when autonomous tech arrives.

It was a difficult question even before the coronavirus pandemic hit: When self-driving cars eventually rule the roads, will Americans own their cars or make use of ride-hailing fleets?

The challenge is now threefold. Self-driving car technology had already reached a plateau, and getting to full Level 5 autonomy will be more difficult than many had thought. With the nation’s economy hobbled by the virus, investment is slowing. And to car owners, their private automobile is now a sanctuary, and it’s unclear how long that attitude will persist.

A CarGurus.com poll of 400 active car shoppers, conducted in May for this article, asked, “What is your overall opinion about the development of self-driving cars?” It showed 22 percent of customers were excited by the prospect. A survey of auto owners in 2019 showed 31 percent of them were excited for autonomous cars.

The question about the long-term future for the world’s cars is far from settled, and the experts (some of whom see disaster for the planet if people own autonomous cars as we own our cars now) differ sharply in their perception of where we’re heading.

Continue reading… “Who will own the cars that drive themselves?”

Engineering, new technology, quantum computing, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Honeywell claims to have world’s highest performing quantum computer according to IBM’s benchmark

June 20, 2020

The chamber housing the ion trap in Honeywell’s quantum computer system.

Honeywell said JP Morgan Chase and other customers are using its quantum computer in production, which it claims is the most powerful currently in use based on a benchmark established last year by IBM.

Industrial giant Honeywell on Thursday said it is now live with a quantum computer running client jobs that uses six effective quantum bits, or qubits, and a resulting “volume” of compute that it claims makes the system the most powerful quantum machine currently in production.

The announcement fulfills a vow the company made in March to offer a machine with a quantum volume of 64, as related on March 3rd by ZDNet’s Lawrence Dignan in a conversation with Honeywell’s head of quantum, Tony Uttley, who is president of the division Honeywell Quantum Solutions.

“In March we said within the next three months we’re going to be releasing the world’s highest-performing quantum computer, and so this is a case of Honeywell did what it said it was going to do,” Uttley told ZDNet in a telephone call.

Continue reading… “Honeywell claims to have world’s highest performing quantum computer according to IBM’s benchmark”

Automation, Coronavirus, Driverless cars, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Pandemic alters carmakers’ driverless plans. Here’s how

June 20, 2020

Detroit — The coronavirus pandemic is proving to be yet another obstacle for the self-driving and ride-sharing movement, delaying the widely touted arrival of next-generation automotive technology.

Ford Motor Co. is postponing for a year the commercial deployment of its autonomous vehicles. Waymo LLC, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., had to temporarily suspend its on-road testing and its ride-hailing offerings in Arizona. Uber Advanced Technologies Group recently announced layoffs of 3,500, citing the pandemic. And General Motors Co. is shutting down Maven, the car-sharing service that debuted in 2016 as the wave of the future.

With demand for car-sharing and ride-sharing diminishing sharply in the age of social-distancing and other forms of vigilant hygiene, companies are shifting their focus to using driverless vehicles to deliver goods before they ferry people — a reversal of a robo-taxi future envisioned just a few years ago, courtesy of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Expensive electrification programs that have yet to create revenue for automakers, however, continue despite automakers losing billions with auto plants closed for eight weeks and many dealerships unable to sell vehicles with stay-at-home orders in place during the pandemic. Still, the prevailing industry consensus holds that electric vehicles must be an option for consumers, and electrified powertrains are the foundation of self-driving vehicles and future mobility technologies.

Continue reading… “Pandemic alters carmakers’ driverless plans. Here’s how”

Electric Vehicles, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Tesla, Transportation

Tesla will develop a new 12-seater electric van for Boring Company airport tunnel

June 20, 2020

A new electric van could replace the prototype Tesla Model X for future The Boring Company tunnels.

A Southern California airport connector project will work with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build a high-speed underground tunnel and a new Tesla vehicle is reportedly part of the plan.

The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority approved a connector line between Rancho Cucamonga with the Ontario International Airport last week. The proposal is for a 2.8 mile-long tunnel that would move riders at 127 mph in electric vehicles. But which electric vehicles?

A county supervisor said that the new system would work with Musk’s electric car company Tesla to develop 12-seater electric vans, as reported in The Mercury News. The projected $60 million project is expected to carry 1,200 people per day to the airport and back.

Continue reading… “Tesla will develop a new 12-seater electric van for Boring Company airport tunnel”

2020 Predictions, Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace

June 20, 2020

The office is critical now for engagement, innovation and experience–and cannot go away.

We’re in the midst of the most significant reinvention of work in our time. We’ve proven people can work anywhere and the greatest social experiment—sending everyone home to do their work—has decimated barriers to working away from the office.

Some contend people are working with a reasonable level of productivity from home. And this is during arguably the worst-case situation for remote work: Being forced to work from home without choice, experiencing stress about the pandemic, sharing space with spouses or partners who are furloughed or also trying to work from home and finding time to educate children who would normally be at school—all of these create challenging conditions. Even so, people are getting work done—and could probably perform even better from home when the coronavirus abates, children go back to school and employees can return to a more typical way of life.

Continue reading… “Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace”