The race to be the first to deploy autonomous vehicles is on among carmakers, emerging startups, and tech giants. Amid this constant news cycle of deals and drama, the purpose of all of it can get lost — or at least a bit muddied. What exactly are these companies racing for?
Continue reading… “Intel predicts a $7 trillion economy for self-driving vehicles”
Until very recently, consensus opinion has viewed electric cars as at best a niche market and at worst a passing fad. That’s changing as production and sales take off. Continue reading… “Electric car sales go exponential”
With all the attention Artificial Intelligence (AI) attracts these days, a backlash is inevitable – and could even be constructive. Any technology advancing at a fast pace and with such breathless enthusiasm could use a reality check. But for a corrective to be useful, it must be fair and accurate.
Continue reading… “Separating the hype from reality surrounding artificial intelligence”
Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, delivered her annual rapid-fire internet trends report at Code Conference at the Terranea Resort in California.
Here’s a first look at the most highly anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley. This year’s report includes 355 slides and tons of information, including a new section on healthcare that Meeker didn’t present live.
Continue reading… “Mary Meeker’s 2017 internet trends report”
The initial construction of the massive airplane Paul Allen has been quietly building in the California desert is complete, and the vehicle, which would be the world’s largest airplane with a wingspan wider than Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, was wheeled out of its hangar for the first time on Wednesday.
Called Stratolaunch, the plane has some impressive stats: a wingspan of 385 feet, or longer than a football field, a height of 50 feet. Unfueled, it weighs 500,000 pounds. But it can carry 250,000 pounds of fuel, and its total weight can reach as high as 1.3 million pounds.
Continue reading… “Paul Allen’s new mega-plane is the world’s largest”
Generous employee perks are as much a part of the tech industry as long work hours, office Nerf gun battles, and people overusing the word “disruption.” But while most firms only go so far as free meals, on-site yoga classes, and maybe the occasional indoor climbing wall, an artificial intelligence-driven hedge fund is taking things to the next level.
Continue reading… “Does your employee benefits package include cryogenic freezing?”
Female investors earned higher returns and saved more of their pay to fund retirement accounts than men, even though most women didn’t think they would, according to a recently released Women and Money Survey from Fidelity Investments.
Continue reading… “Study: Women investors better than men”
Imagine taking your next trip of a couple hundred miles. New York City to Boston, for example. Or Houston to Dallas. Tampa to Miami. The obvious choice now might be to drive. But what if you could show up at an airport at one of those cities, bypass security checkpoints, board a small hybrid-electric plane with luggage in hand, and be on the ground at your destination in about an hour — all for $25 each way?
Continue reading… “Electric planes and $25 tickets could be the future of regional air travel”
Space. The final frontier, and quite possibly your family’s next March Break vacation.
Experts say 2018 will be the year space tourism takes off. But while great leaps are being made at what seems like warp speed, it’s a venture that’s still fraught with issues that go far beyond its out-of-this-world price tag.
Continue reading… “Space Race: Experts say 2018 is the year space tourism takes off”
Elon Musk’s new Boring Company tunnels look pretty, well, not boring.
The company on Friday published an animated concept video on YouTube that shows how tunnels underneath a city could work. In the video, a car drives onto a metal platform that then lowers itself underground. The platform, with the car on top of it, speeds along at 124 mph, while other platforms carrying cars do the same. When the car reaches its destination, the platform lifts it back to the earth’s surface.
Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s boring tunnels don’t look boring at all”
Not since the drilling of the Russia’s Kola Borehole have scientists ventured this deep.
Japanese scientists have announced a plan to drill through the Earth’s crust and reach the mantle. The major initiative would be a first for humankind. Despite multiple previous attempts and multiple boreholes of significant depth, we’ve never managed to drill far enough to see what lies beneath the Earth’s rocky crust. Instead, our knowledge of the mantle is mostly based on indirect observations, like the speed at which seismic waves propagate through the planet’s internal geometry.
Continue reading… “Japan’s massive new borehole project to reach Earth’s mantle”
A new study published by the data science team at Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, shows why it’s becoming harder for software engineers to afford life in San Francisco, even while they make more money than their peers elsewhere in the U.S. and the world.
Based on 280,000 interview requests and job offers provided by more than 5,000 companies to 45,000 job seekers on Hired’s platform, the company’s data team has determined that the average salary for a software engineer in the Bay Area is $134,000. That’s more than software engineers anywhere in the country, through Seattle trails closely behind, paying engineers an average of $126,000. In other tech hubs, including Boston, Austin, L.A., New York, and Washington, D.C., software engineers are paid on average between $110,000 and $120,000.
Yet higher salaries don’t mean much with jaw-dropping rents and other soaring expenses associated with life in “Silicon Valley,” and San Francisco more specifically. Indeed, factoring in the cost of living, San Francisco is now one of the lowest-paying cities for software engineers, according to Hired’s lead data scientist, Jessica Kirkpatrick. According to her analysis, the $110,000 that an Austin engineer makes is the rough equivalent of being paid $198,000 in the Bay Area, considering how much further each dollar goes in the sprawling capital of Texas. The same is true of Melbourne, Australia, where software engineers are paid a comparatively low $107,000 on average, but who are making the equivalent of $150,000 in San Francisco.
Continue reading… “What software engineers are making around the world right now”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.