“Enjoy a light, social high,” says the funky bottle of California Dreamin’ cannabis-infused sparkling pomegranate juice. Launching today at Y Combinator Demo Day, California Dreamin’ is serving up an alcohol alternative that still gets you lit, but without the same hangover or health issues.
Continue reading… “Marijuana soda startup California Dreamin’ wants to replace booze”
After breaking a few energy storage records with its battery system projects in Australia, Tesla looks to come back to the US to build a new world’s largest Powerpack battery system in Colorado.
Earlier this year, we reported on Xcel Energy, an electric utility company operating across the Midwest, Colorado and several other states, requesting bids for major renewable energy and storage projects in Colorado.
Continue reading… “Tesla bids for a new world’s largest Powerpack battery system in Colorado”
LONDON — What will our future look like — not in a century but in a mere two decades?
Terrifying, if you’re to believe Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and author of “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus,” a pair of audacious books that offer a sweeping history of humankind and a forecast of what lies ahead: an age of algorithms and technology that could see us transformed into “super-humans” with godlike qualities.
Continue reading… “Automation, New Morality and a ‘Global Useless Class’”
In towns where workers are scarce, employers are boosting pay and perks and stepping up recruiting—all while trying to avoid raising prices.
What will happen when the U.S. unemployment rate falls below 4 percent, which is expected to occur by this summer? One way to tell is to look at cities where joblessness is already lower than that. Bloomberg News reporters traveled to Iowa, Georgia, and Maine. What they saw there is encouraging. They discovered that employers have found ways to cope with tight labor markets and still make money. Businesses have pulled in workers from the sidelines—including retirees, immigrants, and the homeless—and retooled processes to use less labor. Some have raised pay considerably for certain jobs, but so far there are no signs of an overall wage explosion. That should embolden those at the Federal Reserve who want to raise interest rates slowly to give growth a chance.
Continue reading… “This Is What Record-Low Unemployment Looks Like in America”
A drone offers a unique bird’s eye view as part of a forest fire surveillance system in the Landes region, France.
I’ve tried many ways to free my brain from my iPhone. I’ve invented rules, bought books, deleted apps, installed other apps. But the only thing that reliably works is to leave the phone at home and to walk along a path through the nearby woods. With trees overhead, and mud below, you quickly forget the last social media notification. You escape the internet of things by surrounding yourself with things that can never be plugged in.
San Francisco-based Plenty already supplies produce for Google’s kitchens. Now it’s on a mission to expand what hydroponic farms can grow.
Of the many crops that Matt Barnard has developed, he has a particular fondness for his kale. “If you think about what most people imagine when then they think of kale, think again,” he says. “It’s nothing like the tough, bitter leaf we’re used to. It’s sweet and velvety. People say we should find another name for it.”
Continue reading… “Vertical farms have nailed leafy greens. Next up: tasty peaches”
Farms are a hotbed for automation. Robots, drones, and artificial intelligence have been assisting in agriculture for years and 2017 showed they could farm an acre and a half of barley, from planting to tending and harvesting, without a human stepping foot on the field.
Now there is a small but robust robot that could take care of the more tedious agricultural tasks. It’s called TerraSentia and the four-wheeled robot developed by engineers at the University of Illinois boasts a variety of sensors that can monitor and transmit crop data in real time. It won’t take full autonomy over a farm but is designed to serve as a little cog in a bigger machine.
Continue reading… “Cross a John Deere with a Roomba, and you get this crop-monitoring robot”
Black markets have been using popular social apps and platforms to ply their illicit trade.
Google, eBay and other technology leaders are aiming to protect the world’s animals. Why? In a widely unregulated social-media world, many tech platforms have become a haven for the wildlife black market, a $20 billion industry.
Continue reading… “Tech giants like Google and Alibaba are working to save endangered species”
Cryptocurrency exchanges are charging between $50,000 and $1 million to list initial coin offerings, according to a Business Insider investigation.
“The exchanges are where the liquidity is — it’s where the money is — so that’s where the power is just at the moment,” Michael Jackson, a partner at venture capital firm Mangrove Partners, told BI.
Exchanges are dominant now but that may change with tougher regulations and more standardised business models.
When Albert Einstein first predicted that light travels the same speed everywhere in our Universe, he essentially stamped a speed limit on it: 299,792 kilometres per second (186,282 miles per second) – fast enough to circle the entire Earth eight times every second.
Continue reading… “These 4 Cosmic Phenomena Travel Faster Than The Speed of Light”
Machines are getting much better at the jobs we humans normally do.
As any translator will tell you, transforming the words from one language into another is a task that draws on an enormous reservoir of training, experience, and art.
The Earth and humanity will survive as fertility rates fall almost everywhere.
Some of the most spectacularly wrong predictions in history have been made by those who claim that overpopulation is going to swamp the planet. Thomas Malthus, a British economist writing in the late 1700s, is the most famous of these. Extrapolating past trends into the future, he predicted that population growth would inevitably swamp available food resources, leading to mass starvation. That didn’t happen — we continued to develop new technologies that let us stay ahead of the reaper.
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.