Toggle light / dark theme

An oil tanker abandoned and anchored in the Red Sea could produce an oil spill that would spread over the southern half of the body of water and block ports, close desalination plants, and produce a food and water crisis for the people of Yemen.


A UN rescue plan for the rusting tanker off Yemen’s coast has ballooned in cost to $129 million. So far money raised is $34 million short.

Saw this coming 5 or 10 years back. Soon concept of being a model will be non existent. Probably by 2030. And, once can realistically animate and walk around and speak, end of actors and acting also.


Levi’s is partnering with an AI company on computer-generated fashion models to “supplement human models.” The company frames the move as part of a “digital transformation journey” of diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability. Although that sounds noble on the surface, Levi’s is essentially hiring a robot to generate the appearance of diversity while ridding itself of the burden of paying human beings who represent the qualities it wants to be associated with its brand.

Levi Strauss is partnering with Amsterdam-based digital model studio Lalaland.ai for the initiative. Founded in 2019, the company’s mission is “to see more representation in the fashion industry” and “create an inclusive, sustainable, and diverse design chain.” It aims to let customers see what various fashion items would look like on a person who looks like them via “hyper-realistic” models “of every body type, age, size and skin tone.”

Levi’s announcement echoes that branding, saying the partnership is about “increasing the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.” The company continues, “We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high-quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience.”

Neurosity’s headset uses electroencephalogram technology, or EEG, to measure brain activity by placing small metal electrodes on a person’s scalp. If the electrodes detect decreased electrical activity in the brain, the Crown plays music and sounds, or pulses vibrations, hoping those actions will help the user focus.

But some developers, it seems, have taken Neurosity’s tech a step further, turning the Crown into a more traditional brain computer interface that can allow users to control a computer using only their mind.

One owner of the gadget claimed they’ve used it to drive a Tesla, moving the electric car short distances by doing some mental math, which signals to the device that the person wearing it is exerting a lot of cognitive effort.


Grimes got a new brain gadget for her 35th birthday.

Tesla Vision Park Assist provides visual and audio alerts of surrounding objects. This feature uses the occupancy network to predict high-definition outlines of objects 360 degrees around the car. Note: Tesla Vision Park Assist is for guidance purposes only and is not a substitute for an aware driver. Please be attentive and avoid obstacles as required.

This is after being parked for a while, interesting to see how park assist takes a bit to load previous data from before it was parked. Still really impressive work from the @Tesla team pic.twitter.com/LONqouXp85

A number of Tesla owners with vision-only cars who received update 2023.6.9 have shared initial videos of Vision Park Assist’s performance in real-world situations. Tesla Model 3 owner @EVBaymax, for one, observed that the distance estimates displayed in the vehicle are quite accurate, almost to the inch. The Model 3 owner actually verified Tesla Vision’s estimates with a tape measure, and it was quite accurate.

A Korean research team has developed a large-scale stretchable and transparent electrode for use as a stretchable display. The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that a research team, led by Dr. Sang-Soo Lee and Dr. Jeong Gon Son at KIST’s Photo-Electronic Hybrids Research Center, has developed a technology to fabricate a large-area (larger than an A4 sized paper) wavy silver nanowire network electrode that is structurally stretchable with a high degree of conductivity and transparency.

Transparent electrodes, through which electricity flows, are essential for solar cell-and touchscreen-based display devices. An (ITO)-based is currently commercialized for use. The ITO-based transparent is made of a thin layer of metallic oxides that have very low stretchability and is very fragile. Thus, the ITO electrode is not well suited for flexible and wearable devices, which are expected to quickly become mainstream products in the electronic device market. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new transparent electrode with stretchability as one of its main features.

A nanowire is tens of nanometers in diameter, and the nano material itself is long and thin like a stick. The small size of the nanowire allows it to be bent when an external force is applied. Since it is made of silver, a silver nanowire has excellent electrical conductivity and can be used in a random network of straight to fabricate a highly transparent and flexible electrode. However, despite the fact that silver nanowire is bendable and flexible, it cannot be used as a stretchable material.

Plants use photosynthesis to harvest energy from sunlight. Now researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have applied this principle as the basis for developing new sustainable processes which in the future may produce syngas (synthetic gas) for the large-scale chemical industry and be able to charge batteries.

Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is an important intermediate product in the manufacture of many chemical starter materials such as ammonia, methanol and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. “Syngas is currently made almost exclusively using fossil ,” says Prof. Roland Fischer from the Chair of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry.

A yellow powder, developed by a research team led by Fischer, is to change all that. The scientists were inspired by photosynthesis, the process plants use to produce chemical energy from light. “Nature needs carbon dioxide and water for photosynthesis,” says Fischer. The nanomaterial developed by the researchers imitates the properties of the enzymes involved in photosynthesis. The “nanozyme” produces syngas using carbon dioxide, water and light in a similar manner.

In the latest sign of growing interest in the flying taxi sector, United Airlines and air mobility startup Archer Aviation have announced an upcoming service for hops between downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport.

The service will offer a sustainable, low-noise, and cost-competitive alternative to ground transportation for folks traveling to and from the airport, United and Archer said in a release.

Ford said Friday that its $5.6 billion BlueOval City complex outside of Memphis, Tennessee will include a truck plant capable of producing 500,000 electric vehicles a year.

The first vehicle to come off the line will be a next-gen electric truck, code named Project T3, in 2025.

Construction at BlueOval City, the epicenter for its future EV and battery cell manufacturing and a key component toward its goal to sell 2 million EVs annually by late 2026, began last fall.