Lifeboat Foundation

The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel will be operational in “only a few months,” according to company frontman Elon Musk, who updated the project’s progress on August 28.

Musk, CEO of the Boring Company, set out to create a new source of transportation in high-traffic areas several years ago while living in Los Angeles. While LA has a private test tunnel in Hawthorne, California, near the Tesla Design Studio and SpaceX Headquarters, Musk wanted to expand upon the idea and move it to other cities.

Las Vegas needed a transportation solution to handle traffic on the Strip, where many of the visitors spend the majority of their time while visiting the Sin City. However, the Las Vegas Convention Center also desired an underground people mover, and the Boring Co. was more than happy to make a $52.5 million bid on the project, which was accepted.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Las Vegas Boring Company tunnels ‘only a few months away’ from operation” »

The phrase “too much of a good thing” may sound like a contradiction, but it encapsulates one of the key hurdles preventing the expansion of renewable energy generation. Too much of a service or commodity makes it harder for companies to sell them, so they curtail production.

Usually that works out fine: The market reaches equilibrium and economists are happy. But external factors are bottlenecking renewable electricity despite the widespread desire to increase its capacity.

UC Santa Barbara’s Sangwon Suh is all too familiar with this issue. The professor of industrial ecology has focused on it and related challenges for at least the past two years at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “Curtailment is the biggest problem of renewable energy we are facing,” said Suh, who noted it will only escalate as renewable energy capacity increases.

More advances on artificial photosynthesis.

Scientists at the UK’s University of Cambridge have developed a renewable energy device that mimics photosynthesis by making fuel from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.

Taking inspiration from the way that plants create their own energy, the device is a slim sheet that produces oxygen and formic acid from water, carbon dioxide and sunlight.

Continue reading “University of Cambridge develops synthetic leaf that turns sunlight into fuel” »

Amazon has placed an order of 1,800 electric vans with Mercedes-Benz, adding to the 100,000 electric delivery vans it has on order with Rivian.

« Acording to Electrek, an FBI complaint details how the feds helped foil a plot by Russian hackers to target Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory with a massive ransomware hack and data breach.

It’s worth noting that the complaint itself never explicitly says that the target of the hack was Tesla, though its Gigafactory is located outside Sparks, Nevada. Electrek, though, is reporting as fact that Tesla is the target. We’ve reached out to Tesla for additional information and we’ll update if any new info comes to light. »

Intriguingly, it sounds as though the hackers weren’t just after ransom.

Continue reading “FBI Reportedly Foils Russian Hack at Tesla Factory” »

Forget windmills: This is an energy kite.

South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa has sourced for a R4.4 billion (USD260 million) investor funding at the sustainable infrastructure development symposium. The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) will receive R3 billion (USD177 million) to develop and design up to six satellites in the next four years. The total funding will incubate South Africa’s Space hub. This information was disclosed by the CEO of SANSA, Val Munsami.

South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa has sourced for a R4.4 billion (USD260 million) investor funding at the sustainable infrastructure development symposium. The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) will receive R3 billion (USD177 million) to develop and design up to six satellites in the next four years. The total funding will incubate South Africa’s Space hub.

This information was disclosed by the CEO of SANSA, Val Munsami.

Continue reading “South Africa to Build USD266 Million Space Hub: Promises Six Satellites” »

It’s extremely difficult to make a fair comparison of US and Chinese spend on technology like AI as funding and research in this area is diffuse. Although China announced ambitious plans to become the world leader in AI by 2030, America still outspends the country in military funding (which increasingly includes AI research), while US tech companies like Google and Microsoft remain world leaders in artificial intelligence.

The Trump administration will likely present today’s news as a counterbalance to its dismal reputation for supporting scientific research. For four years in a row, government budgets have proposed broad cuts for federal research, including work in pressing subjects like climate change. Only the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, with their overt links to military prowess and global geopolitics, have seen increased investment.

“It is absolutely imperative the United States continues to lead the world in AI and quantum,” said US Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios ahead of today’s announcement, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The future of American economic prosperity and national security will be shaped by how we invest, research, develop and deploy these cutting edge technologies today.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ksMXbhftBbM

California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. They will offer higher power density than lithium-ion. They will be nigh-on indestructible and totally safe in an electric car crash. And in some applications, like electric cars, they stand to be considerably cheaper than current lithium-ion packs despite their huge advantages.

The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste. NDB uses graphite nuclear reactor parts that have absorbed radiation from nuclear fuel rods and have themselves become radioactive. Untreated, it’s high-grade nuclear waste: dangerous, difficult and expensive to store, with a very long half-life.

Continue reading “Nano-diamond self-charging batteries could disrupt energy as we know it” »