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China currently has one of the most expansive and impressive high-speed rail networks on Earth, and they aren’t showing signs of slowing. As their network reaches the far corners of their nation, Beijing could be setting its eyes on what lies beyond – far, far beyond.

According to reports, China wishes to build a high-speed, 13000-kilometer (8078-mile) train that travels from mainland China, up through Siberia in Eastern Russia, under the sea through the Bering Strait into Alaska, across the rocky peaks of Canada’s Yukon and British Columbia, and into the USA. Once constructed, they have could further extend their international bullet train into every corner of the US.

The price of such an outlandish proposal? A cool $200 billion. A price tag so high, even the likes of Jeff Bezos probably couldn’t reach it.

World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab opens Cyber Polygon 2021 with a warning: “A lack of cybersecurity has become a clear and immediate danger to our society worldwide.”

Giving the welcoming remarks at Cyber Polygon for the second year in a row, Schwab spoke at length about the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) desire to tackle cybersecurity by bringing together a closer merger of corporations, small businesses, and governments.

Last year, Schwab warned, “We all know, but still pay insufficient attention to, the frightening scenario of a comprehensive cyber attack, which would bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole.”

Tesla began sending out over-the-air software updates for its long-awaited “Full Self-Driving” beta version 9, the definitely-not-autonomous-but-certainly-advanced driver assist system.

As promised by Elon Musk, the software update (2021.4.18.12) began uploading after midnight on Friday, giving thousands of Tesla owners who have purchased the FSD option access to the feature, which enables drivers to use many of Autopilot’s advanced driver-assist features on local, non-highway streets.

An ultra-high-speed shipping port logistics system has been presented that’s reported capable of shifting up to 2800 containers a day, covering hundreds of kilometers in minutes.


Hyperloop Transport Technologies has presented an ultra-high-speed shipping port logistics system it says can shift up to 2800 containers a day, covering hundreds of kilometers in minutes – while decreasing emissions wherever it’s rolled out.

The whole thing would be like a giant cargo-carrying version of the pneumatic tube systems that once blasted thousands of messages around every hour, back when things were all black and white. As long as those things were around, innovators dreamed of one day building scaled-up versions big enough to move passengers and cargo.

Among the three billionaires throwing money behind their own rockets in a race to space, Richard Branson may be the first to take flight after his company Virgin Galactic received approval from the U.S. aviation safety regulator to fly people to space.

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The toilet could turn roughly a pound of solid human waste, the average amount a human poops in a day, into an impressive 50 liters of methane gas, according to Cho. That means it can generate half a kilowatt hour of electricity, enough to drive an electric car for three quarters of a mile.

And because its 2021 — a day and age in which nothing is safe from the world of cryptocurrencies — Cho came up with a virtual currency called Ggool, or “honey” in Korean. Every use of the toilet scores you 10 Ggool per day, which can be used to buy stuff on the university’s campus.

“I had only ever thought that feces are dirty, but now it is a treasure of great value to me,” a postgraduate student Heo Hui-jin who’s both earned and spent Ggool, told Reuters. “I even talk about feces during mealtimes to think about buying any book I want.”

Eviation, which has been described as the “Tesla of aircraft” for working on the first compelling long-range electric aircraft, has unveiled the production version of its Alice aircraft.

It has a shorter range than previously announced.

After Eviation unveiled the prototype of its Alice aircraft back in 2017, the company attracted a lot of attention and comparison with Tesla because the aircraft was amongst the first all-electric plane that was viable for actual commercial use.

In 1958, Ford showed the world a car like it had never seen before, one powered by a small nuclear reactor. The Ford Nucleon, as it was christened, was envisioned as a car capable of driving more than 5000 miles between fueling stops, appealing to a postwar fixation with convenience that has dominated American consumerism since. Like some other midcentury nuclear fantasies, though, the Nucleon never came to fruition, in part due to engineering problems we still struggle with to this day.

Before we examine why the Nucleon could never be, let’s get a better grasp of the car itself, starting with its utterly comical dimensions. Ford’s press materials envisaged the Nucleon stretching 200.3 inches long and 77.4 wide, making it as long as the new Ford Maverick compact pickup, but slightly wider. Its roof was said to measure just 41.4 inches high, making it less than an inch taller than the legendarily low-slung Ford GT40.