Lifeboat Foundation

Yup, you read that headline right. A Chinese UAV company named Ehang just unveiled the world’s first autonomous flying taxi.

The plainly-named 184 drone is essentially a giant quadcopter designed to carry a single passenger — and it needs no pilot. Inside the cockpit, there are absolutely zero controls. No joystick, no steering wheel, no buttons, switches, or control panels — just a seat and a small tablet stand.

To fly it, the user simply hops in the cockpit, fires up the accompanying mobile app, and chooses a destination. From that point onward, you’re just along for the ride. The drone takes care of all the piloting and navigation autonomously — so you supposedly don’t need a pilot’s license to use it.

Read more

Facebook Messenger now has 800 million monthly active users, and it’s a sign that phone numbers will soon disappear, the company says.

Read more

When will autonomous cars actually be on our roads? It seems that the date is far closer than anticipated.

Read more

Japanese company creates innovative new translation product. Decides to market it using the most cringeworthy video possible.

Read more

Science, man.

Read more

A new survey has discovered a fear of frailty likely prevents widespread support of longevity, but if health is combined with years then it could well be a popular option.

Healthy longevity may convince people

According to the new survey, out of 1500 people 74.4% wished to live to 120 or longer if health was guaranteed, but only 57.4% wished to live that long if it wasn’t.

Read more

While development is happening everywhere, these companies are the next big things to shoot past the stratosphere.

While a lot of end-of-the-year, turn-of-the-calendar roundups try to focus on the year that was or the year ahead, the space industry is very different. Developments are planned further in advance, so some of the qualifying news that gets companies on this list isn’t scheduled to happen until 2017. The industry is small compared to cloud computing or cybersecurity, for example, but the rate of growth is tremendous. There seems to be a cultural solidarity with spacetech on account of its tightly-knit history of cooperation and the still limited number of private companies that can facilitate space flight.

Read more

Last year August, Stephen Hawking announced he had been working with Malcom Perry and Andrew Strominger on a solution to the black hole information loss problem, and they were closing in on a solution. But little was explained other than that this solution rests on a symmetry group by name of supertranslations.

Read more

Elon Musk’s vision of the Hyperloop — a lightning-fast transportation system that would shuttle passengers at speeds nearing 700-mph using low pressure tubes and air compressors — is slowly coming to fruition in the Nevada desert.

In fact, the first ever Hyperloop tubes are neatly lined up in a ditch, waiting to be assembled and then later tested by Hyperloop Technologies at a site in North Las Vegas.

Read more