Lifeboat Foundation

A recent press release from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has revealed that Tesla will be providing Virtual Power Plant (VPP) services to the state’s grid. The program is part of the Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource (ADER) project that the PUCT pushed last year.

With the VPP in place, Texas could now evaluate how consumer-owned small energy devices, such as home battery units, can be virtually aggregated to provide grid-scale services. Similar programs have been launched by Tesla in California and Australia, to much success.

As per the PUCT’s press release, the two ADERs that are launching the initiative involve Tesla Electric customers who have Powerwall batteries in their homes. The participants of the program have agreed to sell their surplus power in the ERCOT market, and will be compensated for doing so. One ADER is comprised of Houston-area CenterPoint Energy customers, while the other is comprised of Dallas-area customers served by Oncor Electric Delivery Company.

Fear of Russian escalation has paralyzed the West. What’s needed is forceful localized countermoves.

India has joined the U.S., China and the former USSR in successfully soft-landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon. The uncrewed Chandrayaan-3 mission has also become the first to land close to the moon’s south pole.

About 15 minutes after initiating its Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS), Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) touched down around 8:34 a.m. EDT. Images were streamed live on YouTube from the Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) control room in Bengaluru, India.

Continue reading “India Becomes Fourth Nation To Land On The Moon—And First To South Pole” »

A tailsitter is a special kind of fixed-wing aircraft that sits on its tail when it is on the ground and then tilts horizontally for forward flight.

In the ever-evolving world of aerial technology, MIT’s researchers have given wings to the brilliance of aircraft design with their new algorithms for tailsitter drones. This breathtaking technology is enabling these aircraft to execute astounding acrobatics and challenging maneuvers, paving the way for futuristic applications in search-and-rescue, parcel delivery, and more.

Continue reading “How MIT researchers made tailsitter drones fly like acrobats” »

Heata is now using these busy servers to heat water for homes.

Using heat generated by computers to provide free hot water was an idea born not in a high-tech laboratory, but in a battered country workshop deep in the woods of Godalming, England.

“The idea of using the wasted heat of computing to do something else has been hovering in the air for some time,” explains Chris Jordan, a 48-year-old physicist, “but only now does technology allow us to do it adequately.

Nvidia’s second-quarter earnings, which were reported Wednesday after markets closed, prove there is money to be made — and lots of it — selling the picks and shovels of the generative AI boom.

“A new computing era has begun. Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Huang isn’t wrong. Nvidia has become the main supplier of the generative AI industry. The company’s A100 and H100 AI chips are used to build and run AI applications, notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Demand for these demanding applications has grown steadily over the last year, and infrastructure is shifting to support them.

The Clearspace-1 mission is due to launch in 2026, but its target may have smashed into more space debris flying around Earth.

A European space debris cleanup mission run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Swiss startup ClearSpace has been adversely affected by space debris.

The mission, called ClearSpace-1, is aiming to collect a Vespa payload adapter left in low Earth orbit by a Vega rocket over a decade ago.

Scientists use AI-powered brain-computer interface (BCI) to decipher speech.

Brain chips, a current research focus, are used for recording brain activity and treating several neurodegenerative diseases. In May this year, a man who lost the ability to talk because of a motorcycle incident stood up after 12 years thanks to brain implants that provided a bridge for communication between his brain and spinal cord.

Another area in which brain implants have shown significant potential is deciphering speech. Decoding brain signals to speech.

Continue reading “Brain implants and AI help voiceless patients to speak up” »

The company calls it the iPhone of bots as development partners will further applications of this humanoid robot.

Texas-based Apptronik unveiled its first commercial humanoid robot designed to complement the industrial workforce by doing repetitive tasks that humans do not want to do, a press release said. The bot is pocket-friendly and aims to be interaction friendly, making it easier to work alongside humans even in some of the toughest environments, a definite competitor for Tesla’s humanoid bot Optimus.

Continue reading “Humanoid robot Apollo could rival Tesla’s Optimus bot” »