Lifeboat Foundation

In a study published in Scientific Reports, a group of researchers affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil describes an important theoretical finding that may contribute to the development of quantum computing and spintronics (spin electronics), an emerging technology that uses electron spin or angular momentum rather than electron charge to build faster, more efficient devices.

The study was supported by São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP. Its principal investigator was Antonio Carlos Seridonio, a professor in UNESP’s Department of Physics and Chemistry at Ilha Solteira, São Paulo State. His graduate students Yuri Marques, Willian Mizobata and Renan Oliveira also participated.

The researchers observed that molecules with the capacity to encode information are produced in systems called Weyl semimetals when time-reversal symmetry is broken.

Vantablack is a coating so black, anything covered in it appears to disappear, replaced by the blackest of black voids.

Now, the company behind the coating, Surrey NanoSystems, has teamed up with BMW to see what it looks like when you paint a vehicle with Vantablack — and it’s about as trippy as you’d expect.

As part of continuing efforts to ensure their vehicles are the safest cars on the road, Tesla’s “Bug Bounty” program gives awards to security researchers that uncover vulnerabilities in the company’s various product systems. Perhaps one of the most impressive parts of that program, however, is Tesla’s ability to remedy the flaws quickly. In the most recent example of their dedication to security, a Bug Bounty find from April this year is now being patched via an over-the-air (OTA) update in 2019.32.

Last year, a Tesla Model S key fob was hacked by a team led by Lennert Wouters of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven). The security flaw enabled would-be car thieves to clone a fob in less than two seconds, after which the vehicle could be driven off. Tesla subsequently offered a multi-part fix: PIN to Drive, a software update, and a new fob. Wouters again found a very similar flaw in the new fob, but this time the fix only required an OTA update which patched both the vehicle software and the fob’s configuration via radio waves.

A French startup is trying to streamline electric conversion with Tesla batteries in order to offer a relatively cheap way to convert older fossil fuel-powered cars.

Therefs nothing new about electric conversions, but they are often really complicated, which also makes them really expensive.

Continue reading “Startup offers ~$9,000 electric retrofits with Tesla batteries for fossil fuel-powered cars” »

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed to advances in artificial intelligence as evidence that we are smarter than computers in fewer and fewer realms.

Wow. The Chandra X-ray Observatory just celebrated its 20th anniversary of being launched into space! It roared into orbit on board the Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.

Continue reading “Watch the expansion of the Cas A supernova remnant with your own eyes!” »

Any chance of tooth regeneration, this year?

RAADcity: The marketplace of your future.

This is the first in a series of in-depth articles examining China’s efforts to build a stronger, domestic semiconductor industry amid rising trade tensions with US.

After several decades and billions of dollars of investment, only 16 per cent of semiconductors used in China today are manufactured domestically.