UK government again plugs strike-busting dream of driverless subway trains

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 9:27 pm
Posted In: Insider


It’s strike season on the London Underground, and that means one thing for the UK’s interminable Tory governments: time to rev-up the driverless hype train. Conservative politicians have long called for a fully-autonomous metro. In 2012, then-London Mayor Boris Johnson said Britain’s capital would have driverless trains within 10 years. A decade later, he claimed the switch would free people from being “prisoners of the unions.” The government reiterated the case during recent funding talks with Transport for London (TfL), which operates the local underground network. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made working towards driverless trains a condition of the bailout. Shapps…

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Drones offer sustainable last-mile parcel delivery

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 3:50 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized


The future of last-mile package delivery is fast and contactless, with delivery providers focused on eliminating traffic and parking challenges. An increasingly prominent option is the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles or drones.  This week research comparing the environmental impact of different forms of last-mile delivery was published in the scientific journal Patterns. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University compared the energy consumption of quadcopter drones against diesel and electric medium-duty trucks, small vans, and electric cargo bicycles on a per-package basis. They found that greenhouse-gas emissions per parcel were 84% lower for drones than for diesel trucks. Unsurprisingly, drones consumed…

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Crypto fans are paying more for NFT cars than real ones

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 2:07 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized


Say you had millions of dollars to spend. If you’re an automotive enthusiast, perhaps you’d buy the latest Ferrari or a 1956 Aston Martin. But would you spend an exorbitant amount for a car you can’t physically drive? It may sound illogical, but research by Vanarama shows people are digging deep into their pockets to buy car-related NFTs. This means that they own the cars’ digital rendering (although anyone can view and download it), but they’ll never get to lay a single hand on the vehicle. In fact, as per the study, buyers are willing to pay even more for…

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5 ways to identify job phishing schemes

Aug09
by on August 9, 2022 at 12:25 pm
Posted In: Future of Work


Have you ever been catfished? Maybe you’ve met someone on a dating app and decided to go for a coffee or a drink, but when you showed up, the person looked nothing like their profile pictures. Unfortunately, this kind of deception is such a part of dating in 2022 that we’ve almost come to accept it. But that kind of deceit would never happen in a professional setting… would it? By now, you’ve probably heard about the Madbird job scam that hit the news back in February. Madbird was advertised as a British-based design agency run by a charismatic and…

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The future of dark matter research will ultimately be decided by politicians

Aug08
by on August 8, 2022 at 5:53 pm
Posted In: Opinion


Experts believe some 80-percent of the universe could be made up of a mysterious substance called “dark matter.” Some even think there’s an entire group of particles forming a “dark sector” that could be as complex as the matter and antimatter families. Unfortunately, the quest to finally observe dark matter is hitting a wall. Simply put we need more particle colliders. And whether they get built is, seemingly, completely up to the powers-that-be in the European and US political arenas. Cash rules everything The development of particle colliders has been one of humankind’s most expensive scientific endeavors. However, they haven’t…

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