Lifeboat Foundation

Starbucks is aiming to capitalize on the rising demand for electric vehicle infrastructure by installing fast chargers at up to 15 coffeehouses this summer, along a 1,350-mile route from Colorado to Washington.

The project, a pilot program with Volvo Cars, aims to build one DC charging station on each 100-mile segment of the western route.

Why install chargers at Starbucks? The coffeehouse chain is betting that it can score business from electric vehicle owners while they wait for their cars to charge — a process that can take a while, depending on the battery and strength of the charger.

Like electric vehicles – traditionally seen as expensive and niche – solar power is now becoming a realistic option for many households, as well as businesses wishing to decarbonise their operations. While the upfront costs of installing a photovoltaic (PV) rooftop system can be expensive, home solar will usually pay for itself within 5–10 years – and then provides the owner with an essentially free, limitless supply of clean energy, decentralised and unaffected by price volatility. Unlike the world’s increasingly scarce, finite supplies of coal, oil and gas, our Sun will continue to shine for another five billion years. Home solar can also be combined with batteries (which, like solar, are rapidly declining in cost) for energy storage at night.

At the utility scale, gigantic solar projects are now emerging in many countries. Recent years have seen the first gigawatt-scale (GW) facilities. The largest has a nameplate capacity of 2.3 GW. China is the world leader, accounting for 30% of all solar electric generation, followed by Europe (21%) and then the USA (16%). The vast majority is produced from PV modules, with a small fraction obtained by concentrated solar power (using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight onto a receiver).

Continue reading “Solar power reaches 1 TW milestone” »

Every industry will be affected by quantum computing. They will alter the way business is done and the security systems in place which protect data, how we battle illnesses and create new materials, as well as how we tackle health and climate challenges.

As the race to build the first commercially functional quantum computer heats up, here we discuss a handful of the ways quantum computing will alter our world.

A UK consortium wants to build the world’s largest and longest “drone superhighway,” connecting towns and cities across the United Kingdom.

Also read: 14 amazing drone photos from DJI SkyPixel contest winners

Continue reading “World’s longest 165-mile ‘drone superhighway’ proposed in the UK” »

If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics

Richard Feynman

Kinova, a Canadian company that specializes in robotic arms, is launching Link 6, a new generation industrial robot designed for all businesses looking to benefit from automation.

The Link 6 collaborative robot features automation solutions that enable greater daily efficiency while improving the quality and consistency of production results. Kinova’s newest robot helps you start producing faster thanks to a rich interface on its wrist, feed-through of power and data, optional Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and optional wrist vision module.

The company says its Link 6 controller provides the highest processing power and memory capacity on the market, making it ready to use with the AI solutions of the future while keeping the size of the controller compact. Link 6 robotic arm is developed and designed with any user in mind: an experienced industrial integrator and an operator with no particular robotic skills.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vhiYHdMnK44

Mikhail Kokorich is the founder of Destinus. This serial entrepreneur has been dubbed Russia’s Elon Musk by his public relations team. The Russian businessman says his business, Destinus, is developing a hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions transcontinental delivery drone that can travel at speeds up to Mach 15.

Destinus plans to combine the technological advancements from a spaceplane with the ordinary and straightforward physics from a glider to create a hyperplane that will meet the many demands of a hyper-connected world.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Thinks Destinus Technology Will Soon End The War Against Russia, Know How” »

Decentralizing talent

More than 50 million creators are driving their own economy of talent, attracting in excess of $800 million in venture capital. Such figures are but a shadow of what they can become later, as new venues are rapidly becoming available.

The development of blockchain technologies has resulted in a sweeping revolution across financial markets, empowering individuals instead of institutions and channeling ownership of data and funds to their holders. The qualities of the blockchain — immutability, full transparency and the trustless nature of operations — have permeated many industries, swooning the balance of business orientation from centralized corporate reliance to decentralization. This shift in the basic concepts that govern relations between participants to transactions, facilitated by smart contracts, has not gone unnoticed in the creator economy.

After about three rounds of trying to get workers back to an office setting, this time it looks real. The uptick in Covid-19 cases caused the first foray into returning to headquarters to be pushed back. When things looked better, Delta and Omicron variant waves hit, forcing businesses to relent on their plans to get employees out of their homes and into cubicles.

Two years after the start of the pandemic, it looks like this time the executives will have their wish. Companies in all sectors—ranging from tech to Wall Street—are announcing their timelines for returning. The dominant style of work is the hybrid model, in which people will be asked to go to work for two or three days a week at their office and the rest of the time from home or wherever they so choose.

We will likely soon see a showdown. Many surveys over the last year or so showed that employees adamantly responded that they would rather quit than commute back to an office. It’s easier said than done. Saying something in a survey isn’t binding. You may have a preference of how you want to work, but it’s another thing to resign without another job lined up.