Cars are getting streamlined and minimalist. We’ve seen approval for vehicles without a steering wheel or pedals in the effort to make cars with increased autonomous capabilities. But now, automakers have designed a car without conventional brake discs — and it’s all part of a bigger effort to reduce carbon emissions. Over the weekend, French carmaker DS Automobiles, the luxury arm of Citroen, launched a prototype of the DS E-TENSE, which uses only electric regenerative brakes. How does regenera
In the last few weeks, we’ve heard multiple rumors about Elon Musk’s vision of generating more money through Twitter. But now, we have a robust idea of what Twitter’s numbers would look like under the Tesla CEO’s management. Over the weekend, The New York Times published a report about Musk’s pitch deck to investors — and the goals described in it are pretty ambitious. Rocket fueled user growth 931 million. That’s Musk’s target for user numbers by 2028. That’s huge by any measure. But for refere
I like imperfect things. I like my sweater with its holes at the elbows, that painting of mine that my cat walked over while it was drying, that source code I’m using for my doctorate that never seems to execute as I’d expected it to. I like it that way, though. Imperfection makes things more interesting. When you’re talking about business, however, there’s money to be made — potentially lots of money. And unlike other parts of life, in the business world, a small imperfection might result in mi
Whether you need a new villain or an old Spider-Man, your sci-fi movie will sound more scientifically respectable if you use the word multiverse. The Marvel multiverse puts different versions of our universe “out there”, somewhere. In these films, with the right blend of technology, magic, and imagination, travel between these universes is possible. For example (spoilers!), in Spider-Man: No Way Home, we discover there are other universes and other Earths, some of which have their own local Spid
China has had the world’s fastest-growing economy since the 1980s. A key driver of this extraordinary growth has been the country’s pragmatic system of innovation, which balances government steering and market-oriented entrepreneurs. Right now, this system is undergoing changes that may have profound implications for the global economic and political order. The Chinese government is pushing for better research and development, “smart manufacturing” facilities, and a more sophisticated digital ec
As a physicist working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, one of the most frequent questions I am asked is “When are you going to find something?” Resisting the temptation to sarcastically reply “Aside from the Higgs boson, which won the Nobel Prize, and a whole slew of new composite particles?”, I realize that the reason the question is posed so often is down to how we have portrayed progress in particle physics to the wider world. We often talk about progress in terms of discovering n
Bored Apes have become symbolic of the NFT craze. Horrendously ugly and ludicrously pricey, their value derives from artificial scarcity. It would therefore be a great shame if someone offered infinite free versions of the collectibles — which is exactly what Yannic Kilcher has done. The machine learning expert has built an app that generates as many Bored Apes as your heart desires. The system is powered by generative adversarial networks (GANs), which create new content by pitting two neural n
The big existential fear on everybody’s mind used to be losing our jobs to AI. That all changed when the pandemic hit and millions were faced with job loss that had nothing to do with automation. For many, the best solution to their COVID-related employment woes was to turn to the freelance or “gig-based” economy. This led to a huge uptick in value for companies specializing in connecting clients with freelancers, and Fiverr, an Israeli-based company, was no exception. But the tides are changing
I don’t own a TV (streaming all the way), but I’m always interested in car commercials to see what tricks advertisers are deploying in their efforts to make us want to shell out a large portion of our income on a new car. So when I saw that Ford released a new advertisement yesterday – with a decent amount of shade thrown at a competitor whose name starts with a T and ends with an a, I was all in. Let me walk you through it and share some thoughts. You can check out the ad in all its glory: R
Worldwide sales of fitness trackers increased from US$14 billion in 2017 to over $36 billion in 2020. The skyrocketing success of these gadgets suggests that more people than ever see some value in keeping tabs on the number of steps they take, flights of stairs they climb, time they spend sitting, and calories they burn. The manufacturers of these devices certainly want consumers to believe that tracking fitness or health-related behaviors will spur them to increase their activity levels and ma