Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has confirmed that he's been in talks with Elon Musk regarding a possible tunnel solution to the city's traffic woes. Just like in L.A., the Chicago mayor is looking to improve traffic to the city's airport. Fix Our Traffic, Elon

Serial entrepreneur and innovator Elon Musk is truly the 21st centurys transportation guru. Hes had a stake in the transport sector ever since the first Tesla rolled out of production, then he got into the higher-stakes world of space transport with SpaceX.Most recently, he took his talents underground, founding a tunnel startup to bore below Los Angeles traffic.

Now that construction and testing is well on its way in L.A., other cities have showninterest in Musks solution to heavy traffic. The latest is Chicago, whose mayor Rahm Emanuel has expressed interest in assessing thepotential of Musks Boring Company to improve his city.

According to local dailyThe Chicago Tribune, the mayortold reporters on Monday that he is in talks with Musk about the possibility of creating an underground high-speed rail line to connect downtown Chicago to OHare International Airport: [Elon Musk] has expressed an interest in what Chicagos doingThey are very interested, and were going to have them now out to the city to explore further what we are doing and planning and to see if the tunnel approach is an alternative to the ones weve been discussing.

Airport traffic seems to be a primary concern for major cities reaching out to Musk. Recently, L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti expressed interest in Musks tunnel project to improve traffic to and from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Like many other cities have, Id love to see maybe even with the new tunneling technology that people like Elon Musk is looking at, whether we could have a quick and direct route from LAX to Union Station, he told ABC reporters.

If Musk has his way, the tech will most definitely be quick. The tunnels he creates arelikely to incorporate a Hyperloop system, which, according to the Boring Companys website, could transport passengers at speeds exceeding 965 kph (600 mph).

Whatever the case may be, the willingness of Chicago and other cities to work with Musk is a huge step in revamping transportation infrastructure, which will be essential to supporting the growing world population.

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Elon Musk Has Been Invited to Completely Revamp This US City's Transportation - Futurism

In Brief A Reddit user seems to have chanced upon a Tesla Model 3 being test driven around San Matteo. You You Xue's photos give us an unprecedented glimpse of the car that could change the way the world thinks about electric vehicles.

New photos of the Tesla Model 3 the most anticipated electric car of the decade, if not all timehave been leaked by You You Xue, who claimed on Reddit that Xue came across the new model randomly in San Matteo, and jumped straight out of the car and started snapping photos! The car is due to be launched sometime this year.

Tesla has been extremely secretive about the project, going as far as to camouflage and cover the vehicle in every road test it has conducted to date.

The photos show us the interior of Teslas upcoming vehicle, including its dashboard with a 43-cm (17-inch) display, the steering wheel, charging ports, and wheels.

This has been the latest piece of information in a series of exciting updates concerning the Model 3. We know what the robots that will build the cars look like, that it will have an updated autonomous mode, and that production of the battery cell has begun at Gigafactory 1 in Nevada.

At this point, 2017 looks to be the year of Elon Musk, who is pushing the boundaries of almost any industry he enters: from space rockets, to solar panels, to autonomous vehicles the sky seems to be the limit for the modern technological prophet.

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These Leaked Tesla Model 3 Photos Offer You Views of This Decade's Most Anticipated EV - Futurism

In Brief A Youtuber claiming affiliation with the hactivist group Anonymous released a video stating that NASA is on the verge of announcing the discovery of intelligent life. The video takes quotes out of context and adds their own unproven assumptions. Anonymous Tip

Living in these uncertain times, it seems that false news stories generated to rack up the clicks disseminate faster than ever before. Some of these fake stories even make it beyondthe traditionally susceptible Great Uncles Facebook feed and are quickly gobbled up by traffic-hungry publications who are more concerned with riding a wave of sensationalism than earnestly informing the populace. Such a story had its grips on publications across the internet today, and the salacious topic fueling the frenzy was (of course) aliens.Click to View Full Infographic

A video was posted by a self-describedmember of Anonymous a loosely associated international hacktivist group who claimed that they hadexclusive evidence from NASA saying that we are on the verge of discovering alien life. The person in the Guy Fawkes mask with the digitally-altered voice goes even further, claimingthat theyre not just talking about microbial life, but advanced, space-faring civilizations.

Unfortunately, the facts just do not measure up to these claims which were taken out of context from actual hearings. Keeping in mind thatNASA is certainly making significant progress in discovering life on other planets,The Washington Post decided to do some actual journalism and reach out to NASA for a quote on the fake news. While were excited about the latest findings from NASAs Kepler space observatory, theres no pending announcement regarding Extra-Terrestrial life, a spokesman for the agency wrote.

One of the quotes pulled for the video was said by NASAs Thomas Zurbuchen during a congressional hearing back in April (the entire hearing is publicly available). Zurbuchen did indeed state We are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history, but he was discussing the discovery of possible habitable planets around distant suns, as well asorganic chemicals being found on a moon of Saturn.

Futurism will continue to follow all leads regarding the search for life beyond Earth but we will do so with the full backing of peer reviewed science and not by taking the word of a viral video.

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Did NASA Just Discover Alien Life? Spoiler Alert: No. - Futurism

In Brief A system of drones has been developed to help quell the loss of Earth's trees. The system can help plant almost 100,000 trees per day.

The Earth is rapidly losing its forests at a rate muchfaster than humans can replant. Exact figures vary, but according to Scientific American, most analysts attribute upwards of 15 percent [of global carbon emissions] to deforestation. This means that by clearing or burning the Earths forests, we are directly contributing to the rapidly increasing rate of climate change.

One Australian engineer is enlisting technology to fight the battle against deforestation. Dr. Susan Graham has helped develop a pair of drones that can help mitigate some of the damage by planting trees at a rate that far outpaces what is possible to do by hand.

The first dronescans an area of land, searching for an ideal plot to plant. This drone helps to make a 3D map of the area and then special algorithms are employed to find the best places to plant. The second drone then takes that map and its payload of up to 150 seed pods and gets to work shooting the seeds into the ground. Lauren Fletcher, the CEO of BioCarbon Engineering, said: Were firing at one a second, which means a pair of operators will be able to plant nearly 100,000 trees per day 60 teams like this will get us to a billion trees a year.

Drones get a lot of press for their delivery capabilities, but Amazon packages arent the only way to utilize this technology. There are lifesaving drones that can beat EMTs to emergencies, drones that could help to supportdeclining bee populations, and even drones to stand in for backup dancers. All of this and much more is to come, since not even the sky is the limit.

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New Drone Plans an Ambitious Mission to Plant 100000 Trees a Day - Futurism

Ethereum Goes Up

MGT Capital, the company run by John McAfee, said it would start to mine Ethereum the bitcoin rival that has surged nearly 4,000% this year in its latest bid to turn a profit. Although ethereumhas since dropped in value, its an alteration that was predicted by experts, given its unprecedentedly excessive rise. And as this latest announcement highlights, tech experts and investors alike are confident that its price will soon surge again.

MGT, which is publicly traded over the counter, has pitched itself to investors mostly as a cybersecurity company. Cybersecurity is where McAfee made his mark as the founder of the antivirus company that bears his name.

But McAfee has more recently started to tout cryptocurrencies. He said last month that investments in bitcoin would help put MGT back in the black by the end of the year.

Ethereum is like bitcoin in that it can be mined by computers that solve complex computations. MGT said Friday that it reached an agreement with Bit5ive LLC to buy up to 60 graphics-processor-based mining computers to help mine for ether.

We are more convinced each day of the growth and value of digital currencies, and our company is uniquely positioned to be a leading provider of processing power to relevant blockchains, McAfee said in the statement.

McAfees foray into the cryptocurrency space comes when others have been sounding the alarm after a huge run-up in prices.

In early June, billionaire Mark Cuban said it was evident that bitcoin was a bubble, tweeting, When everyone is bragging about how easy they are making $=bubble.

Days later, Goldman Sachs warned that bitcoin was looking heavy and that a drop to between $2,330 and $1,915 a coin was looking likely. Bitcoin put in a low of $2,076 just a day later after the scaling debate came back into focus as the bitcoin-mining firm Bitmain outlined its contingency plan for if a hard fork were to occur. Bitcoin has recouped those losses and now trades at $2,708.

Ethereum is up by 3,964% in 2017. As for MGT, its stock is up by 42% year-to-date.

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Ethereum is Up 4000% This Year, And The World's Elite Are All Buying In - Futurism

In Brief Volvo announced new partnerships with both Nvidia and Autoliv in an attempt to become a major player in the autonomous car industry. This is just the latest company to move toward driverless cars, which can only be good for our driverless future. Volvos New Partnerships

After a recent announcement that Volvo will attempt to challenge Tesla in the electric vehicle market, the car manufacturer hasnow also made a gambit to join the autonomous vehicle competition. The Swedish car giant has teamed up with Nvidia for the project, specifically utilizing Nvidias Drive PX, which is capable of processing data from 12video cameras as well as lidar, radar, and ultrasonic sensors.

This news comes in the wake of an announcement from the CEOof Volvo, Hakan Samuelsson, thatthe company intends to square off with Tesla at the expense of diesel engines.Samuelsson explained in an email to Reuters,We have to recognize that Tesla has managed to offer such a car for which people are lining up. In this area, there should also be space for us, with high quality and attractive design.

The software that will govern the driverless system is provided by Autoliv, who Volvo ispartnering with under the new name Zenuity for this venture. Although some parts of the collaboration will be exclusive for Volvo, other aspects that Autoliv will develop couldbe sold to other car makers.

Volvo and Nvidia have teamed up before for Volvos autonomous car pilot program, Drive Me, but this the first time they have teamed up for a commercially available vehicle, which the companyaims to launchin 2021.

The ever growing hype around driverless car technology which has the potential to make our roads safer and fasterhas encouraged several other notable players in the motor vehicle and computerindustries to start developing their own variants of the technology. Volvo is another racehorse in stable of big-name, big-money ventures.

Also joining the race for the future of transport are: Tesla, who arguably pioneereddriverless technology and have a potential industry changer in their hotly anticipated Model 3; Google, who have also entered the fray by launching as Volvo did a separate company called Google Auto LLCto develop their driverless cars; and Ford, who have goneas far to test their cars in snowy conditions last year.

There is, therefore, a huge amount of competition among car makers, which is exciting for our driverless future as it will lead to the best autonomous cars possible on our roads. Competition breeds innovation, after all.

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Volvo Is Rivaling Tesla With Their Own Driverless Car - Futurism