Editor Blogs

November 2020
Companies Trying to Solve Battery Recycling Issue
Back in 2009, “TV Zombies” from the Electronics TakeBack Coalition invaded the Consumer Electronics Show  – the point being that consumer electronics (and batteries, especially) “live on” in landfills. 11 years later, the electronics recycling challenge still plagues the industry, but Wired recently profiled a
Date:
11/30/2020
Class-Action Lawsuit Claims Tesla Ignored Suspension Defects
Alleging “breach of warranty and for unfair and deceptive acts and practices,” a class-action lawsuit is charging Tesla with ignoring suspension defects in Model S and Model X electric vehicles. We previously covered Tesla’s tussle with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) after a litany of se
Date:
11/24/2020

Would advanced robots like Boston Dynamics' Atlas agree to pay taxes in the future?

It’s not an empty hypothetical query – our attitudes toward advanced A.I. and taxation, and how the robots, themselves, feel about it, could have profound implications for the very nature of society. The North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology poses the aforementioned question in the context of automa
Date:
11/17/2020

Hyperloop Tests New Transportation System on Humans
Virgin Hyperloop

Is this the future of transportation?

Hey, whatyaknow – it is possible to send humans in pressurized capsules at hypersonic speeds without turning them in goo. On Sunday, Virgin Hyperloop tested their much-ballyhooed vactrain transportation system on humans for the first time. And while comfort is still a huge question mark – the Hyperloop
Date:
11/09/2020
Robot Demo Features Realistic Eye Movements...with no Face

Progress or uncanny valley? Or both?

“In climbing toward the goal of making robots appear human, our affinity for them increases until we come to a valley, which I call the uncanny valley.”  - Masahiro Mori, robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, 1970 Disney Research’s latest robotics demo could be the first exa
Date:
11/03/2020

 



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