MIT Technology Review: Uber Wants Flying Cars in Less Than a Decade
Never let it be said that Uber is unambitious. Not content with upending the taxi industry, developing self-driving cars, and making deliveries using robotic 18-wheelers, it now has its aims set even higher. Much, much higher: it wants to build an on-demand urban aviation system.
That’s grown-up speak for flying cars -- chosen, no doubt, to make the idea seem a little less preposterous. But Uber, it seems, is completely serious. In fact, it’s gone as far as publishing a white paper that details its ambitions for what it’s calling Uber Elevate.
Gizmodo: Tesla Vandalized in 'Most San Francisco Crime Ever'
Tesla stock price increased 4.45% after hours on Wednesday, perhaps giving a San Francisco-based vandal a creative idea for a crime yesterday evening. “In the most San Francisco crime ever,” Silicon Valley recruiter Morgan Missen tweeted, “someone tagged my neighbor’s Tesla with its afterhours stock price. His other Tesla appears unharmed.”
Before the markets closed on Wednesday, Tesla was at $202.24, but after hours, the stock price shot up to $211. Some people clearly could not contain their excitement, although it only went up $9, which isn’t cause for such extreme celebration.
Politico: Behind the Retreat of the Koch Brothers' Operation
On a drizzly Monday morning in mid-September, about 200 staffers from the Koch brothers’ conservative advocacy network were summoned to the fifth-floor auditorium of the Charles Koch Institute’s Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, and presented with some bleak news: Their efforts to reshape American politics were faltering and were being scaled back amid concerns about lower-than-projected fundraising.
In recent years, the deep-pocketed network’s forays into federal elections and policy fights had resulted in “very little success,” the managers were told by top Koch official Mark Holden, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
Another official detailed plans for a merger of existing network groups, announcing that the groups would be narrowing the universe of voters they were seeking to mobilize from 10 million to 5 million.
Climate Central: New Oil Discoveries Largely Unaffected by Paris Pact
Large crude oil discoveries in 2016 face uncertain prospects of development for many reasons, but climate change isn’t one of them, at least for the moment.
Climate policies that help countries meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement are likely to have little effect on newly discovered oil fields because the Paris pact all but ignores crude oil consumption and production, experts say. The fate of new oil discoveries hinges mainly on volatile crude oil markets, the availability of oil in existing fields, and evolving electric vehicle technology.
Microgrid Knowledge: Residential Microgrids for the Masses?
Residential microgrids will be attractive to the masses in the form of standardized battery-plus-solar PV systems, says Suleman Khan, co-founder and managing partner of Swell Energy.
In the past, homeowners -- and those who sell clean energy to them -- were going about it all wrong, often installing oversized solar systems without batteries, according to Khan. The oversized solar systems weren’t always cost-effective, and homeowners’ purchase of them meant that the utilities sold less power due to net metering agreements.