A high acid environment is great for a snappy hydrogen oxidation reaction—the reaction at the heart of a clean-energy fuel cell. The problem is the only catalysts that won’t dissolve in the high acid of traditional fuel cells are precious metals—platinum, palladium and the like—and they are very expensive. Subscribe to our newsletter for the … Read more
McDonald’s is testing humanoid robots dressed in company uniforms at a Shanghai restaurant, putting machines in direct contact with customers to greet diners and suggest menu items. The pilot, reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua, represents one of the first known instances of a major Western fast-food chain deploying humanoid robots in a customer-facing … Read more
Walk into most chain restaurants today and you’ll notice something feels different, even if you can’t quite name it. The menu is shorter. The laminated booklet that used to require a dedicated commitment is now a single folded card, or sometimes just a QR code pointing to eight options. You didn’t imagine it, and nobody … Read more
Get behind the wheel of almost any new car and you’ll notice something within the first few minutes. It accelerates effortlessly, absorbs bumps without complaint, and filters out the outside world with impressive thoroughness. Everything works. And yet, if you’ve ever driven something older and more mechanical, you may come away from that new car … Read more
Brinc Drones, the Seattle-based maker of public safety drones for first responders, is moving its headquarters and factory space to a massive development not far from its current Fremont neighborhood location. Brinc is taking over 35,000 square feet at West Canal Yards, in a former fish cannery along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Queen … Read more
Smartphone applications are designed to make life a bit easier for the user. This is especially true of Apple Maps, which can help you easily navigate to various destinations while also avoiding toll roads. But unfortunately, this popular app could soon become something of a headache. That’s because Apple is opening the door for companies to … Read more
Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and former Shark Tank investor, argues that AI agents can trim roughly an hour from the typical workday by handling routine tasks like research, email triage, and sales preparation. But he is equally blunt about the technology’s limits, comparing current AI agents to unreliable interns with a steep price tag. … Read more
Storied semiconductor and software company Arm Holdings is starting to make its own chips after nearly 36 years of licensing its designs to companies like Nvidia and Apple. At an event Tuesday in San Francisco, the company revealed the Arm AGI CPU, a production-ready chip built for running inference in an AI data center. The … Read more
Hyperbikes are having a moment. Every launch promises something faster, more integrated, more aerodynamic than what came before. Deeper profiles. Narrower frontal areas. More speed, for the same effort. And, increasingly, more cost and complexity to get there. If I were a professional bike racer, I’d be very interested in competing on a hyperbike like … Read more
State regulators have signed off on SpaceX’s plan to expand its Starbase launch site even farther into the surrounding wetlands amid lawsuits and a record of violations at the complex near Boca Chica Beach. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently said it had approved the project that would add 21 acres to the launch … Read more
