Will Japan Have Flying Taxis by 2023?

Slashdot reader damitr shared IEEE Spectrum’s look at Japan’s push for flying taxi services: Last year, Spectrum reported on Japan’s public-private initiative to create a new industry around electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles and flying cars. Last Friday [August 28th], start-up company SkyDrive Inc. demonstrated the progress made since then when it held a press conference to spotlight its prototype…

Will More Powerful Processors Super-Charge NASA’s Mars Rovers?

The Texas Advanced Computer Center talks to Masahiro (Hiro) Ono, who leads the Robotic Surface Mobility Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory which led all the Mars rover missions (also one of the researchers who developed the software that allows the current rover to operate):
The Perseverance rover, which launched this summer, computes using RAD 750s — radiation-hardened single board computers manufactured…

New Toyotas Will Upload Data To AWS To Help Create Custom Insurance Premiums Based On Driver Behavior

KindMind shares a report from The Register: Toyota has expanded its collaboration with Amazon Web Services in ways that will see many of its models upload performance data into the Amazonian cloud to expand the services the auto-maker offers to drivers and fleet owners. […] Toyota reckons the data could turn into “new contextual services such as car share, rideshare, full-service…

Bank of America, Google, and Red Hat Executives Join OASIS Board of Directors

OASIS, the international standards and open source consortium, this week announced that three new members were elected to its Board of Directors: Jeremy Allison of Google, Rich Bowen of Red Hat, and Wende Peters of Bank of America. From a report: Their depth of experience in the open source and open standards communities bolsters the Board’s reach and establishes OASIS as…

Volvo’s Polestar Plans an Electric Ride-Hailing Robotaxi with Waymo

Slashdot reader Way Smarter Than You shares this article from Car and Driver:
Polestar, the Volvo premium electric brand, will come out with a new electric vehicle platform just for ride-hailing vehicles. The automated driving technology is called Waymo Driver, and Waymo has been testing it in vehicles from a number of automakers, including Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, and Renault. You’ll be…

Lyft Settles With Justice Department Over Disability Lawsuit

Lyft has settled with the Justice Department in a lawsuit alleging the company discriminated against customers with disabilities. Engadget reports: Now, drivers will be required to help fold and stow wheelchairs and walkers for customers. The rideshare company has also been ordered to educate its drivers as well as pay complainants and a $40,000 civil penalty. Lyft will pay various amounts…

ACLU Sues LA Over Controversial Scooter Tracking System

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Los Angeles Monday over the city’s requirement that electric scooter rental companies provide anonymized real-time location data. The Verge reports: The lawsuit centers on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s use of a digital tool called the Mobility Data Specification program (MDS), which the agency created as a way to track and regulate electric scooters…

Discoveries of high-Chern-number and high-temperature Chern insulator states

The Quantum Hall effect (QHE) is one of the most important discoveries in physical sciences. Due to the one-dimensional (1-D) dissipationless edge states, QHE exhibits exotic transport properties with quantized Hall resistance of h/νe2 and vanishing longitudinal resistance. Here, h is Planck’s constant, ν is Landau filling factor and e is electron charge. QHE usually originates from the formation of remarkable…