future
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What’s the point of self-driving cars if you still have to drive them?
Tesla's Autopilot mode isn't actually meant to auto-pilot, the company says.
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These bizarre, beautiful cities of the future are also super green
Our view of the future is getting more sustainable, according to these images compiled by the U.K.’s Government Office of Science.
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Swarms of robots could replace tractors on farms
Most farm machinery right now consists of huge machines. But in the future, farm machinery could be “a swarm of planting, tending, and harvesting robots running game theory and swarm behavior algorithms to help optimize every inch of arable space in a given field,” Popular Science reports. That’s one Iowan’s vision, anyway, and he’s created […]
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Bill Nye explains why the city of the future is bike-friendly
The city of the future has showers at the office for bike commuters, weatherproof bike highways, and tunnels engineered to create helpful tailwinds, according to Bill Nye the Science Guy.
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Study: Rich old Republicans are pessimistic about your future
A new Gallup poll finds that only 44 percent of those surveyed thought that today's youth would have a better life than their parents. That's worse than during the recession. In fact, it's the lowest percentage on record, for a question they've been asking since 1983. (The highest, weirdly, was in December 2001 — 71 […]
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What Google predicts for the future of life on earth
XKCD has collated Google's predictions for the next century, and it is dire, and also optimistic, and also weird. Another excerpt and some key findings below the fold, or see the whole thing here. Here's how the future is shaping up, according to Google: Jesus will return in 2018 and again in 2023, and will […]
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Climate change: Four futures
As the debate over the climate bill heats up, there’s one rule of thumb that may help you keep your bearings as the rhetoric becomes more gaseous and the weeds grow ever higher around the facts. It’s this: There are, in the end, only four possible futures here. Future 1: Continuation More business as usual. […]
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Avatar: The Prequel
Cross-posted from TomDispatch. The anticipation may be building, but we’ll all have to wait for the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7th to find out just how many Oscars the global box-office smash Avatar will receive. That 3-D sci-fi spectacle, directed by James Cameron, has garnered nine nominations, including ones for Best Picture and Best […]
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The future of farming and food at the Eco Farm Conference
Last week I went to California for the 2010 Eco Farm Conference — a three-day organic farming extravaganza featuring big names (and big influences of the organic agriculture movement) such as Wes Jackson, Frances Moore Lappé, Deputy Security of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan, and a ton of folks who are part of an ever-growing and expanding […]