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In a major reversal, the world bank is backing mega dams (2024)

Despite continued opposition, the World Bank has approved the first of five big dam projects expected to get its support in the coming months. Climate change has upped the need for renewable energy, but the environmental and social costs of building such massive projects remain. After a decade of declining to finance large hydroelectric dams, the World Bank is getting back into the business in a big way. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the bank was the world’s leading supporter of

Africa's gigantic $80B dam could transform entire continent

At a cost of $80 billion, the Grand Inga Dam will be the world's largest hydroelectric plant, capable of generating 40.000 megawatts and bringing electricity to millions, the megaproject will change economies and connect all of Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is about to embark on one of the largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects ever seen. The construction of the $80 billion Grand Inga Dam promises to transform not only the country’s energy sector, but also the f

Daisy Ridley’s Husband Cast in Adaptation of Former Reylo ‘Star Wars’ Fan Fiction

The behind-the-scenes story of an upcoming romantic comedy could, on its own, be a pretty fascinating movie. Here’s the pitch. A young Star Wars fan writes a piece of Reylo (that’s Rey and Kylo Ren for the non-shippers out there) alternative universe fanfiction. The fan is approached about turning the story into a novel, only, it can’t be specific to Star Wars anymore. So the names change, but the intention and romance stay the same. That book becomes a smash hit bestseller, Hollywood comes call

Mill: A better build tool for Java, Scala, and Kotlin

If you want to contribute to Mill, or are interested in the fundamental ideas behind Mill rather than the user-facing features discussed above, check out the page on Mill Design Principles. In particular, this video is a must-watch to help you understand the fundamental concepts behind Mill and why they are interesting:

The Download: California’s AI power plans, and and why it’s so hard to make welfare AI fair

California's statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned. At an industry summit in Minneapolis tomorrow, the California Independent System Operator is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes wit

Human-Constructed Dams Have Shifted the Earth’s Poles, Scientists Say

Humans have built so many dams around the world that the Earth’s poles have wandered away from the planet’s rotational axis, new research suggests. Over the last 200 years, humans have constructed nearly 7,000 massive dams, impounding enough water to nudge the Earth’s poles by about three feet (one meter) and cause a 0.83-inch (21-millimeter) drop in global sea levels, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. This drift is possible because Earth’s solid crust forms a hard shel

AI is changing the rental car return experience - and it could cost you

UVeye Returning a rental car is already a bit of a stressful experience, but it might be getting a little more stressful soon -- you can thank AI for that. Over the past several months, people renting vehicles from Hertz noticed a new step in the return process -- a drive through a giant, glowing archway. Also: Perplexity's Comet AI browser is hurtling toward Chrome - how to try it It turns out that Hertz is employing a new AI-powered system called UVeye (from an Israeli startup that started

Topics: ai car damage hertz human

Mighty mitochondria: Cell powerhouses harnessed for healing

James McCully was in the lab extracting tiny structures called mitochondria from cells when researchers on his team rushed in. They’d been operating on a pig heart and couldn’t get it pumping normally again. McCully studies heart damage prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was keenly interested in mitochondria. These power-producing organelles are particularly important for organs like the heart that have high energy needs. McCully had been wondering whether t

Dark visions and monsters abound in Wednesday S2 trailer

Pugsly joins his big sister at Nevermore in Wednesday S2. The Netflix series Wednesday, created by Tim Burton, was one of our favorites in 2022, and while it was quickly renewed, it's been a long wait for that second season. That wait is nearly over. The first half of S2 debuts next month, and Netflix has released a full-length trailer to remind us of that fact. Verdict: It looks like we're in for another spooky supernatural mystery that only our favorite pig-tailed goth girl detective can solv

The Miyawaki Method of micro-forestry

Introduction Voiceover 00:01 You are listening to Season Six of Future Ecologies. Adam Huggins 00:07 Hello? Mendel Skulski 00:08 Hey, Adam. Adam Huggins 00:09 Oh, hey, Mendel, what's up? Actually, I'm at work right now. Do you think we could- Mendel Skulski 00:13 No, no, that's perfect. Listen. Can I make you a pitch? I think I've got something you might really like. Adam Huggins 00:19 Okay, make it quick. Mendel Skulski 00:21 Adam, are you tired of trying to restore ecosystems, onl

The Hidden Engineering of Liquid Dampers in Skyscrapers

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] There’s a new trend in high-rise building design. Maybe you’ve seen this in your city. The best lots are all taken, so developers are stretching the limits to make use of space that isn’t always ideal for skyscrapers. They’re not necessarily taller than buildings of the past, but they are a lot more slender. “Pencil tower” is the term generally used to describe buildings that have a slenderness ratio of more than around 10 to

From hallucinations to hardware: Lessons from a real-world computer vision project gone sideways

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Computer vision projects rarely go exactly as planned, and this one was no exception. The idea was simple: Build a model that could look at a photo of a laptop and identify any physical damage — things like cracked screens, missing keys or broken hinges. It seemed like a straightforward use case for image models and large language models (

Hertz turns to AI for rental car inspections, faces backlash over fees

A hot potato: Hertz is ushering in a new era of vehicle inspections by deploying artificial intelligence-powered scanners at select locations across the US. The move is intended to improve the accuracy and transparency of the rental car damage inspection process. However, for some customers, the technology has led to new frustrations and unexpected costs. The company's new system, developed in partnership with Israeli firm UVeye, is already operational at major hubs such as Hartsfield-Jackson A

Topics: ai damage fee hertz new

There Has Never Been a Better Time to Revisit the Original ‘Gundam’

Gundam has spent nearly 50 years reinventing itself across myriad side stories, new universes, and reimaginings of the story that started it all in the events of the “Universal Century” that kicked off in the original 1979 series Mobile Suit Gundam. There are so many ways to get into the franchise, newer starting points, perhaps less intimidating starting points than a 43-episode TV series. But there’s a reason the original Gundam still endures as one of the best, if not the best, entry points a

What Happens When Hertz's AI Scanner Finds Damage on Your Rental

Get The Drive’s daily newsletter The latest car news, reviews, and features. Email address Sign Up Thank you! Terms of Service & Privacy Policy. Back in April, we reported on how Hertz was planning to employ artificial intelligence to scan vehicles before and after renters use them, to check for damages and issue associated charges. The AI system has been live now for a few months at select locations around the country, and one customer of Hertz-owned Thrifty reached out to The Drive to share h

My Couples Retreat With 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them

I found the human-AI couples by posting in relevant Reddit communities. My initial outreach hadn’t gone well. Some of the Redditors were convinced I was going to present them as weirdos. My intentions were almost the opposite. I grew interested in human-AI romantic relationships precisely because I believe they will soon be commonplace. Replika, one of the better-known apps Americans turn to for AI romance, says it has signed up more than 35 million users since its launch in 2017, and Replika is

The ‘GQuuuuuuX’ Finale Might Be One of the Most Hopeful ‘Gundam’ Endings in Years

So much of Gundam GQuuuuuuX‘s riffing on the legacy of the 1979 original across its 12 episodes has been almost about a yearning sense of inevitability that it could only end in one way—a retread of what came before narratively, and a continuation of the cycle of conflict that has broadly defined the franchise at large and the Universal Century setting that GQuuuuuuX played with in particular. But in its final episode, GQuuuuuuX played with its nostalgic sensibilities one last time to imagine fo

‘Deus Ex’ Did Good Work, and I Wish It Could Do More

For as many long-running franchises were born during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era—your Assassin’s Creeds and Borderlands, to name a few—some old series tried making a return. Among those was Deus Ex, a series of cyberpunk role-playing games which just turned 20 years old and had an unfortunately short-lived return with a duology that under better circumstances, would’ve been a trilogy. The original game hailed from Ion Storm on June 23, 2000 for PC and eventually PlayStation 2. At the tim

MIT student prints AI polymer masks to restore paintings in hours

MIT graduate student Alex Kachkine once spent nine months meticulously restoring a damaged baroque Italian painting, which left him plenty of time to wonder if technology could speed things up. Last week, MIT News announced his solution: a technique that uses AI-generated polymer films to physically restore damaged paintings in hours rather than months. The research appears in Nature. Kachkine's method works by printing a transparent "mask" containing thousands of precisely color-matched region

The ‘GQuuuuuuX’ Endgame Is About the Messiest Relationship in All of ‘Gundam’

What is Mobile Suit Gundam about? Sometimes, it’s about cool robots. Sometimes, it’s about the horrors of war. Sometimes, it’s about the balance of power, and the exploitation of have-nots by the haves, a cycle of class conflict that is inextricably interwoven through the cycle of military conflict. But really, a lot of the time–especially in the series’ foundational Universal Century setting–Gundam is a story about the two most divorced people to have ever not been married. And now Gundam GQuu

Appeals court tosses $300 million Optis patent verdict against Apple

On Monday, Apple scored a big legal victory in one of its longest-running patent battles, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a $300 million damages award the company had been ordered to pay to Optis Wireless Technology. This latest decision (via Reuters) marks the second time a nine-figure damages verdict in this case has been thrown out. Now, the case is heading back to Texas for yet another trial. What’s this case about again? Optis, a Texas-based IP managemen

Behold, a Shadowy Full Look at the New He-Man

Amazon MGM’s upcoming Masters of the Universe movie just got a bit more real thanks another, more complete look at its musclebound lead, He-Man. Portrayed in the upcoming film by Nicolas Galtizine, the British actor released a picture of himself as Adam of Grayskull’s heroic persona, albeit from the back and bathed in shadow. The picture comes with the news that filming has wrapped, and Galtizine called it “an honour shouldering the responsibility of playing Adam and He-Man. It’s been the role

All the Kookiest Things to Remember About ‘Wednesday’ Before Season 2

Happy Friday the 13th, you Wednesday fandom kooks. The Jenna Ortega-starring Addams Family spin-off series from Tim Burton follows the Addams’ eldest as she attends a boarding school filled with other supernaturally inclined youths in a sprawling mystery that has only begun. Wednesday returns to Netflix in less than two months, so we’re taking this spooky occasion to pull out our Nevermore notes before school gets back in session. Here’s what you need to remember—besides Wednesday having a Frid

“Bouncing” winds damaged Houston skyscrapers in 2024

On May 16, 2024, a powerful derecho swept through Houston, killing seven people and causing significant damage to several of the city's towering skyscrapers. Those buildings were constructed to withstand much stronger hurricane-force winds up to 67 meters per second, as one would get with a Category 4 hurricane. The derecho's winds peaked at 40 meters per second, well below that threshold. And when Hurricane Beryl hit Houston that July with roughly comparable wind speeds of 36 meters per second,