Tech for Good

2022-08-31 07:36:29 Sending power from space

The European Space Agency seeks funding for a feasibility study of space-based solar power (SBSP).

SBSP is collecting solar power in outer space by solar power satellites (SPS). Then distributing it to Earth. The god news about the tech are:
- atmosphere does not reflect and absorb sun's energy = we can collect more;
- there is no (or very little) night in space = more energy;
- we can better face the sun with a satellite = more energy again.

There are also bad news though. Scientists call them the current technological hurdles.

SBSP convert sunlight to other form of energy such as microwaves. Then transmits it through the atmosphere to receivers on the Earth's surface:

- It costs a lot of money to build and launch a solar power satellite;
- the satellite's life in space is not easy. It degrades from radiation and can get damage from micrometeoroids;
- the efficiency of wireless power transition has to be 85%. To achieve that, the antenna receiver has to be 10 km in diameter. That's a lot of land and money.

Despite a lot of challenges and questionable economic efficiency, the researches continue.

Finding a feasible solution would allow not only get a new source of renewable energy on Earth. There are also plans to send energy from satellites or from Earth to the Moon to power future lunar missions.

#space #solar #future Open / Comment

2022-08-25 10:04:26 Kill the distractions and get sh@t done

How often do we get distracted by our smartphones?

I have an open text editor, a plan to make content, a cup of coffee, and a strong desire to do the work. Then my phone buzzes. And here am I one hour later wondering how could a conscious person waste so much time watching an Instagram feed.

Unpluq is a startup with a simple idea to battle distracting apps. They make small NFC tiles that help you lock and unlock your phone with mindfulness. You select the apps like, say, Instagram, Telegram, or TikTok to be unlocked with the Unpluq tile. Then you place the tile far from yourself.

Getting to the selected apps means you have to get up, go to another room and touch the yellow tile with your phone. So, the device requires you to make an active decision to distract yourself from what you're doing.

The price is $50. Do you think it is worth having to get things done?

Unpluq website

#devices #startups Open / Comment

2022-08-17 11:39:57 Stop showing-off on Instagram, be real!

Today's app is for those tired of mindless scrolling, filtered photos, and random recommendations in a personal feed.

BeReal launched in December 2019 promotes the idea of asking users to post an unedited photo once per day. Upon receiving the alert, the user has up to 2 minutes to share what they’re up to and can see the photos their friends also posted.

The app is simple to use, capturing a selfie and front-facing photo at once. No filters are allowed. No time for preparation, one chance a day to post a photo. Sharing with a selected group of friends only. The concept offers users a chance to show who they really are.

The idea is not new, of course. The question is whether the app will be able to compete with Instagram, TikTok and other social giants. My feeling it will stay in its narrow niche. What you think?

#apps #software Open / Comment

2022-08-11 09:48:26 European countries friendly for digital nomads

Today's post is for those of you who:
- like myself, are freelancers, who are looking for a place to live and work online;
- want to become "digital nomads" and need a good reason, like a nice place to live in, to follow their goals.

Here is a good Sifted article for you. It covers European countries that have visa programs for freelancers working online. Such visas allow foreigners to stay in a country for between six months and two years.

A few examples:

Croatia. It allows successful applicants to stay for a year, and to extend the visa for a second year.

Requirements:
- background check from your home country
- proof of health and travel insurance
- proof of a Croatian address and proof that you’re a digital nomad
- earn at least €2,370 per month but do not pay local taxes

Norway. Self-employed nomads can apply for an independent contractor visa. It allows them to stay in Norway for up to two years.

Requirements:
- pay an application fee of €600
- apply for the visa in person either at a police station in Norway or via a Norwegian embassy in your home country
- will have to pay local taxes while living in Norway and must apply for a VAT number.
- earn at least €35,718 per year

Portugal. D7 visa launched in 2007 is one of the longest-standing digital nomad residence permits.

Requirements:
- have a Portuguese tax number and bank account
- must have health insurance and proof of a Portuguese address
- applicants must be able to stay in the country for 16 months for the first two years of their stay
- need to be earning €9,870 annually

Malta. Mediterranean sea, sun, sand, and a straightforward visa process.

Requirements:
- write a letter of intent, explaining motivations for applying
- pay an application fee of €300
- the permit is for a year and is renewable — and usually takes up to 30 days to get approval
- nomads must have a monthly income of €2,700 gross per month

If interested, you may want to read the full article. It has a list of other wonderful places like the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Iceland, and others. Open / Comment

2022-08-03 08:56:42 More humane and less wasteful fish harvesting

Many of us like fish. Even more like when it's fresh and tasty. Yet, how often do we consider how this tasty baked or fried fish on our dining table was harvested?

Fish harvesting in general does not care about the fish's comfort. In most cases the fish are dumped out of the net, roughly sorted, and then thrown on ice to flap around and eventually suffocate minutes or hours later.

This isn't just cruel, but also results in the fish’s body degrading faster due to the stress, bacteria in wounds and blood, and lactic acid in the muscles.

There is a better way, a traditional Japanese method called ike-jime. Ike-jime involves piercing the brain with a sharp spike to send the fish to fish heaven. Then quickly exsanguinating it, and after that destroying the spinal cord.

Doing it this way is not only the most humane. It also prevents stress, suffering, and bacteria from spreading through the body. But you have to do it precisely and within a couple of minutes after catching a fish, so it doesn’t scale.

That is, unless you automate it, which is what Shinkei Systems has done. The team, led by founder Saif Khawaja, has created a device making ike-jime on fresh-caught fish. It works at a rate of one every 10-15 seconds.

The machine is about the size of a big refrigerator. It includes a hopper for incoming fish, an operational area, and output where it can go into an ice bath. A computer vision system identifies the species and shape of the fish it is holding. Then it locates the brain and other important parts. And goes through the ike-jime motions, dispatching the fish quickly and reliably.

It isn’t just for the fish’s sake that Shinkei is going through all this. Kitchens pay a premium for fish processed via ike-jime since it tastes better and lasts longer.

Shinkei raised $1.3 million in a pre-seed round filed in January. The team is now in the sales process. They meet more large-scale distributors and public companies to put the machine in people’s hands. Open / Comment

2022-07-29 09:59:37 Help vertical farming cut costs and be less pollutant

The global vertical farming (VF) market reached USD 4.34 billion in 2021. It will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.5% from 2022 to 2030. The growth is due to the increased production of fruits and vegetables.

VF can increase crop yield, lower land and water use, and localize food supply chains. But the industry still has one particularly unsustainable dependency. CO2 is pumped into vertical farms to help plants grow. And, at present, it usually comes from fossil fuel production.

Skytree startup develops a new method. They install localized direct-air-capture units next to vertical farms. So they can capture their own CO2, recycling it from the atmosphere.

How does it work?

The tech uses plastic beads. They are a few millimeters wide and made of ion exchange resin. They’re exposed to the air and after 15-20 minutes they’ve collected CO2 like a sponge. Then they’re heated up to 70-80C and that releases the CO2 again.

Skytree’s units are small enough to be able to bring captured CO2 to where it’s needed as a product. Besides VF, applications include air and water filtration, and cement/fuel/plastic production.

Skytree's business model is also interesting. They provide their devices on CO2-as-a-service basis. They lock the CO2 price from the start, and clients pay for the amount of CO2 consumed monthly. Clients have no upfront installation costs.

The company's promise to their clients is to cut CO2 costs. It is also to make operations more efficient. Instead of buying, transporting and storing CO2 produced from fossil fuels, customers take CO2 out of the air onsite.

#agriculture #startups Open / Comment

2022-07-25 10:05:05 Affordable housing that even Elon Musk wants

Meet Boxabl, a Las Vegas startup working on affordable housing for everyone. The company founded in 2017 has over $1 billion in reservations from almost 50 thousand customers. Elon Musk apparently lives in one.

So what's special about their product?

Their initial house, Casita, is a 375 sq ft (35 m2) dwelling unit with a full-size bathroom, kitchen, appliances, and tall ceilings with big windows. It ships on a regular flatbed trailer.

The most mindblowing fact: it unfolds and sets up in the customer's backyard in less than 2 hours.

And costs under $50k.

Such low cost is possible due to assembly line mass production. The company builds a massive factory near Vegas and will produce 3600 houses per year.

For those who may think of prefabricated houses as bad quality, the team has an answer. Casita outperforms many other building types:
- on energy ratings,
- fire resistance,
- wind resistance, and more.

The houses have a modular design. That means clients will be able to add space by connecting the second module. Or transform their house into a two-story one with a garage on the ground floor and a living area on the first floor.

Enough words, have a look yourself.

#startups #urbantech Open / Comment

2022-07-20 09:44:56 An oddly satisfying video and a business idea

I sometimes surf TikTok to search for post ideas. Yesterday, I've lost an hour of my life watching the oddly satisfying videos of a fiber laser machine work. Here is one of them from youtube.

I thought that this thing was actually a good business idea. On Amazon, there is a bunch of these machines ranging from $2800 to $17100.

I've searched the companies providing the service of engraving in the US. They sell various services and products such as:
- engraving metal tumblers, glasses, wood plates, trophies, leather notebooks, etc.;
- selling the same engraved items;
- corporate engraving, i.e. business cards, gifts, desk signs, name badges, wine bottles, etc.
- industrial engraving, i.e. metal signs and parts, surgical and other tools marking, etc.;
- and many many more services and products.

What I like about the idea:
- the investment is not so large;
- the marketing is so natural - these videos collect millions of views on TikTok, Youtube, and other platforms;
- the range of products and services is so wide. I can target both B2B and B2C customers;
- the production process looks like I have to spend some time to master it. Yet, it is automated and shouldn't be rocket science;
- I don't need any special room for that, can use any garage or do it at home.

Of course, to succeed, I'd have to spend hours educating myself, finding customers, and growing the business. The key here would be great interest and consistency. The same applies to any startup though.

Your thoughts?

#devices #startups Open / Comment

2022-07-18 08:21:08 Banana fingers

The soft actuator is the device that senses the touch and performs a specific action based on that. It uses pneumatics to move. It has such applications as:
assistive wearables,
exoskeletons,
soft robotics,
and interactive devices.

The problem is making soft pneumatic actuators remain slow, costly, and manual.

MIT researchers published a paper on the new fabrication method. That includes
- designing a device using a special app,
- knitting on a machine in under 5 minutes.

The machine knits a textile sheath around the ordinary silicone tube. The conductive layer under the stitches allows sensing capability. Elastic stitches between normal stitches control the tube's bend direction and strength.

The potential applications include, for example:

Assistive gloves. Minimal muscle activity activates the glow to grasp various size and shape objects
A shirt sleeve with actuators that can assist in elbow bending
The robot responding to a human’s touch
A robot with soft pneumatic legs
Pneumatic exoskeleton that assists in lifting weights or moving

#robotics #wearables Open / Comment

2022-07-13 18:26:44 Industrial revolution or danger to our species?

The picture below is the new Cosmo cover image created by DALL-E, a neural network generating realistic images based on text requests.

In 2021, the Open AI company presented the first version of its neural network. A year later, Cosmopolitan magazine team created the cover with it. In 20 seconds. The text request they used was:

"wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art."

Isn't that fascinating?

DALL-E can create illustrations, photos, combinations of any objects. Whether these combinations already exist or not. It can also answer questions, write texts, pass IQ tests, and much more.

My question is how much time will pass before the world doesn't need photo stocks? Will the world need photographers? Artists? Musicians? Will we be able to distinguish between human and machine creations? If now the answer is yes, what happens in 5 years?

In fact, the industry experts are already ringing the alarm bell. Max Tegmark, for example, says that we are in the worst case scenario. Nobody expected such speed of AI development. The experts thought humanity has enough time to deal with AI safety. But we don't.

Max gives a simple example.

7 years ago, no expert could have imagined that in 2022 AI would be able to answer this question:

“I'm going to go to a mountain with faces on it. What is the state capital to the east of the state in which it is located?"

And today each of us can:
1. Ask a smartphone with a search engine: “mountain with faces”, and get the answer “Mount Rushmore”
2. Ask - "Mount Rushmore State", and hear "South Dakota"
3. Ask - "state east of South Dakota", and hear "Minnesota"
4. Ask - "the capital of Minnesota", and hear "Saint Paul"

But, unfortunately, that's not all progress.

Modern AIs (GPT-3 models) don't need to ask these 4 leading questions. They don't need to ask any questions at all.

For the AI, having heard the question "I'm going to go ...", will immediately give the answer "Saint Paul".

Someone will say - this is not understanding, but statistics. And he will be right.

But if progress continues at the same rate, what will such statistics be capable of in a couple of years?

#AI Open / Comment