“For the first time, scientists have successfully produced full-length spider silk fibers using genetically modified silkworms. With high strength and toughness, this silk has the potential to provide a scalable, sustainable and better-quality alternative to current synthetic fibers like nylon.”
From New Atlas.
“Since 2020, Waymo has reported roughly 60 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag or cause an injury. But those crashes occurred over more than 50 million miles of driverless operations. If you randomly selected 50 million miles of human driving—that’s roughly 70 lifetimes behind the wheel—you would likely see far more serious crashes than Waymo has experienced to date.”
From Ars Technica.
“In 1995, an estimated 55 percent of Nepalis lived in extreme poverty, defined by the US$ 2.15 per day threshold. By 2023, this figure had plummeted to just 0.37 percent. The speed and scale of Nepal’s success in eliminating extreme poverty are unparalleled among its peers. Moreover, this progress was not confined to extreme poverty. The broad-based and deep reduction is evident in the poverty headcount ratio measured at US$ 6.85 per day, which fell from 90 percent to below 50 percent over the same time.”
From World Bank.
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“Waymo announced that Washington, DC will be its next robotaxi city. The company aims to launch its Waymo One ridehailing service in the nation’s capitol in 2026 — though it acknowledged that it will first need to change the city law prohibiting fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers.
Currently, companies that want to test autonomous vehicles in DC are required to have a human driver behind the steering wheel in case something goes wrong. Tech advocates have been pressing the city council to loosen the restrictions to allow fully autonomous vehicles on public roads. A spokesperson for the DC transportation department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”
From The Verge.
