Boring Company could build Tunnel Linking Tesla Factories Together.

Tesla is looking at Boring Co. tunnels to transport materials for Model 3 production

Elon Musk's The Boring Company could be brought in to help the Tesla Factory at Fremont in the manufacturing of the Model 3. In a statement during Wednesday's Q4 earnings call, the Must noted that the company is looking to build a tunnel between its 901 Page Ave.

From article, (Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a novel idea, stating that the California-based electric car maker and energy company would be using The Boring Company tunnels as a way to expedite the transportation of materials from one facility to the next.

“We are looking at building tunnels, using The Boring Company’s thing, because we have, for example, our seats production is at a separate building on Page. And we have a bunch of trucks moving seats back and forth between both the primary Fremont production and the seat factory.

“And we actually get constrained on how many trucks can we dock and undock at the seat factory, which is only, I don’t know, half a mile or a mile away from the vehicle plant. So it’ll be pretty easy to just have a tunnel, do an automated conveyance from seats to the factory,” Musk said.

Overall, Musk is optimistic about the potential of using The Boring Co.’s machines and tunnels as a way to help increase the pace of Tesla’s manufacturing. The Tesla CEO even noted that if the company manages to accomplish this, the optimal pace of the main Fremont facility could improve to 700,000 vehicles per year, comprised of 600,000 Model 3 and 100,000 Model S and X.

“And there are things we can do, where we can build sub-systems and then transport sub-systems to Fremont. These things get increasingly difficult, but they’re all doable. But I can see a path where we get to say 600,000 Model 3 production and 100,000 S and X, so maybe 700,000, which should be like almost 50% more than GM or Toyota got out of the plant. I mean that seems achievable,” Musk said.

Tesla’s Fremont Blvd. and Page Ave. facility are roughly three miles apart by car, which, under normal conditions, would take about 10-14 minutes of travel, according to Google Map estimates. With a tunnel system in place, the time it would take to transport materials between the two factories would be significantly reduced, along with the infrastructure needed to support a high volume of commercial trucks.

Elon Musk did not specify any other details about the idea, though the online community has posted a rough idea of where the tunnel between the main Fremont facility and the Page Ave. factory might run. A link to the possible tunnel between the two plants could be viewed below.)

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Trappsit-1 Planets hold a lot of water. How much? It could be 250 times Earth's Oceans.

TRAPPIST-1 Planets Could Harbor 250 Times More Water Than Earth's Oceans

The seven Earth-size planets around the distant star TRAPPIST-1 are "tugging" on each other as they travel around their parent star.By carefully observing those tugs, scientists were able to gather information about the planets' composition, and found that some of the TRAPPIST-1 worlds could have as much as 250 times more water than the amount in all of Earth's oceans, according to a new study.

From article, ("In the TRAPPIST-1 system, the planets are so close together that they perturb each other," Grimm said in a statement from the University of Bern. "This causes a slight shift in the times of each transit." (A "transit" refers to when the planet appears to pass in front of its parent star as seen from Earth. Thousands of exoplanets have been detected and studied using the transit method.) By simulating the planetary orbits of TRAPPIST-1 with an algorithm until the computational model matched what astronomers had observed in the TRAPPIST-1 system, the team could estimate the masses of the planets. From the mass data, the team could then deduce the planets' individual densities and compositions.

Intriguingly, they found that each of the five lightest planets could have about 250 times more water than the amount in Earth's oceans according to a statement from NASA. Up to 5 percent of their composition could be water, whereas only 0.02 percent of Earth is water.

TRAPPIST-1c, d and e lie close to the star's "habitable zone," or the region where a star receives enough radiation that water might be able to exist as a liquid on its surface. TRAPPIST-1b, the innermost planet, and TRAPPIST-1c likely have rocky interiors and atmospheres denser than Earth's, according to the study. Of all the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets, TRAPPIST-1d is the lightest, at about 30 percent Earth's mass. This may mean it has a large atmosphere, an ice layer or an ocean, but scientists cannot yet discern that. TRAPPIST-1e is likely a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere. TRAPPIST-1f, g and h are so distant from their parent star that their surfaces are probably covered in ice.

"We were able to measure precisely the density of exoplanets that are similar to Earth in terms of their size, mass and irradiation, with an uncertainty of less than 10 percent, which is a first and a decisive step in the characterisation of potential habitability," said Brice-Olivier Demory, a professor at the Center for Space and Habitability and co-author of the study, which was published in late January 2018 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e yielded another interesting finding: It is the most similar to Earth in the amount of radiation it receives from its parent star, its size and its density. And liquid water could exist on its surface.)

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Google Chrome Browser gets hijacked. I first Experienced this over a year ago, so I don't know how new this news really is.

Scam hijacks Google Chrome browser, tries to get your personal data

Scams that hijack the world's most popular browser, Google Chrome, are making the rounds again. It starts with a fake error message. For computer users, this is a vexing problem because the underlying malicious code locks up the browser.

From article, (Scams that hijack the world's most popular browser, Google Chrome, are making the rounds again.

It starts with a fake error message. For computer users, this is a vexing problem because the underlying malicious code locks up the browser. "The bug that it triggers is more than just an annoyance in the sense that it will render your Chrome browser unresponsive,” Jerome Segura, Lead Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes, told Fox News.

“In our tests, it also caused the operating system (Windows) to become unstable if we let it run for a certain amount of time,” Segura said, adding that Google is looking into the issue.

The issue was covered in a blog post this week by Malwarebytes, which was cited in a report by Ars Technica.

Google has not yet responded to a Fox News request for comment.

After the malicious code locks the browser, the fake warning tries to trick a user into calling a number. Then, a person posing as a company representative – from, for example, a well-known American technology company – asks for sensitive personal or financial information to fix the bogus issue.

“That's where it does become a serious issue for the individual," Inga Goddijn, executive vice president at Risk Based Security, told Fox News. "These messages are purposely designed to cause fear and provoke users into turning over sensitive information or in some cases even control of their computer. From there, the scammers really are in the driver's seat.” 

There are other variants of the scam too. For example, one – which also locks up your browser – offers fake deals such as a gift card. 

And other browsers can be affected too. But since Chrome is the most widely-used web browser, outpacing Microsoft Edge, Safari and Firefox, it has been the place where many users come across the problem.  

There are fixes to the issue, but the fixes can vary depending upon the scam.

In Windows, you can use the Task Manager to “end task” and terminate the browser. In macOS, users "force quit" a process, such as a browser.

But in some cases, however, users have to reset their browser so it won't open to the last opened page. Otherwise the fake message will keep returning and keep locking up the browser.)

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What people are saying around the Space Industry about the Falcon Heavy Test Launch

SpaceX does it for the first time again: Falcon Heavy sends a Tesla to deep space

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. - It isn't often a test flight goes almost flawlessly-what space people quietly call "nominal." Yet, SpaceX made history again on Feb. 6, 2018, after successfully launching its super heavy-lift rocket, the Falcon Heavy , for the very first time.

From article, (While SpaceX employees cheered over the live feed from Hawthorne, California, John Insprucker, SpaceX’s principal integration engineer, said the mission provided “everything you could want for a test flight.”

SpaceX’s own news feed noted that “Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9. Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars.”

Buzz Aldrin, whose mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A in 1969, sent his regards:

“It’s a beautiful day for a rocket launch from my favorite launchpad.”

Amazon.com founder and SpaceX rival CEO of Blue Origin Jeff Bezos wished the flight well:

Best of luck @SpaceX with the Falcon Heavy launch tomorrow – hoping for a beautiful, nominal flight!

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, in response to a Twitter follower who asked, “Would you do another space flight with a SpaceX Rocket?” answered simply, “Yes.”
Andrew Gasser, President of the Tea Party in Space, told Spaceflight Insider:

“This is a game changer that proves the limited government, public-private partnership using the American free market system really works. February 6th, 2018 is a day where everyone who is in the space industry will remember where they were when they witnessed Falcon Heavy opening up the infinite economy to all of us.”

Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society said:

“Today SpaceX achieved a spectacular and historic success. Seven years ago, the Augustine commission said that NASA’s Moon program had to be cancelled because the development of the necessary heavy lift booster would take 12 years and 36 billion dollars. SpaceX has now done that, on its own dime, in half the time and a twentieth of the cost. And not only that, but the launch vehicle is three quarters reusable. This is a revolution. The naysayers have been completely refuted. The Moon is now within reach. Mars is now within reach. The moment is at hand to open the space frontier. America should seize the time.”

Having proven itself on its first flight, the next question becomes: who will Falcon Heavy’s customers be in the marketplace? While Musk has talked in depth about making humanity a multi-planet species, are there any actual customers for the rocket today?
In fact, there are. SpaceX currently has five customers on its launch manifest for Falcon Heavy, including Arabsat 6A, Inmarsat, the U.S. Air Force STP-2, and Viasat.
Presumably the Department of Defense and some of the larger satellite producers like Intelsat might have use for very large launchers. And with the Space Launch System still nearly 2.5 years away from its first launch, scientists looking to send payloads to the outer solar system might now have a quicker option.
Of course Musk has said he wants to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy with his Interplanetary Transport System (also called the “BFR”). However, that might be getting a little ahead of the game, given the size of the BFR. SpaceX also needs to do further testing on the Raptor engine, which will be able to produce 683,433 pounds (3,040 kilonewtons) of thrust with a single engine.)

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Model 3 was in a Production Hell a few levels deeper then with the Model S and X. But, Elon Musk says, "[It was] Swiftly Exciting."

Tesla's Elon Musk Regains Bravado With Better Outlook for Model 3

Three months ago, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk warned of the company's production issues. On Wednesday, a day after his SpaceX rocket blasted into space, Mr. Musk was upbeat, again boldly predicting his company would make one million vehicles a year in 2020.

From article, (Mr. Musk, speaking on a call about Tesla’s fourth-quarter results, was upbeat one day after his other company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., sent the world’s most powerful rocket in almost five decades into space with a Tesla Roadster on board.

The Tesla CEO again boldly predicted his company would make one million vehicles a year in 2020. He boasted Tesla would build a car manufacturing system that is superior to anything in the century-old automotive industry. And he claimed that in as soon as three months a self-driving Tesla car would cross the U.S.—after missing a deadline last year.Mr. Musk also seemingly shrugged off Tesla’s troubles producing the Model 3, saying the company was now on track to meet its oft-stated goal of making 5,000 cars a week. And once Tesla achieved that milestone by the end of June, he said, the company would then make a sustainable operating profit this year—maybe even a net profit.

“I’m hopeful that people think that if we can send a Roadster to the asteroid belt, we can probably solve Model 3 production,” he said.

He acknowledged that rolling out the Model 3, which began production in July, was harder than expected. “We were in a deeper level of hell than expected,” he said. “Still a few levels deeper than we’d like to be but swiftly exiting, I think.”

Then, he added, “it was really on balance a phenomenal year.”)

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South Australian Government Trying to keep the power flowing, with new seed money, for Pumped Storage Hydro Projects.

South Australia announces grants worth $8.7m for pumped hydro storage

Grants promised for feasibility studies into plants near Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Germein The South Australian government is talking up the future of pumped hydro energy storage with grants announced for four projects before the 17 March election.

 From article, (The South Australian government is talking up the future of pumped hydro energy storage with grants announced for four projects before the 17 March election.

Grants ranging from $500,000 to $4.7m have been promised to conduct feasibility studies for pumped hydro power plants near Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Germein.

“The cost of solar and wind is rapidly declining globally with the evolution of technology and economies of scale. However, without a viable large-scale storage solution this revolution is incomplete and unsustainable.”

The state’s energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, said: “The key to lowering power prices in South Australia is boosting competition and these projects have the potential to dispatch cheap renewable energy when demand is high.”

The state’s energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, said: “The key to lowering power prices in South Australia is boosting competition and these projects have the potential to dispatch cheap renewable energy when demand is high.”

$4.7m was granted towards a 230MW pumped hydro energy storage facility near Port Augusta. The plant would require $410m to be built.

A potential 225MW hydro project at Cultana, north of Whyalla, was given $500,000 towards a feasibility study and a $3m grant will go towards a possible $406m pumped hydro project north-east of Port Germein.)

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More engines fired on Falcon Heavy Rocket, Adds to Good Probability of Still Getting to Orbit, even if Half a Dozen Fail.

Musk's inspiration for 27 engines? Modern computer clusters

One of the most striking aspects of this week's launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket is the number of engines the triple-core booster used to reach orbit. Each of the cores had nine Merlin rocket engines, making for a total of 27 engines.

From article, (Prior to this launch, no rocket had ever successfully ascended into orbit with more than nine engines—a feat accomplished previously by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. (The Russian Soyuz rocket has five engines, each of which has six thrust chambers.)

Launching a rocket with 27 engines, therefore, represents a notable step forward in rocket complexity. It is all the more so, considering the Soviet N-1 rocket. Four times, from 1969 to 1972, the Russians attempted to launch their titanic “Moon rocket,” and it failed spectacularly each time. Its 30 engines were just too many to fire, throttle, and steer at the same time.

During an interview with SpaceX founder Elon Musk this week prior to launch, Ars asked Musk if the history of the N-1 rocket concerned him. "No," he replied. "I think with the N-1 failure it was mostly avionics failure. They had engine to engine fire issues." Five decades later, SpaceX could do better.

For computers, Musk said, using large numbers of small computers ends up being a more efficient, smarter, and faster approach than using a few larger, more powerful computers. So it was with rocket engines. "It’s better to use a large number of small engines," Musk said. With the Falcon Heavy rocket, he added, up to half a dozen engines could fail and the rocket would still make it to orbit.

The flight of the Falcon Heavy likely bodes well for SpaceX's next rocket, the much larger Big Falcon Rocket (or BFR), now being designed at the company's Hawthorne, California-based headquarters. This booster will use 31 engines, four more than the Falcon Heavy. But it will also use larger, more powerful engines. The proposed Raptor engine has 380,000 pounds of thrust at sea level, compared to 190,000 pounds of thrust for the Merlin 1-D engine.

“It gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture," Musk said Tuesday night, after the Falcon Heavy's launch. "It gives me confidence that BFR is really quite workable.”)

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The New Cash Crop is not Tobacco, farms, but Solar Panel, Farms

Farmers Might Start Swapping Tobacco Plants for Solar Panels

The southern United States is a vast expanse of fields and undeveloped land, much of of which has been used for growing tobacco for hundreds of years. Tobacco is a terrific cash crop, and tobacco farmers make lots of money selling it but a new analysis from Michigan Tech finds that these farmers could make even more money harvesting sunlight.

From article, (The southern United States is a vast expanse of fields and undeveloped land, much of of which has been used for growing tobacco for hundreds of years. Tobacco is a terrific cash crop, and tobacco farmers make lots of money selling it but a new analysis from Michigan Tech finds that these farmers could make even more money harvesting sunlight.

The Michigan Tech researchers looked at tobacco farms in South Carolina, where much of the country’s tobacco is produced and calculated the point at which farmers could make more money farming energy given the falling rates of tobacco use in the United States.

The researchers factored in a lot of variables for their analysis, including the dropping price of solar panels and the increasing value of electricity in the future. They also took into account that the price of tobacco would likely drop in the future, given the decreasing popularity of smoking.

The researchers expected to find the crossover point for solar versus tobacco profits somewhere in the future but, to their surprise, their analysis showed that solar was already more profitable than tobacco.

“We looked at likely trends in all of the major economic factors,” says researcher Joshua Pearce, “but were surprised to find that because the cost of solar has dropped so dramatically it is already economically advantageous for tobacco farmers to replace tobacco with solar in many situations.”)

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The Mall has been rebranded the Consumer Entertainment Place.

Landlords, brands brace for less shopping at the mall

Melanie Stetson Freeman | The Christian Science Monitor | Getty Images E-commerce platforms will account for a third of total retail sales by 2030, according to a new report by consulting group A.T. Kearney. The rapid transformation is leading traditional brands to rethink how they arrange their stores.

 From article, (E-commerce platforms will account for a third of total retail sales by 2030, according to a new report by consulting group A.T. Kearney.

The rapid transformation is leading traditional brands to rethink how they arrange their stores. Landlords are reconsidering their tenant mixes, bringing in more food and entertainment options. And digital start-ups are setting up a physical presence of their own, albeit more cautiously and with a different approach than the industry's precedent would suggest.

"Right now we see traditional retail space built for twentieth-century shopping behaviors ... now we are in the twenty-first century, and we have to rethink how we use the space to engage consumers," Michael Brown, the author of A.T. Kearney's "Future of Shopping Centers" report, told CNBC. "We're starting to see a slow transition."

Part of that transition is retail landlords scaling back on apparel. American Dream Meadowlands, a massive retail development underway in New Jersey (spearheaded by Triple Five Group) set to include an indoor ski slope and KidZania, is just one example of that, Brown said.

Other examples include Simon Property Group bringing residential, office and hotel uses to its King of Prussia Mall in Philadelphia. And Westfield (recently acquired by Unibail-Rodamco) is looking to bring a concert venue to its Promenade Mall in Woodland Hills, California.

"It's no longer a shopping mall but a consumer engagement space, which opens up a world of opportunities for developers in terms of how they use this space," Brown said.

In turn, businesses such as Warby Parker — which started online but now runs its own fleet of stores — are curating retail destinations that include less inventory and more of a service or experiential component.

Other online-first retailers opening stores in the same vein include Rent the Runway, Fabletics, Outdoor Voices, Casper and Boll & Branch. Many of their stores include less merchandise than a traditional department store, for example. The idea is that shoppers would visit the stores to see and touch items in person, maybe making a purchase there, but ultimately the goal is just to introduce people to the brand.)

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Is this the future of food shopping? Where, you order online, and special pickers go thru the shelves, picking out your items, and then delivering them for (sort of) free? If this is the future? It sure sounds fascinating.

Amazon launches Whole Foods deliveries in four cities

SAN FRANCISCO - Amazon is introducing free, two-hour delivery from Whole Foods stores to its Prime members in neighborhoods of Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach, Va. beginning Thursday. Amazon Prime customers in those cities will be able to order fresh produce, meat, seafood, flowers and most, but not all, items that their local Whole Foods stores stock, said Stephenie Landry, vice president of Prime Now, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Restaurants.

 From article, (Amazon is introducing free, two-hour delivery from Whole Foods stores to its Prime members in neighborhoods of Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach, Va. beginning Thursday.

Amazon Prime customers in those cities will be able to order fresh produce, meat, seafood, flowers and most, but not all, items that their local Whole Foods stores stock, said Stephenie Landry, vice president of Prime Now, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Restaurants.

“We might not have every last item that could be available in your local store but we’re going to have the vast majority of them,” she said.

Prime members in those cities can to go their accounts on the Amazon website or via its Prime Now app, which features two-hour delivery items, and type in their ZIP code to see if the service is available where they live.

The four-city roll out is not quite on the scale of Amazon's massive logistics systems. Unlike regular Amazon orders, filled by Amazon employees at enormous, purpose-built Amazon fulfillment centers, the Whole Foods orders will be filled by pickers who will actually go down the aisles of nearby Whole Food stores.

 “They will pick the items, put them in appropriate packaging to maintain the chill chain and pack them,” said Landry.

Those pickers will not necessarily be Whole Foods staffers. “We will use a variety of methods,” was all Landry would say.

The orders will then be handed off to Amazon Flex delivery drivers. These are Uber-like contract drivers who sign on for individual Amazon delivery shifts using their own cars but Amazon’s routing app. They deliver items for Amazon, Prime Now, grocery delivery service AmazonFresh, Amazon Restaurants and now Whole Foods.

The service will only be available during the hours the Whole Foods stores are open, generally 8:00 am to 10:00 pm.

Amazon plans to offer the service more broadly in the future.)

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