PAL-V begins pre-sales of its flying car -starting at $400,000

If you still feel like you were somehow “promised” flying cars based on Popular Science magazine covers in the 1960s then you’re in luck, because Dutch company PAL-V is now accepting pre-orders for its Liberty vehicle, which it calls “the first certified commercial flying car ever.” The three-wheeled”car’ has a retractable top-mounted rotor, making it more like a motor trike with gyrocopter skills than a car, per se.

Still, it does both drive and fly, which is double what most cars or aircraft can do reasonably well, and if you want the future now, PAL-V is willing to give it to you -at a price, and you still have to wait a little while longer to actually take delivery. Pricing begins at $400,000, but that’s for a base model before taxes. If you want the proper trim and kit, you’ll spring for the $600,000 “Pioneer” edition, which adds at-home training, power heating, fancy detailing and an electronic flight instrument display instead of the boring old electromechanical option.

You don’t have to pay all of that up front, since PAL-V says it’s aiming at the end of this year for production of test and certification craft, and delivery of fully certified vehicles by the end of 2018. Instead, the company is asking for either a non-refundable deposit of $25,000 for the top trim Pioneer, or $10,000 for the base model Sport -but if that’s too rich you can also put down a $2,500 escrow deposit which can be refunded and which will put you on the waiting list.

Why just a waiting list? Well, it turns out that only 90 of the Pioneer edition are planned for initial construction, so it sounds like the company is expecting a sell-out run of the initial group.

The PAL-V also has specs, in case that’s going to sway your purchase decision, including take-off space that generally will mean you’ll have to use an airfield to get into the sky. It has a 100 mph top ground speed, with a 0-60mph time of around 9 seconds, and it has 817 miles driving distance on a full tank with fuel efficiency of 31mpg.

While airborne, it has a top speed of 112mph, but mileage drops considerably -you’ll have to refuel every 310 miles while flying with the PAL-V, but that’s still enough for jumping airfield to airfield between a lot of cities and towns.

End of the Thylacine – Tasmanian Tiger

A very unusual animal used to roam Australia. It was like a canine with black stripes. The last Thylacine died in captivity on 7 September 1936. Unfortunately, the last of the species was not recognized as important so little effort was made to record its behavior. A short, grainy film is the only thing that we have of this wonderful creature. No photographs were ever taken of the Tasmanian Tiger in the wild.

Thylacinus cynocephalus lived on the island state of Tasmania. It had a special jaw that could open 120 degrees, though its bite was weak. Farmers feared it would kill their livestock. It could not do this and mainly ate carrion. Humans killed the native in vain. It may have looked like a dog/wolf but it was not related. The marsupial had a quiet, lone existence.

Van Diemen’s Land Co. paid a reward (actual amount unknown) per head of Thylacine. This was followed by the Tasmanian parliament adding a bounty of £1 for an adult and ten shillings for a pup. Dogs brought by Europeans were the sheep killers: they ran amok in the bush. What a mistake the arrivals made. Thylacines would still be alive today if settlers had shown common sense. A writer, John Gould, had predicted its demise in a book published in 1850.

The last survivor had a very sad end. To be set upon for something it did not do was bad enough, but dying of neglect was the ultimate crime. The keeper locked the animal out of its hut and it died of exposure.

http://tysaustralia.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/end-of-thylacine-tasmanian-tiger.html

Solopreneurs, Add This to Your Business Card: “New Economy Pioneer” -The Mission

Welcome to the New Economy: By 2020, more than 40 per cent of the American workforce — 60 million people — will be independent workers, such as freelancers, contractors and temporary employees. Congratulations, you’re ahead of the curve! And you’re participating in this new economy on your own terms.

Here, we break down six ways the culture of self-employment is changing the way we think about work and how you can make the most of these new phenomena.

1. Ratings and Reviews Are the New Resume

While our credentials and resumes still matter, the word of our customers is starting to mean even more. The purchasing process for today’s consumers — particularly millennials — is consultative. Before handing over their business, they want evidence that you can deliver on your promises. A carefully-crafted resume is a good starting point, but the experience and satisfaction of previous customers offers a more official seal of approval.

Consider this: a tantalizing menu might tempt you to visit an uber-expensive restaurant — but a five-star rating and a pile of rave reviews are probably what would put you over the edge to make reservations.

What to Do About It:

Establish a robust online presence where it matters most for your business. In other words, figure out where your potential clients get their information online and go there.

A home service professional will want a profile on a platform like Houzz or HomeAdvisor where satisfied clients can rate and rave about the service.

If you’re a B2B business, curate a gold-star LinkedIn profile complete with glowing recommendations from as many contacts as possible. Even lower-prestige platforms like Facebook or Yelp can help your potential customers get a good feeling about the quality of the work you do.

2. Skills Training is the New Bachelor’s Degree

That bachelor of commerce, arts or science may have provided you with four of the best years of your life — but how much did your learning influence how you’re running your business today?

Your ability to pen an essay or ace a multiple choice test is not the differentiating factor when it comes to delivering tangible results. Chances are, your clients seek you out for the specialist skills you offer that your competitors cannot. Your hands-on ability to perform specific tasks are what make most small businesses thrive.

What to Do About it:

Move beyond the hallowed halls of a formal education and invest your time into learning specific skills that will help you move your business forward. For example, instead of gunning for an MBA to help you conquer the business world, take individual courses that directly relate to the business you’re in. That might mean upgrading your skills or branching out into complementary specialties that will help you broaden your service offering.

Online learning courses such as Udemy, Kahn Academy or continued education classes offered by your local college or university are not for remedial learners. They’re becoming an increasingly viable way to upgrade your skills while running your business.

3. In the New Economy, Time is the New Currency

In a self-employed-driven new economy, time is money. It’s more critical than ever that you’re making wise use of yours.

Whether you’re working on billable hours, business planning, prospecting for new clients or attending to administrative tasks, efficiency is key. A day or two of low productivity each week can have disastrous results. To take advantage of the new economy, you’ll want your workdays full of billable hours.

What to Do About it:

Many successful entrepreneurs delegate or outsource the tasks that cost less than 20 per cent of their hourly rate. That is, if you can pay someone else to do tasks like compiling stats or invoicing clients, your time is freed up for the kind of work only the CEO of a small business can do.

Set a goal to replace your lowest-volume customers every year and replace them with more profitable and higher-quality clients. With this mindset, you can make the most of the time you spend prospecting.

4. The Collaborative Workspace is the New Home Office

Working from home or your local coffee shop can be isolating and can create the conditions for uninspired work. With more freelancers and small businesses entering the market, there are new and innovative opportunities to share work spaces, particularly in larger urban centers.

A quick Google search will net you hundreds of co-working spaces across North America. Most of them feature well-equipped common areas (including kitchens, printers and meeting rooms), a cleaning service and networking opportunities.

What to Do About it:

If you’re feeling socially and professionally isolated, look for a co-working space in your city. Most charge a monthly fee and you’ll need to view it like you would a gym membership, i.e. it’s only worthwhile if you use it regularly.

If you think it might be a hassle to pack up your work and head to an office every day or you don’t like the distractions of other people, it might not be for you. But if you’re looking for a productive way to interact with other humans during the day who might be doing similar work, it’s a great idea.

5. Agency Work is the New Small Business

While it can be tremendously satisfying to hunt and gather your own clients, it’s also hard work. And prospecting is not everyone’s forte. That’s why new platforms that help pair talented freelancers with businesses are enjoying success right now.

And we’re not talking about bottom-feeding content mills that require freelancers to bid on projects. (Spoiler alert: the lowest paying always gets the “job”.) A number of more legitimate agencies are bridging the gap between introspective freelancer and businesses needing top talent. Contently for writers, Jiffy On Demand for home service/tradespeople and Hourly Nerd for business consultants are just some of the viable ways to make money as a freelancer.

What to Do About it:

Just because you’re an entrepreneur you don’t have to do everything alone. If you’re a graphic designer, writer or PR consultant, consider building relationships with bigger agencies and plying (some of your) trade with them. Sure, you won’t get all the credit for the success of your great work and you may not be able to command your hourly rate, but devoting part of your time to working for an agency will allow you to gain experience with bigger brands, widen your network and provide some “bread and butter” cash flow for your business.

Another way to take on bigger projects as a small business is to partner with an entrepreneur who produces similar or complementary work, e.g. a plumber and an electrician or a graphic designer and a writer. Suddenly, your network doubles and your capacity for larger projects has grown exponentially.

6. Diversifying is the New Niche

Not everyone in the new economy is interested in establishing a business that will endure through the ages. For many entrepreneurs, freelancing or running a small business is all about making a great living on your own terms, not building a legacy.

When you think of your work that way, you’re free to diversify your business into multiple offerings that speak to your particular talents and pleasures. Who says you can’t run a dog walking/BBQ catering/cleaning business? If those are the things you love to do and you’re great at them, why not?

What to Do About it:

Redefine the standard measure of success. Small businesses typically aspire to become medium and then large businesses with more than a couple of employees, multiple locations and big dreams for the future.

If an empire is not what you’re aiming for, turn your business plan on its head by incorporating other ways to make money — including the things that bring you joy. When you diversify your services you’re expanding the potential for satisfaction and revenue streams. Win-win.

The Next Pseudoscience Health Craze Is All About Genetics

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasn’t a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.

That was, at least, according to DNA Lifestyle Coach, a startup that offers consumers advice on diet, exercise and other aspects of daily life based on genetics alone. Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

“They show you which genes are linked to what traits, and link you to the research,” Husar told Gizmodo. “There is science behind it.”

DNA Lifestyle Coach isn’t the only company hoping to turn our genetics into a lifestyle product. In the past decade, DNA sequencing has gotten really, really cheap, positioning genetics to become the next big consumer health craze. The sales pitch—a roadmap for life encoded in your very own DNA—can be hard to resist. But scientists are skeptical that we’ve decrypted enough about the human genome to turn strings of As, Ts, Cs and Gs into useful personalized lifestyle advice.

Indeed, that lifestyle advice has a tendency to sound more like it was divined from a health-conscious oracle than from actual science. Take, for instance, DNA Lifestyle Coach’s recommendation that one client “drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice everyday to lose body fat.”

“Millions of people have had genotyping done, but few people have had their whole genome sequenced,” Eric Topol, a geneticist at Scripps in San Diego, told Gizmodo. Most consumer DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, offer genotyping, which examines small snippets of DNA for well-studied variations. Genome sequencing, on the other hand, decodes a person’s entire genetic makeup. In many cases, there just isn’t enough science concerning the genes in question to accurately predict, say, whether you should steer clear of carbs.

“We need billions of people to get their genome sequenced to be able to give people information like what kind of diet to follow,” Topol said.

Husar stumbled upon the Kickstarter page for DNA Lifestyle Coach after getting his DNA tested via 23andMe a few years earlier. He wondered whether there was more information to be gleaned from his results. So six months ago, he downloaded his 23andMe data and uploaded it to DNA Lifestyle Coach. Each test costs between $60 and $70.

“I’m always looking for some ways to learn about my health, myself, my body,” said Husar, who contributed to the company’s Kickstarter back in 2015.

The advice he got back was incredibly specific. According to DNA Lifestyle Coach, he needed to start taking supplements of vitamins B12, D and E. He needed more iodine in his diet, and a lot less sodium. DNA Lifestyle Coach recommended that 55 percent of his fat consumption come from monounsaturated fats like olive oil, rather than the sunflower oil popular in Ukraine. Oh, and he needed to change his workout to focus more on endurance and less on speed and power.

He switched up his workout and his diet, and added vitamin supplements to his daily routine. The results, he found, were hard to dispute: He lost six pounds, and for the first time in memory didn’t spend Kiev’s long harsh winter stuck with a bad case of the winter blues.

For now, DNA Lifestyle Coach’s “interpretation engine” only offers consumers advice on diet and exercise, but in the coming months it plans to roll out genetics-based guidance on skin care, dental care and stress management. The company wants to tell you what SPF of sunscreen to use to decrease your risk of cancer, and which beauty products to use to delay the visible effects of aging. 

“People will one day use their own DNA data to help guide everyday experiences.”

DNA Lifestyle Coach joins a growing list of technology companies attempting to spin DNA testing results into a must-have product. The DNA sequencing company Helix plans to launch an “app store for genetics” later this year. One of its partners is Vinome, a wine club that for $149 a quarter sends you wine selected based on your DNA. Orig3n offers genetics-based assessments of fitness, mental health, skin, nutrition and even—obviously unscientific—which superpower you are most likely to have. The CEO of the health-focused Veritas Genetics hopes to create a “Netflix for genetics,” where consumers pay for a subscription to receive updated information on their genome for the rest of their life.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but we believe that DNA will become an integrated part of everyday life,” Helix co-founder Justin Kao said. “The same way people use data to determine which movie to see or which restaurant to eat at, people will one day use their own DNA data to help guide everyday experiences.”

This article originally appeared at: http://gizmodo.com/the-next-pseudoscience-health-craze-is-all-about-geneti-1792194708.

Star Wars has a new R2-D2

Everyone’s favorite droid has a new face. Disney has officially announced that actor Jimmy Vee will perform the role of R2-D2 in the upcoming Star Wars movie, titled The Last Jedi, after the death of original actor Kenny Baker last year. Vee is a veteran of the entertainment industry who has had several roles in Doctor Who episodes and Harry Potter movies.

While much of the little droid’s on-screen work is now handled by remote-control units and CGI, actors are still used in some scenes, allowing R2 to make his trademark shuffles, bloops, and whistles. While Disney’s announcement is the first time the baton has been officially passed from Baker, it’s not Vee’s first experience with the droid — the actor worked alongside the original R2 actor on 2015’s The Force Awakens, but didn’t receive a credit for the character.

In a statement, Vee said it had been an “absolute pleasure” to have worked with the “legendary” Baker. “Kenny was a fantastic actor and taught me all the ‘tricks’ on how he brought R2-D2 to life which I will continue to portray in his honor,” he said. “I’m so excited to be a part of the Star Wars universe and can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve been working so hard on for the last year.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/15/14620882/star-wars-r2-d2-actor-jimmy-vee.

Fake news is killing people’s minds, says Apple boss Tim Cook

Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, is calling for governments to launch a public information campaign to fight the scourge of fake news, which is “killing people’s minds”.

That doesn’t allow much for people’s ability to discern between fact and fiction, but he’s got a point.

In an impassioned plea, Mr Cook, boss of the world’s largest company, says that the epidemic of false reports “is a big problem in a lot of the world” and necessitates a crackdown by the authorities and technology firms.

Made-up news reports trying to promote a particular agenda gained huge traction on social media in the US during the election.
“It has to be ingrained in the schools, it has to be ingrained in the public,” said Mr Cook. “There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic. 
“We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will.”
The rise of fake news was being driven by unscrupulous firms determined to attract online readers at any cost, he said.

“We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth,” he said. “It’s killing people’s minds in a way.”

All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake newsTim Cook

Tech firms, which have been criticised for doing too little, also need to up their game, he said.

“All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news.

“We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader. Too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do.”

He said that this crackdown would help providers of quality journalism and help drive out clickbait. “The outcome of that is that truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news outlets will win,” Mr Cook said.

“The [rise of fake news] is a short-term thing – I don’t believe that people want that at the end of the day.” 

A new approach was required in schools, he said. “It’s almost as if a new course is required for the modern kid, for the digital kid.”

But he is optimistic. “In some ways kids will be the easiest to educate. At least before a certain age, they are very much in listen and understand [mode], and they then push their parents to act. We saw this with environmental issues: kids learning at school and coming home and saying why do you have this plastic bottle? Why are you throwing it away?”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/10/fake-news-killing-peoples-minds-says-apple-boss-tim-cook/.