Frosty Piss writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4bs-inside-spin-scootersWhen things don't work out for scooter rental companies and they shut down or pull out of a city, they usually take spare stock with them. However, when Spin backed out of Seattle, many locals discovered unused scooters scattered throughout the city. Upon closer inspection of these abandoned devices, or should we say dissection, it was uncovered that they each have a Raspberry Pi 4B inside.This discovery was recently shared on social media. Legally, if the scooters are abandoned then snagging one for the Pi inside is fair game but it's not clear if Spin has plans to recover their remaining assets.The Seattle city government official website confirm that Spin originally arrived in 2021 as a fourth scooter rental option. However, the company did not renew its license for the most recent cycle. Because of this, you can find a few remaining Spin scooters around the city.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
In 1965, Popular Hot Rodding magazine bought a $250 '57 Chevy for a test bed, to try out various drag racing parts and tuning techniques. It was called Project X back then, here's a capsule history, https://www.motortrend.com/features/57-chevy-project-x-history/
taylorvich writes:https://phys.org/news/2023-08-china-human-lineage.htmlA team of paleontologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with colleagues from Xi'an Jiaotong University, the University of York, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Research Center on Human Evolution, has found evidence of a previously unknown human lineage. In their study, reported in Journal of Human Evolution, the group analyzed the fossilized jawbone, partial skull and some leg bones of a hominin dated to 300,000 years ago.The fossils were excavated at a site in Hualongdong, in what is now a part of East China. They were subsequently subjected to both a morphological and a geometric assessment, with the initial focus on the jawbone, which exhibited unique features-a triangular lower edge and a unique bend.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee will be this coming Friday, August 11th, 2023 at 20:30 UTC (1:30pm PDT, 4:30pm EDT) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when available.The agenda for the upcoming meeting will come out within the next few days, 24 hours or more before the meeting. The agenda is expected to cover, at a minimum, actions arising from the previous meeting, such as exploring the formation of a new entity, and janrinok's report on management structure.Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information can be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/GovernanceCall for experts: The committee is calling for experts with relevant knowledge of entity formation to attend the meeting. Their advice may be helpful to the committee and the greater community going forward and would be greatly appreciated.As always, the community is welcome to observe and participate and is hereby invited to come and do both. SoylentNews is People!Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
upstart writes:Standing 40 cm high and 70 cm wide, the semi-transparent display has translations pop up simultaneously on the screen as the station staff and a foreign tourist speak:
hubie writes:Scientists have discovered that the recoil created by the flexible arch of human feet helps position our legs in the optimal posture for moving forward in bipedal walking:
evilcam writes:Following a study published in October which claimed the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor, the academics that wrote and co-wrote the paper have been accused of falsifying their data, as well as attempting to cover up their deception.From Nature:
Two recent news items seem to be at cross purposes, just a little bit.:First the WaPo (and other outlets) report that 7 major car companies are joining to install 30,000 new fast battery electric car chargers (Tesla currently has 22,000), with both CCS and Tesla-style plugs, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/26/ev-fast-charger-gm-hyundai-honda-kia-bmw-mercedes/ [or https://archive.is/C4Uih ]Then going back a month or so, we see New York power grid strained by rapid electrification, this link to PBS, plenty of other outlets for this news as well, https://www.wamc.org/news/2023-06-15/nyiso-electrification-causing-surge-in-power-demand
hubie writes:A team of researchers from around the world is urging the international community to recognize the full environmental and health threat of plastics:
Stanford University President, Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has resigned after a university investigation found that he had fostered an environment that led to "unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices" across labs at multiple institutions.The review focused on five major papers for which he was listed as a principal author, finding evidence of manipulation of research data in four of them and a lack of scientific rigor in the fifth, a famous study that he said would "turn our current understanding of Alzheimer's on its head."The Stanford investigation did not find that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne personally altered data or pasted pieces of experimental images together. Instead, it found that he had presided over a lab culture that "tended to reward the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the 'losers' (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data)."A cynical Soylentil might see Dr. Tessier-Lavigne in much the same way as Al Capone who was only found guilty of tax evasion. Who benefited from falsification "across labs at multiple institutions"? It's well past time to put the scientists back in science and rethink the funding system that rewards the bullshitters.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
hubie writes:Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have shown that it can be cheaper to run heavy goods vehicles on electricity than on diesel:
This is a summary report from the SoylentNews PBC meeting of Monday, July 31, 2023. An IRC log of the full text of the meeting (from channel #meeting) is available, as well as a log of the related discussion (IRC log of #meeting-discuss channel).[Ed. note: the # sign gives problems so here they are in plain text, feel free to left click and open in a new window]