In some San Francisco neighborhoods, automobiles with no driver behind the wheel have turn out to be a typical sight. Most of the metropolis’s ghostly driverless automobiles are business robotaxis, straight competing with taxis and ride-hailing firms.
I spent the previous yr overlaying robotaxis for the San Francisco Examiner and have taken almost a dozen rides in Cruise driverless automobiles over the previous few months. Throughout my reporting, I’ve been struck by the shortage of urgency within the public discourse about robotaxis. It’s excessive time for the general public and its elected representatives to play a extra lively position in shaping the way forward for this new know-how. Prefer it or not, robotaxis are right here.
Now comes the troublesome work of deciding what to do about them. Learn the total story.
The chip patterning machines that can form computing’s subsequent act
After we speak about computing nowadays, we have a tendency to speak about software program and the engineers who write it. However with out the {hardware} and the bodily sciences that enabled their creation—disciplines like optics, supplies science, and mechanical engineering—fashionable computing would have been unattainable.
Semiconductor lithography, the manufacturing course of liable for producing pc chips, stands on the heart of a geopolitical competitors to regulate the way forward for computing energy. And the velocity at which new lithography programs and parts are developed will form not solely the velocity of computing progress but additionally the stability of energy and income throughout the tech trade. Learn the total story.
—Chris Miller
