ReHacked #156: DeLorean returns with 300-mile Taycan rival, The Colorful History of Haribo Goldbears, A 3400-year-old city emerges from the Tigris River and more
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Official: DeLorean returns with 300-mile Taycan rival for 2024 | Autocar #technology #economy #history
DeLorean is back, and it’s gearing up to take on the world’s best-established premium brands with a comprehensive line-up of cars in different segments and an array of powertrain solutions.
The brand is being revived by an US-based outfit headed up by CEO Joost de Vries, previously a high-ranking official at Tesla and Karma.
He has taken the helm from Brit Stephen Wynne, who had run DeLorean as an aftermarket support service since 1995, when he acquired the brand rights following the high-profile demise of the original company.
Just over a century ago, in 1920, German confectioner Hans Riegel Sr. struck out on his own, establishing a new candy company called Haribo—an abbreviation derived from his name and hometown of Bonn (Hans Riegel Bonn). Working out of his kitchen with little more than a copper pot, a rolling pin and a stove, Riegel hired his first employee, his wife, Gertrud, the following year. While she delivered products to customers via bicycle, he experimented with hard candies before creating an entirely new sweet treat: the gummy bear.
After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’ - Our World in Data #world #history
Humans have been reshaping the planet’s land for millennia by clearing wilderness to grow crops and raise livestock. As a result, humans have destroyed one-third of the world’s forests and two-thirds of wild grasslands since the end of the last ice age.
This has come at a huge cost to the planet’s biodiversity. In the last 50,000 years – and as humans settled in regions around the world – wild mammal biomass has declined by 85%.
Expanding agriculture has been the biggest driver of the destruction of the world’s wilderness.
This expansion of agricultural land has now come to an end. After millennia, we have passed the peak, and in recent years global agricultural land use has declined.
Amazon removes the ability to purchase ebooks in its Android apps - The Verge #software #copyrights
It felt like a sneaky hack because, for years, you could buy a Kindle book on the Amazon app on an Android device when you couldn’t do the exact same thing on an iOS one. But that unique relationship has ended, as first noted by Ars Technica. When attempting to purchase ebooks on the Amazon app on Android, you’re now directed to a new screen explaining why the purchasing option is gone. If you happen to update the app, you’ll see a similar note as to what you see on an iOS device that says purchasing digital products on the app is unavailable.
A 3400-year-old city emerges from the Tigris River | University of Tübingen #history
A team of German and Kurdish archaeologists have uncovered a 3400-year-old Mittani Empire-era city once located on the Tigris River. The settlement emerged from the waters of the Mosul reservoir early this year as water levels fell rapidly due to extreme drought in Iraq. The extensive city with a palace and several large buildings could be ancient Zakhiku – believed to have been an important center in the Mittani Empire (ca. 1550-1350 BC).
How to rescue the world's biggest cargo ships - BBC Future #economy
The world's cargo ships, which transport around 90% of global trade, do not always make it to their destination without incident. According to the Safety and Shipping Review by insurance company Allianz, 27 cargo vessels were lost in major incidents during 2021, and 357 during the past decade. They catch fire. They hit rocks, reefs and sand bars. They malfunction. But they don't always sink. Whenever there's a chance to rescue a large ship, their owners almost always take it because these vessels can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The people that shipping firms call on in such situations are called salvors. And they have seen some extraordinary things at sea. Salvors came to the aid of the huge Ever Given container ship after she ran aground, blocked the Suez Canal, and triggered global supply chain issues last year, for example. But when a ship weighing tens or hundreds of thousands of tonnes gets stuck somewhere, how do you free it?
Why science needs more research software engineers #education #career
In March 2012, a group of like-minded software developers gathered at the University of Oxford, UK, for what they called the Collaborations Workshop. They had a common vocation — building code to support scientific research — but different job titles. And they had no clear career path. The attendees coined a term to describe their line of work: research software engineer (RSE).
A decade later, RSE societies have sprung up in the United Kingdom, mainland Europe, Australia and the United States. In the United Kingdom, at least 31 universities have their own RSE groups, a sign of the growing importance of the profession, says Paul Richmond, an RSE group leader at the University of Sheffield and a past president of the country’s Society of Research Software Engineering. Nature spoke with Richmond about life as an RSE, the role of software in the research enterprise and the state of the field as it reaches its tenth anniversary.
How to Make the Universe Think for Us | Quanta Magazine #science
Learning is an exotic process; until about a decade ago, brains were the only systems that did it well. It was the structure of the brain that loosely inspired computer scientists to design deep neural networks, now the most popular artificial learning models.
A deep neural network is a computer program that learns through practice. The network can be thought of as a grid: Layers of nodes called neurons, which store values, are connected to neurons in adjacent layers by lines, or “synapses.” Initially, these synapses are just random numbers known as “weights.”
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