• X (formerly Twitter) now worth half the money Elon Musk paid for it

    The company formerly known as Twitter has valued its equity at $45 a share in an internal note sent to employees, Fortune has reported. The amount is significantly less than then $54.20 per share Elon Musk paid for it upon his acquisition in 2022.  X had previously offered employees stock in March at a $20bn (£16.4bn) valuation. The company’s new value was probably estimated using a 409A valuation, the independent assessment method recommended by the Internal Revenue Service for private firms. As such, it is not entirely surprising that the value of X has dropped, as this method has a tendency to skew more conservatively than valuations based on venture capital funding and other methods. This internal valuation marks a 55 per cent drop in X’s value over the past 12 months. The drop could…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Declassified spy imagery reveals Ancient Roman forts in Syria and Iraq

    A team of researchers at the University of Dartmouth have used declassified Cold War satellite imagery to show the placements of a line of Roman forts built 2,000 years ago. Their locations span from Mosul in Iraq all the way to Aleppo in Syria. In doing so, the team refuted the findings of Father Antoine Poidebard. In the 1920s he conducted one of the world’s first aerial surveys of the area using a WWI-era biplane. Poidebard documented 116 forts, arguing that they were constructed from north to south to establish an eastern boundary of the Roman Empire. “I was surprised to find that there were so many forts and that they were distributed in this way because the conventional wisdom was that these forts formed the border between Rome and its enemies in the east, Persia or Arab armies,”…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Biden issues AI executive order to guard agains the technology’s dangers

    After years of non-binding agreements and ethical debates, the Biden administration has taken a step forward in its journey towards increasing regulatory oversight over AI technologies.  The US President has announced a new executive order that aims to drive the development of “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI. The law sets a series of safety assessments that all AI tools must follow, introducing new consumer protections and the need to ensure that AI respects equity and civil rights.  The new law will require companies developing foundational models that “pose a serious risk to national security, national economic security or national public health and safety” to notify the government of their activities and share the results of all red-team safety tests they conduct.   OpenAI’s GPT…

  • Japan suspends its first driverless vehicle pilot programme

    Japan has backtracked on its push towards self-driving vehicles after one hit a parked bicycle.  The country approved a pilot project last year, which allowed autonomous vehicles to drive on specific public roads. As part of this project, a service of driverless bus-like vehicles – similar to electric golf carts – began operating in Eiheiji in the Fukui prefecture in May. However, on Sunday one of these vehicles hit a bicycle that was parked on a roadside, said local official Norifumi Hiramoto. Although none of the vehicle’s four passengers were injured, officials decided to put the project on pause until its safety could be reassessed.  “We are suspending the operation until the cause of the incident becomes clear,” Hiramoto said. The vehicles drive at a maximum speed of 12 kilometres…

  • UK approves 27 new licences in North Sea to begin drilling for oil

    The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) said the licences were approved for projects that have the potential to go into production more quickly than others. Climate scientists have warned that the expansion in North Sea oil drilling will do little to lower bills or improve security in the near term, while also counteracting efforts to curb global warming. Despite this, the government has gone on a spree of approving new projects, with more than 100 new licences issued in 2022. Labour leader Keir Starmer has said his party will not grant any new licences in the North Sea if it wins the next election as part of plans to bolster the UK’s green economy and help tackle climate change. But the decision will not stop drilling on projects that have already been approved with the exception…

  • Wales introduces ban on single-use plastic items

    The Welsh Government said the rule changes demonstrated its commitment to the climate and nature emergency. From today, the following items are now banned from being sold across Wales in a bid to reduce the flow of plastic pollution into the local environment: Single-use plastic plates, cutlery and drinks stirrers  Cups and food containers made of expanded or foamed extruded polystyrene Single-use plastic balloon sticks, plastic-stemmed cotton buds and drinking straws Climate change minister Julie James said the Act forms part of the Welsh Government’s response to the climate and nature emergencies and “builds on momentum created by communities across Wales who have chosen to go plastic free, defy throwaway culture and tackle littering”. She added: “Many businesses across Wales…

  • The Lotus EV Hypercar & cutting-edge bicycles: revolutionising engineering & British collaboration

    We then delve into the transformation of the engineering team to adapt to electric vehicle technology and Lotus Engineering's broader collaborations, including their work with British Cycling to create cutting-edge bicycles showcasing Lotus Engineering's commitment to pushing boundaries in automotive engineering and the synergy between their various projects.

  • The Voyager Golden Record - Our Message to the Stars

    With no guarantee if our message would find anyone, or the intention if civilization it could find, we launched a collection of images, sounds and information about our precious blue planet.

  • Alan Turing: British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist

    The documentaries in our Difference Makers series celebrate the impact and history of the inspiring engineers and technologist of the past. These famous engineers have helped to shape the world we live in. In this documentary we tell the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist.

  • Amy Johnson: A pioneering British pilot | The first woman to fly solo from London to Australia

    Amy Johnson was born 1 July 1903 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. She was educated there and graduated from Sheffield University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. Initially introduced to flying as a hobby it did not take her long to gain a pilot’s A licence in July 1929. By December 1929 she was granted the ground engineer’s C licence, the first woman in the country to obtain this.

  • What Exactly is the Metaverse?

    First things first, what is the metaverse? First coined by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, the term itself doesn’t refer to a specific virtual space or technology, but rather a broad and often uncertain shift in how we interact with technology.

  • Hertha Ayrton: Engineer, Inventor, and Suffragette

    As her husband, Professor William Ayrton, once said to her cousin, Dr Philip Hartog, “you and I are able people, but Hertha is a genius.” She was born in 1854 as Sarah Marks, the third child of a Polish Jewish watchmaker. Her father died in 1861, leaving Sarah’s mother with seven children and an eighth expected. Sarah certainly took on some of the responsibility for caring for the younger children, one that she never relinquished in the case of her younger sister, Lavinia, but her mother, Alice Marks, was a very strong woman.

  • Sir Joseph Swan: A pioneer of the electric lighting industry

    He remains one of Sunderland’s most notable electrical pioneers and inventors, filing 70 patents in his lifetime and significantly contributing to the development of the electrical lighting and photography industry.

  • Sir Eric Mensforth: A leader of the engineering industry

    The Viscount Nuffield/Mensforth Lecture was established as a result of the combining of the Viscount Nuffield Lecture and the Sir Eric Mensforth International Manufacturing Lecture in 2003 and is now part of our EngTalks lecture series.

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Michael Faraday: The Father of Electricity

    He was a British physicist and chemist who is best known for his discoveries of electromagnetic induction and of the laws of electrolysis. His biggest breakthrough in electricity was his invention of the electric motor.

  • Alan Dower Blumlein: The first Name in Stereo

    Starting work in International Western Electric Corporation in 1925, working on telephone interference, then moving to the Columbia gramophone company. He made advances in telecoms, sound recording, stereophonic audio, television and the H2S RADAR.

  • Sir William Crookes: British Chemist and Physicist

    Crookes was considered remarkable for his industriousness and for his intellectual qualities, and his discoveries were foundational, changing chemistry and physics as a whole.

  • Self-driving car vs human: testing an auto braking system with a real person

    ... By having a person step out in front of an autonomous vehicle to see whether the auto braking system will kick in or if the Tesla will hit the person.

  • Major revamp of energy rules targets net zero and boosts competition

    The Energy Act 2023 will introduce a new tender process for electricity networks that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said will see consumers save up to £1bn off their energy bills by 2050. A new regime for overseeing mergers in the energy sector will also be created in an effort to minimise the risk that they will have detrimental effects on consumers.  There are also new measures to prioritise safety for smart energy appliances that help consumers lower their energy usage at peak times. Ofgem is being given an expanded remit to oversee heat networks, allowing the regulator to set rules on excessive pricing and improve the quality of service. The Act includes new frameworks that incentivise the heating industry to invest in low-carbon heat pumps, and includes…

  • OpenAI creates a team to assess the dangers of generative AI

    OpenAI has formed a Preparedness team that will assess, test and evaluate artificial intelligence (AI) models to address their potential dangers.  Some of the risks the company aims to mitigate are the technology's capacity to pose “chemical, biological, and radiological threats” and facilitate “autonomous replication”. The team will also evaluate an algorithm’s ability to persuade and fool humans in instances such as phishing attacks and generating malicious codes.  The team will be led by Aleksander Madry, the director of MIT’s Center for Deployable Machine Learning. “We believe that frontier AI models, which will exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, have the potential to benefit all of humanity,” OpenAI said in a blog post making the announcement…

  • Ford delays $12bn in EV investments

    Ford has revealed it will delay about $12bn (£10bn) in EV investments. During its third-quarter earnings call, the company’s executives said customers are unwilling to buy premium EVs, revealing that Ford’s Model e EV unit had lost about $3.1bn this year. As a result, the company has decided to postpone its EV investments, including the construction of a second battery plant with joint venture partner SK. In contrast, the construction of its EV manufacturing campus in Tennessee will not be affected. The company stressed that it wasn’t going back on its pledges, but said it now wants to increase its EV manufacturing capacity in a more gradual way.  “We’re not moving away from our second generation [EV] products,” said CFO John Lawler. “We are, though, looking at the pace of capacity…

  • Nasa testing laser system to help ISS communicate 10 times faster with Earth

    The ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload will be launching to the International Space Station (ISS) next month to show how missions in low Earth orbit can benefit from laser communications. The system works by using invisible infrared light to send and receive information at higher data rates, allowing spacecraft to send more data back to Earth in a single transmission. Space laser communications technology could provide 10 to 100 times higher data rates than traditional radio frequency systems can, for the same mass and power. The test of the technology follows the launch of Nasa’s LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) in December 2021. This is currently demonstrating the benefits of laser communications…

  • EU backs plans to cut emissions from HGVs

    In terms of road transport, heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) are the hardest to fully decarbonise. Due to their size and weight, electrified trucks face shorter ranges and long charge times to fill up the massive batteries required to power them. This means the decarbonisation of the sector is lagging behind smaller vehicles. Nevertheless, MEPs have now voted for the aforementioned targets to cut truck emissions, as well as an interim 70 per cent target for 2035, which was higher than the 65 per cent initially proposed by the Commission. They also said the standards should be extended to cover the 20 per cent of heavy-duty vehicle sales the Commission has proposed to exempt, such as waste and construction trucks and small trucks driving in cities. Fedor Unterlohner, freight manager at climate…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • South Africa granted $1bn World Bank loan to upgrade its energy grid

    The bank wants to support Africa’s sixth most populated nation and help it reduce its energy emissions.  South Africa’s energy grid has been increasingly struggling, with the country’s coal-fired power stations routinely breaking down and leaving citizens without power for up to 10 hours a day. To address this situation, the   World Bank said it will provide a $1bn ( £830m) development policy loan (DPL) to South Africa. The funds are expected to help facilitate the “restructuring of the power sector” through the unbundling of state-owned utility firm Eskom.  The World Bank said the loan  “supports the opening of the power market and aims to improve Eskom’s efficiency by redirecting its resources toward investments in transmission and maintenance of existing power plants”. In addition…

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