2019年8月25日

121-ton electric dump truck never uses more energy than it generates on its own

Mining is intense work. For years, companies have relied on heavy machinery – almost all of which burns gas and diesel – to expose ore, minerals.

Kuhn Schweiz AG, has found a way to do at least part of that work completely emissions-free. Enter, the “eDumper” a 121-ton electric dump truck that can consume less energy than it produces in certain situations. Fully loaded, it can transport 65 tons of mined rock downhill from the mountain. As it descends, its regenerative braking generates electricity.Because it’s unloaded at the bottom, and then drives back up the hill weighing less than the downhill run, the eDumper uses less electricity than it produces.

In addition to being the world’s largest electric vehicle, researchers also broke the record for the world’s largest battery, which weighs 4.5 tons. To ensure the fire safety of such a large battery cell, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology Empa examined the behaviour of the Li-Ion cells used in the event of a short circuit or mechanical damage.

The eDumper is expected to move some 300,000 tons of rock every year for the next decade. The researchers estimate that will save “up to 1,300 tons of CO2 and 500,000 litres of diesel ” over 10 years.

Uber and Lyft drivers reveal the hardest parts of their jobs

On the surface, driving for Uber and Lyft is relatively simple: just pick someone up and take them to their destination. But for full-time drivers on the ride-hailing platforms, there’s plenty more work that goes into making sure they keep a top-notch rating.

 “The hardest part for me would be the lack of camaraderie with other drivers,” Michael, a driver in Las Vegas said. “I see them as my competition. I wish them well, but just not at my expense.” It does get lonely while on the road; as a result, since I’m driving in Las Vegas, there will be days that I’m not in a good mood.

“The hardest part is when I try to do research into how much of fares we’re actually getting paid and see that it’s a tiny percentage,” Kevin, a driver in Chicago said. “The hardest part in my opinion is dealing with weather and holidays, when I’d rather be warm at home with my family,” Steven, a driver in Kansas City, said in an email. “Dealing with fraudsters is the hardest, and not just the ones that give a 1 star rating for a one mile ride,” Stephen, a driver in Portland.

“Mentally, the toughest part for me is seeing all the strung out junkies in San Francisco,” a driver named Austin said in an interview.

Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all facing moderation issues

Amazon sells hundreds of millions of items on its online marketplace. With such a massive quantity of products, the question becomes: How does the company regulate what’s being sold?

Over 4,000 items being sold on Amazon that the publication says were labelled deceptively, determined to be unsafe by federal agencies, or banned by federal regulators. Those items included: a children’s toy xylophone with four times the lead allowed by the federal government, knockoff magnetic children’s toys that can lead to internal damage if ingested, and a motorcycle helmet that was falsely listed as US Department of Transportation-certified. It just physically cannot allocate enough human power to police many of these rules.

That issue is mirrored at tech giants like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. These enormous, open tech platforms have struggled to weed through reams of problematic content.

Amazon has now released a statement in response to the Journal article clarifying its practices in monitoring the items sold on its marketplace: 1)New seller accounts are vetted via proprietary machine learning technology. 2) Amazon compliance specialists review the documents submitted by new sellers confirming their products follow regulations (e.g. that children’s toys follow Consumer Product Safety Comission regulations). 3) Products being sold on Amazon are continuously analysed using machine learning and natural language processing tools. 4) Amazon takes safety issue reports from customers and regulatory agencies into consideration and subsequently launches investigations.

YouTube has repeatedly faced issues with regulating the content that appears on its site. The most recent example came in June, when Vox journalist Carlos Maza spoke out about conservative media star Steven Crowder, who had repeatedly mocked Maza’s sexual orientation and hurled ethnic slurs at him in multiple YouTube videos.

In August 2018, a Reuters investigation found that Facebook did not adequately moderate both hate speech and calls for genocide of the Rohingya minority Muslim group in Myanmar.