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Hi-fi, Radio, and Retro: The DIY Projects Spectrum Readers Love

Cars That Think

This month we’re celebrating the launch of our second PDF collection of Hands On articles, which IEEE members can download from IEEE Spectrum ’s website and share with friends. Far and away our most popular article in the last five years has been “ Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort of Cheap ” (November 2018).

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Why is Hydroelectricity So Green, and Yet Unfashionable?

Cars That Think

There is no end of gushing about China’s cheap solar panels—but when was the last time you saw a paean to hydroelectricity? In 2020 the world’s hydro stations produced 75 percent more electricity than wind and solar combined and accounted for 16 percent of all global generation. Construction of large dams began before World War II.

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Heating Buildings With Solar Energy Stored in Sand

Cars That Think

This sponsored article is brought to you by COMSOL. What began as a lighthearted (but serious) student project led to a 3 MWh/100 kW pilot plant in the Finnish city of Tampere, which began operation during the winter of 2020–2021. Sand is efficient, nontoxic, portable, and cheap!”. “We There is nothing special here!”

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2022 GMC Hummer EV: the biggest, baddest, butchest EV to hit the market?

Charged EVs

The news that General Motors would relaunch the infamous Hummer name—as an all-electric truck no less—broke a few days before the high-dollar, high-visibility 2020 Super Bowl ad that introduced that vehicle to the world. This article appeared in Charged Issue 52 – November/December 2020 – Subscribe now.

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Boston Dynamics’ Founder on the Future of Robotics

Cars That Think

Funded by Hyundai (the company also acquired Boston Dynamics in 2020), the Institute’s first few projects will focus on making robots useful outside the lab by teaching them to better understand the world around them. This article appears in the August 2023 print issue as “5 Questions for Marc Raibert.” But somehow, it’s captivating.

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Porsche Whistleblower: “60% of all delivered Taycan have battery issues that caused replacements, damages and fires”

Teslarati

To pretend to have done a repair that never happened and accept a lower battery capacity caused by a cheap Porsche onboard charger without informing the customer would be misleading, to say the least. The supplier has a reputable name, but a cheap charger was chosen to keep costs down. Porsche’s Zuffenhausen site.

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Just Calm Down About GPT-4 Already

Cars That Think

Brooks, who is now working on his third robotics startup, Robust.AI , has written hundreds of articles and half a dozen books and was featured in the motion picture Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. You wrote a famous article in 2017, “ The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Prediction. “ And it’s really cheap. Brooks: No.

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