Have you ever been nervous about giving out your credit card information online? I have! It always feels a little sketchy when you’re entering sensitive financial details into a website you’re not familiar with. I also sometimes forget to cancel subscriptions when I no longer use them. Not good. A few weeks ago, I got hit with a $300+ charge for a FuboTV subscription that I had completely forgotten about. I knew I had to do something to avoid this kind of situation in the future.
A plane powered by plants? Seems like science fiction, right? A recent investment from airline giant United may bring that closer to reality. Bioengineering company, Viridos, is experimenting with creating sustainable aviation fuel (or SAF) from algae.
United has committed $5 million to further research and development of this algae-based fuel. This investment aims to ensure SAFs power all United flights by 2050. The upside to using algae instead of other plant-based solutions is that the algae can be grown in the ocean. There is no need to invest in agriculture or farmable ground to compete with the food industry. And United isn’t the only company planning to switch to SAFs. The US government has issued a tax credit for the development of this fuel alternative, and there are plans to switch government planes to at least a 10% mixture of SAFs by 2028.
Viridos has successfully developed microalgae that outproduce natural algae to create the oils used in fuel. These microalgae are already producing more of this oil by orders of magnitude. Generally, SAFs are created with excess cooking oil or plant byproducts. Microalgae is one of the alternatives to grow the SAF industry to replace fossil fuels in planes and jetliners. The process is projected to have a 70% smaller carbon footprint than current biofuel manufacturing processes.
So, yes. Sometime soon, you may be on a flight powered by plants!
Windows users, have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I were using a Mac!” Yeah, I know, me neither. Just kidding, Mac users! But seriously folks, there’s one feature I have always been extremely jealous of – to the point where I’ve searched and searched to find a solution: texting and calling through iMessage from my Windows laptop. Well, it’s now coming to Windows 11 !!!
A scene in the 2013 movie Her immediately struck me as incredibly understated because essentially, it was a window to our future. At 5:14, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Theodore, walks into his apartment, and the lights turn on without him doing anything. As he moves from the entryway to the living room, other lights come on, and the previous ones dim slightly. As he reaches a set of chairs and lingers, the light above them slowly turns up. The scene is immediately followed by his character playing a video game on a giant holographic screen controlled by moving his fingers around. I fully expect that to be the image you have of his home when you reflect on the movie. That 21-second scene with no dialogue and no consequence to the plot is the main thing I remember from the film. I was fascinated by the idea that these technologies would be so ubiquitous within a few decades that you wouldn’t even notice or comment on them.
For a week, I’ve been staring at a blank Word doc, trying to think of what to write for my blog post. In fact, I’m a day late. Then last night, one of our clients upgraded to Windows 11. While this isn’t a bad thing (we often endorse being current!), she was NOT ready, especially at the height of a busy season.
One of the features of Win11 is that apps group their windows together, meaning you must hover over the app in the taskbar to see multiple windows of a certain program.
