Automated sand delivery
Driverless autonomous trucks are becoming a thing in remote areas of Texas used to feed an endless sand supply to fracking wells. AI and fracking. How could that go wrong? 😀
Tron Electroluminescent (El) Tape
Want to create your own clothes that have lighted tape/lines like recent Tron movies? Want to create unique lighting at your next event or home? Want to wrap your car in illuminated panels?
Look no further than Ellumiglow. They sell a wide variety of wearable electroluminescent solutions for home and clothing.
The original Tron costume lighting solution supposedly was created by a company called Oryon Technologies Inc and the product was Elastolite EL Panels – but they don’t seem to exist or have a web presence anymore.
There are hobbyist selling complete Tron cosplay kits, and others that show you how to screen-print your own El clothing:
Links:
Buying Ethanol free gas
Ethanol gas proports to reduce air pollution; but it’s not without side effects. Gas mileage goes down by about 3-4%. Ethanol is hygroscopic which means it attracts water and can lead to corrosion and water-fuel phase separation over time can damage rubber seals or create gum deposits.
Therefore, it’s recommended that equipment with small engines, motorcycles, classic cars, and especially watercraft should use non-ethanol gas. But where to find it?
Pure-gas.com lets you look up stations in just about any state that sells ethanol free gas. Be ready to pay for it though – usually $0.20-$1 more per gallon.
AI’s pursuit of Trackmania’s records
Yosh has been covering the increasing use of AI to test for better and faster racing times for track A01. The conclusion: AI was able to bet the human world record, but is still lagging the hand-tuned TAS (tool assisted speedrun). They’re not done trying yet – we’ll have to watch and see how many more records fall to AI and which do not.
Jaguar – A failure like no other
We all saw the videos of androgynous actors in strange clothes that left people unsure what Jaguar was even advertising. There was not a single mention of a car. Jaguar emptied its show floors of older models that were all discontinued and announced no cars – for a year.
Then the Jaguar Type 00 prototypes were shown and the attempt flopped. How bad? How about an entire year with no cars for sale and then a 97.5% sales collapse.
April 2024: 1,961 cars sold
April 2025: 49 cars sold
This lead to the firing of the 3rd party marketing group hired for the effort, the lead designers, and CEO. The current offerings from Jaguar are a 180 degree turn back to their older designs but it is unclear if they will ever recover.
A complete disaster and an intelligent re-invention can look similar at first, but it turns out that burning the bridges with an unproven firm before you even know if there is land on the other side is a very bad idea.
LaserWeeder G2
I’ve written about the atomization of farming before, but now Nvidia and Carbon Robotics are demonstrating the LaserWeeder G2. It has 24 high powered lasers and 24 GPU’s and can purportedly zap 10,000 weeds per minute, which breaks down to 167 weeds per second.
That’s an impressive amount of computing horsepower that finds weeds and targets them with lasers – instead of using chemical herbicides. This saves money and the hazards of expensive chemicals.
Here it is in live action (without all the flashy graphics and the BRAAAMs):
Articles:
Replacing your Subaru mid 2010’s Crosstrek Headlights
Once your car gets about 10 years old, one of the most annoying things is that headlights dim and yellow. This is due to a number of reasons – but primarily due to the degradation of the UV coating. You can buff it off, but it often quickly returns and you’re stuck with an annoying chore almost every year.
Another option is to buy replacement headlights. In the old days, you simply unscrewed the old bulbs and put in the new ones. Now you need to remove the assemblies – which often involves removing the bumper and surrounding shrouds – as is the case with mid 2010 Subarus.
The Crosstrek/Impreza’s in the 2015 era were actually not that bad to replace. TRQ does a great job showing you how to do the job yourself – including how to re-aim the headlights. It’s a great video.
LodiGlass’s VW Bug
I’ve seen lowered cars before, but nothing like this from LodiGlass.
Jumping cars
The Chinese auto company BYD demonstrates the Yangwang U9Â model, an electric supercar with four motors, fast charging, a top speed of 243 mph, and individual wheel drive system. It also doesn’t need a driver. Yangwang U9 also has the ability to leap. Watch carefully, and you’ll see the wheels retract into the body like a low rider, and then suddenly extend while at speed to leap over obstacles or holes in the road.
Perhaps they’re trying to duplicate Mercedez-Benz Maybach bounce that has been turning heads.
Tesla about to use Unreal engine?
Tesla’s in-car visualizations for features like Autopilot and Full Self-Driving might be getting an upgrade with a switch to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. As reported by Not a Tesla App, Tesla hacker greentheonly says they found evidence of the change in Tesla’s 2025.20 firmware for Tesla Model S and Model X cars.
It wouldn’t be surprising as the use of standardized tooling is almost always cheaper than making your own. Article here.