We need to think of technology-enabled furniture as a platform for integrating other technology because in a small apartment it is not practical to put in conventional systems...I don't believe in smart homes, I believe in dumb homes that you put smart things into. If smartness is embedded in the walls then your home becomes obsolete in five years time — BBC news

Everything from sidewalks and curbs to streets, building designs, urban layouts, and living patterns will change as computers take the wheel.

“We’re looking at the broader urban effects—and urban opportunities—of this technology,” says Illinois Tech architect Marshall Brown, one of the team members in the Chicago school’s Driverless Cities Project. “It’s in the news a lot, but nobody’s been discussing what it will actually do to cities.” — wired.com

It is not enough to just catalogue these [structures] in photos and videos, it is our aim to break down the logic of these patterns, and recreate them in code in order to make them more accessible and possibly allowing them to find new life in contemporary applications. By building an open source library, accessible to architects, artists, mathematicians, and software engineers, we can carry these patterns and traditions forward for future generations. — Metropolis Magazine

[nuTonomy's] Level 4 autonomous vehicle "is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip;" all you have to do is provide a destination and (possibly) open and shut the doors.

Google's autonomous cars, in contrast, are currently at Level 3, with limited self-driving automation [...]

[nuTonomy] is building into [its] decision-making engine the ability for cars to actually violate the rules of the road when it's necessary to do so — spectrum.ieee.org

The Information notes that building a city could allow Sidewalk Labs to “rethink government, social policy, and data-driven management.” [CEO Dan] Doctoroff explained that “thinking about a city from the Internet up is really compelling,” while also noting that “cities are hard. You have people with vested interest, politics, physical space…But the technology ultimately cannot be stopped.” — 9 to 5 Google

Renewable energy like solar and wind is booming across the country as the costs of production have come down. But the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't blow when we need it to. [...]

A company called SolarReserve may have found a solution: It built a large solar plant in the Nevada desert that can store heat from the sun and generate electricity for up to 10 hours even after sundown. — npr.org

NASA is hoping a new expandable habitat might one day give astronauts a little more alone time. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will be ferried to the ISS later this spring for a series of tests expected to last several years...experiments will help determine the viability of expandable habitats, which weigh less and occupy less space on a rocket, as laboratories and living quarters for future deep-space missions. — Slate

Among the toughest cybersecurity challenges cities face are recruiting a skilled workforce, increasing education and training for employees on cyberthreats, and taking steps to ensure utility companies and service providers are protecting public water and electrical systems. [...]

Cybersecurity experts say large cities are competing with private companies to recruit and retain skilled workers. Smaller cities, particularly in rural areas, often lack staffing and funds for cybersecurity — mystatesman.com

A drone skyscraper has been proposed by designers Hadeel Ayed Mohammed, Yifeng Zhao and Chengda Zhu that acts as a central control terminal for drones to dock and recharge, situated in the heart of Manhattan.

The ‘dronescraper’, dubbed ‘the hive’ has been proposed as an alternative to Rafael Vinoy’s 432 Park Avenue superstructure, which is set to become the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere. — Design MENA

Civil rights lawyers say the new service being touted by local entrepreneurs, Chariot for Women, would probably conflict with Massachusetts’ antidiscrimination laws. [...]

safety of female passengers has dogged Uber and Lyft Inc. and regulators around the country are debating new requirements for ride-hailing services that include [a] background check [...]

SheTaxis, or SheRides, faced questions from regulators in 2014 when it launched an app that connects female passengers with women drivers. — bostonglobe.com

Since summer 2015, [Alex] Rodrigues and his team [at Varden Labs] have been tinkering with autonomous golf carts on university campuses...On the one hand, campus transit agencies, and particularly university ones, are uniquely posed to experiment with pricier autonomous vehicles...But these shuttles will also need maintenance...Plus, driverless shuttles will be the diving bell for a tricky, tricky question: how important are bus drivers? — CityLab

These exponential advances, most notably in forms of artificial intelligence, will prove daunting for as long as we continue to insist upon employment as our primary source of income. The White House, in a stunning report to Congress this week, put the probability at 83 percent that a worker making less than $20 an hour in 2010 will eventually lose his job to a machine. Even workers making as much as $40 an hour face odds of 31 percent. — bostonglobe.com

For four decades, the problem of how to create an economically viable business producing power from waves has fascinated a specialized group of engineers, many of whom are concentrated around the sea-beaten coast of Scotland. Inventors have created all sorts of strange and wonderful devices to coax energy out of the water; investors have poured millions of pounds into the effort. — Quartz