Interesting bunch of articles this morning about green energy, in light on the oil/NG turmoil going on. One points out that the world is not turning away from oil and natural gas at all. Solar and wind only add on but do not replace hydrocarbon-based energy.
Another article highlights the problems that Spain and Portugal have been experiencing with solar energy. They oversold it to the public so much that during summer months, so much energy is generated that it overloads their power grid, and so regular blackouts must be imposed to prevent overloading the system. And in Australia, early adopters of solar now want to, or need to replace their solar panels for the more efficient ones. The older ones cannot be recycled, because they often break during the removal process. So now Australia has a disposal problem of solar panel waste.
Although the West has been moving away from hydrocarbon-based energy, the rest of the world, especially China, has continued to use it. All the grief that Western government imposes on their citizens and the taxes they raise, seem all for nothing.
––– 良くない–––
A Finnish startup Donut Labs announced that they have developed a solid state battery. "High-density, durable, fast-charging" and would go into production later this year. Sounds too good to be true, and people in the know seem to have doubts. But we shall see. A significant advance in battery technology will really shake up the world. We need better batteries than what he have to really make possible a lot of things – including datacenters and practical EVs. Hope it's true.
––– 凄い –––
Now this is cool! How a dancer with ALS used brainwaves to perform live. This is how AI can really take art to the next level. Truly amazing. YouTube of her performance here.
––– 凄い –––
Yawn. Is this what the iPhone 18 will look like? Apple has clearly run out of ideas. Gone are the Steve Jobs days when each new release introduced something that made us want to have it. Now, it's just a new color. Or things re-arranged. New emojis. Meanwhile, battery life still sucks, and we don't have the pocket Jarvis that we want.
––– 良くない–––
Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Disgruntled, Underemployed PhDs. Here are some careers that look promising for the college grad. I'm not so sure about actuarial science or management consulting. Entrpreneurship is always an option but people need the right personality for this and connections to money and investors, or else you're doomed to fail.
––– 良くない–––
Wow, Gary Marcus finally has something positive to say about AI, and it's neurosymbolic AI. Of course, a lot of folks are gravitating to this field. The world-model builders are developing something along these lines, which they feel will exceed the abilities of LLMs to take us to AGI. Maybe. We shall see.
––– 凄い –––
I remember this interview of Patrick Soon-Shiongwho claims that spike protein is in many tumors and is probably associated with why we are seeing malignancies in young people. A bold claim, and it was largely ignored. Why hasn't he published his findings to support his claims? Even his interleukin-15 drug isn't making waves in the standard medical oncology literature or biotech world.
––– 良くない–––
Why did Apple Maps remove all the labels from small town in Lebanon? It's true – I confirmed it. What does it mean?
––– 良くない–––
Scientists Have Uncovered a 3rd State of Life, Which Starts After Cell Death. "the phenomenon of dead cells taking on new functions after death".
...extracted skin cells from deceased frog embryos and watched them reorganize into a new multicellular organism the paper called “xenobots.” Unlike some cells such as tumors or organoids that continually divide after death, these xenobots took on new behaviors beyond their biological roles. Studies have also found this ability in human lung cells, creating anthrobots capable of self-assembling and moving around.
Crazy. Like zombie cells.
––– 凄い –––
AI Knowledge Retrieval, Memory & RAG Systems Catalog (Last updated 2025-04-11). This catalog is a year old but still useful for those building things. I don't see anything major that it's missing.
––– 凄い –––
Labor unions want to build datacenters but some lawmakers are "calling for a pause on construction of data centers, which provide towns with a short-term economic boost but use an enormous amount of water to cool computers producing artificial intelligence." I think this is wise not to rush in ahead with these things. We need datacenters, but not at the cost of harm the hosting community.
––– 良くない–––
Oregon deaths outnumber births by 19,000 this decade. Oregon has a lot of old people- more than the national average. So THAT'S why I'm seeing so many Resistance Grandmas at the No Kings rallies! 🤣
––– 良くない–––