For anyone who believes Russia’s propaganda that the war is going according to Putin’s elaborate master plan: ‘[The head of Russia’s “Wagner” private army] posted a gruesome video of him walking among dead fighters’ bodies [in Bakhmut], asking defence officials for more supplies…”Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the… ammunition?… They came here as volunteers and die for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices.”‘
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65493008
A Russian soldier surrendered to a flying drone in Bakhmut. It dropped a written note to him instructing him to walk towards the Ukrainian lines, and as he did, his comrades tried to kill him.
https://youtu.be/yE2sKbEjsRY
After months of costly fighting, Russian forces captured the small city of Bakhmut. The head of Russia’s Wagner Group said over 20,000 of his men died there.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-border-raid-4f63ade7fb3899b6fa903b562ada0e2c
Two small drones were used in a suicide attack on the Kremlin in the middle of the night, causing no real damage. The perpetrators haven’t been found, but they were likely Ukrainian agents who carried out the attack for its symbolic rather than military value. It also may have been an inside job perpetrated by some faction of Russia’s security apparatus.
https://youtu.be/2Oiagfj_Mik
Russia launched 54 kamikaze drones against Kiev in the largest such attack of the war so far.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65736730
Glimpse the future: In Ukraine, small drones are fighting each other in the air.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-posts-video-rare-drone-104726320.html
Due to the Ukraine War, the Russian military had almost no tanks and planes available for the annual May 9 military parade. Even the number of infantrymen was visibly lower.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/just-one-old-tank-no-105934766.html
A group of militants claiming to be Russian expatriates against Putin crossed from Ukraine into Russia’s Belgorod region and did damage to infrastructure and several structures. Thousands of Russian civilians had to evacuate the area. While the incursion had insignificant military value, it left many Russians shaken by demonstrating how depleted their border defenses had become thanks to the manpower drain of the Ukraine invasion.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/belgorod-raid-exposes-russia-defenses-ukraine-prigozhin-putin-military-rcna85945
The head of Russia’s private army praised the fighting skill of Ukraine’s forces, criticized the heads of Russia’s armed forces, and said that more setbacks in the war could lead to a loss of public support for it, and even a revolution against Putin.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/24/europe/wagner-prigozhin-russia-manpower-ukraine-intl/index.html
A Russian attack destroyed a Ukrainian munitions depot in one of the biggest explosions of the war so far.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-ammo-storage-site-obliterated-where-huge-fireball-seen
Russia is using their antique T-54 tanks in Ukraine in ways mindful of their combat limitations.
https://youtu.be/ObF_cSe_6UM
In a Ukrainian weapons depot, there are still unopened crates full of WWII Tommy Guns that the U.S. gave the USSR in WWII. Instead of putting them into service, it would make the most sense to sell them to international gun collectors and to use the proceeds to buy newly made guns of different types.
https://youtu.be/ApFT-pLcAXQ
For the second time, Ukrainian forces used a U.S.-supplied Patriot missile system to shoot down one of Russia’s “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles. As with so many other weapons, the Russians’ frightful claims about its performance turned out to be false.
https://mwi.usma.edu/hypersonic-hype-russias-kinzhal-missiles-and-the-lessons-for-air-defense/
The U.S. will give F-16s to Ukraine.
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-f16-biden-a281e3cd1474b2e6f453946075824565
I think the Ukraine War will end like this, in an echo of the Korean War: ‘It’s a scenario that may prove the most realistic long-term outcome given that neither Kyiv nor Moscow appear inclined to ever admit defeat. It’s also becoming increasingly likely amid the growing sense within the administration that an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive won’t deal a mortal blow to Russia. A frozen conflict — in which fighting pauses but neither side is declared the victor nor do they agree that the war is officially over — also could be a politically palatable long-term result for the United States and other countries backing Ukraine.’
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/18/ukraine-russia-south-korea-00097563
Ukraine has terrible demographics. While it will probably survive the current Russian invasion with most of its territory, its overall and working-age populations will be 15-20% smaller in 2040 than they were in 2021, undermining its ability to defend itself from future invasions. A long-term Russian effort to chip away at Ukraine and to absorb it will succeed if Russia is willing to bear the high price and if the West’s support for Ukraine flags.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/psp.2656#
In spite of the Russian military’s heavy losses and painful mistakes in Ukraine, it would be a mistake to write it off as an incompetent force on its last legs. This report shows the Russians have adapted in many ways to the nature of the fighting, and still hold large advantages over the Ukrainians.
https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf
Russia is still selling oil to some European countries, and through pipelines that go through Ukraine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/24/ukraine-gas-russia-pipeline-oil/
During WWII, the U.S. Army Surgeon General found that, in Italy, his troops usually became mentally unfit to serve after spending 200-240 cumulative days in combat.
https://youtu.be/1sC3tCXrbwQ
For all of its faults, the M4 Sherman tank was the best in its class when it came to easy crew egress. This is a critical feature when a tank is disabled and burning and the crewmen have to get out immediately. The men represent investments of money that might exceed the value of their own tank, so saving their lives when possible makes sense from a national resource efficiency perspective.
https://youtu.be/q6xvg5iJ4Zk
Warren Buffet is divesting from the world’s biggest microchip company because its factories are in Taiwan, and he thinks the risk of a Chinese attack on the island has gotten too high.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/16/investing/berkshire-hathaway-taiwan-tsmc-stock-exit-hnk-intl/index.html
Key points from a long interview with Henry Kissinger:
- The U.S. and China are on the path to confrontation, probably over Taiwan.
- Trump was right to confront China about its unfair trade practices, but he should have stopped there and not made the relationship worse in any other ways.
- The leaders of America and China should have a major meeting and make a joint declaration that neither wants war with the other. They should form a high-level joint committee to periodically meet to discuss all the countries’ problems with each other.
- Most Chinese thinkers believe America is declining.
- The Ukraine War will probably end with some Ukrainian territory still in Russian hands. However, both sides will still have strong enough armies to restart the war later to try getting what they want. As soon as this war stops, it would be a good idea for NATO to let Ukraine in as it would reduce the odds of either side attacking the other again.
- Russia becoming a “vassal” of China is unlikely because the two have long running contempt for each other.
- If Russia falls into chaos, then there will be a power vacuum in Central Asia, likely leading to civil wars and interventions by other Asian powers who are ethnically related to various Central Asian groups.
- It’s actually not in the U.S. or global interest for Russia to suffer such a big defeat in Ukraine that it collapses.
- Japan will have nuclear weapons within five years.
- The Chinese have always been inward-looking and have never wanted to take over the world. They also have no interest in trying to Sinicize the cultures of other people. They just want to become to dominant power in East Asia, and to be respected (and possibly paid some kind of tribute by) their neighbors. This is fundamentally different from how the Europeans thought and acted during the Colonial Era.
- If the U.S. defeats China in a war, China is likely to have its own civil war, which could have very bad external effects. It’s not in our interest to ever fight with them over anything.
- AI will be as impactful as the printing press.
- AI will make conventional military forces as destructive as nuclear weapons. Every person will be vulnerable to attack.
- China’s approach to developing AI is about as reckless as America’s.
- In spite of its serious cultural and political divisions, America is not doomed. It’s still possible for a leader or political movement to unify the country for something positive.
- https://www.economist.com/kissinger-transcript
Here’s a great interview with economist David Goldman about the future of U.S.-China relations.
https://youtu.be/8aN5Mryo8jI
If a simultaneous heat wave and power blackout hit Phoenix, up to 817,000 people would need emergency medical treatment, and 13,250 of them would die. Using cheap drones, a small terrorist group could probably bring about the scenario by attacking critical pieces of power infrastructure. Drones could also be used to set wildfires and forest fires at the most inopportune moments.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2023/05/25/phoenix-is-not-prepared-for-a-simultaneous-heat-wave-and-blackout/70252691007/
Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s AI research division, seems to suggest that the first AGI could be invented in less than a decade.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google-deepmind-ceo-says-some-form-of-agi-possible-in-a-few-years-2705f452
Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of A.I.”, just quit his job at Google so he can be a public voice about the dangers posed by A.I.
‘His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”’
https://dnyuz.com/2023/05/01/the-godfather-of-a-i-leaves-google-and-warns-of-danger-ahead/
A leaked Google memo predicts that LLM’s will inevitably become open-source, meaning big tech companies will lose their monopoly over the technology, and there will be countless varieties of narrow AIs made by small companies.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/05/11/what-does-a-leaked-google-memo-reveal-about-the-future-of-ai
“The ‘Sparks of A.G.I.’ is an example of some of these big companies co-opting the research paper format into P.R. pitches,” said Maarten Sap, a researcher and professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “They literally acknowledge in their paper’s introduction that their approach is subjective and informal and may not satisfy the rigorous standards of scientific evaluation.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/technology/microsoft-ai-human-reasoning.html
Sam Altman, head of the Microsoft team that made ChatGPT, told Congress that AI development should be regulated by a new national or international agency.
https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-openai-ceo-sam-altman-congress-73ff96c6571f38ad5fd68b3072722790
Altman and two fellow lead executives also released a statement about AI: “It’s conceivable that within the next ten years, AI systems will exceed expert skill level in most domains, and carry out as much productive activity as one of today’s largest corporations.”
https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence
Elon Musk: “Over 20/30 year time frame I think things will be transformed beyond belief. Probably won’t recognize society in 30 years. [AGI] I think we’re only 3 years, maybe 6 years away… we are on the event horizon of the black hole that is ASI.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1661834925488881664
A large number of AI experts and technology executives signed this public statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk
‘The former Google CEO told The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council: “My concern with AI is actually existential, and existential risk is defined as many, many, many, many people harmed or killed. And there are scenarios not today but reasonably soon, where these systems will be able to find zero-day exploits in cyber issues or discover new kinds of biology.” Schmidt also said that governments needed to ensure the technology was not “misused by evil people.”‘
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-111500864.html
Remember back in 2015 when computer-generated artwork looked like an acid trip? In another eight years, we’ll look back on today’s computer-generated art–with its six-fingered fake people–the same way.
https://uproxx.com/technology/let-googles-deep-dream-ai-turn-your-photos-into-psychadelic-nightmare-fuel/
https://hyperallergic.com/808778/ai-image-generators-finally-figured-out-hands/
There’s now a ChatGPT phone app, and it can communicate through speech instead of writing if you want. I predict the level of AI technology depicted in the first half of the film “Her” will exist by the end of this decade.
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-iphone-app/
The controversy over race-swapping actors in movies will disappear thanks to technology allowing viewers to customize which actors play which roles in the films they watch. Taken to its logical endpoint, each person will someday live in his own custom, virtual universe where they only see what they want to. The people who stand to lose out the most from this are those with especially strong inner drives to exercise power and dominance over other people through control of mainstream narratives and culture. It’s nothing more than an animal impulse, and is only a step removed from shouting down the other person during a debate so only your voice can be heard by other people.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1659935325488021507
IBM will stop hiring humans for jobs that computers can now do. As human workers in those positions leave and are not replaced, the company could ultimately slim down its workforce by 7,800.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-01/ibm-to-pause-hiring-for-back-office-jobs-that-ai-could-kill
NVIDIA used the latest technology to create an immersive, first-person game with an NPC that can carry on non-scripted conversations with human players.
https://youtu.be/5R8xZb6J3r0
A fake computer-generated image of thick smoke billowing from a building near the Pentagon caused stocks to drop within minutes of it appearing on social media. Though the image was quickly revealed to be fake and the stocks recovered, the incident shows how such computer-generated disinformation can affect the real world.
https://dnyuz.com/2023/05/23/an-a-i-generated-spoof-rattles-the-markets/
Our failure to create an AI that reliably predict the results of chemical reactions underscores how poor quality our data are. The temptation to fudge results and to omit reporting unwanted results is very widespread among chemists.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/give-me-those-hard-hard-numbers
These videos of “Robotis OP3” robots playing soccer with each other show how far machine dexterity has come, and how far it still has to go.
https://youtu.be/WlIYa3lH5UI
Computers can scan fMRI brain scan data to determine what moving images people were seeing. I’m starting to think it will be possible someday to scan peoples’ brains to download their memories. We might even be able to implant them in other peoples’ brains.
https://mind-video.com/
‘Boring Report is an app that aims to remove sensationalism from the news and makes it boring to read. In today’s world, catchy headlines and articles often distract readers from the actual facts and relevant information. By utilizing the power of advanced AI language models capable of generating human-like text, Boring Report processes exciting news articles and transforms them into the content that you see. This helps readers focus on the essential details and minimizes the impact of sensationalism.’
https://www.boringreport.org/app
Lab-grown diamonds are getting much more common.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/05/diamond-arbitrage.html
Famous investor Balaji Srinivasan conceded his bet that Bitcoin’s value would rise to $1 million within 90 days.
‘Bitcoin is currently trading at about $29,000. That’s about a 10% gain from the $26,000 mark when Srinivasan made the bet.’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/05/02/balaji-srinivasan-concedes-bet-that-bitcoin-will-reach-1-million-in-90-days/
If, like most sensible people, you think Jim Cramer is terrible at predicting the stock market, you can invest in an ETF that bets against whatever he recommends.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bet-against-jim-cramer-etf-122021151.html
NVIDIA’s market capitalization reached $1 trillion, making it the first semiconductor company to do so and only the ninth company of any kind to do so. It makes computer processors specialized for AI systems like the GPT series, so its profits have surged along with the popularity of those programs.
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/nvidia-crosses-1-trillion-market-193710045.html
Here’s a fascinating video explaining the pros and cons of building motorcycles out of different types of metals.
https://youtu.be/ah7Ubbq5EAA
3D printed guns have greatly improved over the last 10 years.
https://youtu.be/rdu53_aCsOM
China is the leader in retracted science papers.
https://dapp.orvium.io/deposits/6442fee5c93d17c257de17d2/view
I knew that smoke clouds could reflect sunlight back into space before it reached the ground, lowering ground-level temperatures. However, under some circumstances, the clouds can also RAISE ground temperatures by blocking ground heat from radiating into space.
https://www.weather.gov/bgm/WeatherInActionSmokePlume
Across the world, there are dried-up lakes that we could refill by building pipelines connecting them to the oceans. The Dead Sea and Death Valley are examples. Since the dried up lakes are below sea level, gravity would move the water through the pipelines and no pumps would be needed. We could even put hydroelectric turbines in the pipelines to generate electricity from the flow.
Once refilled with water, the dead lakes could support life along their shores. Their filling would also slightly decrease sea levels, partly mitigating one effect of global warming.
The dead lakes are all barren deserts with almost no life, so flooding them would not cause any ecological damage. If anything, it would help the environment since plants and animals would have new places to live.
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/seaflooding
Paradoxically, building more housing units in an expensive city like San Francisco might actually increase its average home prices.
“My claim is that increasing density within a city shifts the demand curve for housing within that city, because of increasing desirability.”
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-housing
In the U.S., the rise of telework has done serious damage to small businesses in downtown areas that depended on patronage from office workers.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/12/1173902715/work-from-home-office-space-small-businesses
Microsoft has pledged to buy electricity from a company called “Helion,” which plans to have a working fusion reactor, starting in 2028. I’m skeptical it will work out.
https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/announcing-helion-fusion-PPA-with-microsoft-constellation/
Dr. Garry Nolan claims that there has been a long-term alien presence on Earth, that they’re beyond our comprehension and interact with us using more primitive “intermediaries,” and that he knows people who have worked on reverse-engineering alien technology possessed by the U.S. government. It would be easy to dismiss him if he weren’t such an intelligent and extraordinarily credentialed person.
https://youtu.be/e2DqdOw6Uy4
https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/garry-nolan
Virgin Galactic’s space plane made another successful, manned flight to the edge of space.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/business/virgin-galactic-test-flight-space-scn/index.html
China wants to put a human on the Moon by 2030.
https://apnews.com/article/china-space-program-moon-368d45fa997307ae2c94bcd7e066e2b4
A paraplegic can walk again thanks to a brain implant that sends wireless signals to a second implant in his spinal cord.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01728-0
ChatGPT answers medical questions from average people just as correctly as human doctors, and with a higher level of empathy on average.
https://today.ucsd.edu/story/study-finds-chatgpt-outperforms-physicians-in-high-quality-empathetic-answers-to-patient-questions
Doctors perform lifesaving brain surgery on fetus in the womb
https://news.yahoo.com/doctors-perform-lifesaving-brain-surgery-175040202.html
The new Alzheimer’s drug probably doesn’t help much.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lilly-s-new-donanemab-data-alzheimer-s
The FDA approved a vaccine for a respiratory virus that afflicts elderly people and kills 6,000 – 10,000 of them each year in the U.S.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-respiratory-syncytial-virus-rsv-vaccine
The WHO ends global health emergency declaration for COVID-19
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/05/05/1174269442/who-ends-global-health-emergency-declaration-for-covid-19
The WHO also ends its global health emergency about Monkey pox
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65564033
