Category: futurism

Ukraine staged a successful surprise attack into Russia itself, capturing a significant amount of territory southwest of the city of Kursk.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands-flee-russia-battles-major-123112611.html
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kursk-fighting-80671ef80c36b94dc1114506770cdd56

The Russians are close to seizing a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine called “Pokrovsk.” If it falls, a large section of the Ukrainian frontline will become unsupportable and will crumble.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785z8917leo

While Russia is derided in the Western press for sending poorly-trained men to fight in Ukraine, the fact is Ukraine is doing the same.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-new-recruits-pokrovsk-ed2d06ad529e3b7e47ecd32f79911b83

North Korea condemned Ukraine’s invasion as a terrorist act.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/north-korea-condemns-ukraines-incursion-into-russia-act-terror-2024-08-18/

Russia destroyed a Challenger II tank the British donated to Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/GnYcTWuhSEA?si=gqC3UVY-XBWn8Jf6

The first F-16 fighters have been delivered to Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/air/f-16s-arrive-in-ukraine-report

And the first Ukrainian F-16 was also destroyed during a mission to shoot down Russian cruise missiles and drones.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-f-16-destroyed-during-200508160.html

Since October 7, 2% of Gaza’s population has been killed. That’s comparable to what some countries suffered in WWII.
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-war-hamas-dead-graves-40000-988d16b648e06e222f04964dc9440da0

Top U.S. officials say that though Israel has massively damaged Hamas, it’s unlikely that further attacks will destroy the organization. They’ve proven too adept at survival. Hamas is also so skillful at hiding the remaining Israeli hostages that rescuing them alive with commando raids is impossible. The huge civilian death toll has undermined Israel’s global image and diplomatic standing, and Hamas is so intermixed with the general population in Gaza that even the most surgical Israeli attacks will cause collateral damage.

At this point, Israel should declare victory, end military operations in Gaza, and switch to diplomacy to get its hostages back and to diminish Hamas’ remaining power as much as possible.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gaza-israel-military-reached-end-113642816.html

‘Planted Bomb Was Used To Kill Hamas Leader In Tehran’
https://www.twz.com/news-features/planted-bomb-was-used-to-kill-hamas-leader-in-tehran-report

The U.S. Navy announced it was sending a cruise missile sub to the Persian Gulf to deter Iran from retaliating against Israel.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-sending-powerful-submarine-middle-east-loud-warning-to-iran-2024-8

‘Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels said they had killed at least 84 Russian Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers during days of fierce fighting in late July.’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-pay-homage-wagner-fighters-125657362.html

This gives me an idea for a future weapon: robotic insects that are programmed to crawl into the fuel systems of enemy aircraft and, once they sense the aircraft have taken flight, to clog the fuel lines with some injected gluey substance.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ntsb-investigation-said-wasps-nest-132603368.html

An Air Force investigation concluded that the crash of a $450 million B-1B bomber earlier this year was due to crew error, and that poor discipline and lax standards in their unit set the stage for the disaster. Keep in mind that machines will never forget anything, suffer from skill degradation, or need to spend any time retraining.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/07/25/report-unhealthy-culture-ellsworth-air-force-base-units-contributed-b-1b-lancer-crash.html

The Indian Army’s INSAS assault rifle is, along with the British SA80, one of the worst in its class. Some of its problems owe to manufacturing defects rather than design faults.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/indian-army-plans-to-upgrade-the-insas-rifle-part-1-history-44815417
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/indian-army-plans-to-upgrade-insas-rifle-part-2-my-experience-44815429

China is abandoning its “minimum deterrence” nuclear strategy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/biden-nuclear-china-russia.html

The question isn’t whether the Germans COULD have won the Battle of Stalingrad (the answer is “no”), it’s whether they SHOULD have started the battle at all. They should have lurked west of the city in favorable open ground to destroy any Soviet forces that came out to fight them.

In reality, the symbolism of controlling the city bearing Josef Stalin’s name overrode military logic in Hitler’s mind, so he sent his army into a disaster.
https://youtu.be/zSah-7yvaE8?si=KEycNUPVyPM7er2r

Jacob Schiff was one of the richest men in America around the turn of the century, and a powerful advocate for Jews like himself. In the late 1800s, antisemitic violence within the Russian Empire started driving large numbers of Jews to leave. In 1903, Christian fanatics in Moldova murdered 49 Jews and raped many of their women. Schiff was outraged, and in response, he loaned Japan the equivalent of $5.3 billion in 2023 dollars–half of the country’s entire wartime military budget–to finance its war against Russia in 1905. Russia suffered a humiliating loss that resounds to this day, though Japan was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy by the end. Without Schiff, Russia might have won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the social media messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France because some of the app’s users used it to commit crimes. This has major free speech implications.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2x5yw8z7yo

‘Zuckerberg regrets bowing to Biden ‘pressure’ over Covid’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxlpjlgdzjo

A new mod for the video game Cyberpunk 2077 has been released which upgrades it graphics into being nearly lifelike.
https://www.techeblog.com/cyberpunk-2077-dreampunk-2-graphics-mod/

Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis just gave an interview. Key points:

• He freely uses the term “AGI,” which he used to be reluctant to utter.
• He thinks AGI could be invented as early as 2030.
• He also believes computers could invent cures for most or all diseases within 10 years, including individualized medicines.
• In spite of that, he thinks the media is overhyping the short-term potential of the AI industry. Massive progress will happen, but slower than the media and self-interested startups imply.
  https://youtu.be/pZybROKrj2Q?si=4gHyTisaMR4SmKAb

Peter Thiel also gave an interview, and echoed Hassabis’ view that the AI industry is in a bubble. Specifically, he used the analogy that AI today is where the internet was in 1999: poised for a world-changing breakout but also in a huge bubble that will pop.
https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g?si=GywdTwE3DVyw63VW

This analysis makes reasonable assumptions about growth in training data sets, data centers, electricity availability, and training efficiency, and concludes there’s no roadblock to building GPT-6 by 2030. However, a company the size of Microsoft would have to be willing to pay up to $100 billion to create it, and it would consume up to five gigawatts of electricity. (A gigawatt of electricity can power 300,000 – 750,000 homes, and an average nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt of electricity. [Note that one nuclear POWER PLANT can have multiple nuclear REACTORS in it.]) They could actually afford that and could even build their own power plants by the deadline.

As I wrote a few months ago, the near future of the AI industry hinges on how good GPT-5 is. If it’s a very impressive and instantly profitable product, then many big tech companies will find it worth the gamble to take the next step and build GPT-6 equivalents. If GPT-5 disappoints, then they won’t. I think GPT-5 will be released shortly after the U.S. election.

I don’t know if GPT-6 would be a “general intelligence,” but at a minimum, it would be able to replace large numbers of human jobs and to handle very complex tasks. People and organizations will get access to it through a subscription model, for example, you’ll pay $100 a month to have GPT-6 perform a job at your company that you’d have to pay a human $5,000 a month to do.
https://epochai.org/blog/can-ai-scaling-continue-through-2030

‘Our future AI overlord has determined that putting cold air inside a duct will raise the temperature of the outside of the duct above the ambient temperature of the attic.’
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/08/25/chatgpt-4o-tackles-the-challenge-of-ac-ducts-sweating-in-an-attic/

This ancient Egyptian wooden lock is so simple that only a genius could invent it.
https://youtu.be/3I25Te0qNEM?si=UN6AI-sQU4DGJDiP

A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode that aired in 1995 has caught up with reality.
https://youtu.be/F4x_8miSN9k?si=tCVe50ArSrL5eXdQ
https://youtu.be/Ni8LvECFoiM?si=xC1lVPDNbt5X8BVf

Stanford University mathematics professor Keith Devlin has said, “like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler’s equation reaches down into the very depths of existence”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity

Eight years on, and China’s project to build an international power grid has gone nowhere.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/china-unveils-proposal-50-trillion-global-electricity-network-n548376

‘According to our baseline estimates (Table 1), over the past 38 years, Chernobyl reduced the total number of NPPs worldwide by 389, which is almost entirely driven by the slowdown of new construction in democracies. Our calculations thus suggest that, globally, more than 318 million expected life years have been lost in democratic countries due to the decline in NPP growth in these countries after Chernobyl.’
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/the-unseen-fallout-chernobyls-deadly-air-pollution-legacy.html

Geologists have found a place where it is possible to drill down into the Earth’s mantle.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-drilled-deep-center-earth-163300616.html

A large meteorite impact crater under Greenland’s ice sheet has been dated to 58 million years ago, squashing earlier claims that it was created 13,000 years ago and triggered the last Ice Age.
https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2022/03/giant-impact-crater-in-greenland-occurred-a-few-million-years-after-dinosaurs-went-extinct/

Published 20 years ago: ‘If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades. That is the bold prediction from a leading light at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California.’
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6189-et-first-contact-within-20-years/

The Pentagon’s former lead UFO hunter Luis Elizondo just published an autobiography that includes a lot of detail about his old job and what the government secretly knows about aliens.
‘He claims that his D.C.-area home was “invaded,” The Times reported, by green, glowing, basketball-sized orbs. They could pass through walls and appeared to be “under intelligent control…his wife, their two daughters and their neighbors witnessed the green orbs, which they called “our friends from out of town.”’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-alien-hunter-luis-elizondo-glowing-green-ufos-invaded-my-home

Elizondo also sat down for a long interview about himself and his book. He’s surprisingly smart.
https://youtu.be/9gLPtRwXgCM?si=nK2GJ-OZ1nQbCpOf

Crazy ways to get into space: “Lofstrom loop, StarTram and Space Cannons”
https://youtu.be/gIYpDSs8vsM?si=Dc3Jfmkoc4_f0WVo

Mars probably has liquid water several miles underground, flowing through cracks in rocks. Microbial life could be there.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/12/science/mars-crust-water-reservoir-insight/index.html

It’s very rare to find a dog with the right attributes to serve with special forces units or elite bodyguards. For that reason, it would probably be cheaper to keep cloning the best dogs instead of relying on the genetic crapshoot.
https://gwern.net/clone

Ten years on, and there’s been very little follow-up about this suspended animation procedure. It’s actually the norm for a supposedly revolutionary breakthrough in medicine or some other technology to rock the news media for a few days only to be never heard from again.
https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2014/09/04/the-big-sleep

‘US government report says fluoride at twice the recommended limit is linked to lower IQ in kids’
https://apnews.com/article/fluoride-water-brain-neurology-iq-0a671d2de3b386947e2bd5a661f437a5

You can change the color of your eyes through plastic surgery. The only problem is it might make you slowly go blind.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/health/permanent-eye-color-change-surgery/index.html

There was controversy at the Paris Summer Olympics when gold medals were awarded to to two female boxers with genetic abnormalities that gave them male physical characteristics and male XY chromosomes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlr8gp813ko

The FDA rejected an ecstasy-based drug that was touted as a treatment for PTSD because there wasn’t enough proof it worked.
https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/fda-rejects-ecstasy-based-drug-cfc4b4b5

After a Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 Israeli civilians, Israel used airstrikes to kill senior leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. The bold reprisal carried out the assassinations in Beirut and Tehran.
https://apnews.com/article/haniyeh-shukur-israel-lebanon-hamas-5d3ec9b048ef77b6b8196c6c08755dbd

Israel retaliated against Yemen for a drone attack that killed one person in Tel Aviv with an airstrike that practically crippled Yemen’s most important seaport. The distances are remarkable: southern Israel and the port are 1,200 miles apart.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/details-of-israels-long-range-strike-that-decimated-yemeni-port-emerge

The U.S. military dismantled its floating pier that was meant to deliver aid to Gaza. The failure makes me wonder how badly it would fare under the stress of warfare when it would be needed to deliver supplies to our troops after they secured a beachhead.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-floating-pier-off-gaza-wound-disappointment/story

In spite of a resurgence in U.S. military aid, Ukraine’s forces are slowly falling back at multiple parts of the front line.
https://www.politico.eu/article/kremlin-troops-push-kyivs-underequipped-soldiers-frontline-russia-ukraine-war-zelenskyy/

The Russian “MT-LB” armored tractor fleet has suffered so much attrition in the Ukraine War that it’s on track for extinction.
https://youtu.be/KSvawAjav1k?si=z8cdh4l7JEumq4D3

A U.S. company has developed an upgrade package for Ukraine’s kamikaze drones that lets them home in on their targets using cameras and image recognition. This makes them jam-proof against Russia’s current electronic weapons.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/07/10/destroying-russian-tanks-is-just-the-start-for-us-ai-drone-autopilot/

Defensive lasers that can be mounted on tanks and which can blind the sensors of enemy drones are “an untapped countermeasure.”
https://www.twz.com/land/laser-dazzlers-for-defending-tanks-against-marauding-drones-are-an-untapped-countermeasure

A U.S. soldier in 1944 holding a captured German “Panzerschreck” (left) and an American Bazooka (right). Both weapons were designed to penetrate the thick armor of tanks and to blow them up, but the larger Panzerschreck was more powerful. The Germans based the Panzerschreck on Bazookas they captured from U.S. POWs in 1942 in North Africa.

Islamic fighters ambushed and killed dozens of Russian “Wagner” mercenaries in Mali.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dozens-wagner-fighters-killed-russian-192007431.html

Some of the Mexican army’s guns and armored vehicles are from WWII.
https://youtu.be/Q8R32wuYVe4?si=d6Y_qzuIwXlLxToD

Influential “effective altruists” mostly living in Silicon Valley are trying to get California and the U.S. federal government to impose restrictions on AI development out of fear it might destroy the human race.
https://reason.com/2024/07/05/the-authoritarian-side-of-effective-altruism-comes-for-ai/

Like any other technology, AI will stay largely ignored until its capability surpasses that of humans or some other common technology, whereupon it will be rapidly adopted.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/gradually-then-suddenly-upon-the

A DeepMind LLM secured a silver medal in the 2024 International Math Olympiad.
“The fact that the program can come up with a non-obvious construction like this is very impressive, and well beyond what I thought was state of the art.”
-Prof Sir Timothy Gowers, IMO gold medalist and Fields Medal winner
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/ai-solves-imo-problems-at-silver-medal-level/

LLMs are getting much more computationally efficient.
https://openai.com/index/gpt-4o-mini-advancing-cost-efficient-intelligence/

Maybe managers will be automated before line workers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c03lgz2zrg1o

After his shockingly bad debate against Donald Trump, President Joe Biden ended his 2024 reelection bid. At least two pundits predicted this:

• “I predict the kingmaker who saved Biden’s campaign in the 2020 primary, South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn, will this time be the king slayer. After Biden insists that he is running for re-election, Clyburn, a respected elder statesman with gravitas, will tell Biden his defeat of Trump in 2020 was enough, and now it’s time for another candidate, without Biden’s baggage, to lead the way. Biden, a stubborn man, will eventually agree. By spring 2023, more than 20 Democrats will enter the contest and the party in 2024 will emerge with a newer, younger leader.”
  -Ari Fleischer, May 2, 2022
  https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/joe-biden-wont-run-in-2024-ari-fleischer
• ‘Steve Forbes made a bold prediction Friday morning while sitting with Fox News’ Bill Hemmer and Jacqui Heinrich on “America’s Newsroom”: President Joe Biden will not be the Democrats’ 2024 nominee, despite announcing his reelection campaign in April.’
  -May 26, 2023
  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/joe-biden-not-democrats-2024-231657505.html

Presidential contender Donald Trump narrowly avoided assassination during a speech to supporters in Pennsylvania. Conservative news pundit Tucker Carlson predicted this last September.
‘Speaking with Adam Carolla on the comedian’s eponymous YouTube show, Carlson said: “They indicted him three times, and every single time his popularity rose. If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, then you go to indictment, and none of them work, what’s next? Graph it out, man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously.”‘
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12470861/Tucker-Carlson-breathlessly-says-speeding-Trump-assassination-liberal-establishment-running-options-stop-president-Russian-propagandist-says-ex-Fox-News-host-dead-man-walking.html

Here’s a list of science fiction works that were set in the future at the time they were published, but which now took place in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_future_now_in_the_past

“Redbox” has shut down, bringing down the curtain on the movie disc rental era. I remember when DVD vending machines were high tech.
https://www.ign.com/articles/redbox-officially-shutting-down

‘Europe’s first Ariane 6 flight achieved most of its goals, but ended prematurely’
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/europes-first-ariane-6-flight-achieved-most-of-its-goals-but-ended-prematurely/

Instead of crashing the ISS back to Earth, why not boost it to a higher orbit where it will stay for decades?
https://spacenews.com/transferring-the-international-space-station-into-the-future/

NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found evidence of extinct microbial life on Mars.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/26/science/nasa-perseverance-rover-cheyava-falls-rock/index.html

There is a fine line between genius and insanity.

‘Musk, 53, has directed SpaceX employees to drill into the design and details of a Martian city, according to five people with knowledge of the efforts and documents viewed by The New York Times. One team is drawing up plans for small dome habitats, including the materials that could be used to build them. Another is working on spacesuits to combat Mars’ hostile environment, while a medical team is researching whether humans can have children there. Musk has volunteered his sperm to help seed a colony

…The Boring Co., a private tunneling venture founded by Musk, was started in part to ready equipment to burrow under Mars’ surface, two of the people said. Musk has told people that he bought the social platform X partly to help test how a citizen-led government that rules by consensus might work on Mars. He has also said that he envisions residents on the planet will drive a version of the steel-paneled Cybertrucks made by Tesla, his electric vehicle company.’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/thermonuclear-blasts-species-inside-elon-114134734.html

A new study finds evidence that the brain patterns involved in gender identity are distinct from the brain patterns that reveal biological sex at birth. The study used fMRI brain scans of children aged 9 and 10, along with survey questions meant to find how they viewed their gender. “These gender-associated brain networks were distinct from those associated with assigned sex at birth.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/brain-imaging-study-children-shows-sex-and-gender-operate-different-networks-brain

Another person has been cured of HIV thanks to a stem cell transplant.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13648387/German-man-seventh-person-HIV-cured.html

New genetics research shows that Americans with ADHD and anxiety/depression disorders have been reproducing the most, while people with high educational attainment have been reproducing the least.

Israel’s army staged a daring rescue of four of their citizens who had been held hostage in Gaza since October 7. During the sudden and ferocious attack, one Israeli commando and over 200 Gazans (mostly civilians) were killed.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hostage-rescue-new-details-gaza-operation-nuseirat-rcna156273

The expensive military pier the U.S. built to supply Gaza with aid has been rebuilt.
https://www.twz.com/sea/gaza-pier-repaired-aid-to-flow-soon

Israel’s high court has ruled that military draft exemptions for Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must end.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-politics-ruling-military-service-orthodox-e2a8359bcea1bd833f71845ee6af780d

A Ukrainian drone attack deep inside of Russia destroyed one of the latter’s prized Su-57 stealth fighters on the ground.
https://www.twz.com/air/su-57-felon-targeted-in-ukraine-strike-seen-in-new-higher-resolution-satellite-images

Russian defense missiles intercepted U.S.-made missiles that Ukraine fired at Crimea. The midair explosions from the two groups of missiles colliding hurled shrapnel down onto a packed beach, killing five Russian civilians and injuring more.

The Ukrainians almost certainly weren’t targeting civilians, and their missiles were probably headed for Russian warships or bases. Nevertheless, Russia has sworn revenge.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pppr719rlo

‘One year after Wagner uprising, Putin more powerful than ever’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-wagner-uprising-putin-more-063929686.html

Russia now has three captured M1 Abrams tanks. Each one is damaged in a different way. I bet their working parts could be combined to make one working tank.
https://youtu.be/yBhYcMb8Tng?si=kYf17lu3a_eyjV2e

The carousel autoloader found in Soviet and Russian tanks isn’t necessarily a fatal design flaw. If the Russians copied the gunpowder from the advanced ammunition they found in the captured German Leopard 2 tank, then their own tanks would become much less likely to blow up thanks to their own ammo cooking off.
https://youtu.be/6A4CqxGMBQw?si=DUc_wyPlbWI7QgHv

This is from 2008. Six years later, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7583810.stm

According to a new agreement, North Korea will supply Russia with weapons and guest workers in exchange for Russian technology and hard currency.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-north-korea-putin-kim-agreement-7221909867dbb999de8adb23604e3c79

The third variant of the British WWII Sten sub machine gun was one of the simplest and cheapest guns ever made. It’s interesting to see how those factors hurt its reliability and longevity, even compared to other Sten variants. The Mark III was truly a throwaway weapon.
https://youtu.be/W0qlOOE8G_k?si=LNbw1XOwYr5urr5A

The man who invented a small add-on device that turns any Glock into a full-auto weapon is a mechanical genius from Venezuela. He created the first device in the late 1980s while he was still a teenager and working at a gun shop. Only in recent years has the device started becoming common among criminals.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/feel-terrified-inventor-glock-switch-090429902.html

A photo of the top secret U.S. “Manta Ray” submarine was captured by a private satellite.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13567175/Top-secret-aquatic-drone-weapon-Manta-Ray-spotted-Google-Maps.html

‘Russia develops its first chipmaking tool — outdated by 30 years from day one’
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/russia-develops-its-first-lithography-tool-outdated-by-30-years-from-day-one

Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company, with a market cap over $3.4 trillion. It was worth $418 billion just two years ago.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyrr40x0z2mo

Within days, Nvidia lost 16% of its stock value, resulting in a market cap loss of $500 billion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/business/dealbook/nvidia-stock-wipeout.html

Without using the term “singularity,” math whiz and high-ranking OpenAI staff member “Leopold Aschenbrenner” published a paper claiming that milestone is upon us. Radical changes thanks to AI will happen in just the next ten years.
https://situational-awareness.ai/

Here’s a counterpoint to his claims from Sabine Hossenfelder.
https://youtu.be/xm1B3Y3ypoE?si=FAZ30WLfCjA9i74T

Between 2026 and 2032, LLMs will gobble up all the written content humans have ever created.
https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-training-data-running-out-9676145bac0d30ecce1513c20561b87d

Apple has made a major deal with OpenAI to install ChatGPT on its iPhones.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nn5mejl89o

An internet writer describes how LLMs destroyed his workplace in 18 months and totally changed his own daily roles.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240612-the-people-making-ai-sound-more-human

Ah, memories…

‘In February, AI-based forgery reached a watershed moment–the OpenAI research company announced GPT-2, an AI generator of text so seemingly authentic that they deemed it too dangerous to release publicly for fears of misuse. Sample paragraphs generated by GPT-2 are a chilling facsimile of human- authored text. Unfortunately, even more powerful tools are sure to follow and be deployed by rogue actors.’
https://hbr.org/2019/03/how-will-we-prevent-ai-based-forgery

After quitting OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever has set up a company called “Safe Superintelligence Inc.,” whose goal it is to safely create an AI.
https://apnews.com/article/openai-sutskever-altman-artificial-intelligence-safety-c6b48a3675fb3fb459859dece2b45499

According to the 1999 movie The Thirteenth Floor, by June 21, 2024 we were supposed to have had AGI, full immersion virtual reality like The Matrix, lifelike digital worlds, and really cool-looking glass skyscrapers in L.A.
https://youtu.be/UCsR9iPvX0I?si=iLM31LuQMMcC5Q1u

This prediction was accurate:

“I think Joe Biden will run again in 2024 and I think he will run against someone with the last name ‘Trump.’ I do not know whether that is Trump or Trump Jr…”

Saagar said that in March 2021, when it was unclear whether Trump had a political future and whether Biden would want to stand for reelection.
https://youtu.be/grceJbuPUXI?si=JMZFlNQ-dRCHVMvc&t=5851

Engineering and logistics impose limits on how big wind turbines can get; physics does not.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-theoretical-maximum-size-of-a-wind-turbine

Corrugated steel sheets are a construction wondermaterial.
https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/the-rise-and-rise-of-corrugated-iron

There’s a reason why the classic Spielberg movies have slightly “off” colors that make them look old fashioned in a subtle way: the film stock used back then had a limited color range. It would be interesting to use AI to reverse those distortions and create rereleases of those films that are true to the actual colors on set.
https://youtu.be/kQmIPWK8aXc?si=7L2nPuUZ9aaVU_EM

A lack of passive safety features doomed the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
https://youtu.be/YBNFvZ6Vr2U?si=sCm_zthCZHgm12g_

Some forest fires are actually caused by bacteria. Just like a human-made compost pile, underground peat deposits can get extremely hot due to the metabolisms of bacteria that inhabit and eat them. Furthermore, sudden jumps in surface temperature caused by heat waves can cause the bacteria to raise the peat temperature by even more. The result is spontaneous combustion.
https://theconversation.com/zombie-fires-in-the-arctic-smoulder-underground-and-refuse-to-die-whats-causing-them-221945

‘Breeders also value posture, hoof solidity, docility, maternal ability and beauty. Those eager to level up their livestock’s genetics pay around $250,000 for an opportunity to collect Viatina-19’s egg cells.

“She is the closest to perfection that has been attained so far,” Martins said. “She’s a complete cow, has all the characteristics that all the proprietors are looking for.”’
https://apnews.com/article/brazil-cow-cattle-breeding-zebu-nelore-amazon-deforestation-9d58844f3e695ce878da838c10280f0d

For the first time, more aquatic animals were farmed than were caught wild through fishing.
‘Experts say the milestone in human history had been expected, as the hauls from fisheries have largely stagnated over the last three decades — largely because of limits in nature.’
https://apnews.com/article/fisheries-aquaculture-fao-united-nations-84a92a43387a4bea79dcdb278da14a59

And there are other ways the Drake Equation could be tweaked to result in humans being the only intelligent species in the galaxy. ‘According to Stern and Gerya, it’s likely quite rare for planets to have both continents and oceans along with long-term plate tectonics, and this possibility needs to be factored into the Drake Equation.’
https://gizmodo.com/drake-equation-update-fermi-paradox-intelligent-life-1851503974

Here are three, technically feasible megaweapons that aliens could use to destroy Earth from light years away.
https://youtu.be/tybKnGZRwcU?si=CFzXWpxbCRDdRkfP

The fourth test of the SpaceX “Starship” rocket was fully successful.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/science/spacex-starship-launch-fourth-test-flight-scn/index.html

Elon Musk has revolutionized the space rocket industry.
https://youtu.be/effFp6AnCWo?si=Dy_tsekGVR-vQAzw

Boeing’s troubled “Starliner” space capsule has had serious problems during its maiden crewed flight. The two passengers could be stranded on the ISS for weeks until it is known whether the capsule can safely bring them back home.
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/astronauts-stranded-in-space-due-to-multiple-issues-with-boeings-starliner-and-the-window-for-a-return-flight-is-closing

An unmanned Chinese probe returned rocks to Earth from the dark side of the Moon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04447venm1o

The 1997 “Phoenix Lights” incident was one of the most credible mass UFO sightings ever.
https://youtu.be/GdAz93WL5To?si=Hl1di4ApIPBX5CTy

The FDA has rejected the first MDMA drug for treating PTSD because the medical studies supporting the drug were flawed.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-panel-rejects-first-mdma-treatment-deep-concerns-flawed-trials-rcna155325

Lung cancer, once a death sentence, has become more treatable thanks to new drugs.
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/lung-cancer-treatment-deaths-5cfeb6fd

Researchers have discovered a gene that causes obesity in some people. Genetic engineering and new medical interventions will end the global obesity problem in the future. The average person will be taller, thinner, stronger, and healthier.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/health/obesity-genetic-wellness/index.html

A woman endured eight years of excruciating leg surgeries to increase her height from 5′ 5″ to 6′.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/28700728/model-frankenstein-surgery-shows-off-results/

Russia is slowly moving forward at multiple parts of the frontline.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-fortifications-8a72981dfdb755de6f8011b13f4d062e
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-takes-100-square-miles-140010022.html

Ukraine claims it foiled a Russian attempt to assassinate President Zelensky.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68968256

Russia’s odd “turtle tanks” are artefacts of the peculiar nature of the Ukraine War and don’t herald a permanent type of new vehicle.
https://youtu.be/PCrAve7ynhw?si=IQigNgfs1_rEFXVt

Russia has now lost 3,000 tanks and 1,300 lighter armored combat vehicles in the Ukraine War. Furthermore, thousands of their artillery pieces, trucks, and armored vehicles not meant for direct combat have also been lost.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

In spite of these heavy losses, Russia has so many weapons left over from the Soviet era that it won’t run out of them, even at current loss rates, for two or three years. As the shortages near the critical threshold, I predict Russia will make up for it by starting to import old Soviet and Soviet-compatible weapons from friendly countries like North Korea.
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/02/equipment-losses-in-russias-war-on-ukraine-mount/

The Moscow Victory Day Parade only had one Russian tank–a WWII-era T-34.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-again-had-only-one-173044546.html

The Russian public’s support for the Ukraine War remains steady. Predictions that the economy would collapse and Putin would be overthrown aren’t close to coming true.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russians-coming-terms-putin-war-000029755.html

‘Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.’
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-20-2024

Glimpse the future: A Russian kamikaze drone attacks a Ukrainian drone ship in the Black Sea.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/russian-fpv-drone-seen-attacking-ukrainian-uncrewed-surface-vessel-for-the-first-time

‘ATACMS Obliterates Russian Air Defense System As It Desperately Tries To Defend Itself’
https://www.twz.com/news-features/atacms-obliterates-russian-air-defense-system-as-it-desperately-tries-to-defend-itself

Russian troops can consistently jam U.S.-made Excalibur guided howitzer shells.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-gave-sending-ukraine-excalibur-130324037.html

Ukraine destroyed two, expensive MiG-31 interceptors on the ground at a Russian air base in Crimea.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/mig-31-foxhounds-confirmed-destroyed-in-new-imagery-of-belbek-air-base

Missiles and artillery fired from within Russia have been hitting targets inside of Ukraine. The Ukrainians have Western-made weapons with the ranges to destroy those Russian sites, but donors like the U.S. refuse to let Ukraine use them against Russian territory for fear it will lead to an expansion of the fighting. There’s a growing consensus among Western leaders that they should ease the rule and let Ukraine use their weapons to attack Russian soil. Putin is warning that this would lead to “serious consequences.” 

Is it another bluff? Maybe. Regardless, we’re entering unknown territory. 
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/05/28/putin-says-western-weapons-striking-russia-would-have-serious-consequences-a85248

‘Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons’
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/30/biden-ukraine-weapons-strike-russia-00160731

In spite of the colossal damage it has suffered, Hamas still exists and its troops are killing Israeli troops. Eradicating the organization may be impossible.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-end-insurgency-0fcb4e20821ba8c0e49edf6571486d3b

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for several leaders in Hamas and Israel’s government, including Benjamin Netanyahu, for their roles orchestrating violence against civilians. Both sides are outraged at being equated with the criminals on the other side.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/politics/biden-denounce-icc-warrant-israel-hamas/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-hamas-see-false-equivalence-icc-charges-2024-05-20/

President Biden has said he will withhold some military aid to Israel if it sends ground troops into the last Palestinian-controlled city in Gaza, Rafah. There are widely held fears that such an operation would kill large numbers of civilians.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html

An Israeli bombing raid killed 45 people and severely burned many more in a crowded Gaza refugee camp, drawing international condemnation. The bomb was made in the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/29/rafah-strike-us-munition-israel/

The $300 million pier the U.S. military built in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid broke apart during a storm. It only operated for a few weeks.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/us-gaza-pier-broken-apart/index.html

Israeli troops seized control of Gaza’s land border with Egypt. They claimed it was necessary to shut down secret tunnels that were being used to smuggle things across the border.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1994g22ve9o

Russia has successfully convinced Niger to kick out American and French troops and to lets its own troops take over their bases.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/10/pentagon-orders-all-us-combat-troops-to-withdraw-from-niger-00157329

A group of American civilians were arrested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for supporting a failed coup.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13437171/congo-malanga-drc-coup-cia-utah-tiktok.html

Iran’s President and foreign minister died in an accidental helicopter crash. It will have no real effect on their government in the long run.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-president-ebrahim-raisi-426c6f4ae2dd1f0801c73875bb696f48

Right after Taiwan swore in a pro-independence candidate that Beijing hates, the Chinese Navy and Air Force staged massive military drills that encircled the island.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/asia/china-military-drills-taiwan-punishment-intl-hnk/index.html

Peter Zeihan’s dour 2019 predictions about the future of China’s economy have proven accurate:

“So I would argue that fixing this [by] deflating the bubble, I think that I think that ship sailed 20 years ago, and so the question becomes ‘is this triggering going to be internal or external?’ Let’s start with internal. Demographically, we are going to be seeing a contraction in Chinese domestic economic activity simply because of demographics within the next five years.”

An economic “contraction” doesn’t necessarily mean negative growth; it can mean a sharp decrease in the positive growth rate. For example, if my personal income rises by $5,000 per year, but then one year the growth rate shifts down to only a $1,000 increase each year, in economic terms I’ve experienced a contraction. China’s GDP growth rate and domestic spending growth rate are both way down from where they were in 2019 when Zeihan made his prediction.   

The “Madsen M50” was simple as a WWII submachine gun, but better, and it was made by Denmark of all countries.
https://youtu.be/95YPVQR_7yw?si=rkwiFMCd_6rUx_Ks

Anglo-American troops raped thousands of women during the liberation of France. Tens of thousands of French civilians were also accidentally killed by Allied bombers and artillery strikes during the War.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/taboo-french-women-speak-rapes-143322935.html

Several major U.S. military laser weapon programs have been recently canceled.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-military-laser-weapon-programs-are-facing-a-reality-check

The U.S. Navy has failed to learn from its past procurement mistakes.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-new-constellation-class-frigate-is-a-mess

‘Report: 14,000+ Google Search Ranking Features Leaked’
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-data-leak-37462.html

‘Nvidia’s profits soar as AI boom shows no sign of slowing down’
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/5/23/chk-nvidias-profits-soar-as-ai-boom-shows-no-sign-of-slowing-down

OpenAI unveiled it’s latest and most advanced LLM, “GPT-4o”. At the demo, the machine was able to carry on a conversation with a human presenter in a totally natural and intelligent manner.
https://www.youtube.com/live/DQacCB9tDaw?si=GPXXv9mHoh5NcA1d

Actress Scarlett Johansson claimed OpenAI had cloned her voice without her permission to synthesize GPT-4o’s voice, and quickly sued the company. Though they say they didn’t break the law and used a different human to create the voice, OpenAI nonetheless disabled the voice feature indefinitely. Scarlett Johansson famously voiced “Samantha,” a sentient AI character in the 2013 movie Her.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/entertainment/openai-accused-mimicking-scarlett-johansson-tech-company-pauses-chatgpt-voice

GPT-4 has passed the five-minute Turing Test.
“GPT-4 was judged to be a human 54% of the time, outperforming ELIZA (22%) but lagging behind actual humans (67%).”
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.08007

ChatGPT is one of the fastest-growing digital services in history. In less than a year, it accumulated 100 million weekly users.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948386/chatgpt-active-user-count-openai-developer-conference

That said, only 2% of British people use LLMs on a daily basis.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

A large number of AI safety staff quit OpenAI nearly at once. While NDA’s prevent most of them from talking about it, people in the know say they were unhappy with Sam Altman’s dishonesty and lack of commitment to their mission.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ASzyQrpGQsj7Moijk/openai-exodus

The founder of the dating app Bumble predicts that personal AIs will match humans with romantic partners in the future.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13407769/Bumble-founder-future-dating-AI-interview.html

Someday, machines will be better than humans at everything, including creating entertainment products.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68897555

‘AI might wreak havoc on traditional studio moviemaking, with its massive budgets and complex technical requirements. But in the process, it is likely to make high-quality filmmaking much less expensive and logistically arduous, empowering smaller, nimbler, and less conventional productions made by outsiders with few or no connections to the studio system.’
https://reason.com/2024/05/25/ai-is-coming-for-hollywoods-jobs/

An important lesson from the last few years is that job automation will sweep across the workforce in unexpected ways. For example, no one believed jobs involving artistry would be automated before jobs involving simple physical labor, like flipping burgers. It might prove more profitable for companies to replace their leaders with AIs sooner than they replace their assembly line workers.

Regardless, keep in mind there’s probably no limit to how far job automation can go. In 50 years, if you’re part of that lucky 1% of the adult human population that still has a “real job,” don’t gloat at the unemployed masses because it will only be a few years before your position is also taken by a machine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/ai-chief-executives.html

A roundup of famous American economists’ future predictions from 1980 is full of huge misses.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/05/economists-predictions-from-1980.html

Here’s a gem from 2010: “‘CIBC’s former chief economist Jeff Rubin has touted peak oil for years, and his price estimates have been dead on. Lately, he predicted $225 oil by 2012 and rising.’
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-rudin-i-know-a-place-where-demand-for-oil-grows-even-faster-than-china-2010-2

Here’s a very fascinating case study of a young Mexican man who was born deaf and whose parents never taught him sign language. As a result, he never developed any kind of linguistic ability and had a totally different way of thinking (he lacked “symbolic thinking” and couldn’t conceive of attaching names to objects) and dealing with people. After illegally immigrating to the U.S., a linguist stumbled upon him and slowly taught him sign language.

‘As part of her discussion of the human rights of the deaf, Schaller makes the argument, familiar also from Benjamin Whorf (and also brought up in the commentary on Henrich’s WEIRD article) that language diversity itself is an insight into human cognitive diversity: ‘Every language is an outcome of how the human brain works. We don’t know how much we can do with our one brain, even, and each language has used the brain in a slightly different way.’ However, there’s an even deeper and more profound cognitive diversity in her discussion of Ildefonso: the possibility of language-less human thought, something that theorists like Merlin Donald have attempted to discuss.’
https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/

Tesla has abandoned its effort to make cars through a “gigacasting” process because it was too expensive and they weren’t able to master it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-retreats-next-generation-gigacasting-manufacturing-process-2024-05-01

Something that makes no sense in Star Wars and many other space movies is the inability of spacecraft to quickly point in any direction to bring their guns to bear on the enemy. Usually there’s a good guy fighter plane being pursued by a bad guy fighter plane, and the good guy yells out “I can’t see him because he’s behind me! Help!”

In reality, since there’s no air resistance to deal with in space, the good guy could instantly flip his fighter plane around and shoot the bad guy. You see two examples of that in the movie “Oblivion.”
https://youtu.be/zRvXcyznOsQ?si=86sSlxUQHrvnw4Nc

Blue Origins launched six tourists into space.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/19/world/blue-origin-rocket-ns-25-mission-scn/index.html

In 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia nearly suffered a catastrophe that would have forced it to attempt an emergency landing back on Earth right after it lifted off.
https://youtu.be/qiJMdfj9NmI?si=g-PHc0zHoyTXtF0M

One cubic millimeter of human brain tissue contains 1,400 terabytes of data about the neurons, supporting cells, and connections between them.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/world/human-brain-map-harvard-google-scn/index.html

‘AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules’
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-deepmind-isomorphic-alphafold-3-ai-model/

‘Overall, this is very impressive performance, although I should note that it is not up to the various headlines of “AlphaFold 3 Predicts All The Molecules of Life!” and so on. In almost every area it’s a significant improvement over anything that we’ve had before – including previous AlphaFold versions – and in some of them (protein-antibody and protein-RNA) it appears to be (for now!) the only game in town, even though it’s not an infallible oracle in those cases by any means.’
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alphafold-3-debuts

Most of the new drugs “discovered by AI” actually weren’t, and they’re not likelier to work than drugs discovered by humans.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far

‘These results strongly suggest Neanderthal-derived DNA is playing a significant role in autism susceptibility across major populations in the United States.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02593-7

Alzheimer’s is partly genetic. Though this bit of information helps, the amount we still DON’T know about the disease or how to treat it is shocking.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/health/alzheimers-apoe4-gene-risk/index.html

Even more evidence has arisen that Ozempic treats serious health problems aside from obesity.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/health/ozempic-benefits-diabetic-kidney-disease/index.html

1/8 of American adults have taken the weight-loss drug Ozempic or one that is similar.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/health/ozempic-glp-1-survey-kff/index.html

1/3 of American adults are obese.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-rates-worldwide/

The recipient of a genetically engineered pig kidney died after two months. It’s still unclear whether his death was due to a problem with the organ.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/12/pig-kidney-xenotransplant-patient-dies-two-months-later

There are many types of mental disability and they have many different causes. Among them are mutations to single genes. A new gene that causes it, RNU4-2, has just been discovered. 0.41% of mentally disabled people have the condition due to it. 

Better knowledge of the human genome and cheaper prenatal DNA screening will let us reduce the population prevalence of mental and physical disorders in the future. 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38645094/

Sony has created a tiny robot that can do precise microsurgeries. In this video, it makes an incision in a corn kernel and then stitches it up.
https://youtu.be/bgRAkBNFMHk?si=LmjjLDkwgHp4zbgp

After decades of building tensions and proxy warfare, Israel and Iran exchanged direct fire with each other for the first time.

• On April 1, Israeli warplanes bombed a building that was part of the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus. They had advance intelligence that several high-ranking Iranian military commanders, including those who helped terrorist groups attack Israel, were having a meeting there. Several of those men were killed. This violated international norms and laws since embassies are considered part of the sovereign territory of their nations.
  https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-embassy-strike-shows-israels-growing-reach-mideast-boils-2024-04-04/
  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentagon-reveals-israel-conducted-strike-iran-syria/story
• On April 14, Iran fired almost 300 cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, and ballistic missiles at Israel in revenge. Almost all were shot down before reaching their targets. No Israelis died.
  https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-missiles-war-hezbollah-fdc927f764375fabf88041f5a63f3e0f
• Britain, the U.S. and Jordan helped defend Israel’s airspace against the Iranians.
  https://www.yahoo.com/news/raf-jets-shoot-down-iranian-224946101.html
• China and Russia didn’t condemn Iran’s attack.
  https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/642120/World/Mena/China-notes-Irans-position-on-Israel-attack-and-does-not-condemn-strikes
  https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240413-russian-foreign-minister-calls-israeli-strike-on-iranian-diplomatic-mission-in-damascus-political-killing/
• Israel launched a much smaller aerial counterattack against Iran on April 19.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68861607
• A massive number of Iran’s missiles didn’t reach Israel because they malfunctioned and crashed. The confrontation showed the supremacy of Israeli and American weapons.
  https://youtu.be/COBDSmx9QDw?si=oa1JaWuy9OkyrnCB

An Israeli airstrike killed the leader of Hamas’ three sons.
https://www.bbc.com/news/68783840

A Ukrainian kamikaze drone struck a building 1,200 kilometers inside of Russia. This is the deepest such strike conducted so far in the war.
https://youtu.be/rvhLrIWNCWg?si=ko4IecuKLR_tPtu-

A glimpse into the future of warfare: A Ukrainian quadcopter drone destroys a Russian ground vehicle drone.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-captures-rare-drone-drone-170705950.html

Russia’s use of “turtle tanks” shows how dire the threat posed by kamikaze drones has become.
https://youtu.be/s7p2-tMS4UE?si=O_Z1tP3tKkgXY86I

Ukraine just captured a Russian T-72 tank with the most ghetto drone jamming system tied to its roof.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-situation-report-russian-anti-drone-electronic-warfare-tank-captured

Russia copied a damaged M1 Abrams tank the U.S. gave to Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/land/first-confirmed-abrams-tank-variant-captured-by-russia-seen-with-inner-armor-exposed

Russia also captured one of the high tech German tanks donated to Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/LjXuTWfthRI?si=otGZUFRRqo6solmL

Compared to its losses of tanks and land weapons, Russia has lost few aircraft.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/russian-air-force-has-only-lost-10-percent-of-fleet-in-ukraine-us-officials-say/

Soviet tanks were better than American tanks in the 1970s and 80s.
https://youtu.be/GOJLKOKCxWc?si=OUNQYG8ua0qx64tj

However, the Soviet 1970s-era T-62 is now obsolete on the modern battlefield. Russia is using them in Ukraine anyway due to shortages of better tanks like the T-72.
https://youtu.be/cJfvIOAs-2o?si=MKQ09SDfnwtCqVGi

The Germans had the best telescopic gun sights of WWII.
https://youtu.be/VFzNtqJ7tpY?si=Q_o_oD0ioCr656RE

Here’s an idea for a cheap terror weapon: Release helium balloons that have some steering ability and that carry small, guided bombs. Once the balloon gets above a target, it drops the bomb. It would cost more money to shoot one down than it would cost to build one.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraines-explosive-laden-balloon-operations-against-russia

A massive cyberattack that would have had global consequences was narrowly averted.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/backdoor-in-xz-utils-that-almost-happened.html

DARPA held the first simulated dogfight between an F-16 piloted by a machine and one flown by a human.
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-04-17

Jerome Powell was right about the U.S. avoiding a recession in 2023. Does that mean he is really smart, or that he just got lucky this one time?
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/26/fed-hikes-rates-again-and-leaves-options-open-for-more-00108303

Good Lord, these predictions from 2022 were totally wrong:

‘House prices in the United States — which rose during the pandemic by the most since the 1970s — are falling too. Economists at Goldman Sachs expect a decline of around 5%-10% from the peak reached in June through to March 2024.

In a “pessimistic” scenario, US prices could plunge as much as 20%, Dallas Fed economist Enrique Martinez-Garcia wrote in a blog post recently.’
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/23/business/global-house-price-slump/index.html

Reality: Aside from the briefest of moments in mid-2023 when the average U.S. house price dropped by a tiny amount, prices have only increased since the CNN article was published.
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/indexnews/announcements/20240326-1471289/1471289_cshomeprice-release-0326.pdf

James Cameron released remastered 4K versions of Aliens, True Lies, and The Abyss. He used new computer technology to radically sharpen the images by removing the grains of the 35mm filmstock and tuning the colors. I predicted this would happen, but not until the 2030s:

‘Computers will also be able to automatically enhance and upscale old films by accurately colorizing them, removing defects like scratches, and sharpening or focusing footage (one technique will involve interpolating high-res still photos of long-dead actors onto the faces of those same actors in low-res moving footage). Computer enhancement will be so good that we’ll be able to watch films from the early 20th century with near-perfect image and audio clarity.’
https://www.joblo.com/james-cameron-4k-restoration-defense/

An algorithm transformed a bland software licensing agreement into a convincing, sad song. Do YOU have the musical ability to do this?
https://youtu.be/pGbodliLFVE?si=Uug-40eT5uO7ENN8

GPT-4 is as good at diagnosing eye problems as average human doctors.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-ai-doctors-accurately-eye-problems.html

We need an expert consensus on what tests a machine must pass to be deemed a “general intelligence.” Right now, there is no agreement, so a computer could be declared to be an “AGI” if it passed one set of tests favored by one group of experts while failing other sets of tests favored by others.

Without a consensus on this issue, we’re headed for a multi-year, contentious period where different tech companies and labs will unilaterally declare they’ve built “the first AGI” while everyone else disagrees with them. This is part of why I say we’ve entered “The Era of Fake AI.” I think we’ll need the benefit of many years of hindsight to be able to say for sure when the first AGI was created.
https://apnews.com/article/agi-artificial-general-intelligence-existential-risk-meta-openai-deepmind-science-ff5662a056d3cf3c5889a73e929e5a34

Famed philosopher Daniel Dennet died. He recently said this about the future of AI:
‘AIs are likely to “evolve to get themselves reproduced. And the ones that reproduce the best will be the ones that are the cleverest manipulators of us human interlocutors. The boring ones we will cast aside, and the ones that hold our attention we will spread. All this will happen without any intention at all. It will be natural selection of software.”‘
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240422-philosopher-daniel-dennett-artificial-intelligence-consciousness-counterfeit-people

Boston Dynamics has retired its old model “Atlas” humanoid robot.
https://youtu.be/-9EM5_VFlt8?si=9oFPyFZZUK9hP_JC

Simultaneously, the company announced it had a made a new type of Atlas robot that was nimbler and more advanced.
https://youtu.be/29ECwExc-_M?si=6odXeLFnpXH7c-ng

The British retail company Ocado, already famous for the heavy automation of its warehouses, has roboticized even more work functions.
https://youtu.be/COBDSmx9QDw?si=oa1JaWuy9OkyrnCB

Humans are so optimized for a narrow set of living conditions. As with space, intelligent machines will beat us to colonizing underwater regions.

‘Key problems include low temperatures, high pressure and corrosion. The change in gases – such as an increase in helium – also breaks electrical equipment and makes people feel cold; the Sentinel habitat will need to be heated to 32 degrees to make it feel like 21. High humidity also creates the potential for a lot of bacteria build-up, with people at risk of getting skin and ear infections, and the pressure also means people’s taste buds stop working – so those of the Sentinel will be eating food loaded with spices.’
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/inside-300-long-project-live-190000639.html

Mark Zuckerberg is richer than Elon Musk for the first time in four years.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-05/zuckerberg-is-world-s-third-richest-person-passing-his-arch-rival-elon-musk

Here’s a video that shows how a “continuously variable transmission” (CVT) works. They’ve become very common in cars, for better or worse.
https://youtu.be/xHWqlfDZnmQ?si=_vhLVEgsI4FZKOvR

A Chinese company has invented a diesel engine with a record-breaking 53.09% thermal efficiency. A typical, commercial diesel engine is only 46% efficient.
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-diesel-engine-thermal-efficiency

‘The Space Shuttle launching from Cape Canaveral in Florida (28.5° north of the equator) is a 0.3% energy savings compared to the North Pole. If we move it to around the equator, such as the European Space Agency’s spaceport in French Guiana, we’d get about 0.4% savings. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but every bit helps.

…Launching from the top of Mount Everest would give you a 0.2% savings in energy per kg.’
http://ifsa.my/articles/space-launch-equator-vs-mountains

During the last Ice Age, the planet wasn’t just colder, it was drier. Because so much water was locked up in the enlarged ice caps and glaciers, the atmosphere was drier and it rained less in the parts of the world closer to the equator. The deserts were larger than they are now and the rain forests were smaller. The equatorial regions were more clement to human life, but that wasn’t saying much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum

Whenever there is a climate disaster, the media always announces it with trumpets. However, whenever a disaster gets fixed or when there are extraordinarily clement climactic conditions, it gets buried on the back page.
https://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2024/03/28/lake-shasta-could-fill-by-end-of-april-finally-after-drought-years/73118853007/

‘Watch your garden glow with new genetically modified bioluminescent petunias’
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/08/1242346659/genetically-modified-bioluminescent-petunias-make-their-own-light

1% of people have “extreme aphantasia,” meaning they can’t visualize ANYTHING in their minds.
6% of people have lesser degrees of aphantasia.
3% of people have “hyperphantasia,” meaning they can see mental images that are so vivid they can’t tell them apart from real images they’re seeing in front of them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68675976

Anti aging therapies are entering mainstream medicine.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/rejuvenating-blood-cell-population

French Canadians have high rates of genetic defects due to inbreeding in the distant past.
https://blog.23andme.com/articles/french-canadian-health

The first “conversation” between humans and a whale happened, though we don’t know what exactly was said.
https://www.seti.org/press-release/whale-seti-groundbreaking-encounter-humpback-whales-reveals-potential-non-human-intelligence

‘Amphibians use scream inaudible to humans for self-defense against predators’
How much experience do humans miss because we can’t hear or see outside of narrow bands of sound and light?
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-amphibians-inaudible-humans-defense-predators.html

‘“The textbooks say nitrogen fixation only occurs in bacteria and archaea,” says ocean ecologist Jonathan Zehr at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a co-author of the study. This species of algae is the “first nitrogen-fixing eukaryote”, he adds, referring to the group of organisms that includes plants and animals.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01046-z

‘Experts suggest the discovery of rare variants in the BSN and APBA1 genes are some of the first obesity-related genes identified for which the increased risk is not observed until adulthood.’
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/scientists-find-genes-can-raise-28934600

Brain scans that map the structure and activity of a brain can predict whether it belongs to a biological male or female with 99.7% accuracy.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.07096

Men are likelier to be gay if they have an older brother.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/15/1243861703/sexuality-birth-order-gay-siblings

He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who created the first genetically engineered humans, has finished his prison sentence and is again working on genetics research.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13259289/Disgraced-scientist-genetically-editing-babies.html