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