One of Putin’s fiercest and most famous critics, Alexei Navalny, died in a Russian prison. Russia claims it was due to natural causes while most outsiders claim long-term neglect and/or deliberate assassination caused it. Putin promoted the head of the prison right after Navalny’s death.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/alexei-navalnys-funeral-be-held-friday-moscow-spokesperson-2024-02-28/
Russia captured the town of Avdiivka from Ukrainian forces after six months of costly fighting. It’s the first significant Russian victory in the war since last May’s seizure of Bakhmut. There’s a growing consensus that the tide of war is now in Russia’s favor, though battlefield gains can only be made at great expense.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-withdraws-two-villages-near-avdiivka-military-says-2024-02-27/
Ukraine’s President says 31,000 of his countrymen have died fighting Russia so far. Russia’s deaths are 2-3 times higher.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68397525
Russian spies assassinated one of their countrymen who defected to the West with a military helicopter several months ago.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-sent-hitmen-kill-deserter-125449343.html
‘Ukraine Using Thousands Of Networked Microphones To Track Russian Drones’
https://www.twz.com/land/thousands-of-networked-microphones-are-tracking-drones-in-ukraine
Several Ukrainian drones flew into a warehouse through an open door and blew up multiple Russian tanks. It won’t be long before they are coordinated enough to force entry by having the first drone in a swarm blow up a door or window.
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1759849349855469657
Russian troops destroyed their first U.S.-made M1 Abrams in Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/pOlyytCzWkU?si=wIURhzBtqg8aYP_s
A second Russian AWACS plane was destroyed. Both sides claim to have shot it down.
https://youtu.be/dVaZy1vGklU?si=BMxTMoYfYceAo8Kb
Russia is developing a special nuclear weapon designed to generate a large EMP. They would launch it into space and detonate it in orbit, indiscriminately destroying a vast number of satellites. The weapon has not been launched and might still be in the design phase.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/16/politics/russia-nuclear-space-weapon-intelligence/index.html
Israel’s GDP shrank by 19.4% thanks to the Gaza War. The mobilization of Israelis to serve in the military and the suspension of Palestinian guest worker agreements has hit the country’s labor force very hard.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/israel-economy-slumps-war-far-111314753.html
50% of Americans now say Israel’s war against Gaza has gone too far.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-poll-biden-war-gaza-4159b28d313c6c37abdb7f14162bcdd1
In revenge for a January drone attack that killed three American troops in Jordan, the U.S. conducted dozens of airstrikes against Iran-affiliated militants in Syria and Iraq. Things have quieted down since then.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-strikes-back-at-iranian-backed-militia-targets-in-iraq-syria
Britain and China have seized the lead in air-to-air missile technology. The U.S. is working on catching up. America’s future air combat strategy against Russia or China will involve sending stealth fighters and stealth drones in close while our older, non-stealth fighters hang back out of enemy missile range. Those older fighters will carry very long-range missiles they’ll be able to fire into enemy territory.
https://youtu.be/3FnVJ0ziRTE?si=824OxmPUky13Nqg3
American analysts focus on how China’s military buildup will shift the balance of power with Taiwan and its allies, but overlook how it also shifts the balance with India.
https://sputniknews.in/20240220/ominous-emerging-stealth-gap-in-iaf-operational-capability-needs-urgent-plugging-6618250.html
Turkey’s first stealth fighter made its maiden flight.
https://www.twz.com/air/turkeys-kaan-next-generation-fighter-has-flown
The U.S. has cancelled its expensive “Future Attack Recon Aircraft” helicopter program, partly because the Ukraine War has showed how vulnerable helicopters are on the modern battlefield to missiles.
https://www.twz.com/air/cancelling-the-future-attack-recon-helicopter-was-the-right-move
Sniper scopes from the 1800s and early 1900s were very long due to limitations in precision manufacturing.
https://www.quora.com/Why-were-early-telescopic-sights-on-weapons-so-long
‘The surrender at Appomattox took place a week later on April 9.
While it was the most significant surrender to take place during the Civil War, Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s most respected commander, surrendered only his Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
Several other Confederate forces—some large units, some small–had yet to surrender before President Andrew Johnson could declare that the Civil War was officially over.
…Not until 16 months after Appomattox, on August 20, 1866, did the President formally declare an end to the war.’
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2015/spring/cw-surrenders.html
Here’s a fascinating article about German, American and Soviet tank production in WWII. Culture and limitations on available resources influenced design and production choices.
https://www.historynet.com/profiles-cold-steel-making-tanks/
This “backyard engineering” video shows how composite tank armor works and why it’s better than pure steel armor.
https://youtu.be/OwJK99uL1qY?si=bzGCAk-m23FVyO8E
Under the futuristic-looking, faceted covers meant to make warships stealthier are common, skeletal metal framed masts.
https://www.twz.com/sea/san-antonio-class-looks-very-different-after-shedding-its-stealthy-masts
The U.S. Air Force has started retiring its A-10 Warthogs. Antiaircraft missiles have gotten so good that the plane is obsolete against modern enemies. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t scrap the planes: in the near future, we’ll be able to retrofit them as expendable drones.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-us-air-force-wing-181612797.html
From two years ago: ‘Although Deutsche Bank cautioned there is “considerable uncertainty” around the exact timing and size of the downturn, it’s now calling for the US economy to shrink during the final quarter of next year and the first quarter of 2024, “consistent with a recession during that time.”‘
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/business/recession-inflation-economy/index.html
Over the last few years, professional forecasters have made terribly inaccurate predictions about the economy. That being the case, why should you believe their new predictions that inflation will be tamed and the world will achieve a “soft landing” instead of having a recession?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/economists-pilloried-getting-forecasts-wrong-030700148.html
Apple released their first augmented/virtual reality goggles, the “Vision Pro.” Most reviewers say they’re excellent, though also have some problems expected of any first-generation product. For years, I’ve predicted that AR and VR eyewear would become mainstream by the end of this decade.
https://youtu.be/dtp6b76pMak?si=Tcr2RTyXPhJ31-Vh
After 10 years of secret work, Apple canceled its program to build a car.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/apple-cancels-work-on-electric-car-shifts-team-to-generative-ai
Boston Dynamics released a new video of their humanoid “Atlas” robot doing something resembling factory work.
https://youtube.com/shorts/mWn5KjWeNas?si=aPNHpGE0RKUGtNYz
Facebook is 20 years old.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68109208
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicts machines will pass the Turing Test, plus all other tests now used to gauge machine intelligence, by 2030. I agree, and think tech companies will focus more on coming up with better tests of intelligence between now and then.
https://twitter.com/tsarnick/status/1753718316261326926
OpenAI head Sam Altman asked a group of investors for $5-7 trillion to build enough computer chips and power plants for the AIs he sees coming in the future. This essay analyzes how he arrived at that number. In short, the amount of money, electricity, and training data needed to make each GPT iteration has been rising exponentially, and if the trend holds, GPT-7 will cost $2 trillion.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis thinks LLMs can be improved, but are incapable of achieving general intelligence.
https://www.wired.com/story/deepmind-ceo-demis-hassabis-interview-artificial-intelligence-scale/
OpenAI released “Sora,” a revolutionary text-to-video program that blows away everything that came before it.
https://youtu.be/NXpdyAWLDas?si=GZ9IBLtOTtJ2Gn3q
‘Tyler Perry Puts $800M Studio Expansion on Hold After Seeing OpenAI’s Sora: “Jobs Are Going to Be Lost”’
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/tyler-perry-ai-alarm-1235833276/
Google’s “Bard” is now named “Gemini.”
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2230933/google-bard-ai-is-officially-gemini-unofficially-irrelevant.html
Google Gemini’s text-to-image generator was temporarily pulled from the market for reprogramming after users discovered it’s left-wing bias led to it making offensive and absurd responses to some human prompts, like outputting images of nonwhite men when asked to generate images of the Founding Fathers of America.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-nazis-female-popes-american-200000130.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68412620
Thanks to advances in computer translation and voice mimicking technology, Hitler’s speeches can be heard in clear English, with the vocal qualities of his voice preserved. I predict within the next ten years, it will be possible to make an accurate digital “Hitler clone” constructed from the available data about him (speeches, writings, personality analyses, accounts from people who knew him).
https://youtu.be/ZWboqo_1jC8?si=krHkIz_E76t4xXE3
Imran Khan, Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister, used AI to give a “victory speech” to his supporters after his political party won a plurality of Parliament seats in the general election. Khan is forbidden access to a telephone or camera in prison, so he sent out the text of the speech and his assistants converted it into a computer-generated video of him reciting it.
https://www.politico.eu/article/pakistans-imran-khan-use-ai-artificial-intelligence-make-victory-speech-from-jail/
https://youtu.be/762NygYk02s?si=gquMDw-p5fkCtPHP
“A finance worker in Hong Kong was tricked into paying £20 million of his company’s money to fraudsters because of an elaborate deepfake pretending to be his boss.”
https://metro.co.uk/2024/02/05/horrifying-deepfake-tricks-employee-giving-away-20-million-20225490/
FCC Makes AI-Generated Voices in Robocalls Illegal
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-makes-ai-generated-voices-robocalls-illegal
Someone has been using ChatGPT to crank out fake books that claim to reveal secrets about King Charles’ health problems.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13069743/buckingham-palace-lawyers-king-charles-cancer-diagnosis-ai-amazon.html
A “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” (SCIF) is a room designed to be safe against all forms of eavesdropping and to allow for physically safe storage of classified materials. The walls, ceiling and floor of a SCIF have a metal mesh embedded in them, so if you had X-ray vision, such a room would look like a big chicken coop. The mesh forms a Faraday Cage that blocks electromagnetic waves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2023/scif-room-meaning-classified/
A fascinating video on “district heating systems.”
https://youtu.be/a8Khzns0KIk?si=1jah95817G8IGZsq
An Italian woman who had reason to believe she was the illegitimate daughter of the billionaire head of the Lamborghini car company tracked down his legitimate daughter at a restaurant, stole a drinking straw she had used, and had its DNA sequenced and compared to her own. The results prove the women are sisters.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/italian-beautician-hires-private-detective-32017449
Animals that use echolocation have evolved sophisticated abilities to keep from “jamming” their own sound signals or those of members of their same species in their vicinity. Some of their prey animals have also evolved sound-making attributes that can jam echolocation hearing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echolocation_jamming
Introducing foreign species into new environment was, until the mid-20th century, viewed as a good thing. There are actually examples of “invasive species” that helped new environments, like the transfer of honeybees and earthworms from Europe to the Americas. Moreover, few people would argue with the practice of moving small populations of endangered animals from their original habitats to new, similar habitats to protect them from extinction.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/11/02/alien-plants-and-animals-are-not-all-bad
A yellow frog with a mushroom growing out of its left side was photographed in India. The fungus was apparently not hurting it in any way.
https://newatlas.com/biology/frog-sprouts-mushroom/
A 26-foot long snake was found in the Amazon.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26062367/worlds-largest-snake-amazon-rainforest/
Grass-fed beef actually damages the environment more than factory-farmed beef.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8867585/
Many parts of the U.S. East Coast are flooding more often and are on track to sink below sea level. However, global warming is only a minor contributor to this: the pumping of groundwater to meet the needs of growing human populations is causing the ground level to drop. To what extent is the same practice to blame for increased flooding in coastal and riverine areas across the world?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/13/climate/flooding-sea-levels-groundwater.html
Another reason the U.S. East Coast is sinking is “glacial isostatic adjustment.” This has nothing to do with global warming.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152452/americas-sinking-east-coast
About 2% of babies born in the U.S. are conceived through IVF.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/ivf-egg-freezing-explainer-wellness/index.html
Good news: a massively expensive Alzheimer’s drug that probably didn’t work has been withdrawn from the market. The FDA’s decision to approve it in spite of a lack of scientific evidence it worked has always been highly controversial.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/goodbye-aduhelm
‘Late Chinese philosopher Li Zehou’s brain frozen for science’
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3251709/late-chinese-philosopher-li-zehous-brain-frozen-science-causing-stir-scholarly-circles
For the first time in 51 years, an American spacecraft landed on the Moon. Unfortunately, it tipped over on its side, meaning its mission will end early.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68388695
According to these calculations, Mercury could be disassembled to make a Dyson Swarm to fully enclose the sun. The swarm’s satellites would have an average thickness of 0.5 mm. The process would start with the construction of a 1 km2 solar farm on the surface, which would provide energy to robots and to a coil gun. The latter would work together to dig up rocks and shoot them into orbit, where a different set of machines would fashion them into Swarm satellites.
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf