Futurology

As freeway/motorway driving is easier, one would have assumed self-driving vehicles would already be using them. However, the infrequency of critical events means there is less training data, and the higher speeds of travel are a challenge, too. No more, it seems.

The same will one day be true for outlier use cases like snowy roads, etc.

Like all technology, self-driving vehicles will be adopted on an S-curve, where one day their adoption and use will quickly become widespread. This is another sign that the day is ever closer.

Waymo hits the freeway in US autonomous vehicle first

This article is an interesting look at why young men are dating and socializing less. It makes the case that the physical world has become more anxiety-inducing, as economic opportunities have decreased. At the same time, the digital world has made all sorts of risky behaviors, from gambling to speculative investments easier. Some might say, the digital world is designed to encourage this addictive behavior.

These changes are significant because they have now marked a generation and are having profound social and political effects.

It would also seem that the trend seems set to continue, and perhaps get stronger. Where does this leave society in the 2030s & 40s?

The Monks in the Casino: A brief theory of young men, "the loneliness crisis," and life in the 21st century

Impressive considering electricity demand is growing at 6%, all that growth is now being covered by renewables. The rapid adoption of EVs means oil for transport is in decline, though still increasing in use as a chemical feedstock.

In other major areas of the world, the EU & US, C02 emissions have started to decline, too, but not yet in India.

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months

Kimi K2 Thinking has continued the remarkable trend of Chinese Open-Source AI besting or equalling the Western closed source models investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into.

OpenAI floated the idea of a government guarantee for its debt, but then backtracked when the idea was badly received. It's inked deals to build $1.4 trillion in infrastructure. Where's the money going to come from? It's revenue is expected to be $20 billion in 2025; that's just 1.43% of that debt.

OpenAI says they have the potential to earn hundreds of billions a year, but where are the consumers who want to give them that amount of money? At every turn Chinese Open-Source models can do what they do, for a tiny fraction of the cost.

The Chinese renewables juggernaut rolls on. Today it's coal, soon it will be the same story for oil.

Australia is offering consumers three hours of free solar power a day to help stabilise its grid and use up excess power that is going to waste in off-peak periods. Those 3 hours will be enough to fully charge many people's electric vehicles.

Gas/combustion engine cars are already in their horse & buggy phase; some people just haven't caught up to reality yet.

Australian thermal coal producers are losing their growth markets

US Coal Exports Drop 11%

Indonesia’s exports dropped 12%

The second part of the video linked below is interesting. I haven't seen one of these humanoids walk in such a human-like fashion before.

They want to start mass-producing them in 2026. What will their capabilities be?

Interesting they talk of "open the SDK for IRON robots, jointly building a humanoid robot application ecosystem with global developers". Going this route by open-sourcing things seems to be the norm among Chinese robotics/AI firms.

Video in cross-post

In the current US political climate, the people who think human life starts at conception have the upper hand. It will be interesting to see if they allow this to go ahead. It sets up a conflict with the Tech Bros bankrolling them. They'll all be behind this tech.

This tech poses an interesting question. What if some people want their children to be 'diseased'? Most of us would regard sociopaths and people with malignant narcissism as defective, but to some people, these qualities make them 'winners'.

Announcing Preventive

Level 4 self-driving means a vehicle can drive on a pre-mapped route without human intervention. For example, once they had mapped a bus route, they could drive it. Lots of businesses have driving jobs that are analogous to bus routes. For example, from a regional warehouse to local retail branches. For taxi firms, it could be from a city's main airport to the Top 100 most popular drop-off points in a city.

Neolix orders have grown 10x year over year, and they’ve already deployed over 10,000 vehicles. When will it be 100k, a million & then 10 million vehicles? At $22,000, these are a steal, and needless to say, vastly cheaper than a human-driven option.

This is yet another sign that the future of robots/AI taking jobs, that we used to talk of as still in the distance, is actually bearing down on us fast.

Neolix raises $600M to continue scaling autonomous RoboVan fleet

Website with pricing details

Plastic microparticles are everywhere in the environment and in everyone's body. Inevitably, the petrochemical industry will find people to tell us this is harmless, or perhaps even good for us, but the evidence points the other way.

So far, biodegradable alternatives have shortcomings, but this solution appears to have fixed them. A third of global plastics are made in China & 6.5 per cent of all global oil use currently goes to supply China with petrochemicals. Since 2021, 90% of the increase in Chinese oil imports has been used by chemical feedstocks, not fuels.

Quite apart from environmental concerns, oil imports are China's top national security risk. They are the only way outside actors (the US) can leverage a chokehold over its economy.

Speedily electrifying with renewables has been one way they've been reducing that dependence; now they have another. Swap bamboo (something they have in vast abundance) for even more oil imports.

High-strength, multi-mode processable bamboo molecular bioplastic enabled by solvent-shaping regulation

Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines (targeting tumour antigens) can sensitise tumours to Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). This makes them more receptive to the latest immunotherapy breakthroughs in treating cancers.

Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines are still very expensive. What this research has found, is that existing mRNA vaccines for unrelated things like Covid, have some of the same effect. The effect was significant and happened with lung and skin cancers. The researchers theorise it may broadly work for all cancers treated with immunotherapy.

Sadly, we still haven't cured misinformation with the same success rate. In some countries, people trapped in disinformation media bubbles won't benefit from these new lower rates of cancer.

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade

If this were an unknown start-up, this headline could justifiably be accused of being clickbait. But Ming Yang is one of the world's biggest wind turbine makers. Furthermore, they've already tested this 'double-turbine' design with a 17MW prototype. So if they claim 'half the cost', then it's believable.

It makes sense, too. How much is one extra turbine going to add to the overall cost of a project? Not much, but it's doubling the output.

This illustrates a trend with renewables that other energy sources can't compete with. Technology keeps dramatically improving renewables all the time.

China’s Ming Yang promises monster two-headed, low cost 50 MW floating wind turbine