Lugh

I wonder how long it will be before we see people purposely create these so they can influence their descendants. There might be a future where people have "relationships" with a collection of long dead people.

The logical follow on from this is that EV owners should have cheaper car insurance. With far fewer moving parts they will also have much cheaper maintenance costs. Added to that EVs are cheaper to buy. China has reached the point where 50% of new car sales are EVs much quicker than anyone expected. Most people thought that was years away, but we're already there. How soon before people start talking about a "death spiral" when it comes to gasoline cars?

Relevant Data

Per 1,000 vehicles of 3 year old cars

ICE 6.4

BEV 2.8

The ADAC even noted a growing lead for electric cars in recent years. The analysis was based on the more than 3.5 million call-outs made by ADAC breakdown services last year

Solar thermal propulsion is the idea of using solar energy to heat a propellant and using that energy for thrust. If it worked as hoped it could be very useful in LEO and beyond. Portal Space Systems, the start-up here, points out there are already plenty of use cases for it now moving satellites into different orbits. This idea has been around since the 1950s, and could even be described as low-tech (it could work with mirrors heating water), but the logistics and infrastructure to support it might not be so simple, or economically viable.

China already getting to 50%+1 for EV new car sales is way ahead of most predictions. Most people thought that was still a few years away, but it seems events are moving faster.

China is also exporting this speedy transition to other countries. Economics of scale are kicking in with EV manufacturers now, and the cars are getting cheaper and cheaper to make.

I suspect the rest of the world will be relying more and more on decentralized grids and renewables too as the decades roll on. They are cheaper and easier to deploy, but crucially more climate change resilient.

The other backstory here is China. They've brought down the price of solar enough to make this happen.

NASA really is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to its lunar plans. Its SLS system is a disaster, but pork barrel politics means it can't ditch it. So it lives on, zombie-like, to suck the life and money out of better options.

Meanwhile, it's placed all its eggs in a SpaceX basket. That company is run by someone who routinely exaggerates timelines for delivery and fails to meet them. Guess what? It's happening again. A commenter on the OP article sums up what SpaceX has to do before humans can go back to the Moon.

• Re-light Starship engines
• Achieve stable orbit
• Dock with another Starship
• Transfer propellant
• Use transferred propellant
• Dock with Orion and/or Dragon
• Design a life support system for a volume much larger than Dragon
• Build life support system
• Test life support
• Achieve escape velocity for TLI
• Demo propulsive landing on Luna
• Demo takeoff from Luna after sitting idle
• Dock with Gateway (?) up and down

Sometimes it's the little things that are the most revolutionary. Small drones the size of the human hand that are essentially endlessly self-powered could have countless uses. Perhaps many we can't even see yet. Terrain exploration, security, warfare - there are many ways you would see these being used.

No part of this article involves AI making independent discoveries.

My reading of this is the opposite.

Although there were competing hypothesis, nobody knew how insect wing hinge mechanisms worked. Now they do, and the fundamental insight was provided via AI.

I think this is both a fundamental discovery, and one we can attribute to the AI, more than the humans involved.

Any time I hear claims that involve hitherto unknown laws of Physics I'm 99.99% sure I'm dealing with BS - but then again, some day someone will probably genuinely pull off such a discovery.

CATL are the world's largest battery maker, with 37% global market share. They are also the technology leaders in this sector. You would expect them to be making the most advanced tech breakthroughs.

I wonder what the reasoning is behind this. If I were to guess, it's that their approach has been overtaken by events. All around the world, they have been superseded by a different approach. Relatively simple robot bodies that are made powerful by today's AI. Continuing with their approach might have been a classic case of sunk cost fallacy, it may be better to abandon it and join everyone else's new way of doing things.

There's a lesson here for today's tech leaders. As technological development accelerates, you can go from industry leader to has-been really fast. Though in fairness to Boston Dynamics, calling them 'has beens' isn't justified, they are still doing excellent work on their Spot & Stretch non-humanoid robots.

Some of the other humanoid robots in development around the world.

LimX Dynamics

1X's NEO

Tesla's Optimus

Agility Robotics

Xiaomi's CyberOne

Apptronik Apollo

Ubtech's Walker S

Figure's Figure 1

Fourier Intelligence's GR-1

Sanctuary's Phoenix

Unitree Robotics' H1

XPENG's PX5