Lugh

The usual caveat here is that it takes time to go from the laboratory testing like this to viable treatments that are widely available. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in many countries. A treatment that could reverse it by growing brand new heart muscle could save millions of lives and extend many people's lifespan.

We're so used to the idea of the speed of light constraining us from studying the vastness of space up close, that we often forget a simple fact. Sometimes, some of that distant space comes to us. 40,000 tons of interstellar dust hits our atmosphere every year. The vast majority of it comes from within our solar system - but not all. It's fascinating to wonder if the first evidence of alien life might be contained in it.

Ditto suggestions like this. This might be our best chance to study material from other distant solar systems elsewhere in our galaxy.

One common meme about the future is that you'll rent everything and own nothing. However, given the monthly costs of owning a car and paying back its purchase price - €100 a month (approx $110) seems like a bargain.

The bottleneck here is that the cars have to be French manufactured, and demand is outstripping supply. Chinese firm BYD is selling its Seagull car for $11,000.

I suspect if European and American millennials could live in a world where they could lease cars for €100 a month or buy utilitarian vehicles for $11k, the existing car industry would start to collapse.

Knowing humankind we'll learn our lesson the hard way. Disaster first, lamentations afterwards. I wonder what the first big disaster will be ?

Some countries (such as the US) are already oversupplied with law school graduates. The implication of this research is that they will soon be even more oversupplied. Law degrees are expensive to obtain. Apart from tuition costs, you need to devote years to study when you are not earning anything.

One of the obvious questions posed by this research is why should anyone invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in starting to study law in 2024? The old assumption was that investment would pay for itself in lifetime earnings. Those old assumptions seem to be collapsing around us.

I've no doubt AI will either be the number one transformative technology of the 21st century or only come second to something like genetic bioengineering. That said, it's riding a wave of investor-fueled hype in 2024 that seems like a classic speculative bubble. Gary Marcus, the OP in this article, does a good summary of why this is so.

There's a tendency for commentary about AI to pivot around fanboyism for success with investors. Gaining multi-billion dollar valuations = significance. Perhaps when history looks back on AI in 2024 they will see the real action was happening elsewhere. I can't help noticing how free open-source AI is almost as good as the AI investors are valuing at 10s of billions.

Its hard to imagine a future where humans expand into space without space stations.

I've never understood some people's fascination with space-based solar. Why go to all that over-engineered trouble to do something you can do on Earth anyway, except in an orders of magnitude simpler way.

Also, I love to see people devote efforts to space development, but it depresses me to see people do it and waste their time. I know it's a simplistic way of looking at things, but I wish they'd devote their time to something useful, like creating a commercial space station.

There are vast vested interests in keeping the fossil fuel industry afloat. It supports entire countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the stock portfolios and wealth it gives to many among the richest and most powerful elsewhere.

I expect anti-battery disinformation will increase as panic sets in from those with a lot to lose.

I see we've moved on from the 'Don't be evil' era.

Saying all Chinese language media is propaganda just seems like a conspiracy theory.

Most English language media is poor at reporting on China, so sometimes you come across facts like this that sit up and make you take notice; though I wish I had more context for them.