Futurology

An under-appreciated aspect of the switch to renewables & electrification is how it is getting all the innovation. Will you see major technological innovation advances like this for the dying paradigm of fossil fuels? No you won't. Their death spiral has already started.

Swedish researchers say they have made a major advance in structural battery tech, that will allow the structure of EVs and electric aircraft to store energy, not just their batteries.

They've developed a composite that uses carbon fibers as both structural reinforcement and electrodes/current collectors, minimizing dead weight. A load-bearing electrolyte enables ion transport while transferring mechanical forces. Glass fiber fabric separates the carbon-fiber negative electrode from an LFP positive electrode on aluminum foil. The material delivers ~24 Wh/kg energy density, ~25 GPa modulus, and >300 MPa tensile strength, surpassing prior structural battery materials in both mechanical and electrochemical performance.

A Structural Battery and its Multifunctional Performance

Doesn't this miss the core problem? Social media is divisive, dishonest & addictive by design. Great that one country is protecting kids from it, but it doesn't change Big Tech.

Why does the rest of the world have to go to so much trouble to protect billions of people from a tiny number of bad people?

People spend money on home security because they don't know who the burglars are, but here we know exactly who we need to deal with, and there aren't very many of them either.

Australia social media ban for under 16s to take effect

It's depressing that bulls**t like this is still allowed to go unchallenged. When in the history of capitalism do companies, out of the goodness of their heart, find better paying jobs for workers they don't need any more?

The only way CEOs call sell this shiny happy future of jobs being automated away, is to be allowed to get away with lies like this. It's long past the point our politics deals with the reality of automation by AI/robots. It's already happening, and it's only going to accelerate.

Humanoid robots will take over factory jobs within 5 years, Xiaomi CEO says

A paradox of the mid-2020s is that while Russia seems unable to advance much in conventional military terms in Ukraine, it's making stunning advances against NATO countries when it comes to the cyber realm. Its capture of White House foreign policy is a tangible military victory as real as capturing land. Now it looks like it has more of NATO and the US that it can conquer uncontested.

Is anyone going to do anything about their capture of Western AI? I doubt it. Big tech doesn't want the regulation and doesn't care about anything else except money. Meanwhile, Moscow already has the key politicians in its pockets anyway.

Inside the CopyCop Playbook: How to Fight Back in the Age of Synthetic Media

The Hybrid Threat Imperative: Deterring Russia Before it is Too Late

As millions will lose driving jobs, understandably the focus is often on the negative economic impacts of self-driving vehicles. But they come with huge plusses, too. This article by neurosurgeon Jonathan Slotkin details those.

The data is in. Today's self-driving vehicles are dramatically safer and cause fewer accidents than human drivers. Furthermore, they'll keep getting safer and better, too.

I suspect as this sinks in, the day where manual driving is banned, or severely restricted will arrive. The same pressures that criminalized drunk-driving & no seatbelts will see to it.

The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.

Bennu was the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission that returned samples of the asteroid to Earth. Now, research published in Nature has shown that those samples have all the chemical building blocks for RNA. This is significant, as it's thought that before life settled onto DNA as its organizing mechanism, it first evolved through an RNA stage.

Bennu is thought to be formed from a protoplanet that was formed very early in the Solar System's history, but fragmented 1-2 billion years ago. If this protoplanet formed RNA precursors, and Bennu harbored them undamaged for 1-2 billion years in deep space, it suggests the Universe must be widely seeded with RNA. If that is the case, then there may be billions of planets seeded with such precursors, where the chances of life evolving via RNA could have happened as they did on Earth.

The next 5-10 years will see several space and ground-based telescopes capable of scanning exoplanet atmospheres for the biosignatures of alien microbial life. This new finding about asteroid Bennu suggests we may find life in many of those exoplanets.

Bio-essential sugars in samples from asteroid Bennu

More good news about the demise of the fossil fuel age. EV trucks are cheaper to run, so economics is primarily driving this. Though the Chinese government has provided subsidies too. The expansion of heavy-duty charging stations across China is another driver.

As electric trucks outpace both diesel and LNG trucks, China’s demand for diesel is shrinking. This is a significant shift given China is a major global diesel consumer. Chinese truck manufacturers are positioning themselves to export electric heavy trucks internationally, and aiming to influence global freight markets and accelerate adoption abroad.

China's diesel trucks are shifting to electric. That could change global LNG and diesel demand