China: 3 Year Old High End Villas
July 2nd, 2018Winston and C-Milk are great. I’ve been watching both of them for about a year. They have both lived in China for over a decade, have Chinese wives and speak the language.
Their individual channels are:
Their partnership “Adventure” channel is: advchina
Very interesting viewing!
Via: Advchina:
More States Opting to ‘Robo-Grade’ Student Essays by Computer
July 2nd, 2018Via: NPR:
Department Of Education Deputy Commissioner Jeff Wulfson cited “huge advances in artificial intelligence in the last few years” and cracked, “I asked Alexa whether she thought we’d ever be able to use computers to reliably score tests, and she said absolutely.”
California: The Poverty Capital of the U.S.
July 1st, 2018Via: City Journal:
California—not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia—has the highest poverty rate in the United States. According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure—which accounts for the cost of housing, food, utilities, and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income—nearly one out of four Californians is poor. Given robust job growth in the state and the prosperity generated by several industries, especially the supercharged tech sector, the question arises as to why California has so many poor people, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).
It’s not as if California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause, for decades now. Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.
Tesla and PG&E Are Working on a Massive ‘Up to 1.1 GWh’ Powerpack Battery System
June 30th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Tesla would be providing the battery packs for the giant project, which would be able to output 182.5 MW of power for 4 hours, which represents 730 MWh of energy capacity or over 3,000 Tesla Powerpack 2s.
PG&E also has the option to increase the capacity to 6 hours for a total of 1.1 GWh.
Earlier this month, Tesla CTO JB Straubel announced that the company has deployed over 1 GWh of energy storage – a capacity that he says is “undeniably making an impact.”
If this new project is approved and deployed to its full potential, it would represent more energy capacity in a single project than what Tesla Energy deployed since its inception 3 years ago.
There Are Now Barely Two Workers Per Senior in Most Developed Economies
June 30th, 2018Via: The Sounding Line:
For every American 65 years of age or older, there are now barely three people working and paying into the country’s safety-net, Social Security, and Medicare programs. In France there are barely two workers per senior. In Japan there are slightly less than two. In Italy and Greece there are barely more than 1.5 workers per senior, less than half the ratio in the 1960s. In each case, the definition of a ‘worker’ includes anyone working as little as one hour a week.
At the same time, government entitlement spending is surging in virtually every developed economy. In the US, a full 73% of government revenues are already being spent on entitlement programs and over 60% of those entitlements go to senior citizens via Social Security and Medicare. With the bulk of the baby-boomer generation reaching retirement age right now, the problem is only going to get worse.
With fewer and fewer workers per retiree, with entitlement spending already consuming the vast majority of tax revenues across the developed world, with governments already running large perennial deficits, with most developed world governments already weighted down with over 100% debt-to-GDP, and with interest rates set to rise, there is a funding crisis coming to governments across the developed world.
In many of these same countries, whatever tax revenue is not being spent on entitlement programs is already being spent servicing huge national debts.
DARPA Backing Development of ‘Silicon Compiler’
June 29th, 2018Via: EETimes:
The U.S. will pour $100 million into two research programs over the next four years to create the equivalent of a silicon compiler aimed at significantly lowering the barriers to design chips. The programs, involving 15 companies and more than 200 researchers, were described for the first time in a talk at the Design Automation Conference here.
…
With $100 million in finding, the IDEAS and POSH programs represent “one of the biggest EDA research programs ever,” said Andreas Olofsson, who manages the two programs.
Together, they aim to combat the growing complexity and cost of designing chips, now approaching $500 million for a bleeding-edge SoC. Essentially, POSH aims to create an open-source library of silicon blocks, and IDEAS hopes to spawn a variety of open-source and commercial tools to automate testing of those blocks and knitting them into SoCs and printed circuit boards.
Pentagon Intelligence Chief: Russia And China Will Have Weapons in Space ‘In the Near Future’
June 28th, 2018Just wait. You haven’t seen anything yet.
Via: DefenseOne:
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s director says the U.S. lead in space is diminishing and tomorrow’s skies will be filled with enemy robot satellites.
Russia and China are developing new space-based weapons and they’ll be ready “in the near future,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday at the Defense One Technology Summit in Washington, D.C.
The countries, which Ashley called “competitors,” are developing “the ability to interdict satellites both from a ground standpoint and from a space standpoint,” he said. “The technology is being developed right now. It is coming in the near future.”
An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS
June 28th, 2018Mmm hmm.
Via: The Atlantic:
The tale of a bombing raid in the Libyan desert, pitting stealth bombers and 500-pound bombs against 70 ragtag fighters.
Mini Neanderthal Brains Will Be Connected To Robots
June 28th, 2018Via: Live Science:
Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, but thanks to cutting-edge science, there is now a lab in California that has petri dishes filled with pea-size versions of the cavemen’s brains.
Why are researchers cultivating and studying these mini brains? The reason, they say, is that these small neural lumps may reveal why Neanderthals died out and Homo sapiens went on to conquer much of the planet.
…
Muotri’s team is now tackling another sci-fi-like challenge. They have devised a way for robots to measure electrical brain signals sent by human mini brains. By connecting the robots with the mini brains, they hope to create a “learning feedback loop” that will help the brain direct the robot to explore its surroundings.
“Ultimately, we want to compare the Neanderthalized organoid [with the robot] to test its ability to learn,” Muotri said.
Flashback 2004: Rat Brain Cells in a Dish Fly F-22 Simulator
BP Bets on Electric Vehicle Switch with Chargemaster Buy
June 28th, 2018Via: Reuters:
BP will buy Britain’s largest electric vehicle charging firm Chargemaster and plans to use its technology to roll out ultra-fast chargers across its 1,200 petrol stations in the country over the next 12 months.
Royal Dutch Shell, Volkswagen and Daimler have all made acquisitions and investments in an effort to tap into rapid growth in electric vehicles, which is being driven by regulation and a move away from fossil fuels.
