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.
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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.
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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.
Ad Astra: Musk’s School at SpaceX
June 26th, 2018I had heard of Musk’s private school before, but I didn’t have a sense of what actually went on there. My wife and I are homeschooling three (soon to be four) children, so we are always on the lookout for interesting feats of pedagogy.
Via: Ars Technica:
In a corner of SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, a small, secretive group called Ad Astra is hard at work. These are not the company’s usual rocket scientists. At the direction of Elon Musk, they are tackling ambitious projects involving flamethrowers, robots, nuclear politics, and defeating evil AIs.
Those at Ad Astra still find time for a quick game of dodgeball at lunch, however, because the average age within this group is just 10 years old.
Ad Astra encompasses students, not employees. For the past four years, this experimental non-profit school has been quietly educating Musk’s sons, the children of select SpaceX employees, and a few high-achievers from nearby Los Angeles. It started back in 2014, when Musk pulled his five young sons out of one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious private schools for gifted children. Hiring one of his sons’ teachers, the CEO founded Ad Astra to “exceed traditional school metrics on all relevant subject matter through unique project-based learning experiences,” according to a previously unreported document filed with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
“I just didn’t see that the regular schools were doing the things that I thought should be done,” he told a Chinese TV station in 2015. “So I thought, well let’s see what we can do. Maybe creating a school will be better.”
In an atmosphere closer to a venture capital incubator than a traditional school, today’s Ad Astra students undertake challenging technical projects, trade using their own currency, and can opt out of subjects they don’t enjoy. Children from 7 to 14 years old work together in teams, with few formal assessments and no grades handed out.
Ad Astra’s principal hopes that the school will revolutionize education in the same way Tesla has disrupted transportation, and SpaceX the rocket industry. But as Musk’s sons near graduation age, the future of Ad Astra is unclear. Will Musk maintain interest in the school once his children move on? And even if he does, can a school of fewer than 40 students ever be anything more than a high-tech crèche for already-privileged children?
Richard Dolan Interviews Catherine Austin Fitts: Missing Trillions and The Secret Space Program
June 26th, 2018Via: Richard Dolan:
Senior Scientist at Allergan, Vaccine Researcher Shot to Death as He Slept Beside His Daughters at Remote Campsite
June 25th, 2018Via: Heavy:
A 35-year-old California man was killed while camping with his daughters in Malibu Creek State Park and police are investigating the mysterious case as a homicide. No suspects have been identified. Tristan Beaudette was shot in the upper torso early in the morning of June 22, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release.
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Tristan Beaudette was originally from Fresno. According to the Fresno Bee, Beaudette was a valedictorian at Edison High School in 2000. He graduated from the University of California San Diego in 2005 with a degree in chemistry, according to his Linkedin profile. Beaudette spent a year as a summer research intern at IBM. He then began pursuing his Ph.D in chemistry at UC Berkeley in 2005, completing his studies in 2010. He wrote a thesis entitled, “Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Acid-Degradable Polymeric Materials for Protein-Based Vaccine,” a research project, ” focused on the design, synthesis, characterization, and implementation of acid-sensitive polymeric microparticulate and nanoparticulate vehicles for vaccine and drug delivery applications,” he wrote on Linkedin.
While at Berkeley, Beaudette was a graduate student instructor and worked on several research projects that were focused on pharmaceuticals and vaccines, according to his Linkedin profile. He wrote that he, “Synthesized polyacrylamide, polyacetal, and polysaccharide-based acid-degradable microparticles and used in vitro and in vivo techniques to characterize their ability to elicit cell-mediated immune responses for applications in vaccines and cancer therapy.” He also wrote, he, “Developed methods for chemoselective particle functionalization for use in targeted drug and gene delivery.” And, “Led a multidisciplinary team of chemists, immunologists, and biologists in an NIH-funded collaborative project involving the design of novel protein-based vaccine formulations,” while also composing, “multiple scientific research proposals. Presented and published graduate work at national conferences and in peer-reviewed journals.”
You can read his publications here.
