Tag: us

Presidential Climate

Of the nearly 24 Democrats running for president, only 2 campaigns have so far laid out deadlines for transforming American life to slash the pollution that is warming the planet’s climate. Washington governor Jay Inslee and Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke want the US to be CO2 neutral within the next 30 years. Both have unveiled detailed climate policy plans. Inslee would set milestones for 3 sectors that could drive major reductions: power, transportation, and buildings. He has earned praise for his specificity. O’Rourke would also spend $5 trillion on green infrastructure.

Yang Bid Very 21st Century

In the history of politicking, few politicians have publicly declared what to do about America’s crumbling malls, or how to provide free marriage counseling for all, or how to make filing taxes fun. But Andrew Yang, who’s gunning to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, certainly has—and those are the more minor concerns among a dizzying list of 80 policy positions on his campaign website.

also has geoengineering, UBI and many other things.

Utah Digital Privacy

Utah Just Became a Leader in Digital Privacy

Utah legislators voted unanimously to pass landmark legislation in support of a new privacy law that will protect private electronic data stored with third parties like Google or Facebook from free-range government access. The bill stipulates that law enforcement will be required to obtain a warrant before accessing “certain electronic information or data.”

Restarting Nuclear

Despite its advanced age, the average American plant has a generating capacity—a measure of the percentage of time a reactor is producing energy—of more than 90%. Plants abroad have an average generating capacity of 75%. “In terms of the ability to reliably generate electricity and safely generate electricity, the US fleet still sets the standard for performance. The place that the US is falling behind in is in the ability to build a new plant at schedule and at a low cost. A combination of solar, wind, and nuclear led to decarbonization at the lowest cost. New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have introduced subsidies to keep their nuclear power plants profitable and running, rather than trying to meet energy demands with renewables alone. But keeping America’s current fleet running is not enough to decarbonize the electricity sector.”

it wouldn’t need saving if people weren’t so dumb and mood-affiliated.

Warren Wrong

This entire plan gets headlines (duh) because so many people are (perhaps reasonably!) angry at the power of big tech companies. But, very little in the actual plan makes much sense. The “platform utility” idea will lead to massive, wasteful, stupid lawsuits. The unwinding of old mergers will involve interfering with an independent agency, and seem unlikely to do much to change the main “concerns” that Senator Warren raises in the first place.

US-China Cold War

The new dynamic affects people as well as products. China is asking state firms to avoid travel to the US and its allies. And if you were an American or Canadian tech company executive, would you travel to China right now, given that Canada has detained a leading Huawei executive (and daughter of the company’s CEO) for extradition to the US? Meanwhile, many American universities are kicking their local Confucius Institute off campus, most notably the University of Michigan, amid complaints that those institutes are spying on Chinese nationals who attend those schools. Whether or not that is true, this is another sign of the collapse of trust. This is the deeper issue with the US-China relationship: the continuing erosion, in an era of rapid deglobalization, of previous ties built at least partly on a common sense of purpose. Looking back at 2018, it now seems obvious that this was the most important story of the year.

2019-03-15: AI competition

Suppose, however, that the AI competition between the US and China is submerged in a far larger global competition between man and machine. Suppose the strongest, healthiest, happiest country is the country in which human beings are most in control of their lives. Humans controlled by their machines, by contrast, will feel a pervasive, purposeless malaise, locked into what Webb describes as a “digital caste system” with all their decisions made for them in predetermined and directed lives.

2019-06-24: Liu Cixin

A leading scifi writer takes stock of China’s global rise

2020-01-01: Dan Wang

I’ve found it curious that Congress has become so keen to publicly beat up on Facebook and Google while the US considers itself in technological competition with China. In my view, antitrust arguments apply better to companies like Intel and Boeing, which are the tech giants that wield much greater market power. The US responded to the rise of the USSR and Japan by focusing on innovation; it’s early days, but so far the US is responding to the technological rise of China mostly by kneecapping its leading firms. So instead of realizing its own Sputnik moment, the US is triggering one in China.

2020-01-06: and the New Yorker

To a degree still difficult for outsiders to absorb, China is preparing to shape the 21st century, much as the US shaped the 20th

2021-01-27: A proposed strategy

America’s technological leadership is fundamental to its security, prosperity, and democratic way of life. But this vital advantage is now at risk, with China surging to overtake the United States in critical areas. Urgent policy solutions are needed to renew American competitiveness and sustain critical US technological advantages.

In order to lead, the United States will need to maximize its competitive advantage in key strategic technologies in ways that overcome China’s advantages, which include greater scale, hyper-integrated platforms, and faster product integration loop.

Intelligence. We need to upgrade our intelligence capabilities to dominate the forecasting space. If we cannot forecast where technology is going, we cannot stay competitive.

Brain Drain. The United States will need to develop, attract, and retain human capital and foster environments for inquiry and experimentation.

Supply Chains. Building more resilient supply chains is critical to diminishing our vulnerability to Chinese control, but will require significant investment in domestic infrastructure, ally-centric production, and advances in automation.

Multilateralism. We must work with allies to strengthen cooperation among like-minded countries; promote collective norms and values around the use of emerging technologies; and protect and preserve key areas of competitive technological advantage.

Government Redesign. Our internal government structures are not optimized to address the new challenges posed by emerging technologies.

2022-02-22: US losing in war games

Over the past decade, in US war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time. Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down. How did this happen? It wasn’t an intelligence failure, or a malign Pentagon and Congress, or lack of money, or insufficient technological prowess. No, it was simply bureaucratic inertia compounded by entrenched interests.

2023-02-23: China Internet content may be too low quality to build good LLM.

As of 2021, although the numbers of Simplified Chinese Internet users and English Internet users are comparable, English content accounts for 60.4% of the top 10 million websites in global rankings, while Chinese content accounts for only 1.4%.
The poor quality of Chinese Internet content is the result of Chinese Internet companies, represented by Baidu and ByteDance, who rush to make quick profits. Instead of patiently transporting more books and literature into the Internet, these platforms judge the quality of content based on whether it kills time and drives revenue. After several years of precipitation, it is now difficult to search for high-quality information on the internet in Simplified Chinese, and it should not surprise us that these chatbots confuse themselves as soon as they are asked meaningful questions.

Sloppy Geocoding

MaxMind determined that 1m IP addresses were operated by entities in Pretoria, and so it geolocated those IP addresses to the coordinates offered by the NGA for the city. And any time someone uses one of those IP addresses to do something bad—like cyberbullying the owners of a leather shop—it looks to someone who maps the address like the bad thing is being done by someone sitting in John and Ann’s backyard.

EV Charging

Perhaps even more important than how much electricity EVs would consume is the question of when it would be consumed. We based the above estimates on optimal, off-peak charging patterns. If instead most EVs were to be charged in the afternoon, the electricity grid would need more generation capacity to avoid outages. While EVs might increase the amount of electricity the US consumes, the investment required to accommodate them may be smaller than it appears. Many regions already have sufficient generation capacity if vehicles are charged during off-peak hours. The energy storage on board EVs could provide the flexibility needed to shift charging times and help grid operators better manage the supply and demand of electricity.

2021-02-09: The US doesn’t have a charging standard. This is insane. Of course it means that Tesla becomes the standard.

2022-02-08: EV uptake simulation as a function of charging infrastructure. Pretty dumb simulation as it predicts a decline in EV sales.

50% of adults who are aware of electric vehicles say they are unlikely to seriously consider purchasing one. Consumers hesitant to make the switch cite concerns such as the high purchase price, limited driving range and lack of sufficient charging infrastructure.

Using a model that is a stylized portrayal of the US auto market, we’re able to simulate the impact of policies intended to overcome these concerns about EVs. Each scenario assumes a limited number of vehicle technologies are available to consumers; the number of cars on the road remains constant; new powertrains are supported by targeted advertising campaigns to raise awareness.

2022-10-14: Shell is trying to convert their gas stations to electric, but are not price competitive. A Tesla Model 3 has a max battery of 82 kwh, which would cost £23 at the average rate, not £35. And much much cheaper at home. In a world where every parking spot can become a charging spot (why not?), this business plan isn’t going to work.

With 46k stations in 80 countries, Shell is the world’s biggest gasoline retailer. The Fulham station is one of several prototypes it’s planning as more cars shift to battery power, aiming to get feedback on what works while laying the groundwork to hit a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Charging can be done more or less anywhere there’s a plug, so the issue is one that the oil giants, regional chains, and independents that run the world’s 770k filling stations will confront in the coming decades. What’s the value of their real estate in cities and on highways worldwide? Will people still show up if recharging takes 30 minutes or more? Is there a business model that will work for filling stations when people can also charge up at home, the office, or the mall? One advantage they can bring is faster fill-ups: as little as 10 to 20 minutes vs. many hours when using a standard charger at home. And they typically occupy prime locations with lots of traffic, where tired and hungry drivers are likely to grab a coffee or a snack while charging their cars.
At the Fulham facility, fully charging a Tesla Model 3 takes 30 min and can cost more than £35


2022-10-20: Drastically faster charging allows for much smaller batteries, which is great for battery supply, car efficiency and cost. The fastest Tesla supercharger takes 20 min and is not recommended for daily use.

A breakthrough in electric vehicle battery design has enabled a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery. “Our fast-charging technology works for most energy-dense batteries and will open a new possibility to downsize electric vehicle batteries from 150 to 50 kWh without causing drivers to feel range anxiety. The smaller, faster-charging batteries will dramatically cut down battery cost and usage of critical raw materials such as cobalt, graphite and lithium, enabling mass adoption of affordable electric cars.

The technology relies on internal thermal modulation, an active method of temperature control to demand the best performance possible from the battery. Batteries operate most efficiently when they are hot, but not too hot. Keeping batteries consistently at just the right temperature has been major challenge for battery engineers. Historically, they have relied on external, bulky heating and cooling systems to regulate battery temperature, which respond slowly and waste a lot of energy.

The researchers developed a new battery structure that adds an ultrathin nickel foil as the fourth component besides anode, electrolyte and cathode. Acting as a stimulus, the nickel foil self-regulates the battery’s temperature and reactivity which allows for 10-minute fast charging on just about any EV battery.

2022-11-11: Tesla opensources their charger (as previously predicted)

With more than 10 years of use and 30b EV charging km to its name, the Tesla charging connector is the most proven in North America, offering AC charging and up to 1 MW DC charging in one slim package. It has no moving parts, is 50% the size, and 2x as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors.

In pursuit of our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, today we are opening our EV connector design to the world. We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles. NACS is the most common charging standard in North America: NACS vehicles outnumber CCS 2:1, and Tesla’s Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.


2022-11-28: Dumb scaling beats working with local mafias.

Charging EVs in parking lots with solar power is a marriage made in heaven. But the general rule for any solar or charging installation is that it be grid tied, so it can charge vehicles from the grid when the sun is not shining, and feed excess power back to the grid when the cars are not charging. Beam builds their stations in their factory, at scale — which is a big cost win — and then ships them on a flatbed trailer to the site, where they are simply dropped in any sunny parking spot. Without permits or contractors this can be done immediately, not months later. The Beam system is not cheap, however. Just cheaper for some locations than the high cost of traditional install.

Unprofitable Coal

US could save $78B by shutting down coal plants

42% of global coal capacity is already unprofitable because of high fuel costs; by 2040 that could reach 72% as existing CO2 pricing and air pollution regulations drive up costs while the price of onshore wind and solar power continues to fall; any future regulation would make coal power still more unprofitable.

It costs more to run 35% of coal power plants than to build new renewable generation; by 2030 building new renewables will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96% of today’s existing and planned coal plants.

China could save $389B by closing plants in line with the Paris Climate Agreement instead of pursuing business as usual plans; the EU could save $89B; the US could save $78B; and Russia could save $20B.