Interesting Links

2025-06-12 Thursday

  • An Air India Boeing 787 crashes in Gujarat
    • Air India Flight 171 was on its way from Ahmedabad to Gatwick
    • The plane crashed into a hostel at a medical college seconds after takeoff, after reaching a peak altitude of just 625 feet
    • Plane was carrying 242 people
    • There was a single survivor from the plane, and an unclear number of casualties on the ground
    • Pilots had issued a mayday call shortly before the crash but there was no response to Ahmedabad airport's air-traffic control's follow up messages
    • The 787 involved was 12 years old, according to Air India
    • Prior to this crash, the 787 had a perfect safety record, with zero fatal accidents
  • AI tools represent the biggest threat to ad agencies
    • Google, Amazon and Meta are creating tools to enable customers to make their own ads using AI tools
    • These tools represent a threat to the traditional billing model of ad agencies, which charge customers based on the time spent to create their ad campaigns
    • Corporate marketing teams will be increasingly able to craft their own campaigns
    • Ad agencies will have to transition to a strategic advisor role, creating themes and concepts, which provide scaffolding for AI tools to craft a coherent marketing campaign around
  • The Indian government announces multiple investments in AI
    • The largest fraction of ChatGPT users come from India
    • The Indian government has announced an initiative to create locally-trained large language models capable of conversing in Indic languages and, later, locally designed AI training chips
    • However, current AI models targeted towards Indian users in their native languages have been fine-tuned versions of other publicly available models, such as Mistral
    • India also faces a problem with data
    • Indian data is often siloed and inaccessible
    • Having more publicly available datasets would make it easier to make foundation models geared towards Indian needs
    • India also faces a dearth of AI researchers
    • Many talented AI researchers go abroad
    • Locals complain of a lack of long-term investment in AI
    • India risks being dominated by foreign firms as happened with smartphones and social networks
  • Can India innovate?
    • While Indian manufacturing is increasingly taking on final assembly from China, most of the components in Indian devices still come from outside the country
    • India does not yet have the sort of manufacturing innovations that would enable it to move up the value chain as China has
    • India's labor force is full of contradictions
      • India has the world's largest population of IT engineers, but is completely absent from the race to build cutting edge AI
      • Indian drug manufacturers supply the world with generics, but don't make original drug discoveries
      • IITs train talent for the world but can't even crack the top 100 ranking for published research
    • Indian spending on R&D lags behind
      • In industrialized countries, private spending on R&D is roughly \(\frac{2}{3}\) of total R&D spending
      • In India, private spending only accounts for \(\frac{1}{3}\)
    • While the relative poverty of India and its correspondingly low corporate margins accounts for some of this thriftiness, even profitable firms in India spend far less than their counterparts in the US and China
      • In the US these firms spend almost 9% of revenue on R&D
      • In China R&D spending is roughly 2% of revenue
      • In India, it's 0.3%
      • Indian firms often think they're spending enough on R&D, when, in reality their spending lags far behind their foreign competitors
      • Indian people, and Indian businessmen especially are cheap
      • They will absolutely refuse to spend money on anything that does not have a clear and immediate return
      • Speculative R&D spending on moonshot projects is an anathema
      • Any Indian with an interest in that kind of stuff immediately emigrates to Europe, the UK or the United States
    • Indian academia is no better
      • Indian researchers are rewarded for publication, rather than impact
      • Publish a large number of articles, but India is only ranked #19 when adjustments are applied for how often those articles are cited
    • Indian startups often focus on consumer applications, such as delivery services, than "deep technology" like electric vehicles or semiconductors
      • That's partially a response to funding
      • China has a large number of "deep tech" startups because the Chinese government has poured a vast amount of money into ensuring that these startups have favorable access to bank loans
      • The US, to the extent that it does have "deep tech" startups, manages to have them by virtue of being very rich — a small percentage of a very large pot still manages to be lot of money
    • Indian entrepreneurs reply that India's patchy infrastructure offers much greater returns to consumer applications than it does to deep technology
    • Delivery apps don't require constant, ultra-stable power and water supplies like semiconductor fabs
    • The big exception to this is space
      • ISRO has managed to become a successful space program, despite operating on a relatively shoestring budget
      • Is an example of successful public-private collaboration that should be replicated elsewhere
  • Iran announces a third enrichment facility
    • Announcement comes after the UN's atomic energy agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared that Iran was no longer in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations
    • Iran currently has two enrichment facilities, at Natanz and underground in Fordow
    • Mohammad Eslami said that Iran was installing centrifuges in a third, undisclosed, location and would soon being manufacturing fissile material there
    • Iran Also announced that it would increase the production of enriched uranium at Fordow
    • US officials say that there is no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, but add that Iran has enough nuclear material that it could acquire a weapon within months if it chose to do so
    • The IAEA finding allows Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council, where a vote could be held to reimpose sanctions
    • Iran says that if sanctions are reimposed, it will leave the Nonproliferation Treaty and expel UN inspectors
    • The Israeli government has said that, if it believes that Iran is about to develop a nuclear weapon, it will act preemptively
  • Micron Technologies announces a $200 billion investment in US semiconductor manufacturing
    • Micron will invest $150 billion in domestic memory manufacturing
    • Will build two high-volume fabs in Idaho and four such fabs in New York
    • Will also modernize its existing fab in Virginia
    • The remaining $50 billion will be invested in additional R&D
    • The capacity expansion is to allow Micron to meet market demand while achieving its goal of manufacturing 40% of its chips in the US
    • Construction has already begun on the first Idaho fab, with the facility expected to begin producing chips in 2027
  • Mattel announces partnership with OpenAI
    • Collaboration is still in its early stages
    • OpenAI's tools will be used to help design toys, and toys may later feature ChatGPT integration
    • AI tools could be used to make toys like the Magic 8-ball even more interactive
    • Honestly? An AI-powered Magic 8-ball would be pretty cool
  • Aerospace startup JetZero announces that it will build a factory in North Carolina
    • JetZero is a startup which aims to lower costs and increase fuel efficiency by developing a blended wing body aircraft
    • Blended wing body design cuts fuel consumption by up to 50% and has a more spacious cabin
    • JetZero has been working with the Air Force to use its blended wing body design for the US Air Force's Next Generation Air-refueling System
    • Announced plans to begin construction on a factory in North Carolina next year
    • A full-scale prototype of JetZero's aircraft is scheduled for flight in 2027, and the aircraft is scheduled to enter production in 2032
  • The Chinese government is encouraging development of larger drones for deliveries and passenger transport
    • Shenzhen has kiosks that allow customers to pick up drone-delivered food
    • Numerous start-ups are developing eVTOL "flying taxis"
    • While these technologies are nascent in much of the rest of the world, China is forging ahead with them
    • The Chinese government refers to the development of delivery drones and flying taxis as the "low-altitude economy"
    • "Low altitude" is defined as below 1000 meters above ground level
    • The government has revised airspace regulations to make it easier for small startups to get into the drone business without having to undergo a cumbersome permitting process
    • Local governments have invested in infrastructure, such as landing pads and designated fixed routes for drones, as well as improvements in cell phone infrastructure to allow drones to communicate more easily
    • The delivery company Meituan has more than 100 drones in the air at once during busy periods in Shenzhen
    • China's investments in the low-altitude economy plays to China's existing strengths in battery technology and electric motors, as seen in its gains with electric vehicles
    • However, it is still unclear whether eVTOL companies will be profitable
    • One thing the article doesn't cover is the application this has to defense
    • Low-altitude drones have had a decisive impact on the war in Ukraine, and China is building up the infrastructure to have lots of drones and drone pilots
    • This is similar to how Germany invested in private "flying clubs" in the 1930s in order to build up a domestic aircraft industry and train pilots in advance of World War 2
  • The West has stopped losing its religion
    • The proportion of people calling themselves atheist or agnostic has grown from 5% in 1990 to over 30% in 2019
    • However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of people professing religion has grown, reversing an almost 30-year trend
    • Even in Europe, where religion has declined even faster than it has in the US, the proportion of people saying they're atheist or agnostic has slowed markedly
    • This matches a slowdown in the number of people leaving Christianity, making it unlikely that the decline in atheism and agnosticism in Europe can be explained by Muslim immigration
    • A plausible explanation for the decline in atheism is the COVID-19 pandemic, which isolated Gen-Z just as they were entering adulthood
    • Another plausible explanation is given by Tanner Greer in Culture Wars are Long Wars
    • He points out that each generation is, in some ways, a counterculture to the generation that came before it
    • We've reached the point where atheism is the "mainstream" culture, so the counterculture to that will be religious
    • Religion offered a source of meaning and comfort during those years of tumult
    • However, religious affiliation has persisted after the pandemic subsided
    • People have said that their faith has strengthened after the ending of the pandemic
    • Another surprising factor about the new religiosity is that it's primarily a male phenomenon — historically women have been the more religious gender
    • This is likely because women are increasingly liberal and find traditional religion out of step with their broader political views
    • And young men, conversely, have been becoming more conservative, and thus aligned with traditional religion
    • Many of these new converts are joining religion as adults, driving a spike in adult baptisms
    • The reversal in the decline of religion means that America will be a majority-Christian nation for at least the next 50 years

2025-01-28 Tuesday

  • Starbucks earnings and same-store sales fall
    • Starbucks profit per share dropped by 23%, as the chain invested in making its cafes more welcoming for customers to linger
    • Profit and revenue beat analysts' expectations
    • Last year, sales had the steepest decline since the COVID-19 pandemic
    • Customers are frustrated with rising prices and increasing waits
    • CEO Brian Niccol has implemented some changes aimed at improving customer satisfaction, such as restoring the condiment bar and allowing free refills of regular coffee and tea
    • Improved order handling software to speed up order fulfillment will be coming later this year