Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[guerney]

@saneagle @Ghost1951 - I can'tfind your posts about BASIC. Those were the good old days when every computer shipped with a programming language, and your BASIC savvy students were targeted by Microsft using Visual Basic, a runaway success for the company which morphed into .NET. These days a programming environment has to be downloaded and installed, and isn't nearly as immediate or fun for youngsters wanting to learn to create solutions to problems. That era when most computers weren't predominately consnumer devices, spawned so many programmers, and we may never again see the like.

 

[lenny]

The zoo that will recycle your old Christmas tree
Zoo recycles old Christmas trees - and the animals love it

Noah's Ark: Zoo taking old Christmas trees for animal enrichment

Noah's Ark Zoo Farm in north Somerset has recycled thousands of trees in the past five years.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[lenny]

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Three killed in cross-border attacks

Around 1,700 soldiers of a high-profile unit have reportedly deserted the army before deployment

www.independent.co.uk

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

Boxing clever? China's next-gen tailless combat aircraft analysed - Royal Aeronautical Society

On Boxing Day 26 December 2024, pictures and video emerged of a new Chinese stealth aircraft, featuring a unique configuration of three engines, diamond planform and no tail. Veteran aviation journalist and stealth expert BILL SWEET assesses what we know so far.

www.aerosociety.com

 

[lenny]

‘Ironic’: climate-driven sea level rise will overwhelm major oil ports, study shows
Ports including in Saudi Arabia and the US projected to be seriously damaged by a metre of sea level rise

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/04/climate-driven-sea-level-rise-set-to-flood-major-oil-ports

 

[lenny]

New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis is Spreading

New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis is Spreading | U.S. Senate Committee On The Budget

The Official U.S. Senate Committee On The Budget

www.budget.senate.gov

 

[lenny]

Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe

Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe

There might not be a mysterious 'dark' force accelerating the expansion of the Universe after all.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[lenny]

Parasitic worms 'manipulate' praying mantises onto asphalt roads: Japan researchers

Parasitic worms 'manipulate' praying mantises onto asphalt roads: Japan researchers - The Mainichi

OSAKA -- Every autumn, dead mantises can be seen lying on the asphalt of roads. A type of parasitic worm may be leading the creatures to their deaths

mainichi.jp

 

[lenny]

AI companies cause most of traffic on forums

Excerpt from a message I just posted in a #diaspora team internal f...

Excerpt from a message I just posted in a #diaspora team internal forum category. The context here is that I recently get pinged by slowness/load spikes on the diaspora* project web infrastructure (Discourse, Wiki, the project website, ...), and looking at the traffic logs makes me impressively...

pod.geraspora.de

 

[lenny]

Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life
Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.

Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life | Quanta Magazine

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.

www.quantamagazine.org

 

[lenny]

Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past twelve months, plus my attempt at identifying key themes and pivotal moments.

Things we learned about LLMs in 2024

A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past …

simonwillison.net

 

[lenny]

Protocells emerge in experiment simulating lifeless world: ‘There is no divine breath of life’
Researchers from a Spanish laboratory observe, for the first time, the formation of compartments alongside the basic ingredients of organisms

Protocells emerge in experiment simulating lifeless world: ‘There is no divine breath of life’

Researchers from a Spanish laboratory observe, for the first time, the formation of compartments alongside the basic ingredients of organisms

english.elpais.com

 

[lenny]

Chat with a bunch of AIs at once.

https://melty.sh/chorus

 

[lenny]

China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras
China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master's degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.

China's young workers - overqualified and in low-paying jobs

With high youth unemployment rates, Chinese graduates are resorting to working as waiters, cleaners and movie extras.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[lenny]

Why China Is Building a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor
China’s demo reactor could breed nuclear fuel from rare earth waste

Why China Is Building a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor

China’s demo reactor could breed nuclear fuel from rare earth waste

spectrum.ieee.org

 

[lenny]

You know well tesla and Musk.
He bought an entire production line from CATL for his Arizona battery factory.
Musk has built very strong ties with China. His biggest factory is in shanghai. As industrialist, Musk knows better than anyone how to do these things.
Now there are strong similarities between making chips and making batteries. The equivalent of CATL in chips is TSMC.
The USA got TSMC to build foundries in Arizona. The guys from TSMC have said that it costs them 10 times to build in Arizona than in Taiwan. If you are interested in technology transfers in top industries, watch this interview on yt. TSMC employs nearly 20,000 PhD researchers. Where will you find them?

watch?v=Lzizz4z1fPw

BYD is now the world’s largest automaker by R&D workforce after major hiring spree

BYD is now the world's largest automaker by R&D workforce after major hiring spree

China’s BYD now has the world’s largest R&D workforce of any automaker after its latest hiring spree. With over 900,000...

electrek.co

 

[lenny]

World’s 500 richest people surpass $10 trillion in wealth in 2024
An indomitable rally in US technology stocks played a key role in turbocharging wealth

World’s 500 richest people surpass $10 trillion in wealth in 2024

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang led the group of billionaires to the new milestone.

www.ocregister.com

Silicon Valley seeks an audience at the court of Trump

Tech bros from Elon Musk to Sam Altman are looking to president-elect’s second term to unshackle them from regulatory restrictions

www.irishtimes.com

 

[lenny]

‘Extraordinary longevity’: great whales can live a lot longer than we thought – if we leave them alone
Bowhead whales may not be the only species that can live to 200 years old. Researchers have found that the industrial hunting of great whales has masked the ability of these underwater giants to also live to great ages

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/02/great-whales-longevity-lifespans-centuries-hunting-study-finds

 

[lenny]

Experimental evidence that a photon can spend a negative amount of time in an atom cloud

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03680