Most power outages are due to failures in the transmission network (storms, broken power lines), not instability in supply. Making the move to newer, cleaner energy solutions is going to be difficult and take time – and cause pain for those involved. But that's not a good reason to prop up old, dirty, under-utilized coal and nuclear plants with subsidies or tricks. Let the newer "old fuel" plants provide the resilience needed, and replace the even older dirty capacity with newer, cleaner energy.
https://rob.al/2HmrMFC
There’s not a lot of evidence behind his laser focus on coal and nuclear power.
I'd love to have a robot butler. Previous attempts have been hilariously unsuccessful – so i'm not holding my breath – but the goal is certainly worth chasing.
https://rob.al/2vI9WaE
Ten years ago, Amazon introduced the Kindle and established the appeal of reading on a digital device. Four years ago, Jeff Bezos and company rolled out the Echo, prompting millions of people to…
Find yourself snowed under with no time to come up with your next big idea? Most of us come back from holidays refreshed and with new goals and objectives – but how do we achieve that level of innovative ideation on a more regular basis? Make time – two hours a week, locked away from distraction, could be enough. This article includes some tips on getting started.
https://rob.al/2Jb7b3m
Zat Rana looks at the trait shared by Einstein, Darwin and Nietzsche – taking the time to pause and think.
“AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire,” Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said at Davos said. “Any time you work with technology, you need to learn to harness the benefits while minimising the downsides.”
https://rob.al/2J8L1P6
The technology could eliminate many of the constraints we now face, he said.
As more and more services compete for valuable kerb space (deliveries, ride shares, taxis, emergency vehicles), having a common framework, platform, and language to share valuable data on utilisation and timings can help city planners optimise rules and maximise value, ensuring they do this without compromising customer confidentiality (does the city need to know who is getting out in front of the health clinic, or just that it’s a busy place?) https://rob.al/2K5bkr0
https://rob.al/2K4ac6W
The ride-hailing company is working with DC to share data—and the much coveted curb.
A fascinating insight – what traces would be left of a civilisation which died out 4 million years ago? Certainly nothing on the surface (the oldest is only 1.8m years), and fossils are incredibly rare (only a few thousand dinosaur fossils exist despite their 180m year existence) – but what about chemical traces? https://rob.al/2K3Qjwz
https://rob.al/2K0mpcC
Fossils and objects are unlikely to survive more than a few million years. Searching for chemical traces of industrialization offers an intriguing alternative.
Assembling an Ikea chair in 20 minutes, rather than the 5 that a person takes, doesn’t seem like much of an advance. But while computers excel at trigonometry and logic games like chess, evolution’s billion year head start on interacting with the physical environment means that advances like this are drawing us (very) slowly closer to a world where robots can perform menial but unpredictable physical tasks.
https://rob.al/2F2tgPg
Cower before your silicon overlords, puny humans
Apple’s new robot, Daisy (an upgraded version of a robot announced in 2016), can disassemble 200 iPhones per hour, sorting the parts for reuse and recycling, extracting parts which traditional recyclers are unable to safely or cost effectively remove.
https://rob.al/2HOCTnO
Apple has created a new robot – not for building products, but for ripping iPhones apart. The robot, named Daisy, can take nine different iPhones models apart and extract the important parts of them,…
The move to paperless movement of goods in these extraordinarily complex logistics chains has the potential to unlock massive benefits, reducing the cost of movements, by shortening the time it takes for goods to cross checkpoints and borders – an example 32 day journey of perishable goods could be completed in 20.
https://rob.al/2JZagVB
Globalization has brought the most advanced trading networks the world has seen, with the biggest, fastest vessels, robot-operated ports and vast computer databases tracking cargoes. But it all still…
I have no idea about the game that the author is engineering manager for, but this is a good write up of a framework for assessing technical debt, including the value of resolving it now vs later (never)
https://rob.al/2ELJgox
Bill Clark discusses classifying and managing tech debt at Riot.