Wikimedia Commons.
These high-performance magnets, used in wind turbines and electric vehicles, are vital for building a zero-carbon economy. Currently, the best permanent magnets available require rare earth elements.
Category: economics – Page 40
The U.S.-China decoupling is giving rise to a divided tech landscape between the two major economies, shaping the development of the red-hot area of generative AI, which turns text into various forms of content like prose, images, and videos.
China, in order to reduce dependence on the U.S. technological foundation, has been pursuing its own large language models that match OpenAI’s GPT models. But unlike the U.S., some of its most advanced AI endeavors are happening at established internet juggernauts, such as Baidu.
The search engine and autonomous driving giant rolled out its counterpart to ChatGPT in March. Now the 23-year-old firm wants to have a stake in other AI startups, too. The company aims to have a stake in other AI startups. During a JPMorgan summit in China this week, Baidu’s co-founder and CEO Robin Li announced the launch of a billion yuan ($145 million) fund to back generative AI companies.
The Indicator from Planet Money
Posted in business, economics, space travel
Is this Mars thing really happening? SpaceX did its first test launch of Starship this spring, the rocket that it’s developing to send to Mars. But getting to Mars is still a long way off. So does SpaceX have the funding and business plan to pull it off?For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Tesla Inc has doubled discounts on some already made new Model 3 electric cars and offered discounts on the Model Y and others in its U.S. inventory to entice buyers amid economic uncertainty, rising competition and the upcoming redesign of its mainstay model.
In California, a Model 3 variant in inventory was priced at $42,060, a discount of $2,680 to the price of newly ordered cars, according to its website. That is double the $1,300 discount on Model 3 cars offered less than two weeks ago.
The moment is badly chosen, but with Elon Musk the unexpected is the rule.
The serial entrepreneur arrived in China on May 30, according to Reuters, whose journalists spotted his private jet at Beijing airport. This surprise visit by the CEO of electric vehicle producer Tesla, founder of SpaceX and owner of Twitter, comes at a time of renewed tensions between China and the U.S., which raise fears of a potential confrontation between the two leading world powers.
Musk and his empire symbolize, according to experts, the intricacy of the two largest world economies, which are interdependent. The U.S. and China are Tesla’s two biggest markets and the regions where the world leader in electric vehicles manufactures the vast majority of its cars.
JIUQUAN — China sent three astronauts to its Tiangong space station on Tuesday, putting a civilian into orbit for the first time as it pursues plans to send a crewed mission to the Moon by the end of the decade.
The world’s second-largest economy has invested billions of dollars in its military-run space program in a push to catch up with the United States and Russia.
The Shenzhou-16 crew took off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 9:31 am (0131 GMT), AFP journalists saw.
The quest to develop hydrogen as a clean energy source that could curb our dependence on fossil fuels may lead to an unexpected place—coal. A team of Penn State scientists found that coal may represent a potential way to store hydrogen gas, much like batteries store energy for future use, addressing a major hurdle in developing a clean energy supply chain.
“We found that coal can be this geological hydrogen battery,” said Shimin Liu, associate professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State. “You could inject and store the hydrogen energy and have it there when you need to use it.”
Hydrogen is a clean burning fuel and shows promise for use in the most energy intensive sectors of our economy—transportation, electricity generation and manufacturing. But much work remains to build a hydrogen infrastructure and make it an affordable and reliable energy source, the scientists said.
It’s been a strange week. On the technological side, it has been exciting. Since there is the possibility that Apple announces its headset soon, all the companies are rushing to announce what they have in the pipeline before the big day. This means that these days we are going to have a lot of announcements. This and the next editions of the newsletter are going to be full of cool pieces of news.
On the work side, it has been busy, very busy. I’m also working on a cool tech prototype and I will share it with you very soon in the next few days on this blog. Be sure not to miss it! Next week I’ll also be at AWE. So the next 2–3 weeks are going to be crazy for me, so sorry if I will make the comments on the newsletter a bit shorter than usual.
On the personal side, I’m a bit devasted by the flood that happened in central Italy. My city has not been affected, I’m kinda distant from there (thanks to everyone that asked if I was ok), but seeing the images of what happened there tore my heart. In the Friends section of this newsletter, I will tell you how you can donate to the people affected by this terrible event if you want.
The End of Screens?
Posted in augmented reality, economics, robotics/AI
Believe it or not, one of the most important technology announcements of the past few months had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. While critics and boosters continue to stir and fret over the latest capabilities of ChatGPT, a largely unknown 60-person start-up, based out of Tel Aviv, quietly began demoing a product that might foretell an equally impactful economic disruption.
The company is named Sightful and their new offering is Spacetop: “the world’s first augmented reality laptop.” Spacetop consists of a standard computer keyboard tethered to pair of goggles, styled like an unusually chunky pair of sport sunglasses. When you put on the goggles, the Spacetop technology inserts multiple large virtual computer screens into your visual field, floating above the keyboard as if you were using a computer connected to large external monitors.
As oppose to virtual reality technology, which places you into an entirely artificial setting, Spacetop is an example of augmented reality (AR), which places virtual elements into the real world. The goggles are transparent: when you put them on at your table in Starbucks you still see the coffee shop all around you. The difference is now there are also virtual computer screens floating above your macchiato.
Tokyo can boast of political stability, a soaring stock market and potential victory over deflation, though longer-term challenges remain.