Archive: 2024-06

You (obviously!) can’t control your kid’s every actions; the best you can do is provide solid, consistent examples of appropriate behavior...and hope for the best. — Adrian Holovaty - Thoughts on my first machine learning project (2024-06-20 · adrian-holovaty, ai, ml, mlp, music, omr, parenting, quotable, sheet-music )

The ‘Godfather of AI’ emerges out of stealth to back climate focused startup for material science — “Humanity will face many challenges in the coming decade. Some will be caused by AI while others can be solved by AI,” Hinton said.  “I’ve been very impressed by CuspAI and its mission to accelerate the design process of new materials using AI to curb one of humanity’s most urgent challenges—climate change.” (2024-06-19 · ai, climate, cuspai, geoffery-hinton, material-science, mlp )

Big tech’s great AI power grab — Admittedly the Economist are pro-capitalist lapdogs, but as we worry about the energy consumption being driven by AI, in the US context at least, it's worth remembering that big tech is one of the largest drivers and investors in green energy. Including informing Georgia Power, one of the worst utilities, that data centers are unlikely to come to their region, citing data centers near nuclear, and being important early customers from green energy startups like enhanced geothermal startup Fervo. (2024-06-18 · ai, big-tech, climate, datacenter, green-energy, mlp, power )

Super wonky podcast on Boston Metal's "molten oxide electrolysis" process for producing carbon-free steel. — Beyond the huge impact of decarbonizing the 10% of current emissions that today go to producing steel, this technology feels like it has the shape of something that could get on learning curve with modular technology, and have the sort of classically disruptive impact of e.g. moving steel production up the production chain to the people who are producing the ore reducing global shipping and giving the people impacted directly by resource extraction a higher value product. (2024-06-16 · Tadeu-Carneiro, climate, climate-hope, co2, david-roberts, industry, mlp, steel, volts )

University of Cambridge demonstration of a zero carbon technique for recycling cement — When recycling steel in an electric arc furnace if you replace the lime flux with recycled "cement paste" then rapidly cool the resulting slag you not only get purified steel you also get new Portland cement, without releasing additional carbon. (Cement of our course being a classically "hard to decarbonize" process as the carbon isn't just a byproduct of the need to generate heat, but a core part of the chemical process.) (2024-06-16 · carbon, cement, climate-hope, co2, construction, materials, mlp )

"AI is to Google what meth was to the Juarez cartel" — Greg Wilson's call for someone to write, "Narconomics and Big Tech" (2024-06-15 · addiction, business, google, greg-wilson, mlp, quotable, tech )

Randomized study of hybrid work (3 days in the office) vs in office (5 days) at a Chinese online travel agency. — "The authors found that the hybrid workers generally had increased job satisfaction and reduced resignation rates, and were as productive as those who worked entirely in-person, as measured by performance reviews. The reduction in resignation rates was particularly pronounced for those with longer commutes and for women. Reduced attrition rates were not seen for managers." While I am grateful everyday for flexible work it is absolutely harder to do the manager job in this new world. (2024-06-15 · hybrid, mlp, office, productivity, work )

The Green Wall - a low tech, community centered approach to land recovery in Senegal along the border of the Sahara — The kiddo and I have been working our way through Andrew Millison's reporting on permaculture(-ish) approaches to reclaiming land and dealing with the impacts of climate change. This is our favorite. (2024-06-11 · africa, agriculture, climate-hope, farming, mlp, nature, permaculture, senegal, unwfp, video, youtube )

Volts inteview with Caroline Spears, founder of Climate Cabinet — Good information on what it means to "moneyball" climate important elections. (2024-06-10 · caroline-spears, climate-hope, david-roberts, mlp, politics, us, volts, voting )

Climate Cabinet - Moneyball meets climate policy — An advocacy group focused on finding high ROI races to ranked by "greenhouse gases under legal authority". (2024-06-10 · climate-hope, mlp, policy, politics, us, voting )

Postmarks - a single-user bookmarking website designed to be easily hosted on Glitch — Going to look at this as an approach to adding ActivityPub support to MLP. But also looks like a good option if you don't need to indulge in the quixotic undertaking of writing your own. (2024-06-09 · activitypub, mlp )

Canopée: the sailing ship for Ariane 6 transport — Hybrid wind and diesel cargo ship -- something folks have talked about but Canopée is operating today. (2024-06-09 · climate-hope, mlp, transportation, wind )

Save congestion pricing! — Fight isn’t won and not lost, more work todo. And thank you for everyone who has already acted to make NYC safer, healthier and more sustainable. (2024-06-09 · activism, climate-hope, mlp, nyc )

A Link Blog in the Year 2024 — Thoughts on starting a link blog in 2024. (2024-06-09 · meta, mlp )

Voynich manuscript - an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown script by an unknown author — I'm going to be honest, I just learned about this using Simon's "fascinate me" prompt to make sure I had `llm` installed correctly. (2024-06-08 · article, cryptography, history, llm, mlp, wikipedia )