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Tag Archives: big-tech
The Netherlands Would Be a Pretty Nice Future
The Washington Post today has a fascinating article about what would seem to be a dull topic: Netherlands Agriculture Technology. It notes that tiny little Holland, with the land area of Maryland and only 17M people, is the second largest … Continue reading
Ukraine v Russia Is a Tech War Like Union v Confederacy
In the 1860s the Europeans watched the American Civil War in horrified fascination. It had been almost 50 years since the Napoleonic Wars, when they had been in a real war with matched combatants. They had been mainly fighting colonial … Continue reading
Launching US Rockets From Soviet Bombers
In the last post I complained about how ugly the Soviet ekranoplans were. I’m glad I can now pass along a story about one of their really beautiful planes – the TU-160 supersonic bomber. It almost got used for doing … Continue reading
Space vs Balloon Tourism
After a long hiatus, space tourism came back this year. The last trip was in 2012 to the ISS, but there have recently been four trips: two sub-orbital flights by Blue Origin in July and October, one by Virgin Galactic … Continue reading
The First Exa-Transistor Computer
That is, the first single system to have more than 1018 transistors, more than a quintillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 . It’s the Fugaku supercomputer in Japan: It’s the world’s fastest machine as of November 2020, as defined by the benchmarks on … Continue reading
The Really Dangerous Tech is Really Old
Here’s an odd thing – the technology that is really dangerous today all comes from the 1950s and earlier. The big inventions of the last 60 years are nowhere near as deadly as the ones from earlier, especially those from … Continue reading
Good News on Backstopping Renewables (3) – Eavor Advanced Geothermal
The last posts were about batteries and pumped-hydro storage, which will be used to handle excess energy from variable renewables. But what happens when there’s no sun or wind for weeks on end? There still needs to be something to … Continue reading
Good News on Backstopping Renewables (2) – Closed-Loop Pumped Hydro
The Ambri batteries mentioned in the last post are fine for storing some energy for a couple of days, but suppose you need a lot of storage for a week or more. That’ll be necessary when all the fossil fuel … Continue reading
Mad Science #6: Nazi Fusion Fraud
I can’t believe I’ve never come across this story. An actual Nazi scientist, Ronald Richter, was working on an actual super-technology, lithium-hydrogen nuclear fusion, in an actual secret lair, the island of Huemul, surrounded by razor wire, machine guns, and … Continue reading
MIT On Climate Change
Every year MIT has a Technology Day on its alumni reunion weekend where faculty discuss what they’re working on. These are consistently interesting, and I’ve written about them before: The Oceans Are Dissolved Information and Print Your House and … Continue reading
A Niche in the Library of Babel 