Deep-learning bird simulator adjusts multiple control surfaces to optimize efficiency and stability.
Here are some youtube videos, or articles that caught my eye - from the New York Times, Consumer Reports, Popular Science etc.
Friday, November 22, 2024
Musician Charged With Music Streaming Fraud Aided By AI and bots
Where can you find songs with names like: "Zygophyceae," "Zygopterous," "Zygotic Washstands," "Zyme Bedewing," "Zymoplastic," and "Zyzomys," written by the artists you love, like: "Calliope Erratum," "Calm Baseball," "Calm Knuckles," "Calms Scorching," "Calorie Event," "Calorie Screams," "Calvinistic Dust," "Camaxtli Minerva," and "Camel Edible."
What a great idea! If you don't have talent in music, just get AI to generate songs, and computer bots to "listen" to the songs billions of times, and you can make millions in royalties! The only downside, and it's just a small one, is that after several years the FBI slams you with multiple counts of fraud and a lifetime in jail.
"Some music distributors and streaming platforms caught wind of Smith's activities a year or two after he started [and] removed Smith's music from its stores... A source close to Spotify confirmed it was the streaming platform that detected the fraud in 2019."
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Brick-laying robot
Interesting robot with proprietary bricks and adhesive/mortar.
But probably cheaper and easier at the building site than this concrete 3-D printer, which 2:59 requires 10 minutes before the next layer is added, and 2 weeks to cure before it can support weight.
Displacing the Panama canal.
If this container-shipping railway were built, 7:25 it's estimated to increase the GDP of the entire country of Mexico by 3-5%.
4:28 the rail would be slower than the Panama canal route, because it necessitates unloading and reloading a ship at each end. However, freight conditions have restricted the number of ships that can pass through Panama canal, leading to 3:30 a bidding war, where ships can bid up to millions of dollars to jump the queue. This makes the shipping railway
Monday, November 18, 2024
Sunday, November 17, 2024
How Singapore is trying to build a climate-proof city.
Singapore is a tiny island-city nation with a high population density, imbuing it all the constraints that encourage development that propels the world towards a carbon-neutral future.
3:11 Singapore installed a massive 45-hectare solar farm on its water reservoir, generating 60 MW of power. (For comparison, the large wind turbines you see are 2MW.) The advantage is two-fold: the underlying water keeps the solar panels cool, optimizing their efficiency, and their presence diminishes evaporation from the reservoir. 8:44 They also claim it improves the water quality of the reservoir.
8:05 The solar panels are tilted at 5 degrees, as a compromise between rain runoff that keeps the panels clean when they're tilted, vs maximizing sun exposure at 0 degrees (Singapore is near the equator.)
10:25 they even have drones to scope out bird poop on the panels.
11:12 Singapore is partnering with Equatic, a US company that is cleverly combining carbon capture with hydrogen fuel generation (CO2 + H2O = NaHCO3 + H2)
Interestingly, 13:35 almost 80% of Singapore's population live in government housing. The latest development 14:05 will have minimal vehicles, autonomous trash collection, and a centralized multi-building solar cooling system.
The city has long been seen as a concrete jungle 20:51, so new developments are designed (and computer-modeled 16:48) to optimize greenery, shade, and wind-flow between buildings in what they call 19:12 "biophilic" design.
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Talhotblond, a dark rabbit-hole of internet catfishing leads to murder
"while "Jessi" was a real person, Thomas had been chatting [online] with her mother, Mary Shieler, catfishing and posing as her daughter online"
Monday, November 11, 2024
Design constraints of piston rings
James, you first introduced me to the concept that high-performance engines are designed to burn through a lot of oil on purpose - a liter every 1600km. I understood in general, but this in-depth analysis goes into great detail about the way a piston ring exerts pressure on the cylinder wall, and how the lower rings are cleverly designed to scrape oil and deposits off the cylinder walls.
You can skip to 3:56 after the discussion of steam-engine piston rings.
6:26 I didn't realize that combustion pressure forces its way behind the inner diameter of a piston ring, pushing the ring against the cylinder wall.
7:39 I also didn't realize that piston rings convey half the heat from the piston to the cylinder wall.
14:23 graphite-steel is stronger, and chrome or other minerals are deposited onto the surface of the piston ring to enhance strength and wear-resistance.
The world's biggest desalination plants shouldn't exist
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Why are street lights turning purple?
The main reason is that the phosphor layer on top of the LED is failing and popping off, causing the blue light to shine through without being converted to white light (see 10:29).
Friday, November 8, 2024
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
How physicists broke the solar efficiency record.
Very interesting description of how to squeeze every last photon of energy out of solar energy.
You may have to read the next sentence twice to really take in the magnitude of it.
20:00 "470 exajoules* of energy reach the Earth's surface every 8 minutes, which is the same amount of energy that the entire world's population uses in a year."
*An exajoule is 10^18 joules, equivalent to 277.8 terawatt hours
Monday, November 4, 2024
Catenary curve in Christopher Wren's tallest building in London
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