From the USA Today.

Renewable electricity powered California 100% for the first time in history

I suppose we should get used to seeing topics like this discussed in the mainstream news. For the record I consider myself pretty well informed on A.I. technology and have tried to keep up with developments since, well, the late 1980s. I have also done some similar circuit design work. I would probably also be considered an A.I. “skeptic” although I consider myself more of a “realist”.

In this story, some Google engineers have some issues with recent claims of using A.I. to build circuits. I’m sure this is a deep, inside baseball argument going on here, but not to be allow to be discuss this publicly is a bit strange. Again, for the record, I think there are many overblown claims for A.I. (self driving cars and IBM Watson, I’m looking at you) but maybe the real problem is that the overblown claims get all the attention.

Another issue with using nuclear power, especially in the western US. I originally saw this in an article about an Arizona nuclear power plant which is behind a paywall. A Google search turns up some numbers. From a UK article.

“A large nuclear power plant may use up to 1 billion gallons of water a day and, for this reason, they are often built next to rivers, lakes or oceans to utilise the bodies of water.”

Nuclear power and its water consumption secrets

Self-assembly? I waited, but it didn’t assemble itself. I finally did all the work. Instructions were easy and didn’t require any tools. I wonder if the Ikea help line gets any calls about this one?

The ads I get on line are usually accurate, sometimes to a scary degree. Recently I’ve had some that were way off target. Always a bit amusing. Had multiple ads for a “pipe cleaner”. Be ready for inspection! I had to click. Must have me confused with someone else.

I have tended to look at crypto from technical and maybe societal angles. This is a very good article about the personal side. Who is involved in crypto and why. I consider it a sort of Ponzi scheme, but after reading this article I think it is more of a sort of lottery. From N+1.

Walk Away Like a Boss

A good read about what major cities in the southwest are doing to conserve water.

A Quiet Revolution: Southwest Cities Learn to Thrive Amid Drought

A good read from The Guardian (UK).

The Lost Jews of Nigeria

Lots being written about this, most of it missing the point. In the short term, a single, very wealthy person controls one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. What can you do with this sort of platform? In the short term, promote your brand(s). Get people to buy more Tesla’s. But perhaps he has political ambitions. Can Twitter sway any election, anywhere in the world? Probably. So imagine your favorite (of least favorite) politician owning Twitter. Afraid yet?

And this talk of opening up the algorithm is a distraction. What I would want to see is the data. Who is getting what postings, and who is paying for special access (advertisements pretending to be postings).

What can be done? I dunno. Someone built a bomb, now you have to defuse it. Get rid of all anonymous and robot accounts? Flag paid content as advertisements? Apply laws for libel, slander, terroristic threats, etc. to postings. Basically arrest people who make threats to other people on line, as would happen in real life, on the phone or through the mails. Provide data on content accuracy. Flat earth people won’t get their message out, but is that really a problem? It will cut into Twitter traffic and revenues, though. Lastly, treat it like we have treated other public communication infrastructures, i.e. telephones, television, and regulate it. Make them do some or all of the things above.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is planning large scale solar on federal lands. For scale, the US had about a million megaWatts of generation capacity, or about 1,000 gigaWatts (GW), so this is significant.

US rolls out plan to green-light close to 30GW of solar plant on federal lands