Monday, January 6, 2025

Trudeau Resigns—CNN's Scott Jennings: "God Bless The Canadian Truckers"

 Huh.

Although we had quite a few posts on the Canadian truckers, starting on January 11, 2022 we were looking at it through a logistics lens, though there were already signs of the socio-political import:

However,  by February 18 (four days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine) we had posted: Short of War, What Just Happened In Canada May Be The Biggest Story Of The Covid Era

When we started posting on the vaccine mandate and the trucker's protest (January 11) it was to focus on the logistical angle of cross-border commerce. On January 13 that was still the focus:
This seems like a pretty important story, what with Canada being the largest trading partner of the U.S. and all but it doesn't appear that anyone cares....
 
But by January 24 the entire dynamic had changed: this was now a socio-political story:

Ummmm....Something's Up: Canadian Trucker's Convoy Being Greeted As Heroes

If this is the Zeitgeist, governments are going to fall....

....Saturday's "1000 Canadian Trucks On The Way To Ottawa To Protest The Cross-Border Vaccine Mandate" is going to prove to be a low estimate of the numbers. The trucks are coming from New Brunswick in the east to Vancouver in the west and Yellowknife up in the Northwest Territories. And the people are cheering them on.This might be one of the preference cascades we were posting on in early November.

Even though we had been following the story closer than many folks, at that point we really had no idea how big and how important the the unfolding events were. 

Here's Izabella Kaminska at The Blind Spot, February 18 (also on blogroll at right) with more of just how critical it is for people to understand what is going on....

And May 15 2022,  Let The Lawsuits Commence: Canadian Judge Rules Trucker Protests Were Peaceful and Legal
A seemingly big deal that is not getting a lot of any mass media coverage.
I only just heard of this month-old ruling thanks to a friend. 

In January 2024 we saw:

Le Petit Roi, Justin Trudeau, Slapped Down By Federal Court Over Actions He Took Against Truckers (plus Izabella Kaminska stops by)

The sick glee exhibited by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland as they ordered banks to freeze citizen's bank accounts was as sick as anything you are likely to see in a purported Democracy.
(hence the Short of War post)

God bless the Canadian truckers!

at

"'Not Necessarily Super Excited About This': Klarna's CEO Says AI Can Take Over All Jobs, Including His Own"

From Entrepreneur, January 6:

Klarna used an AI clone of the CEO to report its financial results in December. 

  • Sebastian Siemiatkowski is the CEO of Klarna, a "buy now, pay later" company worth around $14.6 billion.
  • He explained why he thinks AI can replace all jobs, even that of a CEO.
  • Siemiatkowski wrote in a Sunday post on X that AI is currently capable of replacing jobs, even though it needs more research and development to achieve this. 

....MUCH MORE

Most recently on Klarna:
at

"US port labor talks resume with spotlight on automation"

From Reuters via MSN, January 6:

Contract talks covering 45,000 dockworkers on the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are set to restart on Tuesday in a labor dispute that will help set the pace of automation at ports stretching from Maine to Texas.

The International Longshoremen's Association wants to eliminate past labor contract concessions on automation - notably the use of semi-automated cranes that stack containers on docks - arguing they pose a threat to jobs.

The United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group, meanwhile, argues those rail-mounted gantry cranes are key to remaining competitive as ports, most notably in China, lead the way on automation.

If the two sides do not reach a deal by Jan. 15, workers at container ports that handle more than half of U.S. ocean imports could start a strike just days before President-elect Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

A three-day strike by the ILA last October triggered a spike in shipping prices and cargo backlogs at the 36 affected ports.

The union and employers, which have issued dueling statements in recent weeks, did not comment separately for this article.

PAST REGRETS

Nearly two decades ago, port employers convinced an earlier group of ILA leaders that using semi-automated cranes at what is now known as Norfolk International Terminals would eventually help create thousands of new jobs, the union said.

Those cranes replaced equipment like specialized human-operated forklifts known as top loaders, and have been introduced at a handful of other U.S. port terminals since.

The cranes can handle bigger container stacks than traditional equipment, expanding capacity on the dock, and can work overnight arranging containers for pickup the next day, with little human involvement. Placing containers on the trailers of trucks waiting to whisk them away is still handled by joystick-wielding human operators.

"What seemed like a win for one port turned out to be the project that is becoming the model for automation that could potentially chip away at many jobs at almost every other terminal along the East and Gulf Coasts," Dennis Daggett, the ILA's executive vice president, said in December.

Union President Harold Daggett, Dennis Daggett's father, has called for "absolute airtight" contract language stating that there will be no automation or semi-automation at port terminals....

....MUCH MORE

Previously:

December 9 - Shipping: American Ports Are Stuck In The Stone Age

December 8 - Shipping Stocks: "Maersk Sell Ratings Stack Up as Oversupply Concerns Mount" (Plus: The Dockworkers Are Preparing To Cripple The U.S. Economy Over Automation)

If you are going into hunker-down mode ahead of the resumption of the strike the first affected products will be automobiles, beef and bananas:

The U.S. Bananapocalypse Is Nigh

The Longshoreman's Strike As An Example Of Greedflation (ILA)
I am all for private sector unions and have written favorably about them* but this guy leading the longshoreman union sounds a bit whack....

And back in 2018:
"Where can you get paid $466K a year to wash trucks? Special deals, union clout at N.J. port"

December 13 - President-Elect Trump Appears To Align With The Longshoremen In The Possible January Strike Over Automating U.S. Ports

Here's the President of the International Longshoreman's Association stating flat-out that he will cripple the U.S. economy (beginning at 15:06): 


December 14 - Dockworkers - "A MESSAGE FROM ILA INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT DENNIS A. DAGGETT"

Lifted in toto from the International Longshoreman's Association's ILA Education/History Facebook page, December 13:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I had the honor of meeting with President-elect Donald Trump yesterday, and I want to share an experience I never imagined in my wildest dreams. Throughout my career, I’ve never seen a politician—let alone the President of the United States—truly understand the importance of the work our members do every single day. But yesterday, President-elect Trump not only demonstrated that understanding but also showed the utmost respect for the hard work, sacrifices, and dedication of our membership....

....MUCH MORE

at

Europe's Largest Supervolcano Is Stirring

It has been slowly waking from a four-hundred year slumber for the last eight or nine years.

The last known major eruption was in September - October 1538.

From Il Mattino (Naples), December 22:

Two Earthquakes Felt in Campi Flegrei on December 22, 2024

Two close earthquakes were felt this evening, Sunday, December 22, 2024, in Campi Flegrei. The tremors were felt by the population at 9:56 PM. Many people wrote in neighborhood Facebook groups and in the Flegrean area about having felt the tremors. Reports on social media come from Naples, Quarto, Agnano, and Pozzuoli. Some say they also heard a roar. According to the Vesuvian Observatory's website, the tremors were recorded by seismographs 20 seconds apart....

....MUCH MORE

And from Il Mattino, January 4:

Tremors Shake Campi Flegrei

The earth still trembles at the Campi Flegrei with a magnitude 2.0 quake felt at 5:21 PM. The tremor was recorded with particular intensity by detectors positioned inside the Solfatara. The initial location is in the Gulf of Pozzuoli, in the sea in front of Via Napoli...

....MORE

Previously on Campi Flegrei aka The Phlegraean Fields:

August 2012 -  Risk: Supervolcano Near Pompeii Could Have Globally Catastrophic Effects

December 2016 - "Europe's Most Dangerous Supervolcano Is Reawakening Just In Time For Christmas"
As Grandmother used to say, "If it's not one tham ding it's another."
She would have made a good risk manager....

November 2018 - Deadly European supervolcano could be rumbling towards a colossal eruption – study
Following up on yesterday's "Why 536 was ‘the worst year' to be alive".

October 12, 2023 - "Italy plans for mass evacuation as quakes continue around supervolcano"
I know that sometimes it seems to be all bad news on the blog but it's not really. For example, a few takeaways from this piece:

1) most of the time when supervolcanoes experience seismic activity there is no civilization-destroying eruption.

2) should the worst happen, the surviving woodland creatures will benefit from the re-wilding of previously urban areas.

3) It is not as if the volcano is going to go off tomorrow.

at

Capital Markets: "Dollar Pares Last Week's Gains but Yen Weakness Persists"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

Overview: After rallying last week, the US dollar pulled back today, though is mostly consolidating within the range set last Thursday and Friday. The Japanese yen is the exception among the G10 currencies and is heavier against the greenback despite Bank of Japan Governor Ueda's reiteration of plans to raise rates if the economy and prices evolve as expected. Among emerging market currencies, central European currencies are leading the way higher. A few Asia Pacific currencies are trading heavier, including the Chinese yuan and Indian rupee.

Most of the large equity markets in Asia Pacific region were lower, but Taiwan and South Korean markets were notable exceptions with 2.8% and 1.9% gains, respectively. The Nikkei lost about 1.5%, while China's CSI 300 settled slightly lower. Australia and New Zealand equities eked out a small gain. Europe's Stoxx 600 is slightly firmer after losing nearly 0.5% before the weekend. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ futures are around 0.70% higher and the S&P 500 futures are up nearly 0.50%. Gold trading at a two-and-a-half week high (~$2665.3) ahead of the weekend but is trading heavier today to approach the January 2 low near $2621. Trendline support is around $2600. February WTI rally 4.75% last week to $74.25, its best level since early October. It made a marginal new high today but is consolidating and straddling the $75 area.

USD: The US dollar is trading heavily today as some of last week's gains are pared. The week's highlight is the employment report on Friday. The median forecast in Bloomberg's survey is around 160k. As Fed Chair Powell acknowledged that officials recognize that jobs growth has been overstated. Benchmark revision could reduce the average monthly rise by as much as 100k, according to some projections. The FOMC minutes due Wednesday may shed some light on what appears to have been the Fed's pivot back to emphasizing its price stability mandate. A poor employment report may challenge that. The final services and composite PMI will draw little attention, and the final reading of durable goods may see the 1.1% drop pared. The Dollar Index is within the January 2 range (~108.25-109.55) Treasury kicks off the year with the $119 bln sale of coupons with $58 bln in three-year notes today and $156 bln in bills. 

EURO....

....MUCH MORE

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"Nvidia-Partner Hon Hai’s Shares Climb After AI Spurs Sales Beat" (2354.TW; NVDA; TSLA)

Also known as Foxconn.

From Bloomberg, January 5:

  • Company sees significant sales growth for the first quarter
  • December revenue advances 42% on strong AI server sales

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. reported faster-than-expected 15% revenue growth after the server assembly partner to Nvidia Corp. rode sustained demand for AI infrastructure.

Hon Hai, also the world’s largest maker of Apple Inc. iPhones, reported NT$2.13 trillion ($64.6 billion) of revenue for the past three months. December revenue rose 42%, helping the company known as Foxconn beat analyst expectations. It also forecast “significant” sales growth for the first quarter, helping its shares rise as much as 3.6% in Taipei, their biggest intraday gain in about two weeks.

The company and other Taiwan AI hardware suppliers have enjoyed a boost from massive spending on servers for data centers by the biggest US tech firms like Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But the lack of a compelling use case for AI so far has been making investors nervous about when the expansion might slow.

Read more: Nvidia Partners Hon Hai, Quanta See Strong AI Demand Into 2025

Goldman Sachs analysts revised up their 2024 earnings estimate by 1% based on higher-than-expected December revenue. They also raised revenue estimates for this year and the following two years, citing higher AI server revenue....

....MUCH MORE

Man, it seem like it was just yesterday that every AAPL analyst was tracking Foxconn and Foxconn's suppliers as they tried to get a penny closer to what Apple was going to report.

And the NGOs publishing stories about the suicides at Foxconn, when in fact the per capita suicide rates were lower than those in the NGOs home countries. It was all just a smear, probably orchestrated by some big money pulling the strings on their dancing monkeys/useful idiot pressure groups and bloggers.

You can see the same thing happening now with Tesla, interesting phenomena.

From November 2012's from "What May Happen When the Foxconn Robots Become Self-Aware":

In 2010 when 18 Foxconn employees attempted suicide and 14 succeeded there was a worldwide outcry.
This outcry stemmed from a number of factors including an ignorance of statistics and a profound ignorance of suicide in human populations.

At the time Foxconn had 930,000 employees (now 1.2mil.) resulting in a suicide rate of 0.001505376% or 1.505 per 100,000.* According to the all-knowing one, Wikipedia, the rate for China as a whole was 22.23 per 100,000.

The Foxconn rate was lower than that of 99 countries including every country in Europe, the U.S. (12.0) and the rest of the G20.

As a general rule, if you aren't feeling too chipper stay out of Eastern Europe and the Western U.S.

*Half of the workforce is in the gigantic Shenzhen complex of facilities. 14/450,000 only gets you to 3.1 per 100,000 or about the rate of Malta and less than a third of the worldwide rate of 10.07 per 100K.

Interesting phenomena. 

If one is so inclined, dig up the "$TSLAQ" cashtag tweeters on Twitter starting in 2014/2015.

The "Q" is the letter appended to a symbol for an issue in bankruptcy.

You clever, clever boys.

In January 2015 Tesla was trading at a split-adjusted $13-or so (already up ten-fold from the IPO), Today in very early pre-market action the stock is up $6.69 (+1.63%) at $417.13.

The $TSLAQ gang cost their followers hundreds of billions of dollars in potential profits if the followers stayed away and tens of billions in real losses if the followers shorted the stock.

And probably a few suicides too.

No one knows for sure how Tesla will work out, not even Mr. Musk. Here's the introduction to April 2024's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":

In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.

Below are the words that are adding billions ($50+) to the company's valuation. 

Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one.

With that, here are the thoughts of the cultural observer Sting in his seminal work "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" as the conclusion of this intro:

"....Poets priests and politicians 
Have words to thank for their positions 
Words that scream for your submission 
And no-one's jamming their transmission...."

at

"Chinese exchanges ask big fund managers to restrict stock selling, sources say"

A Reuters exclusive, January 6:

China's main stock exchanges asked some large mutual funds to restrict stock selling at the start of the year, three sources familiar with the matter said, as authorities sought to calm markets heading into a tricky period for the world's second-largest economy.

At least four large mutual funds received calls from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2 and 3, asking them to buy more stocks than they sold each day.
 
The guidance came as Chinese stocks kicked off 2025 with deep losses on worries that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump would impose hefty tariffs on Chinese goods, heaping more pressure on an already sluggish economy.
 
Those funds could sell stocks, but if total selling values exceeded purchases, they would need to add more positions soon to fill the gap, as per guidance from the exchanges, one source said.
 
"Such guidance has a tendency to become regular," the source added, noting similar requests made around the start of last year.
 
The sources were not directly contacted by the exchanges but are aware of the discussions. They declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
 
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
 
China's blue-chip CSI 300 Index slumped 2.9% on the first trading day of 2025 -- its worst New Year start since 2016. The benchmark lost more than 5% last week....
....MUCH MORE
 
The CSI 300 index is down 6.20 (-0.16%) today, 3,768.97 last.
Possibly also of interest, December 29:

The Shanghai-Shenzhen CSI 300 Stock Index Looks Manipulated 
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Sunday, January 5, 2025

Artificial Intelligence And The Emerging “Intention Economy”

From Cambridge University via SciTechDaily, January 3:

AI Could Predict and Sell Your Desires Before You Know Them

AI assistants may soon predict and influence our decisions at an early stage, selling these “intentions” to companies in real time, creating an “Intention Economy,” say Cambridge ethicists. These tools, leveraging vast behavioral data and persuasive AI, could manipulate human plans for profit, raising concerns about ethics, privacy, and societal impact, especially on elections, media, and markets.

The emerging “Intention Economy” leverages AI to forecast and influence decisions, commodifying human motivations. Cambridge researchers warn of ethical risks, including manipulation and threats to democracy, urging regulation to prevent misuse.

AI assistants may soon play a pivotal role in predicting and shaping our decisions at an early stage, selling these emerging “intentions” in real-time to companies ready to fulfill our needs—sometimes even before we consciously make up our minds.

This concept, known as the “Intention Economy,” is highlighted by AI ethicists at the University of Cambridge. They warn of a burgeoning and potentially unsettling marketplace where digital signals of intent—ranging from purchasing movie tickets to casting votes—become highly lucrative.

Experts from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) suggest that the rapid growth of generative AI and our increasing reliance on chatbots mark the beginning of a new era of “persuasive technologies.” These developments, they note, align with recent strategic moves by major tech companies, hinting at the growing potential of this emerging field.

“Anthropomorphic” AI agents, from chatbot assistants to digital tutors and girlfriends, will have access to vast quantities of intimate psychological and behavioral data, often gleaned via informal, conversational spoken dialogue.

This AI will combine knowledge of our online habits with an uncanny ability to attune to us in ways we find comforting – mimicking personalities and anticipating desired responses – to build levels of trust and understanding that allow for social manipulation on an industrial scale, say researchers.

Ethical Concerns About AI Manipulation

“Tremendous resources are being expended to position AI assistants in every area of life, which should raise the question of whose interests and purposes these so-called assistants are designed to serve,” said LCFI Visiting Scholar Dr. Yaqub Chaudhary....

....MUCH MORE

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Saturday, January 4, 2025

"The Palestinian Authority Takes on Hamas Militants in West Bank Power Struggle"

Although probably not returning to the power struggle/civil war of 2006 - 2007 in Gaza, the remaining Hamas leadership has to be a bit concerned they are about to lose all power and any remaining popular support in Gaza, much less in the West Bank.*

From the Wall Street Journal, January 2:

Weeks of deadly fighting have marked the most serious clashes between Palestinian factions in years 

Palestinian Authority security forces are battling militants from Hamas and its allies in the occupied West Bank, in a fight that has the potential to shape the long-running struggle for the leadership of the Palestinian cause.

The struggle between Palestinian factions gained new urgency as the Israeli military battered Hamas in Gaza over the past 15 months, leaving a leadership vacuum in the territory. The PA has support in the West, while the militant groups are backed by Iran and deeply rooted in Palestinian society.

The Biden administration and others see the PA as the best alternative for running Gaza after the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted the idea, saying the PA is anti-Israel at its core.

The PA has governed major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank since the 1990s under agreements with Israel. Showing it can take on militants there could bolster its case to run Gaza.

The clashes pit PA security forces against militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied group. The fighting, which erupted in December, is the most fierce since Fatah, the Palestinian faction that largely controls the PA, engaged in a 2007 battle with Hamas in Gaza, analysts said. Fatah ultimately lost that fight, leading to Hamas’s control of the enclave.

The current fighting has taken place in the Jenin Refugee Camp, which has long been seen by Palestinians as a center of resistance against Israel and by Israel as a stronghold for militants conducting terrorist attacks. The fighting has led to at least 11 deaths and dozens of arrests, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

Clashes began on Dec. 5 after militants stole two pickup trucks belonging to Palestinian security forces. The black-clad and masked militants paraded the vehicles through the camp’s narrow streets bedecked with flags belonging to various Islamist militant groups. PA security forces surrounded the camp that night and began the crackdown.

Security forces have so far killed at least six inside the camp, arrested dozens of suspected militants and defused dozens of improvised explosive devices and booby-trapped cars, said Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the spokesman for the PA’s security forces.

One of those killed was Yazid Ja’saysa, a commander in the Jenin Battalion, a PIJ affiliate and the city’s most prominent militant group. The militants, meanwhile, have killed at least five members of the security forces, according to Rajab. 

“The goal of this operation is to restore control of the Jenin Camp from the control of outlaws, who have embittered the daily lives of citizens,” Rajab said while announcing the operation on Dec. 14....

*Fatah (Palestinian Authority) December 30, New York Post:

Palestinian leader predicts Trump will ‘destroy’ Iran and pulverize Hamas

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"Tensions Escalate After Pakistan Pounds Afghanistan With Airstrikes"

From the New York Times, January 1:

Pakistani leaders were once friends of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now, cross-border violence has become alarmingly frequent.

Airstrikes by Pakistani warplanes inside Afghanistan have intensified tensions in recent days in an already volatile region. Once-close ties between Pakistan’s leaders and the Afghan Taliban have frayed, and violent cross-border exchanges have become alarmingly frequent.

Officially, the Pakistani government has been tight-lipped about the strikes in Afghanistan on Dec. 24. But security officials privately said that the Pakistani military had targeted hide-outs of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group also known as the T.T.P. or the Pakistani Taliban that has carried out a series of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.

The security officials said that several top militants from the Pakistani Taliban had died in the airstrikes, which came days after 16 Pakistani military personnel were ambushed and killed in a border district.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan said that dozens of civilians had died in the strikes, including Pakistani refugee families. The group condemned the strikes as a blatant violation of Afghan sovereignty, and said it had retaliated by conducting attacks on “several points” inside Pakistan.

Officials in Pakistan have not officially commented on those attacks. But they reported that they had thwarted a cross-border incursion by militants they said had been facilitated by the Taliban authorities.

The airstrikes were the Pakistani military’s third major operation on Afghan soil since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, and the second in the past year alone....

....MUCH MORE

January 7, 2024
"Afghan Taliban Leaders Silent After Reports Of Secret Visit To North Korea By Official Taliban Delegation Seeking Nuclear Weapons"
 
Tough neighborhood:
 
https://geology.com/world/pakistan-map.gif
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"How George Soros became ‘Enemy Number 1’ for India’s Modi"

Mr. Soros, along with Bill Nye the Science Guy, Anna Wintour, Bono and fifteen other recipients was awarded the American "Presidential Medal of Freedom" by President Biden on Saturday.

From Al Jazeera, December 26:

The ruling BJP has accused the billionaire of financing opposition-championed initiatives critical of Modi that it claims are aimed at destabilising India. 

New Delhi, India — As India’s Parliament convened for its winter session in late November, the world’s largest democracy braced for heated exchanges between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition, led by the Congress party.

The northeastern state of Manipur is still burning, after more than a year of ethnic clashes that critics have accused the local BJP government of exacerbating; the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed down; and one of India’s richest men, Gautam Adani, is at the centre of a corruption indictment in the United States.

But on a cold and grey day in mid-December, BJP leaders marched through Parliament premises holding placards aimed at pushing back against opposition criticism by linking the Congress to an unlikely villain in their eyes: George Soros.

Since early 2023, the Hungarian-American financier-philanthropist has emerged as a central target of the BJP’s rhetoric, which accuses Soros of sponsoring the country’s opposition and backing other Modi critics with the intent of destabilising India. Those accusations sharpened ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections in which the Hindu majoritarian BJP lost its majority for the first time in a decade, though it still secured enough seats to cobble together a coalition government.

But the campaign has reached fever pitch in recent days, with the BJP even accusing the US Department of State of colluding with Soros to undermine Modi.

In a series of posts on December 5, the BJP posted on X that the Congress leaders, including Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, used the work of a group of investigative journalists — funded in part by Soros’s foundation and the State Department — to target the Modi government on questions related to the economy, security, and democracy.

The BJP cited an article by French media outlet Mediapart claiming that Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the State Department funded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Then, it drew attention to the OCCRP’s exposes on the alleged use of Pegasus spyware by the Modi government, investigations into the Adani group’s activity, and reports on declining religious freedom in India to suggest that Soros and the Biden administration were in effect behind this coverage.

“The deep state had a clear objective to destabilise India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” a BJP spokesperson said at a news conference, adding that “it has always been the US State Department behind this agenda [and] OCCRP has served as a media tool for carrying out a deep state agenda”.... 

....MUCH MORE

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The FT's Martin Wolf's New Book: "The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism"

From the New York Review of Books, January 16, 2025 edition:

‘Never Too Much’ 
If globalization has allowed elites to remove themselves from democratic accountability and regulation, is there any path toward a just economy? 

Something has gone terribly wrong. In his 2004 book Why Globalization Works, the economics journalist Martin Wolf wrote that “liberal democracy is the only political and economic system capable of generating sustained prosperity and political stability.” He was articulating the elite consensus of the time, a belief that liberal democratic capitalism was not only a coherent form of social organization but in fact the best one, as demonstrated by the West’s victory in the cold war. He went on to argue that critics who “complain that markets encourage immorality and have socially immoral consequences, not least gross inequality,” were “largely mistaken,” and he concluded that a market economy was the only means for “giving individual human beings the opportunity to seek what they desire in life.”

Wolf wrote those words midway through a four-decade global expansion of markets. Throughout the 1980s in Britain, the United States, and France, governments led by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and François Mitterrand set about privatizing public assets and services, cutting welfare state provisions, and deregulating markets. At the same time, a set of ten policies known as the “Washington Consensus” (because they were shared by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the US Treasury) brought privatization, liberalization, and globalization to Latin America following a series of sovereign debt crises. In the 1990s a similar set of policies, then known as “shock therapy,” suddenly converted the formerly Communist economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to free markets. Around the Global South, and especially in the rapidly industrializing countries of East Asia after the 1997 financial crisis, “structural adjustment” policies that were conditions for IMF bailouts again brought liberalization, privatization, and fiscal discipline. The same policies were enforced on the European periphery after 2009, in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, again, either as conditions for bailouts or through EU fiscal restrictions and restrictive European Central Bank policy. Today there are far more markets in far more aspects of human life than ever before.

But the sustained prosperity and political stability that these policies were meant to create have proved elusive. The global economy since the 1980s has been riven by repeated financial crises. Latin America endured a “lost decade” of economic growth. The 1990s in Russia were worse than the Great Depression had been in Germany and the United States. The austerity and high-interest-rate policies after the 1997 East Asia crisis restored financial stability but at the cost of domestic recessions, and contributed to political instability and the repudiation of incumbent parties in Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea, as they did again across Europe after 2009–2010. Global economic growth rates in the era of globalization have been about half what they were in the less globalized postwar decades. Around the world, violent racist demagogues keep winning elections, and although they all seem very happy with the idea of private property, they are openly hostile to the rule of law, political liberalism, individual freedom, and other ostensible preconditions and cultural accompaniments to market economies. Both democracy and globalization seem to be in retreat in practice as well as in ideological popularity. Or, as Wolf writes in his new book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism:

Our economy has destabilized our politics and vice versa. We are no longer able to combine the operations of the market economy with stable liberal democracy. A big part of the reason for this is that the economy is not delivering the security and widely shared prosperity expected by large parts of our societies. One symptom of this disappointment is a widespread loss of confidence in elites.

What happened?

Martin Wolf is probably the most influential economics commentator in the English-speaking world. He has been chief editorial writer for the Financial Times since 1987 and their lead economics analyst since 1996. Before that he trained in economics at Oxford and worked at the World Bank starting in 1971, including three years as senior economist and a year spent working on the first World Development Report in 1978. This is his fifth book since moving to the Financial Times. The blurbs and acknowledgments are stuffed with central bankers, financiers, Nobel laureates, and celebrity academics. The bibliography contains ninety-six references to the author himself....

....MUCH MORE

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"The largest hydroelectric dam in the world has been approved"

From New Atlas, January 4:

China has approved what is set to become the biggest hydropower dam complex in the world, capable of producing nearly three times as much power as the current record-holder, the Three Gorges Dam.  

The project is slated to be built on the Yarlung Zangbo River in Tibet near the border of India at a cost of US$137 billion. It's part of China's 14th "Five-Year Plan," which includes environmental goals to accelerate renewable energy and fight pollution. The location of the proposed dam looks to take advantage of the river's steep geography to harness more hydropower than ever before: 300 billion kilowatt-hours per year. 

That translates to 300 TWh, enough to serve as many as 300 million people in China.

The Three Gorges Dam, spanning the Yangtze River in China, currently holds the world title for installed capacity and annual hydroelectricity generation, producing between 95 and 112 TWh every year. If completed, the proposed Yarlung Tsangpo Hydroelectric Project will eclipse the Three Gorges Dam production by nearly three times.

For a sense of scale, the largest hydroelectric power plant in the US is the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. It's one of the largest concrete structures in the world and produces about 20 TWh per year....

....MUCH MORE

In the introduction to 2019's "Is China’s plan to use a nuclear bomb detonator to release shale gas in earthquake-prone Sichuan crazy or brilliant?" I mentioned:

After the Three Gorges Dam was completed some very serious problems emerged, I mean beyond the environmental degradation and the slowing of the earth's rotation, some straight-up engineering concerns: shifting, cracking, earthquakes etc.
The civil engineers went to a very famous Chinese engineering Professor in search of solutions.
The first thing he told them was: "You are dealing with powerful forces, almost beyond human comprehension."
I met him at his daughter's home, classic little old Chinese gentleman, pants pulled up to his armpits,  where he was singing, in German. It was a bit surreal....

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"Dubai Unlocked": Money Laundering and Real Estate In the UAE

A bedrock rule for financial intermediaries, contractors, parasites, and courtiers is "go to where the money is." 

A series of articles from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, May 14, 2024: 

From its humble days as desert tradepost to its current status as a global financial hub, Dubai has long served as a crossroads for commerce.

But it's not just financiers and footballers who are rubbing shoulders in the city’s glitzy skyscrapers and villa communities today.

Dubai has also become a meeting point for men and women from around the globe who have been accused of criminality and corruption.

With a reputation for financial secrecy, low taxes, and an ever-expanding spread of valuable real estate, the city is an appealing option for those looking to launder or hide cash.

Thanks to a new leak of property records, reporters have identified scores of individuals from around the world who own property in Dubai, and whose holdings we believe to be in the public interest to reveal.

They include alleged money launderers and drug lords, political figures accused of corruption and their associates, and businessmen sanctioned for financing terrorism, among others.

Dubai Unlocked, an investigative project involving more than 70 media outlets around the globe, is the most up-to-date look yet at who owns what in the Middle Eastern city....

....MUCH MORE, scroll through

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Friday, January 3, 2025

"Jensen Huang Wants to Make AI the New World Infrastructure" (NVDA)

This sovereign AI you speak of, I have heard of it.  

I have heard wondrous tales of immense wealth,

Of amazing deeds performed as if by magic.
Yes I have heard of all of this...*

From Wired, December 3:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a plan to bring AI infrastructure to countries around the world, and he’s pitching it in person.

In a world where people are increasingly doubting the potential of AI, you can count on Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, to be the last one hyping up how AI will be the fundamental force that changes society.

Talking to WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode at The Big Interview event on Tuesday in San Francisco, Huang called the trend of AI “a reset of computing as we know of [it] over the last 60 years.” The force of AI is, he said, “so incredible, it’s not as if you can compete against it. You are either on this wave, or you missed that wave.”

That means, Jensen said, “people are starting to realize that AI is like the energy and communications infrastructure—and now there’s going to be a digital intelligence infrastructure.”

The task for Huang now, however, is whether he can get others, especially governments around the world, to agree on his vision.

Huang was the only interviewee at the event who phoned in from outside the country. He was in Thailand, where Huang said he lived for five years as a kid and where, just today, he met with Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand’s prime minister to talk about building “world-class AI infrastructure” in the country together.

It’s the latest stop of Huang’s whirlwind tour this year to pitch governments on the idea that they should forge their individual paths to the future by building their own AI infrastructure, processing their own national data, having their own AI systems, and, obviously, buying Nvidia chips for that purpose.

The pitch seems to have worked pretty well. Thailand is the new addition to a list of at least 10 countries, according to data compiled by Sherwood News, that have signed up for AI infrastructure projects with Nvidia. Huang himself said during the interview that he was in Denmark, Japan, Indonesia, and India this year; the countries all decided to build their own national AI systems—using Nvidia chips.

The success of Huang’s pitch to global governments reflects both a fundamental recognition of the potential of AI systems and an increasingly splintering internet where geographical boundaries are being rebuilt online. AI is the latest tech product where the invisible flow of chips and data are being obstructed by nation-state borders....

....MUCH MORE
*Previously: 
December 2023 - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says AI to See ‘Major Second Wave (NVDA)
February 2024 -  "Nvidia chief sees rise of ‘sovereign AI’ infrastructure across nations, driving demand for company’s advanced chips"
March 2024 - Here's Nvidia's "Sovereign AI" Pitch (NVDA)

.... This is terrible. I now have Jensen Huang speaking in Dr. Martin Luther King's cadences as he repurposes the penultimate paragraph of "I have a Dream":

Let AI ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let AI ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let AI ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let AI ring. 

I may have to go lie down.

March 2024 -...Every, town, every village, every hamlet, every wide spot in the road, should have their own (NVDA-powered) supercomputer. 

May 2024 - NVIDIA Earnings Call And Transcript Q1 2025 - May 22, 2024 (NVDA)
....One out-the-door note, Nvidia has basically created a brand-new multi-billion dollar business:

October 2024 - "Parlez-vous AI? Francophone scholars warn against English language dominating AI"  

November 2024 - Singapore: "Chinese Group Accused of Hacking Singtel in Telecom Attacks"

....Our last couple mentions of Singtel were in reference to Nvidia's roll-out of the Blackwell chip for their sovereign AI program:

....Nvidia said AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will be among early cloud service providers to offer Blackwell instances, as will Applied Digital, CoreWeave, Crusoe, IBM Cloud and Lambda. Sovereign AI clouds will also provide Blackwell-based cloud services and infrastructure, including Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Nebius, Nexgen Cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, Oracle US, UK, and Australian Government Clouds, Scaleway, Singtel, Northern Data Group’s Taiga Cloud, Yotta Data Services’ Shakti Cloud and YTL Power International.

— "Nvidia CEO Becomes Kingmaker by Name-Dropping Stocks" (NVDA+++++++)

...For example, Japan plans to invest more than $740 million in key digital infrastructure providers, including KDDI, Sakura Internet, and SoftBank to build out the nation's Sovereign AI infrastructure. France-based, Scaleway, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group, is building Europe's most powerful cloud native AI supercomputer. In Italy, Swisscom Group will build the nation's first and most powerful NVIDIA DGX-powered supercomputer to develop the first LLM natively trained in the Italian language. And in Singapore, the National Supercomputer Center is getting upgraded with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, while Singtel is building NVIDIA's accelerated AI factories across Southeast Asia.

December 2024 - Canada commits $1.4B to sovereign compute infrastructure as it joins the AI arms race

Jensen Huang smiles.

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"If You Meet ET in Space, Kill Him"

But what of the Buddha?

From Nautil.us, October 3, 2024:

Should an alien species resist, we will have discovered life.

If we ever contact extraterrestrials, we’ll have to find a way to understand them. Who are they? What are their intentions? What have they discovered that we haven’t? Olaf Witkowski thinks the only way to begin that dialogue is to try and kill them.

Clearly, there are going to be major differences between us and them. Biological, technological, and cultural gaps are likely to be as wide as interstellar space itself. “The only way to communicate with a creature that is very different from you, and you can make no assumptions at all about how they encode language or meaning, is just killing them,” Witkowski says.

He argues that the only universal basis of communication, the sole feature that all life shares, whatever its form—because it is built into the very definition of life—is that life wants to live. It strives to maintain itself, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t survive the depredations of the world.

Living entities have to be “replicating or maintaining themselves in a homeostatic loop,” Witkowski says. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t be there.” They will be experts at detecting threats to survival. “So, you try to hurt them. Then they will understand.”

Witkowski hasn’t worked out how threatening ET would open a door to communication rather than shut it rather firmly. In Stanislaw Lem’s final novel, Fiasco, humans (spoiler alert) send a ship to contact aliens on a distant planet and, when they don’t respond to radio messages, attack. That does get the aliens to answer, but the consequences are evident from the book title.

The only universal basis of communication,
the sole feature that all life shares,
is that life wants to live.

Still, in Witkowski’s scenario, ET’s instinct to survive tells us it’s a form of life, something we share. Perhaps, then, we could turn around and help it survive. “Now we can start from something they value,” Witkowski says. “So they will hear us.” And that could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

A soft-spoken researcher on artificial life and intelligence, Witkowski is an unlikely advocate for a warmongering view of interstellar interchange. He is monk-like in his serenity and once considered taking his vows. “I even joined some religious communities as a teenager and have sometimes considered a monastic life,” he says.

Born to a Vietnamese mother and Polish father, growing up in Belgium, studying in Spain, now living in Japan, Witkowski speaks six languages fluently and can get by in another six. For his dissertation, he analyzed how communication enables cooperation among AIs or other cognitive systems. Yet despite his linguistic superpowers, Witkowski feels that communication is such a fraught act, presupposing a background of shared knowledge and motivations, that we might scarcely even recognize a message from beyond Earth, let alone decipher it. Humans can often barely communicate among themselves.

Pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence recognized the challenge, but many assumed that mathematics and physics could serve as a cosmic lingua franca. Our radio signals or laser pulses might tap out a sequence of prime numbers, for example—a prime on Earth is a prime on Alpha Centauri Ca—and build up from there.

In 1966, Carl Sagan wrote about the tests of this principle which he and Frank Drake had conducted. Once he gave a sample message to eminent scientists at a party in Cambridge, Mass., and asked them to figure it out. They couldn’t. (He does not mention whether those scientists ever came back to one of his parties.)....

....MUCH MORE

Related:
"This is What Game Theory Tells Us About Messaging Aliens"
The prime directive from my mother if she was feuding with a neighbor: "Ignore them, do not wave back."*
She meant it and so do I....

"Classifying alien civilizations: The Kardashev scale is based on how much energy a civilization uses" 

And many more including:

MIT researchers reveal plan for a giant laser 'porch light' in space to make it easier for aliens to find us
No.
This is a bad, bad, very bad idea.
There is no reason to think space aliens would be favorably disposed toward humans....
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South China Sea: China Coast Guard’s ‘monster’ ship arrives at Scarborough Shoal

We've looked at this vessel a few times, pointing out that it is larger than American cruisers, typically a navy's category for their second largest ships. This ain't your Grandfather's coast guard cutter.

From Radio Free Asia, January 2:

The world’s largest coast guard ship arrived at the disputed area as China’s navy holds drills to exert air control.

https://www.rfa.org/resizer/v2/7IM4CV6Y2ZDXNPT4U56PWTLM2Y.jpg?smart=true&auth=61aa251ca2a1132d98bd891b39df3b2ee3e7c7ffd3a8257819a93d86cec7d948&width=1600&height=899

The Chinese coast guard ship CCG 5901, known as “The Monster,” in Philippine waters on June 24, 2024. 
(Philippine Coast Guard)

The world’s largest coast guard vessel, a Chinese ship known as “The Monster,” has arrived at the disputed Scarborough Shoal inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone to boost Beijing’s control over the maritime area, an American analyst said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese navy has been conducting a New Year carrier-based helicopter training exercise in the airspace over the South China Sea, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The 12,000-ton CCG 5901 arrived at Scarborough Shoal on Wednesday, said Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight project at Stanford University, who tracks the ship’s movements.

There are at least three other Chinese coast guard ships - CCG 3106, 3302 and 3305 – as well as seven militia ships, already present at the shoal, Powell told Radio Free Asia.

The aim of their mission is to boost Beijing’s control over the maritime area just 125 nautical miles (232 kilometers) from the main Philippine island of Luzon, he said....

....MUCH MORE

Also at Radio Free Asia, January 3:

South China Sea: 5 things to watch in 2025 

The waterway is expected to stay turbulent through the new year; we explore possible flashpoints. 

....Vietnam’s island building

Vietnam’s island building in the South China Sea has reached a record, with the total area created in the first six months of 2024 equaling that of 2022 and 2023 combined, according to a study by the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).

Between November 2023 and June 2024, Hanoi created 692 new acres (280 ha) of land across a total of 10 features in the Spratly archipelago. Vietnam’s overall dredging and landfill totaled about 2,360 acres (955 ha), roughly half of China’s 4,650 acres (1,881.7 ha).

“Three years from when it first began, Vietnam is still surprising observers with the ever-increasing scope of its dredging and landfill in the Spratly Islands,” AMTI said.

Vietnam occupies 27 features and has been carrying out large-scale reclamation works on some over the past year....

....MUCH MORE

Taking a page from the Chinese playbook:

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UAH Satellite-Inferred Global Temperature Anomaly: Down Slightly For December After Record High During 2024

Our proposition bet has the UAH figure falling from +0.95°C the day we announced the bet, May 2, 2024 (three days later the April figure was announced, +1.05°C, not very good timing on the part of yours truly) to +0.45°C by the termination date:

Here's a prop bet for you. By May 15, 2026 we will see the satellite-measured -inferred global lower atmospheric temperature anomaly decline by at least 1/2 degree C.

The two keepers of the satellite record are Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa CA and the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

Here's the temperature graph from UAH:....

And from Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, January 3, 2025:

UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for December, 2024: +0.62 deg. C

2024 Sets New Record for Warmest Year In Satellite Era (Since 1979)

The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2024 was +0.62 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the November, 2024 anomaly of +0.64 deg.

https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_December_2024_v6.1_20x9-2048x922.jpg

The Version 6.1 global area-averaged temperature trend (January 1979 through December 2024) remains at +0.15 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).

As seen in the following ranking of the years from warmest to coolest, 2024 was by far the warmest in the 46-year satellite record averaging 0.77 deg. C above the 30-year mean, while the 2nd warmest year (2023) was +0.43 deg. C above the 30-year mean. [Note: These yearly average anomalies weight the individual monthly anomalies by the number of days in each month.]....

....MUCH MORE

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U.N. FAO Food Price Index: Down For December, Up For 2024

https://www.fao.org/images/worldfoodsituationlibraries/default-album/home_graph_1_jan25.jpg?sfvrsn=4dcedd86_283

From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, January 3:

Despite steady monthly increases for most of 2024, primarily driven by dairy, meat and vegetable oil prices, FAO Food Price index overall in 2024 remained below its 2023 levels

» The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 127.0 points in December 2024, down 0.6 points (0.5 percent) from its November level, as decreases in the price indices for sugar, dairy products, vegetable oils and cereals more than offset increases in meat. The index stood 8.0 points (6.7 percent) above its corresponding level one year ago, yet remained 33.2 points (20.7 percent) below the peak reached in March 2022. For 2024 as a whole, the index recorded 122.0 points, 2.6 points (2.1 percent) lower than the average value in 2023.

» The FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 111.3 points in December, relatively unchanged from November and 11.5 points (9.3 percent) below its year-earlier level.  Wheat export prices remained overall stable in December. Downward pressure from subdued international demand and higher seasonal availability from harvests in Argentina and Australia was balanced by upward pressure from poor winter crop conditions in the Russian Federation. World maize prices edged upwards marginally, supported by an uptick in export sales and tighter supplies in the United States of America, along with strong demand for Ukrainian origins. Among other coarse grains, world prices of barley increased, while those for sorghum decreased. The FAO All Rice Price Index declined by 1.2 percent in December, reflecting falls in quotations of Indica and fragrant rice driven by a slowdown in demand. For the year as a whole, the FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 113.5 points in 2024, down 17.4 points (13.3 percent) from the 2023 level, underpinned by lower wheat and coarse grain prices, and marking a second annual decline from the 2022 record level. The FAO All Rice Price Index averaged 133.1 points, up 0.8 percent from 2023 and representing a 16-year nominal high. Indica quotations underpinned this annual increase, as strong import demand from some countries in Asia and reduced competition among exporters kept them elevated during the first nine months of 2024.

» The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 163.3 points in December, down 0.9 points (0.5 percent) month-on-month but still 33.5 percent higher than its year-earlier level. The marginal decrease of the index mainly reflected lower soy, rapeseed and sunflower oil prices, more than offsetting slightly higher palm oil prices. In December, international palm oil quotations on average increased by 2.0 percent from the previous month, largely driven by protracted tight supplies in leading producing countries in Southeast Asia. By contrast, world soyoil prices fell moderately, underpinned by prospects of ample global supplies and somewhat weaker demand in the United States of America. Meanwhile, world rapeseed and sunflower oil prices also declined due to contraction in demand. For 2024 as a whole, the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index stood at 138.2 points, up 11.9 points or 9.4 percent from 2023 amid tightening global supplies.

» The FAO Meat Price Index* averaged 119.0 points in December, up 0.5 points (0.4 percent) from November, marking a rebound after three months of consecutive declines. At this level, the index stood 7.9 points (7.1 percent) above its corresponding value a year ago. The increase was primarily driven by higher bovine meat prices, resulting from strong global demand coupled with production constraints due to routine end-of-year maintenance shutdowns at processing plants in major exporting countries. Likewise, international ovine meat prices rose, underpinned by reduced slaughter availability in Australia following improved pasture conditions from recent rainfall, which encouraged higher livestock retention, combined with sustained global demand. By contrast, pig meat prices declined, underpinned by weaker-than-expected consumer demand in the European Union ahead of the winter holidays. Meanwhile, poultry meat prices registered a slight decline due to ample export supplies from Brazil. In 2024 as a whole, the FAO Meat Price Index averaged 117.2 points, up 3.1 points (2.7 percent) from 2023, driven by robust import demand from key meat-importing countries, amid slower global production growth. This sustained higher average prices for bovine, ovine, and poultry meats, while average pig meat prices declined, prompted by subdued import demand, particularly from China.

» The FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 138.9 points in December, down 1.0 point (0.7 percent) from November, marking the first decline after seven consecutive months of increases, but remained 20.2 points (17.0 percent) above its corresponding level a year earlier. International quotations for butter registered the largest decline, ending a fourteen-month streak of continuous increases, due to subdued global demand and accumulated stocks. Similarly, world cheese and skim milk powder prices contracted, driven by a weaker international demand. By contrast, international whole milk powder quotations surged, underpinned by price increases in Oceania stemming from solid global demand, especially in Asia, combined with tighter inventories in Western Europe due to seasonally low milk production. In 2024 as a whole, the FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 129.6 points, up 5.8 points (4.7 percent) from 2023. This increase was mainly attributed to a sharp surge in butter prices, on the back of a high global demand and constrained exportable supplies, resulting from erratic weather patterns that negatively impacted production....

....MUCH MORE

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"Singapore Watchdog Urges Probe Into SingPost Executive Firings"

It was just a throwaway line, the outro from December 29's "Singapore Money Laundering Suspects Spent Lavishly on Dubai Real Estate" (plus "Dubai Unlocked"): 

...Unrelated but noteworthy at The Edge, Singapore:
January 2 Bloomberg reported: 

Singapore Post Ltd.’s sudden dismissal of three senior executives, and their strong denials of the company’s allegations against them, calls for an independent inquiry, according to Singapore’s investor watchdog.

“The disclosures from the company and the responses from the three executives thus far raise more questions than provide answers,” David Gerald, president of the Securities Investors Association Singapore, said in a statement on Jan. 2. There is a fundamental difference in positions taken by the two parties and “the only way to properly resolve this is via an independent investigation,” he added....

....MUCH MORE

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Thursday, January 2, 2025

"Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over Internet For First Time"

From ScienceAlert, December 27:

A quantum state of light has been successfully teleported through more than 30 kilometers (around 18 miles) of fiber optic cable amid a torrent of internet traffic – a feat of engineering once considered impossible.

The impressive demonstration by researchers in the US may not help you beam to work to beat the morning traffic, or download your favourite cat videos faster.

However, the ability to teleport quantum states through existing infrastructure represents a monumental step towards achieving a quantum-connected computing network, enhanced encryption, or powerful new methods of sensing.

"This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible," says Prem Kumar, a Northwestern University computing engineer who led the study.

"Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiber optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level."....

....MUCH MORE

Wake me up when we get instantaneous cat video downloads.

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