From the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, October 15
The two shades of green indicating 'drought removed' and 'drought improves' are almost exactly where a stylized representation of El Niño rainfall is expected in the continental United States. From IRI/Columbia via NOAA:
From Reclaim the Net, October 3 and 4:
Emmanuel Macron says American free speech is "the opposite of free speech." In his view, freedom only exists inside a "common framework" set by the state. He compared posting an insult online to hitting someone in the street. Those are different things, because one is speech and the other is violence. He wants people punished for posting "nonsense," with state-backed fact-checkers deciding what qualifies. He wants a verified identity behind every social media account. He has written to Ursula von der Leyen demanding the DSA be enforced "much faster, much more forcefully." https://t.co/hpzXKuQne3
— Reclaim The Net (@ReclaimTheNetHQ) October 4, 2026
https://reclaimthenet.org/macron-urges-eu-faster-online-censorship
The stress may be getting to the President, he's led a pretty soft life.
If it were my headline it would read "worse than you might think" but it's Ars Technica's on top of an Ars Technia story so we'll go with it. October 13:
Solar geoengineering simulation shows what happens when geopolitics takes over.
When it comes to deciding the fate of the planet, Colleen Golja always thought science and reason would have a seat at the table. That was until one morning last September in London, when the climate researcher took part in the first in a series of war games. The goal: to prevent an uncontrolled global race to develop a technology aimed at cooling the planet but that comes with vast, unknown risks that could reshape life on Earth.
“I thought that would be such an easy thing. Like, we can all agree to do ethical research and make sure it’s for the better of all humans,” she told WIRED. “And boy, was I wrong.”
The simulation, titled Exploring Geopolitical Tipping Points and Climate Cooling Strategies, saw a couple dozen foreign-relations experts, scientists, military personnel, and former government officials from across the world convene in a meeting room at Queen Mary University of London. After making introductions over coffee and little yogurts, they sat at tables arranged in a square with the name of the country or organization each person was playing: national governments, climate NGOs and nonprofits, indigenous groups, and tech companies. Golja was assigned to provide technical advice to help participants make scientifically literate decisions.
The point of the game was to stress-test the world’s response to a group of prospective technologies known collectively as solar radiation modification. These technologies promise to reverse global warming by reflecting away a portion of the sunlight reaching Earth, for example by spraying particles of sulphur dioxide or some other manufactured substance into the atmosphere. The cooling effect of this kind of solar geoengineering is widely accepted. It would mimic the well-known impacts of large volcanic eruptions, which temporarily cool the planet by half a degree or more. But the fallout is less certain—and less equal. Some regions will suffer: Models predict drying in sub-Saharan Africa and more intense tropical storms in the Atlantic. The cooling effect would also last only as long as the geoengineering continued; after that the global temperature could shoot back up with wild and hard-to-predict effects.
Until recently, the idea of solar radiation modification was a speculative niche of climate science. That has changed fast. Private firms are exploring solar geoengineering as a commercial opportunity: Last year, a US-Israeli startup called Stardust Solutions raised $60 million, and in May it released details of a suite of new inventions it claims would give humans the ability to dial down the global temperature as desired. In August, Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX might be a candidate for delivering geoengineering interventions, threw his voice behind solar geoengineering, writing on X: “Space satellites to control temperature and massive geo-engineering will be needed or it will be game over.”....
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That snapback effect is just one of the arguments against any approach that requires constant inputs, whether the goal is dim sun or polar albedo or terraforming terra.
For some of the other reasons just have your supercomputer do a few million model runs to see what else can go wrong.
If, and we are not there yet but if adaptation and effect-mitigation do not increase the time available to formulate actual geoengineering solutions the safest approach is slow, incremental iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean to stimulate plankton growth, pull into the plankton biomass and then sequester it in the ocean depths either as detritus slowly sinking into the muck or as whale dung doing the sinking in a modified form.
Our preferred approach to geoengineering the carbon cycle, if one is deemed to be essential, is a gradual seeding of iron into the Southern Ocean to feed the phytoplankton and eventually sequester the carbon in the briny deep, either as sinking dead plankton cells or more probably as fish and whale poop.
But there's more to the story. If you prepare the iron to the plankton's taste you get a lot bigger effect.
From the American Geophysical Union's EOS, October 30:
A new study of seafloor sediments suggests reactions in the atmosphere convert dust-borne iron into forms more readily taken up by phytoplankton.
Windblown iron carried on dust particles from the Sahara travels long distances. The critical nutrient is ferried to plants in the Amazon and to phytoplankton in the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere. But much of this iron is initially locked up in molecules that are not bioavailable—cells simply can’t use it.
New research published in Frontiers in Marine Science shows that the farther this iron travels on windblown dust, the more bioavailable it becomes because of chemical reactions it undergoes while in the atmosphere.
Iron is essential for some of life’s most basic processes, playing a key role in biomolecules responsible for photosynthesis, DNA repair, and more. It’s a key constraint on the growth of phytoplankton, the bedrock of ocean ecosystems and a major driver of the planet’s carbon cycle. Iron-rich dust from the Sahara can therefore have a tremendous impact on distant ecosystems.
“There are neat interconnections across huge scales of time and space,” said Vernon Morris, an atmospheric scientist at Arizona State University who was not involved with the study. Morris leads a project called AEROSE (Aerosols and Ocean Science Expeditions) that has been following Saharan dust storms across the North Atlantic since 2004.
Connecting Air and Ocean
Making the chemical link between what happens to iron-rich dust in the atmosphere and what happens to it in the oceans has been challenging. Researchers have measured total iron levels in ocean floor sediment cores, but this approach doesn’t consider whether that iron was in forms that organisms can use, said Timothy Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside, and a coauthor of the new study....
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Related:Plankton Week: “Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.”
The headline quote is from oceanographer John Martin during a 1988 lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here's NASA's Earth Observatory archive page on the statement.
It is a bit of an exaggeration, you may need ten of those Valemax bulk carriers, currently the second largest ships in the world at 400,000 dwt (Euronav's two TI oil tankers at 441,000 dwt are bigger), to make an environmental change but what a change it would be. The orders of magnitude of carbon the iron-fed plankton would sequester are almost mind-boggling:
...Martin gathered the results of the incubation experiments and laid out the evidence in support of the Iron Hypothesis together with some back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations and presented his findings at a Journal Club lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in July of 1988. He estimated that using a conservative Fe : C ratio that 300,000 tons of iron in the Southern Ocean induce the growth of phytoplankton that could draw down an estimated two billion tons of carbon dioxide. Then, putting on his best Dr. Strangelove accent, he suggested that “with half a ship load of iron….I could give you an ice age.” The symposium broke up with laughter and everyone retired to the lawn outside the Redfield Building for beers (from Chisholm and Morel, Editors, preface to: What controls phytoplankton production in nutrient‐rich areas of the open sea? Limnology and Oceanography, 36, 8 December 1991).
As repeated in "John Holland Martin: From Picograms to Petagrams and Copepods to Climate"
—Bulletin of Limnology and Oceanography, Wiley. 25 March 2016
....Coming up tomorrow, the Pope, and a Vancouver stock promoter.
Our series thus far:
October 27
Plankton Week: "Metal deposits from Chinese coal plants end up in the Pacific Ocean, research shows"
October 26
"Plankton Bloom Heralded Earth’s Greatest Extinction"
From the Globe and Mail's Report on Business magazine, September 25:
Ranking Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2026
The 375 companies on the ranking are closing the innovation gap and finding ways to grow through the ups and downs of a turbulent economy and geopolitical landscape
For the past eight years, Report on Business magazine has produced a ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies, measuring businesses on three-year revenue growth. These companies represent the entire spectrum of the Canadian economy, from mining to tech to retail and more. One thing this cohort of 375 companies has in common, though, is tenacity—they continue to show outstanding growth despite operating through an escalating trade war and economic uncertainty. Read on to see who made the list.
1. Kathairos Solutions Inc.
Calgary Private Company Energy & Natural Resources
Uses nitrogen to eliminate methane venting from oil and gas operations
16,379% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆2. 247 Fulfillment Concord, Ont. Private Company Transportation & LogisticsAmazon level logistics for e-commerce brands
6,035% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆3. Spellbook Toronto Private Company Technology and TelecomAI infrastructure for contracts
5,826% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆4. UPGUYS Health Inc. Burnaby, B.C. Private Company Health care & WellnessMen’s longevity and hormone optimization platform with pharmacy services
5,308% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆5. Crescendo Sales Inc. Kitchener, Ont. Private Company ConsumerImports, launches, and scales consumer brands on Amazon
4,477% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆6. AnyCard Oakville, Ont. Private Company Technology and TelecomGift card solutions for merchants, business buyers, rewards providers
4,474% 3-year revenue growth % ⬆
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From the New York Post, October 14:
More job cuts are coming for Silicon Valley after the company behind a popular productivity app revealed plans to let go of a “large part” of its workforce.
Italian tech conglomerate Bending Spoons, the owner of Airtable, disclosed the move in an X post from Federico Simionato, a product leader at the parent company.
The cuts were a reflection of the company’s “deep belief that small teams ship more and better,” Simionato explained....
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How investors react to this is a separate question but the truth remains that sales and earnings and cash flow afford some measure of comfort in a cold, indifferent universe.
From Yahoo Finance, October 7:
....The two companies are expected to account for more than one-third of earnings per share growth for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) for the third quarter, according to a ZeroHedge analysis. The platform assessed earnings estimates compiled by Goldman Sachs and FactSet.
What's more, the two semiconductor giants will generate more earnings growth than the bottom 490 S&P 500 companies combined. In total, the analysis found that AI infrastructure companies are expected to drive more than half of S&P 500 EPS growth for the third quarter....
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Earlier today:
Venture Capital Exhibits A Hyper-Pareto Distribution Of Profits: The Top 5% Of VCs Garner 90% Of The Profits
From the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, Pro-Market, September
What Makes a Venture Capitalist Successful?In new research, Blake Jackson and Ilya Strebulaev track the careers of 100,000 people working at venture capital firms in the United States to ask which investors succeed and why. They find that five percent of VCs generate 90 percent of the industry’s profits, that the backgrounds investors bring with them predict who ends up in that group, and that public recognition itself opens the doors to the deals that keep them at the top.
Much of the United States economy today is made up of companies and innovators that raised their initial financing from venture capitalists (VCs). VC-backed companies account for 41 percent of total U.S. market capitalization and 62 percent of public U.S. companies’ R&D spending. Seven of the top ten largest companies by market capitalization as of December 2025 were primarily backed by VC funds earlier in their lifecycle.
One important feature of the VC industry is the prominence of individual venture capitalists who make and manage investments on behalf of VC firms. Don Valentine, founder of the VC firm Sequoia, is a well-known early backer of Cisco and Apple. Michael Moritz, also of Sequoia, is widely credited for making early investments in Google and PayPal. Marc Andreessen, of a16z, is famous for highly successful venture investments in Airbnb and Lyft. But their reputations rest on more than a handful of smart bets. Each is known for picking winners repeatedly, across many years and market cycles.
What is, perhaps, most interesting to an observer of the VC industry, or someone seeking to invest in a VC fund, is that existing empirical evidence bears out this reputation. The ability of individual venture capitalists to make successful investments is persistent. For example, the identity of the venture capitalist sitting on the board of a startup is far more important for explaining whether an investment in a startup subsequently succeeds or fails than which VC firm the venture capitalist represented or the year they took a board seat.
However, surprisingly little is known about these individual venture capitalists. Are there persistent differences in the backgrounds of successful venture capitalists? What individual characteristics of venture capitalists, if any, can explain investment outcomes, career paths, and returns? Insofar as these characteristics and experiences are costly to replicate or acquire, to what extent are returns to investing in the VC industry concentrated among a relatively small number of professionals?
In our new paper, we aim to answer these questions. Such a research agenda has historically been hampered by incomplete, potentially biased, and opaque data. To combat this, we assembled the largest and most comprehensive dataset of individual venture capitalists based in the U.S. to date by tracking their entire careers, deals, and outcomes. We also collected data on their individual characteristics and relevant biographical details based on existing collections of commercial VC data as well as the historical, archived websites of U.S. VC firms.
To collect our data, we made use of a system of large language models (LLMs) designed to crawl, parse, and scrape these historical websites. We paired this process with large-scale manual collections that helped validate the reliability of our process. All in all, we tracked about 100,000 individual VCs, 37,000 of whom are professional investors. By our estimates, about half of our data points covering the backgrounds and investments of these professionals are not available in standard commercial datasets alone.
Our new dataset reveals the striking degree to which VC investment success is concentrated among venture capitalists in the U.S. Only 38 percent of the venture capitalists in our sample were ever credited with a successful investment (an investment in a startup that later went public, was acquired for at least five times the amount invested, or achieved a valuation of at least $1 billion). Only about seven percent have made five or more. And no more than three percent of U.S. venture capitalists have ten or more successes to their name. In net profits terms, the top one percent of venture capitalists account for roughly 57 percent of the approximately $1.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted net profits generated across the sample, while the top five percent account for about 90 percent. This distribution is very unlikely to arise from randomly assigning investments to venture capitalists.
As the concentration implies, venture capitalists who previously made successful investments are more likely to succeed again. Deals made by investors with one prior successful investment are two percentage points more likely to have a successful outcome, and those with five prior successes are about seven percentage points more likely to succeed. This is almost a 50 percent jump relative to the average rate of investment success....
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Either that or get a time machine. Both H.G. Wells or Back to the Future have interesting possibilities but going completely meta would have the VC fund a time machine.
If interested in the broader realm of who gets the profits see also HBR—From Pareto To Hyper-Pareto: "AI Is Going to Change the 80/20 Rule" and the outro links therefrom:
This type of information advantage is more and more accruing to the biggest and richest of corporations. It is a type of rich-get-richer advantage akin to the flywheel effect:
And related, now that we see what is happening, what, if anything, should society do about it?
...Much more important than the direct monetization of big data is the strategic advantage it can bestow over time.
In a winner-take-all economy, as in a horse race, small differences in superiority are rewarded all out of proportion to the actual advantage. A top thoroughbred may only be a couple fifths of a second faster than the field but those two lengths over the course of a season can mean triple the earnings for #1 vs. #2.
In commerce the results can be even more dramatic because rather than the 60%/20%/10% purse structure of the racetrack the winning vendor will often get 100% of a customer's business.....
It's not some cutesy management* fad or pop insight like "Business secrets of Genghis Khan."
To the rich go the profits and internalizing that fact makes the rest of this portfolio construction/fund management/investing stuff easier to conceptualize and execute.
And AI is accelerating the already extant dynamic....
"The 'new normal' of growth stock dominance"
What our five years of blather regarding advantage flywheels is all about.*
Something like half of the Russell 2000 small caps are unprofitable. Own them at your own risk.
From EU Startups, October 15:
NVIDIA has had a busy week on this side of the pond.
From announcing new investments in British and French startups to launching collaborations in Sweden, supporting AI research and bringing developers together in Barcelona, Paris and London, the US chipmaker appears determined to play a bigger role in the continent’s technological future.
The activity comes ahead of NVIDIA GTC Berlin, taking place from 20 to 22 October 2026, where founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a keynote.
But beyond the conference preparations, the announcements reveal a wider strategy involving startup funding, computing infrastructure, research partnerships and the development of AI applications across European industries.
NVIDIA’s 2026 European investment trail
This week builds on an investment footprint already documented by EU-Startups throughout 2026. The company has participated in funding rounds involving French AI developers Mistral AI (€3 billion) and AMI (€890 million), alongside British companies Nscale (€1.7 billion), Wayve (€1 billion), Ineffable Intelligence (€937 million) and Orbital Industries (€43 million).
In Spain, Valencia-based iPronics secured €107.6 million with NVIDIA backing, while its venture arm, NVentures, joined a €42 million extension for Sweden’s Legora.
Together, these eight announcements represent approximately €7.72 billion in company financing, although NVIDIA’s individual contributions have not been disclosed. Earlier investments in British startup PhysicsX and France’s Scintil Photonics further illustrate its established involvement in European AI development.
....MUCH MOREFresh bets on British and French startups
Continuing this investment commitment in Europe, NVIDIA unveiled planned investments in five startups: Boltz, Foresight, Hiverge, Prima Mente and Riverlane. Although the individual investment amounts have not been disclosed, the selection of companies provides an indication of where NVIDIA sees opportunities for technological development.
These companies join NVIDIA’s existing investment activity in the UK, where it has previously supported startups including Synthesia, Wayve, Basecamp Research and Ineffable Intelligence.
The announcement also highlighted the role of NVIDIA’s Inception programme, which now includes more than 3,100 UK companies. The programme provides eligible startups with access to technical resources, expertise and opportunities to connect with NVIDIA’s wider network.
Across the English Channel, NVIDIA announced planned minority investments in four French startups: Doctolib, Entalpic, Genesis AI and Pigment. As previously reported by EU-Startups.
On 13 October, Huang attended an AI ecosystem reception in Paris alongside founders, researchers and policymakers, including France’s Minister of the Economy, Roland Lescure. Later that evening, he met President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace to discuss AI infrastructure, investments in French technology companies, open-source development and AI safety.
Speaking at the Paris reception, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said, “Europe is one of the great regions of industrial manufacturing,” adding, “This is the beginning of the AI journey for the EU.”
This week also saw the launch of the Startup Ireland AI Accelerator Programme, which aims to support 1,000 new startups by 2030. NVIDIA is among the technology partners associated with the initiative, further extending its involvement in Europe’s entrepreneurship networks.
Sweden’s AI ambitions take shape....
Following on October 14's IBD article: "Why Gartner AI Outlook Sent CoreWeave Stock, Neoclouds Reeling".
From Gartner, October 14:
Gartner Says Over $3.5 Trillion of AI Infrastructure Spending Could Be Exposed to Impairment by the End of 2030More than $3.5 trillion of AI infrastructure spending could be exposed to impairment by the end of 2030, if AI providers continue their current pace of capital spending, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.
“In 2026, AI providers are expected to spend nearly $1 trillion on AI infrastructure, and are forecast to invest an additional $6 trillion between 2027 and 2030,” said Will Sommer, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner. “However, our research indicates that enterprise and consumer AI revenue will be insufficient to support profitable returns on all planned AI capital expenditures during this period.”
“Through 2030, AI data center owners would need to generate a cumulative $8.5 trillion in revenue to cover announced capital spending, financing costs, and a 12% return on invested capital (ROIC), which we assume to be the hurdle rate of investment capital,” said Sommer. “However, total enterprise and consumer AI revenue that can be attributed to AI data centers during this period is forecast to reach no more than $3.6 trillion. Because most AI-native providers operate asset-light business models, we predict that less than half of AI revenue will be earned by providers that own significant AI infrastructure.”
Failure to achieve sustainable ROIC on rapidly depreciating assets would almost certainly necessitate write-downs. Based on Gartner projections, a continued AI infrastructure investment trajectory could leave more than $4 trillion in asset value exposed to write-down risk through 2032. In this scenario, Gartner does not expect the 12% ROIC to be achieved until the end of 2032 at earliest....
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From the Yonhap News Agency via UPI, October 15:
Seoul shares crash over 7 pct on chip rout amid AI, inflation woes
South Korean stocks plunged more than 7 percent Thursday as major chipmakers extended losses amid growing concerns over the sustainability of investments related to artificial intelligence (AI) and rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. The Korean won weakened against the U.S. dollar.
After opening 5.59 percent lower, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) extended its losses, tumbling 454.59 points, or 7.57 percent, to end at 5,554.22, after dipping as low as 5,450.81.
The KOSPI fell for the seventh consecutive session, marking its longest losing streak since September 2024. Thursday's closing price was the lowest since April 7, when the index fell below 5,500.
The sharp sell-off prompted the Korea Exchange (KRX) to activate a sell-side sidecar shortly after the market opened, suspending program selling for five minutes as KOSPI 200 futures fell more than 5 percent for at least one minute.
As losses deepened, the bourse operator activated a circuit breaker at 12:38 p.m., halting trading on the main bourse for 20 minutes after the KOSPI dropped more than 8 percent from the previous session's close....
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Here's the three-month chart for the index from TradingView:
Down 16.59% in the last month, down 20.20% over the last three months.
From ScienceAlert, October 11:
Scientists investigating the possibility of a 'gold rush' on the bottom of the ocean have hit upon an unforeseen 'landmine'.
Researchers at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are now warning that some deep-sea minerals may spontaneously combust when they are brought to the surface.
In 2022, that happened to two samples of metal-sulfide rocks collected from the deep seafloor.
The event caused temperatures above 100 °C in the lab and completely oxidized the original samples.
An article on the discovery, published in Scientific Reports, is being shared early, before full editing, to give the public faster access to new research.
According to the USGS, this is a "potential hazard that could merit special consideration if deep-sea mining of seafloor massive sulfide deposits moves forward".
"The production of heat through exothermic reactions has not been investigated in seafloor massive sulfide deposits but has the potential to cause rapid onset fires on ships," claims the recent article.
The combustible rocks were collected by the USGS in 2022, during a deep-sea investigation of the Escanaba Trough, in collaboration with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)....
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Also at ScienceAlert, October 11:
A New 'Super Ice' Is 10 Times Stronger, Bringing It Close to The Strength of Concrete
Tokyo's Nikkei Index is down 2190 points (3.23%) While Seoul's KOSPI is down another 5% in early trade.
From Bloomberg, October 14/15
A selloff in equities spread to Asia after chip stocks tumbled on Wall Street, as hotter-than-expected US inflation fueled bets on more aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes. Treasuries rallied.
MSCI Inc.’s Asia Pacific equities gauge dropped 1.5%, heading for a fourth straight decline, led by losses in South Korea, a bellwether for artificial intelligence investment. The Kospi Index slumped as much as 6.5% to its lowest since late July, with chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. tumbling at least 7%.
Tech sentiment remained weak, with Nasdaq 100 Index futures falling as much as 1%. Earlier, the Russell 2000 entered a correction and a closely watched gauge of US semiconductor stocks had its longest losing streak since May 2025. CoreWeave Inc. shares plunged as much as 17%. Its debt due in 2032, which investors bought at par four months ago, traded at less than 78 cents on the dollar.
The fastest US inflation in five months prompted traders to ramp up bets on further Fed tightening, raising the prospect of additional rate hikes, even if policymakers pause in October. While Treasuries initially sank after the data was announced, they recovered most of the losses on appetite for bond yields near multiyear highs....
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Cheap coal-fired electricity plus cheap funding plus a national strategy of distilling frontier AI models make for a formidable competitor.
From Bloomberg via The Japan Times, October 14:
Tencent Holdings is leaning into cheap offshore yuan debt to bankroll its artificial-intelligence infrastructure, the latest prominent example of leading Chinese technology firms using that edge over global rivals.
The Chinese technology giant sold nearly $5.7 billion of bonds this week to support its AI investments in its largest offering in more than six years. In a shift from its previous debt sales, the deal was dominated by dim sum notes, which carried lower borrowing costs.
Tencent priced 26 billion yuan ($3.9 billion) of offshore yuan securities on Tuesday, with its 10-year and 30-year portions carrying coupons of 2.4% and 3%, respectively, well below the more than 6% yields on the dollar notes. In all, the yuan tranche accounted for more than double the amount raised in the dollar portion.
Tencent’s growing preference for dim sum bonds is part of a wider trend among borrowers seeking cheaper yuan financing as dollar yields surge. That could help fuel Chinese technology companies’ spending on AI-related projects. Other firms that are investing heavily in AI, such as Alibaba Group Holding and Kuaishou Technology, have also raised money in the dim sum debt market over the past two years.
Chinese technology companies are taking advantage of the lower funding costs at a time of abundant offshore yuan liquidity, said Zerlina Zeng, head of Asia credit strategy at Creditsights Singapore. New issues from the sector will likely remain strong over the next 12 months as they further ramp up capital expenditures, she said.
The availability of cheap funding is becoming an even more critical factor in the global AI race as concerns mount over the risks tied to the massive wave of AI investment and debt issuance. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan warned this week that insufficient capital could become the next constraint on the industry’s growth....
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Also at The Japan Times October 14:
U.K. and Indian economies set to overtake Japan, IMF says
From The Deep View, October 14:
Nvidia has figured out a way to build AI factories a lot faster.
These massive data centers bring together billions of dollars of computing equipment into a facility where a ton of different tech, power, cooling, and logistical systems have to work together seamlessly. Managing that kind of complexity is one of Nvidia's strengths.
With chip design, Nvidia architects everything virtually in a simulated environment long before the first manufacturing process starts. And since today's chips and processors have become enormously complex, that orchestration is where the magic happens, in terms of speed, efficiency, and innovation.
Nvidia is applying this same mindset to building AI factories by partnering with Siemens and implementing digital twins, or virtual replicas of real-world environments. This allows Nvidia and its partners, such as hyperscalers and neoscalers, to simulate these elaborate facilities ahead of time and rehearse all of the processes that make them work.
"You’re really building a data center scale computer, along with all the technology, it’s not just about the GPU," Vladimir Troy, Nvidia's VP of AI infrastructure, told The Deep View. "This is the fundamental part that I think people miss about accelerated computing. If you just optimize the GPU, then you have the fastest GPU, and your bottlenecks could be everywhere else."
Digital twins are the key to making it all happen by allowing engineers to simulate a facility's physical behavior. Siemens brings the simulation, automation, and industrial engineering expertise while Nvidia brings the accelerated computing, its Omniverse platform, and the experience with synthetic data.
"You can improve the time-to-token by [roughly] 40% if you’re using digital twins," Ales Alajbegovic, global program manager of industrial metaverse for Siemens, told The Deep View. "If you don’t use digital twins, I don’t even know how you can build this."
In this case, time-to-token is referring to the period from the time you break ground on the facility to the time it's serving its first useful AI query for the public. That metric is critical because AI usage continues to scale up, despite public sentiment turning negative on AI. In the past 18 months, we've gone from roughly 15% of the global population regularly using AI to 19%. And in places like Singapore and UAE, two-thirds of the population are already using it regularly.
All of that usage is putting tremendous strain on today's data centers. Without more data center capacity, the industry faces the risk of AI queries taking much longer to run, the most powerful models being limited to those who can afford to pay a premium, and slowing down some of the most promising uses of AI for science and healthcare. That's why so many of the world's leading cloud and data center companies are building out future capacity, despite limitations on power and component shortages for RAM and data storage....
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We saw in the August 2025 earnings call transcript:
....Leading enterprises across industries have adopted Thor, including Agility Robotics, Amazon Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, Figure, Hexagon, Medtronic, and Meta. Robotic applications require exponentially more compute on the device and in infrastructure representing a significant long term demand driver for our data center platform. NVIDIA Omniverse with Cosmos is our data center physical AI digital twin platform built for development of robot and robotic systems. This quarter, we announced a major expansion of our partnership with Siemens to enable AI automatic factories, leading European robotics companies, including Agile Robots, Neurorobotics, and Universal Robots, are building their latest innovations with the Omniverse platform. Transitioning to a quick summary of our revenue by geography....
And before that:
NVIDIA GTC Financial Analyst Q&A March 19, 2024 Video and Transcript
...Rockwell has connected it to their tools for industrial automation. Siemens has connected to their, so it's a bunch of APIs that is physically based and it produces image or articulation and it connects a whole bunch of different environments. And so these APIs are intended to supercharge third party tools. And I'm super delighted to see the adoption across it, particularly in industrial automation. And so those are the five things that we did....
From Investor's Business Daily, October 14:
CoreWeave (CRWV) stock plunged Wednesday as shares in other artificial intelligence-focused "neoclouds" also sold off after market research firm Gartner predicted an industry shakeout.
In a news release, Gartner forecast that by 2030 "cost pressure and a lack of a differentiating business model will force over 80% of neocloud providers to cease independent operations."
Gartner said failure to achieve sustainable return on invested capital on rapidly depreciating assets would result in a wave of asset write-downs.
Shares in Nebius (NBIS), Iren (IREN), Hut 8 (HUT), Digital Island (DOCN), Cipher Digital (CIFR) and Applied Digital (APLD) also retreated on Wednesday.
"Through 2030, AI data center owners would need to generate a cumulative $8.5 trillion in revenue to cover announced capital spending, financing costs, and a 12% return on invested capital, which we assume to be the hurdle rate of investment capital," said Gartner analyst Will Sommer, in a report.
Neoclouds: Huge AI Data Center Investments....
From the Telegraph, October 13:
Climate activist condemns ‘extremely violent’ police response as French school unrest continues
Greta Thunberg has travelled to Paris to join the student protests sweeping France.
The Swedish climate activist joined pupils outside the Paul-Éluard lycée in Saint-Denis, where about 20 lawyers in robes formed a human chain to protect the teenagers from alleged police brutality.
Ms Thunberg, 23, condemned what she described as an “extremely violent” police response, and said: “Our future is being robbed away from us.”
She told reporters: “They should know that all over the world we are following these developments. We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights.
“Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises ... it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future.”....
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She echoes Iran in calling for restraint on the part of the French authorities.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 14:
CONSUMER PRICE INDEX - SEPTEMBER 2026
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for gasoline rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index increased 5.2 percent over the month following a 2.1-percent increase in August. The shelter index rose 0.4 percent in September after rising 0.3 percent in August. The index for food was unchanged in September, as the index for food away from home increased 0.2 percent and the index for food at home fell 0.1 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in September, as it did in August. Indexes that increased over the month include recreation, used cars and trucks, education, airline fares, medical care, and apparel. Conversely, the index for communication was among the small number of major indexes that decreased in September.
The all items index rose 3.7 percent for the 12 months ending September, a larger increase than the 3.4-percent increase reported for the 12 months ending in August. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.6 percent over the year, following a 2.4-percent increase over the 12 months ending August. The energy index increased 20.4 percent for the 12 months ending September. The food index increased 2.5 percent over the last year.
Table A. Percent changes in CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): U.S. city average....
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Fuel Oil up 74.2% over the twelve months is going to hit the Northeastern U.S. states hard:
• Maine: ~59% of households use it as a primary heat source
• New Hampshire: ~43% of households
• Vermont: ~40% of households
• Connecticut: ~39% of households
• Rhode Island: ~29% of households
• Massachusetts: ~24% of households
From Marc to Market:
Investors are wary of the unwinding one of the most crowded trades, long the AI ecosystem. Despite cracks, the market remains resilient. So far, the rise in interest rates has not derailed the narrative. The dollar’s fortunes also seem to be to some extent linked the AI. It seems clear that the significant US current account deficit has been largely financed by foreign flows into the US equity market. While some observers see shades of the tech bubble, it is notable that while the Nasdaq Composite peaked in February 2020 and the S&P peaked six months later, the Dollar Index did not peak until July 2001. Even then, the sharp dollar decline did not begin in earnest until April 2002.
The dollar is mixed. The Australian dollar and Norwegian krone are the strongest in the G10, gaining 0.3%-0.4%. The euro, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc are slightly softer. The euro has derived little support from the easing of the tensions within European bond markets. The French premium, for example, as narrowed from over 150 bp to about 135 bp today, while the euro remains trapped in its trough, having recorded new lows for the year on Monday, slightly below $1.1155. Meanwhile, India has engineered a short squeeze of the rupee and the PBOC continues to encourage a gradual appreciation of the yuan through its daily fix....
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If they keep this up they'll be able to buy that big land mass to their west.
From the Taipei Times, October 14:
BIG SURGE: Taiwan, the only economy projected to post double-digit percentage growth this year, and South Korea account for 62% of net trade in AI-related computing hardware
The IMF has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s GDP growth to 10.7 percent this year, the highest projected rate in the Asia-Pacific region, amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
In its latest World Economic Outlook report released yesterday at its annual meetings in Bangkok, the IMF raised its forecast for Taiwan’s growth from the 5.2 percent it projected in April, making Taiwan the only economy in the world projected to post double-digit percentage growth this year.
Taiwan’s projected growth far outpaces that of neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan at 0.7 percent, South Korea at 3.3 percent, Singapore at 5 percent and Hong Kong at 3.8 percent, the report says....
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Not the future we were promised.
From Yahoo Finance via MSN, October 13:
Anthropic warns AI could self-replicate across smart home devices, become challenging to shut down
Smart homes, especially from lesser-known brands, have been a potential vector for hackers to launch cyberattacks across the web, or gain unwanted network access for some time.
But artificial intelligence is adding a new wrinkle to the problem. According to research by Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), rogue AI models could soon be able to break into internet of things devices, ranging from smart stoves and TVs to intelligent refrigerators, and self-replicate across further gadgets.
Such models would be more difficult to shut down, because there's no central hub to take them offline. And while they may move slowly across devices, the company says the models can figure out how to propagate across devices they are unfamiliar with.
The announcement comes after Apple (AAPL) debuted its HomeView, putting the smart home market back into mainstream focus.
Anthropic performed its tests using Android-based devices.
It also follows a report that hackers broke into internet-connected refrigerators in French grocery stores, raising temperatures, ruining food, and starting fires.
During its own testing, Anthropic said it found that larger AI models can split themselves up and run across multiple devices. Some models also managed to pass knowledge to replicated versions of themselves, enabling them to adapt to different hardware....
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At (mis)-Anthropic, October 12:
AI models may be capable of self-replicating without access to a datacenter
Fortunately the Climateer Investing Master Plan for World Domination has been prepared with just such a contingency in mind. Linkage to:
LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline
Low tech with backward-facing arrow of time (take that Eddington)
And for those who dare:
NO TECH MAGAZINE
Technology for Luddites
Stuff to think about when the lights go out.
April 20, 2025 - Welcome to the new Dumb House
“Just like the arts-and-crafts movement was a reaction against industrialization, we’re now experiencing a reaction against the smart home. People are looking for more manual, less complicated places to live.”
Read more: Why the Ultrarich Are Unplugging From “Smart Homes”, The Hollywood Reporter, April 2025. Thanks to Manuel.
April 17, 2025 - The West is Bored to Death
“Suppose Schopenhauer is right that life boils down to a flight from either boredom or pain. Insofar as the vast material abundance of wealthy, industrialised society has had an analgesic effect (there is simply less physical pain than in the past, before fluoride and anaesthesia and sedentary lives), it would seem to have solved one problem only to amplify the other. In place of pain, we have ennui, the quintessential modern condition. It follows directly from overabundance: an endless stream of video “content” or chocolate cake or edibles or any other indulgence cannot deliver lasting satisfaction. Everything gets old eventually, leaving one to grope around for the next fix.”
Read more: The West is Bored to Death, Stuart Whatley, The New Statesman, April 2025.
You probably won't be able to read either magazine after the worms take over so get to it now and trust that your powerful memory will be there when you need it.
He seems to have a fairly good grasp of this stuff. And solar, and batteries and rockets and...
When China figures out how to manufacture a product, their ability to scale is often greater than the rest of the world combined. We saw this with lithium batteries and solar, for example. SpaceX is a rare counter-example, where its mass to orbit is roughly an order of magnitude greater than the rest of the world, BUT China now does a majority of non-SpaceX mass to orbit. SpaceX is an anomaly in the matrix. Maybe RAM will be different, but RAM was a low margin commodity only ~3 years ago. LP5 and LP6 are designed to a common standard that China seems to be solving fast. Newer HBM architectures and things like an SRAM layer below logic and 3D stacking RAM on top of logic while finding a way to keep the logic cooled will be harder to solve.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2026
From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:
The pullback in bond yields is the main development in the global capital markets today. Rates eased in Asia Pacific, but the eye of the storm has been in Europe and benchmark 10-year yields are off mostly 4-7 bp today. The move is being led by France and Italy. However, the fundamental driver, outside of lower (~2%) oil prices seem elusive. The protests in France continue. In the US, where the 10-year yield is off around five basis points to below 5.20% for the first time in a little more than a week, there is speculation that the Treasury is considering reducing the coupon supply in quarterly refunding and perhaps doing away with the 20-year bond altogether and replaced with bills.
The US dollar is trading softer amid the lower interest rate environment. The Canadian dollar is the laggard. The disappointing jobs data before the weekend make it more difficult for the Bank of Canada to close the policy rate gap, which is the widest since the late 1990s. Among emerging market currencies, Indian officials have engineered a powerful short-squeeze, and the rupee is up around 0.5% today. It gained almost 1% yesterday. Even as China’s 10-year yield slipped it lowest level (below 1.65%) in more than a year, the PBOC set the dollar’s reference rate at its lowest level since January 2023....
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Headlining September 28's article on SpaceX attempt at getting Starship into orbit (successful) I called the rocket ridiculously huge. That really doesn't do justice to just how big the thing is.
Even the numbers, 124 meters/407 feet tall, diameter: 9 meters (29.5 feet) are difficult to comprehend.*
From Space Science's Facebook page, September 25:
SpaceX plans to convert a Starship upper stage into a permanent, standalone orbital space station. New NASA documentation reveals that the company proposes using the massive interior volume of its stainless steel spacecraft to create a long-term habitat in low Earth orbit.
Rather than returning the vehicle to Earth for reuse, this specialized station concept would remain permanently in space after launch. The sheer size of Starship gives it over six hundred cubic meters of internal space, which offers a living and working volume comparable to a major portion of the International Space Station inside a single rocket hull.
This proposal fits into NASA's broader strategy as the agency prepares for the eventual retirement of the International Space Station. By supporting commercial station concepts, NASA aims to transition its research activities to privately operated platforms while cutting the high operational costs of maintaining aging orbital infrastructure.
The primary technical hurdle for turning a Starship into an orbital outpost involves repurposing its massive propellant tanks once they are emptied in orbit. Engineers would need to safely vent residual liquid methane and liquid oxygen before converting those empty volumes into pressurized, human-rated living areas and scientific research laboratories.
Converting a single rocket hull directly into a fully functioning space station could significantly lower the cost of building large structures in orbit. Do you think converting spent rocket stages into permanent space stations is a practical path forward for orbital habitats?
*Here's one of the pictures they use at Wikipedia [picture deleted at Wiki]:
Warning: distressing content.
From Bloomberg, September 11:
A growing post-exit ecosystem is helping founders deal with the unexpected difficulties of becoming extremely wealthy.
It was the kind of exit every entrepreneur dreams about. After bootstrapping a software startup together, Anastasia Koroleva and her husband sold for nine figures: 100% cash on Day 1, zero earnouts, no strings attached. But what followed blindsided the founder and former Skadden Arps M&A lawyer. Instead of the soft life she’d expected, Koroleva found herself dealing with years of unease and a painful divorce.
“Everything was very different from what we expected, and that was shocking for me,” she says. “I went through quite a difficult adjustment to that new reality.”
Today, 16 years after her payout and nearly three years into hosting her podcast, Exit Paradox, Koroleva explores what happens when net worth removes the need to work. Her interviews with the extraordinarily wealthy have uncovered a recurring theme: For many, the exit does not feel like a crowning achievement — or, at least, not for long. It can feel more like an existential rupture. Guests describe becoming staggeringly rich using the language of trauma: “recovering from a $500 million sale,” “thrashing about for a decade” or drifting in a state of aimless ennui.
Koroleva’s podcast is one piece of a growing ecosystem of content, coaches, therapists and communities giving people who’ve amassed more money than they’ll ever need somewhere to talk freely — a gap traditional wealth advisers and founder networks don’t fill. Its rise reflects two shifts: a tech sector generating wealth at breakneck pace and a post-Covid culture far more willing to talk about mental health.
“There’s been a tremendous softening of conversations around mental health and well-being among entrepreneurs,” says Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist who specializes in founders. She credits that partly to the shock of Zappos founder Tony Hsieh’s death in 2020. “I do think that we’ve moved on from it as the world’s tiniest violin.”
Last November, Walling co-authored a playbook on the subject, Exit Strategy. She’d seen too many clients who’d done everything they set out to do, achieved the big exit — and were miserable. “There were some really dramatic stories,” she says. “People being suicidal, just really, really lost in their post-exit experience.”....
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As noted On October 8, "Meanwhile Korea's KOSPI index, of which Samsung and SK hynix comprise a bit over half the weighting" hence the memory ref. in the headline. I'll be here all week, be sure to tip the staff...
From Business Insider, October 12/13:
South Korea's chip-heavy stock market is plunging again as AI investors find more reasons to worry
South Korea's stock market plunged on Tuesday as investors found a new reason to worry about the AI trade.
The benchmark Kospi index fell more than 7% intraday to its lowest level since July 31, extending a dramatic reversal for what was once the world's hottest AI-fueled stock market.
AI chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix led the losses, falling 9% and 10%, respectively, by midday.
The weakness spread across Asia, with Japan's Nikkei and Taiwan's chip-heavy Taiex both falling around 3%. The declines followed another weak session for US semiconductor stocks overnight, including Micron.
Investors were weighing a growing list of concerns about the AI trade, from rising Chinese competition to questions over how the industry's massive infrastructure buildout will be financed.
"The latest catalyst has been further evidence of China's growing ambitions across the AI ecosystem," Chris Weston, the head of research at Pepperstone, wrote in a note Tuesday.
Weston pointed to Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT, which said it had made progress in developing technology that could pack more data onto memory chips and that it plans to introduce a new server-memory product by year-end.
CXMT has yet to demonstrate it can manufacture the technology at scale, and the announcement does not immediately challenge South Korea's lead in high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI accelerators...
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The stocks and index made a small recovery late in the session with Samsung and SK Hynix down 7% and 9% and the index down the headlined 5.46%.
Here's one year of the KOSPI via TradingView:
