Aseity @aseitycom

@djcows If he had physical dollar bills for this and laid them end to end in geostationary orbit, they’d orbit 500 times.

@DabsMalone Nice design 👌

@apples_jimmy o6

1/ I've published an extended version of my FT essay: "How can Europe build its first trillion dollar start-up?" on my blog. Here's what's in the uncut version:

Torso 2 with an actuated abdomen.

@waitbutwhy It’s a bit of a doer upper.

The progress in Robotics in 2024 makes me question my life choice of being a SaaS founder 😬 > paralyzed can walk > new era of warfare > automating most human labor > westworld-like humanoids A Mega Thread on Robotics + AI (Nov 30) 🧵:

@JeffDean When people are that uninformed, democracy is a fallacy. But maybe that’s the point.

@skdh The end? We haven’t had the start, yet!!

As background, we unveiled Figure 02 robot ~3 months ago F.02 robot is our 2nd generation humanoid robot which is designed for commercial customers and the home Humanoid robots in everyday life will make it feel like living 30yrs in the future

UPDATE: Figure x BMW Figure 02 is now an autonomous fleet, 400% faster with 7x higher success rate We’re committed to delivering millions of useful robots to companies and homes worldwide Details in thread:

In which I explain why I worry about scientific progress youtube.com/watch?v=Qtxjat…

Must watch explanation on clean energy by @g__j on #BBCQT - also watch Tim Stanley squirm repeatedly when Jackson gives answers Greg Jackson, "We've crossed the rubicon.. Clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels" "Power from wind and solar is cheaper than power from fossil fuels" "Consumers don't see the benefits because our markets are run in the old traditional way" "We need market reform so when we build wind farms, people get cheaper energy" "It doesn't help that we are paying wind farms to turn off when it's windy, instead of giving people cheap power at those times" "59% of all of the renewable energy has been built in China" Fiona Bruce, "They're also building huge coal plants" Greg Jackson, "The majority will never be used, they'll be mothballed" "Why are they building green energy? It's not because they're nice people. Now they recognise clean energy is cheaper, and energy is the engine of growth for their industry, they're investing in it" "Six or seven years ago if you went to Chinese cities people wore face mask because of air pollution.. That's gone" Tim Stanley, "If you have a period where the wind dies and the sun doesn't shine, what happens, you have to rely on back up.. Rely on gas.. Import the power from overseas" Greg Jackson, "Allow me to help you with this answer.. As somebody who buys more power than anybody in the UK.. I can give you an authoritative answer on what to do" "An electric car holds enough power in its battery for a typical house in the best part of the week" "As more and more electric cars hit our roads, we have distributed storage of electricity, days on end, without wind" "It's not the whole solution but it's a big part of it.. And it helps us reduce our reliance on things like those fossil fuel backups" "It's always windy somewhere, it's always sunny somewhere.. As we connect our country to others.. When they're windy we get their power, when we're windy we sell ours to them" "By the way, we are one of the windiest places in the world.. This is a huge export opportunity for the UK"

Hey it's me Destin, from Smarter Every Day. Now that it's time to elect America's next leader, I would like to share something very interesting and important with you. I've been paying attention to this for a while, and I think if you look for it, you see it too. 🧵 1/n

Today at Meta FAIR we’re announcing three new cutting-edge developments in robotics and touch perception — and releasing a collection of artifacts to empower the community to build on this work. Details on all of this new work ➡️ go.fb.me/mmmu9d 1️⃣ Meta Sparsh is the first general-purpose encoder for vision-based tactile sensing that works across many tactile sensors and many tasks. Trained on 460K+ tactile images using self-supervised learning. 2️⃣ Meta Digit 360 is a breakthrough artificial fingertip-based tactile sensor, equipped with 18+ sensing features to deliver detailed touch data with human-level precision and touch-sensing capabilities. 3️⃣ Meta Digit Plexus is a standardized platform for robotic sensor connections and interactions. It provides a hardware-software solution to integrate tactile sensors on a single robot hand and enables seamless data collection, control and analysis over a single cable. The potential impact of expanding capabilities and components like these for the open source community ranges from medical research to supply chain, manufacturing and much more. We’re excited to continue this work with the broader community.

The 2024 Living Planet Index (LPI) reports a 73% average decline in wildlife populations. While extremely worrying, the numbers presented in the LPI report are often misunderstood. Read our guide to understanding what the LPI does and doesn't mean: ourworldindata.org/2024-living-pl…

The UK is like a person who looks rich but doesn’t own anything. The house is rented, the car is leased, the fancy watch is a gift from grandma. Most British companies aren’t British. If you don’t own the assets, you don’t get the profit and you don‘t have the wealth. The UK Government wants you to believe that the top 10% of British earners and investors aren’t paying enough in taxes (despite covering 50%+ of the bills). The truth is, the UK doesn’t own anything anymore. When “British companies” make a profit it goes back to their foreign shareholders. The economy isn’t in trouble because of wealth inequality the economy is in trouble because of asset deficiency. The last chance the UK has to fix this is the small group of dynamic entrepreneurs and investors who are UK based. If you lose them, you’ve lost the existing businesses and the ability to create new ones. If the government taxes rise more - the only thing left in the UK will be cheap labour for foreign companies to exploit. Here’s a list of 30 “British Brands” that aren’t: 1. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars – Owned by BMW (Germany) since 1998. 2. Mini – Also owned by BMW (Germany) since 1994. 3. Bentley – Owned by Volkswagen Group (Germany) since 1998. 4. Jaguar – Owned by Tata Motors (India) since 2008. 5. Land Rover – Owned by Tata Motors (India) since 2008. 6. Cadbury – Owned by Mondelez International (USA) since 2010. 7. P&O Ferries – Owned by DP World (United Arab Emirates) since 2006. 8. Boots – Owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance (USA) since 2014. 9. Scottish Power – Owned by Iberdrola (Spain) since 2007. 10. British Steel – Owned by Jingye Group (China) since 2020. 11. Weetabix – Owned by Post Holdings (USA) since 2017. 12. Harrods – Owned by the Qatar Investment Authority (Qatar) since 2010. 13. Selfridges – Owned by the Weston family (Canada) since 2003. 14. Lotus Cars – Owned by Geely (China) since 2017. 15. O2 – Owned by Telefónica (Spain) since 2006. 16. Thames Water – Part-owned by a consortium including China Investment Corporation (China). 17. House of Fraser – Owned by Sanpower Group (China) since 2014. 18. Fortnum & Mason – Owned by the Weston family (Canada) since 1951. 19. Vauxhall – Owned by Stellantis (a multinational conglomerate headquartered in the Netherlands) since 2021, after being previously owned by General Motors (USA). 20. Costa Coffee – Owned by The Coca-Cola Company (USA) since 2019. 21. Caffè Nero – Majority-owned by The Cyrpus-based holding company controlled by its founder, Gerry Ford, with significant involvement from foreign investment firms. 22. Innocent Drinks – Majority-owned by The Coca-Cola Company (USA) since 2013. 23. Manchester United – Owned by the Glazer family (USA) since 2005. 24. ARM Holdings – Owned by SoftBank (Japan) since 2016 (with plans for a partial public offering in the USA). 25. Hamleys – Owned by Reliance Industries (India) since 2019. 26. Virgin Atlantic – 49% owned by Delta Air Lines (USA). 27. Odeon Cinemas – Owned by AMC Theatres (USA), which is controlled by Wanda Group (China). 28. Thomson Holidays – Now part of the TUI Group (Germany). 29. New Look – Controlled by Brait SE (South Africa). 30. Harvey Nichols – Owned by Dickson Concepts (Hong Kong) since 1991.

Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!

@jdwitherspoon Ah, I’ve seen this one. After this stage it always goes one of two ways: apocalyptic war or alien invasion.

@t_blom It’s not just startup, but pre-seed in UK is hard, getting to terms with a lead investor is exceptionally hard and even exit and post exit. From top to bottom the culture is negative and risk averse and those that succeed soon leave. It’s almost contempt.