The bank analyst who correctly predicted that Bitcoin would massively gain value over the course of 2017 then went on to predict it would keep rising to $50,000 to $100,000 by the end of 2018. (The actual price on December 31, 2018 was $3,691)
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/16/bitcoin-headed-to-100000-in-2018-analyst-who-forecast-2017-price-move.html
Two geologists who predicted 2018 would have abnormally high earthquake activity were also wrong.
https://qz.com/1133304/as-earths-rotation-slows-2018-could-see-a-spike-in-large-earthquakes/
A rare Nextbigfuture.com article that I think is worth reposting (even though I still can’t fully understand it).
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/the-end-of-moores-law-in-detail-and-starting-a-new-golden-age.html
Unless a human is mentally focused on something, the human might not be displaying general intelligence.
https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/humans-who-are-not-concentrating-are-not-general-intelligences/
Airbus is discontinuing its monstrous A380 passenger plane due to lack of sales. I remember when it was introduced with great fanfare. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/02/15/lesson-from-the-a380-and-california-hsr-smaller-is-better-in-transportation/#29c6c055d56d
UltraViolet–the massive digital movie library company–is shutting down.
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/ultraviolet-shutting-down-1203123898/
President Trump says he wants “6G technology in the United States as soon as possible.” This is a fanciful statement, since 5G hasn’t even entered widespread use, and no one has even started hammering out a technical definition of what “6G” would be.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/21/trump-says-he-wants-g-even-g-wireless-tech-what-is-g/
Holographic TVs need 10,000 times as much data as 2D TVs. Only an advanced 5G broadband network could support that.
https://www.electronicworldtv.co.uk/blog/holographic-tvs-a-possibility-in-the-next-decade
The guy who invented the world’s first augmented reality contact lenses thinks they won’t be mature, commercially available technology until 2035.
https://www.inverse.com/article/31034-augmented-reality-contact-lenses
Another of my predictions has come true (early): Samsung has unveiled a “foldable” smartphone.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/20/18231249/samsung-galaxy-fold-folding-phone-features-screen-photos-size-announcement
Why buy a tiny house when you can buy this?
http://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26599/this-containerized-missile-launcher-could-give-almost-any-ship-short-range-air-defenses
A shipping container full of Russia’s advanced S-400 missiles might have fallen over the side of a cargo ship on its way to China, and could be sitting on the ocean floor somewhere. If it knew the location, the U.S. could probably recover it.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26540/is-a-batch-of-russias-most-advanced-surface-to-air-missiles-sitting-on-the-sea-floor
For years, the U.S. Air Force used Area 51 to analyze captured Soviet and Chinese fighter planes.
http://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26372/usaf-mini-documentary-takes-you-behind-the-scenes-of-its-top-secret-cold-war-mig-squadron
According to an internal Kremlin analysis, China’s level of military technology will grow to match Russia’s within ten years.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-09-24/why-russia-and-china-are-strengthening-security-ties
The sad saga of Russia’s aircraft carrier continues. It turns out China doesn’t want to help fix it, after all.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-only-aircraft-carrier-serious-trouble-43157
‘This combination of un-manned sea travel — plus a complex, remotely-managed rocket launch — is a clear demonstration of what’s to come. China’s successful test heralds a new era of at-a-distance robotics: with applications in defense, search + rescue, exploration, off-shore drilling, ocean fleet management, environmental protection, and a variety of command-and-control systems.’
http://www.kurzweilai.net/digest-ship-without-sailors-worlds-first-weather-rocket-launch-from-robotic-vessel
An autonomous U.S. Navy ship did a test cruise from San Diego to Hawaii and back.
http://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26319/usns-sea-hunter-drone-ship-has-sailed-autonomously-to-hawaii-and-back-amid-talk-of-new-roles
The wreckage of the USS Hornet–the last U.S. aircraft carrier to be sunk in combat–was found at the bottom of the Pacific. Construction started on the ship in September 1939, and it was sunk in October 1942.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-hornet-wreckage-world-war-two-warship-discovered/
China tested a new submarine-launched nuclear missile, whose range is long enough to let Chinese subs strike targets deep inside North America from the safety of the Pacific.
https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/china-conducts-first-test-of-new-jl-3-submarine-launched-ballistic-missile/
Coalition of the Unwilling: America’s allies have refused to take over the job of policing Syria if U.S. troops leave. This sort of thanklessness only strengthens U.S. isolationists.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/allies-say-they-wont-remain-in-syria-after-us-troops-withdraw/2019/02/20/62e503b2-3532-11e9-a400-e481bf264fdc_story.html
When the history of WWIII is written, surely it shall be said that the extra 100 men from North Macedonia are what tipped the balance to NATO.
https://www.janes.com/article/86205/nato-signs-macedonian-accession-protocol
Hungary is finally selling off its Soviet-era MiG-29s, moving NATO that much closer to weapon interoperability.
https://www.janes.com/article/86269/hungarian-mod-looks-to-sell-off-decommissioned-mig-29s
In the 1980s, Israel developed an upgraded F-4 Phantom fighter plane that could supercruise thanks to lighter, more advanced engines. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/1980s-israel-developed-heavy-hammer-f-4-super-phantom-what-happened-44702
The sad case of a young woman who died and then had her family ignore her wishes to be cryopreserved should impel us to change the pertinent laws. In absence of any legal changes, I think a person could ensure compliance by writing a will that disinherited any next of kin who obstructed their wishes to be frozen.
https://qz.com/1555363/cryogenics-is-facing-legal-trouble-with-body-preservation/
A scientific team at the renowned Salk Institute used a CRISPR gene therapy to significantly slow down aging in mice. It boosted their lifespans by 25%. If there were a pill that could extend your life by just five years, how much would you pay for it?
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/putting-the-brakes-on-aging/
Not only is obesity partly genetic, but so is the distribution of fat within a person’s body. This has implications for aesthetics and health, since storing too much fat in the hips and around visceral organs heightens the risks of many serious disorders, including heart attacks and diabetes.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-dna-variants-significantly-body-fat.html
Furthermore, South Asians (and to a lesser extent, East Asians) have a genetic predisposition to store body fat in their livers, abdomens and muscles, raising their risk of diabetes and heart disease compared to other races.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/well/live/why-do-south-asians-have-such-high-rates-of-heart-disease.html
If the NHS offered free genomic sequencing to everyone in Britain, there might be a positive ROI since many people would have genetic diseases caught in their early phases, when effective treatment is relatively cheap and easy.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/02/precision-genomic-medicine-and-uk.html
Scientists have made stable DNA strands composed of the four natural nucleotide bases along with four synthetic ones. Such engineered strands would be more “information dense” than normal DNA strands, and could have medical uses.
https://www.livescience.com/64829-hachimoji-dna.html
Computer simulations of chemical reactions are getting more accurate thanks to Moore’s Law and better algorithms. In a recent study, millions of “virtual reactions” between random chemical combinations were run, and a respectable number of them were verified as correct through real-world duplications of those experiments.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/02/11/virtual-screening-as-big-as-it-currently-gets
A startup company backed by Bill Gates is trying to build a tiny “tele-operated robo-surgeon” that human surgeons would remotely control through an interface that made them feel like they were the size of a rat.
http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/02/13/bill-gates-backed-vicarious-surgical-adds-a-virtual-reality-twist-to-robots-in-the-operating-room/
A new study strengthens a belief I’ve had for a while: The utility that people gain from leisure time is subject to the law of diminishing returns, and actually becomes negative past a certain amount. This casts doubt on the notion that a post-scarcity future world where machines did all the work and humans had endless free time would be utopian.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/free-time-life-satisfaction/583171/
Two baseball players looked so alike that they took a DNA test to see if they were related (they weren’t). With so many photos of so many people available on the internet, it won’t be long before you can use an app to find all of your doppelgangers. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/two-similar-looking-baseball-players-take-dna-tests-to-prove-whether-they-are-related
An advanced image-editing program has been invented that converts simple doodles to realistic alterations of human faces.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.06838.pdf
A Tweet worth considering. I call this the “Technological Unemployment Tipping Point,” and I also think that rather than trying to guess which career field you should aim for, it will someday make sense to just ask the machines which jobs align the best with your skills and interests, and will not become obsolete soon. (You might not like the answer.)
Texas is now producing more oil than ever before. The “Good Old Days” are back, yet strangely muted.
http://www.tipro.org/newsroom/tipro-news/tipro-releases-state-of-energy-report-1
BP predicts that renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass) will produce the biggest share of the world’s energy (and not just electricity) by 2040. Coal will have the second biggest share, and will have precipitously declined in popularity from today.
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook/demand-by-sector/power.html
The number of buildings in the world will double by 2060 to accommodate a bigger and richer human population. An enormous amount of CO2 will be emitted thanks to all that construction.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter
The share of the Earth’s surface covered in green plants actually increased from 2000 to 2017. Much of that owes to China’s state-directed “Great Green Wall” tree-planting project.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/14/694202210/you-may-be-surprised-to-learn-which-two-countries-are-making-the-globe-a-lot-gre
While some insect populations are shrinking, the problem is probably being overblown by alarmist people with their own agendas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/insect-apocalypse-really-upon-us/583018/
The brine produced at desalination plants could be processed to make valuable chemicals and to capture valuable bits of metal dissolved in seawater.
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-desalination-resource.html
What would life be like on a tidally-locked but habitable planet? 1) Probably sucky, 2) Everyone would have blackout curtains, and 3) There wouldn’t be different time zones.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/space-colonies-on-tidally-locked-planets/582661/
Richard Branson says he will fly into space on his own craft on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6682257/Richard-Branson-says-hell-fly-space-July.html
Jeff Bezos thinks there will someday be 1 trillion humans living in our Solar System.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-wings-club-presentation-transcript-2019-2
‘The Lunar Library™ represents the first in a series of lunar archives from the Arch Mission Foundation, designed to preserve the records of our civilization for up to billions of years. It is installed in the SpaceIL “Beresheet” lunar lander, scheduled to land on the Moon in April of 2019…[it] contains a 30 million page archive of human history and civilization, covering all subjects, cultures, nations, languages, genres, and time periods. ‘
https://www.archmission.org/spaceil
A successful experiment to harpoon a piece of space junk raises hope that the cloud of manmade debris around Earth could someday be removed. https://apnews.com/066f28f2c2d04fd89ec15f7d43c99d88
After recovering from a serious head injury, this guy found he had acquired a talent for playing the piano. Very advanced brain surgeries and stimulative brain implants could someday enhance peoples’ intelligence, mental skills, and alter their personalities.
https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/02/10/derek-amato-acquired-savant-syndrome-piano/
Home delivery of groceries is expensive (and hence, less popular that deliveries of everything else) because care must be taken to keep perishable groceries at the right temperature and to properly handle delicate foods, like bags of chips.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/online-grocery-shopping-has-been-slow-catch/581911/
By 2025, there will be 261 different car models that don’t run on gasoline–triple today’s figure. In 2011, there were only three such models.
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/16/694303169/as-more-electric-cars-arrive-whats-the-future-for-gas-powered-engines
If app-based carsharing in Moscow is any indication, it’s a win-win for nearly everyone.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-lyft-automakers-russia-20190211-story.html
1:1 virtual simulations of cities would really help city planners.https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46880468