Posts

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The democracy building needs an elevator, not just revolving doors.

It’s hard to get short-term governments to implement and secure long-term policies, so here we are:
– housing price crisis
– retirement pyramid schemes
– climate maladaptation
– refugee waves
– arms races

So many big issues impossible to solve without a long-view planning body.
Parliamentary governments are executive, not planning bodies.
Are we waiting on the EU to solve all the major problems?

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The Spacetime Crystal

Water, at exactly zero degrees, doesn’t know what it wants to be. Add the tiniest nudge of energy and it stays liquid; subtract the same and it snaps into ice, molecules locking into a perfect repeating lattice. The tipping point itself, that knife-edge moment of indecision, is its own strange kind of object. For decades, physicists suspected something similar could happen to spacetime. Not water molecules, but the very fabric of the universe, organising itself into a crystal-like structure right on the threshold of becoming a black hole. Now, for the first time, a team from Vienna and Frankfurt has written down an exact mathematical description of what that object looks like, using nothing more than paper and pencil.
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Marbles

Apparently we are entering the ‘vibe slop’ phase. Yet all I can think about is how poor language sounds these days. Can I be a techie without talking like I have marbles in my mouth? Wait, I can. Yeah, turns out that careless, ill-informed natural language coding is a problem, Houston.
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Soon enough it’s G & A, not OAI

OpenAI / ChatGPT will dwindle, leaving only Google and Anthropic on the battlefield.

Running the risk of not being the only one thinking this, and still be wrong, but I’ve been right enough times to call it.

Google steadily reclaims average/daily use cases and G-Workspace startups.

Anthropic already rules the Enterprise and will be powering most of Microsoft workspace based enterprises.

If nothing else, simply because they’re all US companies, and the US dislikes having more than two choices; us vs them, right vs wrong, zero-sum game mentality.

See Intel v AMD, Mac vs Windows, Bing v Google… dare I go political 😉

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Europe’s Productivity Gap

I didn’t study economics; I was too nerdy back then. It turned out interesting first when I learned about complex systems, and now with the impact of AI on society.

This week a piece caught my eye saying “Europe’s productivity gap with the US is a mirage”. Paul Krugman argues that standard productivity comparisons between Europe and the US are misleading, driven almost entirely by America’s tech sector. While for the rest, productivity adjusted to purchasing power has been equivalent.

Still, being in tech gives me the feeling that we can’t ignore its importance in how world’s economies and societies will play out. I can’t help but feel that Europe isn’t doing enough innovation, at least not fast enough. But I’m optimistic about entrepreneurs driving change where politicians fail.