My favorite paid subscription is Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View. There are two parts of this subscription I like best – a collection of charts every Wednesday and a curated list of interesting research/technology articles every Sunday. Here, for example, are links that caught my eye today.
(1) Meta’s open source Large Language Model (LLM) is as good as GPT 3.5.
The availability of a high quality LLM as an open source tool will change the landscape. Again.
(2) The price of polysilicon – a key input in solar modules – is down 78% this year. Solar is going to continue getting cheaper.
(3) We’re still early days in the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Norway, which leads the world, with 21% of its vehicles being electric, has some fascinating data on passenger car fires. ICE/traditional cars were responsible for 35 out of 10,000 passenger car fires. The same number for EVs was 4 – nearly 9x better.
(4) We may finally have a drug that slows down Alzheimers.
(5) Canada trialed a new work permit directly targeting US H1-B holders. They hit their capacity of 10,000 applications in 2 days. #TalentWars.
(6) An energy startup, Fervo Energy, has shared a statement claiming the first every scalable geothermal energy breakthrough.
What I appreciate about this newsletter is that they don’t shy away from talking about the realities of the challenges we face – especially around the nature of the climate crisis. Those realities are hard to ignore at a time when we’re shattering all sorts of heat wave / temperature records.
For example, it is true that Coal consumptions was the highest this year in a while.
But it is also true that coal consumption is plateauing with growth in coal flattening.
However, this isn’t enough. Fossil fuels are still 82% of the world’s energy supply.
But, on the bright side, the rate of growth of renewables powered by solar and wind is amazing to see. And exponential growth will mean significant changes in our mix in the next two decades.
In their words – “Renewable energy is poised to be this engine of growth. It is on a 60-year exponential growth curve. Solar energy, for instance, is growing at the fastest rate ever seen for any energy technology. China’s progress exemplifies this: it is on track to double its wind and solar capacity by 2025, five years ahead of its 2030 target. Renewables are ready for lift-off, and we love that here at Exponential View.”
This explains why I appreciate Azeem and team’s work. They do a good job of both embracing reality while dealing in hope.
And, as these notes above show, there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful and optimistic.
