- The Chernobyl disaster killed 60 people and an estimated 60,000 from radiation poisoning.
- However, abandoning nuclear led to 4 million deaths from air pollution as the world moved to coal-fired power for base load.
- Source.
Misc
Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.
Transformation of Capital Markets
- Ken Moelis thinks the financial crisis changed the face of transaction banking and capital markets.
90 Facts
- Almost 75% of companies paid a dividend in the late 1970s; it declined to 35% in 2021.
- Only 7% of people made it through Novel Prize economist Daniel Khaneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
- More here.
Declining Turnover
- Active manager portfolio turnover has been declining.
- Source.
Natural Diamond Prices Have Been Falling
- Supply (see slide 11) is forecast to fall over the long run.
- Source.
Miles Driven to GDP
- The miles-driven intensity of GDP has been declining.
- Source.
Robotaxis
- First comes the hype, then the disappointment, then it becomes reality (well some way to go).
- Source.
52 Things I learned 2024 Edition
- The list returns.
- “People whose surnames start with U, V, W, X, Y or Z tend to get grades 0.6% lower than people with A-to-E surnames. Modern learning management systems sort papers alphabetically before they’re marked, so those at the bottom are always seen last, by tired, grumpy markers. A few teachers flip the default setting and mark Z to A, and their results are reversed.“
- Ozempic seems to be changing the second hand clothes market, creating a surge in plus-size women’s apparel sales. Size 3XL listings have doubled over the last two years
Activate Tech & Media Report
- 206 slides on the state of tech and media.
Drug Overdose Deaths are Declining
- This is an encouraging fall after years of unwelcome increase.
- Source.
State of Gen AI in Enterprise
- Results from surveying 600 US IT decision makers.
- Plenty of stats and analyses inside.
Scientific Progress
- Scientific publications have grown 4.1% pa since 1675, accelerating in the most recent phase to 5.1%.
- Source.
Benedict Evans’ Latest Deck
- A tour of the frontiers of tech through slides.
- AI will take time – even cloud, after all the talk and years, is still only 30% of workloads.
On the Cover of Science
- “Evo is a genomic foundation model that enables prediction and generation tasks from the molecular to genome scale. Using an architecture based on advances in deep signal processing, Evo is trained on 7 billion parameters with a context length of 131 kilobases at single-nucleotide resolution. Evo captures two fundamental aspects of biology—the multimodality of the central dogma and the multiscale nature of evolution.“
- Source.
The Concrete Impact of AI
- In the US there are 5,000 data centers today, with 450 being added every year to 2030.
- Data centers need a lot of concrete, more so due to AI’s need for bigger servers.
- This concrete causes a lot of emissions, throwing a spanner in big tech emission targets, and leading to high demand for so-called green concrete.
Newspaper Presidential Endorsments
- Are no longer a thing, perhaps a function of the social media age.
- Source.
You don’t Own Anything
- The transformation of technology to the -as-a-service model has led to many positives, yet it has led to a situation where users don’t own anything.
- This creates vulnerabilities – “years ago websites were made of files; now they are made of dependencies.”
- “If the current trend of technology is sweeping us in a direction of “everything is amazing, but nothing is ours”, Technology that’s Actually Yours could be the next great counter-trend.“
State of Venture
- A discussion on how venture capital just isn’t what it used to be.
- Large rounds for companies lead to perverse incentives – the speakers estimate just 5% of the 1,400 pre-LLM unicorns would raise an up-round today.
- These round sizes continue today (though in part explained by the increased capital intensity of AI based startups).
- Large funds could also lead to a reshaping of portfolio return curves, with consequences that are yet to be seen.
Art Market Update
- The art market continues to struggle, as public auction sales are declining for a third year in a row.
- Source.
Containers Full of Air
- 75% of containers that come from overseas to the US return to their origin empty.
- Source.