Stephen Shankland

PG&E sends me these reports about how we're doing. They'd make me feel bad except that we have two EVs. Aside from that we're pretty energy efficient.

A black-necked stilt at Baylands Nature Preserve on the marshy and muddy edge of the San Francisco Bay. #birds 🐦

OpenAI hires black hole theoretical physicist Alex Lupsasca, the first person to join the OpenAI for Science initiative led by Kevin Weil, to shape its research By Megan Morrone / Axios. View the full context on Techmeme.

OpenAI is setting up a science discovery team. IMO a pretty interesting area for AI. (Speaking as an employee of a company that just announced a partnership with Google Deepmind.)
www.techmeme.com/251016/p32#a...

Google DeepMind is bringing AI to the next generation of fusion energy We’re announcing our research partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to bring clean, safe, limitless fusion energy closer to reality with our advanced AI systems. This partnership...

More of what my colleagues and I have been working on at GDM on AI for fusion is public now: deepmind.google/discover/blo...

It re-emerged here:

www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

There are lots of AI technologies; LLMs that power chatbots like ChatGPT are the highest profile today. Our partnership between with Google DeepMind involves other approaches like reinforcement learning that could help us explore and optimize our SPARC fusion machine.
#FusionEnergy

That's true, and usually "nuclear" = "fission" in mainstream and even expert energy circles.

I find the overall push and framing here pretty interesting, though, more than the implementation particulars at this stage.

The firm’s effort comes at a time when the U.S. is looking to modernize infrastructure, fortify supply chains, and implement policies that promote growth. JPMorganChase will focus on the following four key areas, supporting companies across all sizes and development stages by offering advice, providing financing, and, in some cases, investing capital: Supply Chain and Advanced Manufacturing, including critical minerals, pharmaceutical precursors and robotics Defense and Aerospace, including defense technology, autonomous systems, drones, next-gen connectivity and secure communications Energy Independence and Resilience, including battery storage, grid resilience and distributed energy Frontier and Strategic Technologies, including AI, cybersecurity and quantum computing

👀

JPMorganChase Launches $1.5 Trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative to Boost Critical Industries

www.jpmorganchase.com/newsroom/pre...

Yeah, not sure what happened to it.

DOE's new fusion energy roadmap to support commercialization: www.energy.gov/articles/fus...

#FusionEnergy

It was warm the second day I took out Canon's 200-800mm lens. I was photographing birds that were pretty close, but I was appalled how bad the heat distortion was and wondered if I had a dud lens (I didn't).

Early morning photography is much much better.

There is nothing like that sweet, sweet line of sight.

*Angels. LOL. Though I kind of like the name Blue Angles. Ninth grade geometry was my favorite math class ever.

A photo of San Francisco's Sutro Tower with a jet arcing downward through the sky over hills with lines of houses.

800mm telephoto shot of @sutrotower.bsky.social from ~15km / 9mi away yesterday — randomly got a Canadian Forces Snowbirds jet. They substituted during Fleet Week in San Francisco for the US Navy's Blue Angles, grounded because of the US government shutdown. Heat distortion makes everything blurry.

A screenshot of the MacOS 7.5's Date and Time control panel including a section for "Daylight Savings Time."

TIL the MacOS 7.5 control panel said "Daylight Savings Time" instead of the correct but less common "Daylight Saving Time." (Though you don't need to capitalize it.) Via the amazing tour de control panels, with emulation, from the incomparable @aresluna.org: aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...
#UI #MacOS

Words whose original, legitimate meaning I have come to appreciate despite their overuse in business jargon:
— critical path
— integrated
— synergy
— leverage

Interesting that North America plunged while APAC and EMEA surged.

YouTube video by Chuck Cook FSD Supervised v14.1 First Impressions Drive - Memorial Park

Come for the Tesla FSD 14.1 evaluation (the first I've seen for brand-new v14 release), stay for the comments discussion about turn signal protocol & rules in roundabouts.
youtu.be/K424Ezrt9NQ

Introducing Limbo: A complete rewrite of SQLite in Rust we forked SQLite with the libSQL project. What would it be like if we just rewrote it?

Utterly tangential but I just saw turso.tech/blog/introdu...

This is relevant to my interests

YouTube video by Google Japan Gboard ダイヤルバージョン / Gboard Dial Version

I was chuckling, then the moment with the return key, and I hooted. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgdW...

YouTube video by Commonwealth Fusion Systems An Inside Look at One Half of SPARC's Vacuum Vessel #alternativeenergy #FusionEnergy #Engineering

Vacuum vessel: www.youtube.com/shorts/oin8m...
#FusionEnergy

Cholla cactus backlit by the New Mexico sunrise this morning.

shutdown, n.
shut down, v.

YouTube video by Bill Gates Harnessing the power of the sun to generate electricity

"This is a fundamental technology for mankind to power everything we do." –Bill Gates on @cfs.energy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmPe...
#FusionEnergy

Each of our TF magnets is made of a stack of 16 "pancakes" that house a coil of superconducting tape — a hugely powerful electromagnet when assembled. DOE has validated vetted our TF performance test success, confirming this production magnet works under SPARC conditions.
#FusionEnergy #EnergySky

Devil's Postpile Devil's Postpile National Park, California || Photo info: Taken 2023-08-01 with Canon EOS R5, RF24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM, ¹⁄₆₀ sec at f/8.0, focal length 24 mm, ISO ISO 100. Copyright 2023 .

Agreed! Or columnar basalt...

Devil's Postpile (California):
www.flickr.com/photos/shank...
www.flickr.com/photos/shank...

Giant's Causeway (Northern Ireland): www.flickr.com/photos/shank...

Reynisfjara (Iceland):
www.flickr.com/photos/shank...

🌏 Overheard at NYCW '25 Move over, Climate Week, it was NY Energy & AI Week

CTVC on Climate Week NYC:

"Less 'climate' this week, more of 'Energy AI' week, with adjacencies like security, affordability, resiliency, and efficiency also taking the spotlight... the vibe itself felt resilient."
www.ctvc.co/overheard-at...
#EnergySky #Climate

Really miss those blue tits from when I lived in UK & France

You can see the sunspots without using fancy filters if you take a photo of the sun with the right thickness of clouds in the way.