October 08 2024

FLASH: NOBEL PHYSICS PRIZE FOR AI; TWO SCIENTISTS HONORED
1. ELECTION ROUNDUP: HARRIS’ WORKING CLASS PROBLEM, AZ SWING VOTER A/C BILLS TOO DAMN HIGH
2. MIT ECONOMIST SAYS ONLY 5% OF JOBS RIPE FOR AI IN NEXT DECADE
3. AI BOOM SPARKS DATA CENTER SHORTAGES AND RESISTANCE FROM LOCAL COMMUNITIES
4. GOOGLE ORDERED TO OPEN ANDROID TO APP STORE RIVALS AFTER COURT LOSS
5. FOREIGN AFFAIRS BRIEF: MEXICO IN TURMOIL AS NEW PRESIDENT TAKES ON ORGANIZED CRIME AND TRADE
October 8 1945: First patent filed for the microwave

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 10a CST.

Editors note: Apologies for newsletter’s tardiness this morning, we had a cat-related incident at the Loving household. All cats are now accounted for and doing well. We’re still waiting on Israel’s retaliatory strike on Iran. It will come and when it does, we’ll cover it.

FLASH: NOBEL PHYSICS PRIZE FOR AI; TWO SCIENTISTS HONORED

With work on machine learning that uses artificial neural networks, John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “showed a completely new way for us to use computers,” the committee said.

Article Source: NYT

1. ELECTION ROUNDUP: HARRIS’ WORKING CLASS PROBLEM, AZ SWING VOTER A/C BILLS TOO DAMN HIGH

A. WORKING-CLASS DEMOCRATS SKEPTICAL IN MICHIGAN, PENNSYLVANIA, WISCONSIN 

Democrats have privately grown worried about Kamala Harris’s standing among working-class voters in the crucial “blue-wall” states—particularly in Michigan. Donald Trump has assiduously courted union members and noncollege-educated white voters with a message focused on high costs, manufacturing and the threat of China to the U.S. economy. Senior Democrats, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, want a sharper economic appeal from Harris and have conveyed those concerns to her campaign, according to people familiar with the conversations. They also would like the vice president to spend more time campaigning in the state. Michigan Democrats have urged the campaign to make more overt appeals to auto workers and blue-collar workers by emphasizing the administration’s work to grow the industry and build new plants. Recent polling shows Harris and Trump essentially tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Winning the blue wall, along with Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, remains her strongest path to 270 Electoral College votes, as she is doing slightly worse in polls of competitive Sunbelt states. An internal poll done by Democrat Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign last week showed Harris down by 3 percentage points in Wisconsin, while Baldwin was up by two points, according to a person familiar with the poll. The person said much of the narrowing is due to Republicans’ strength with noncollege-educated men. Public polling has shown Harris with a slight lead in the state.  

B. ARIZONA HEAT WAVE AND RATE HIKES DRIVE A/C BILLS TO NEW RECORD HIGHS 

Gasoline is often the energy cost voters think about most. But in Arizona, electricity is giving it a run for its money. Rate increases, and a historic 113 consecutive days of temperatures peaking at or above 100 degrees in Phoenix, have generated record air conditioning bills and widespread consternation. Modest-sized homes are paying as much as $500 a month, while the biggest properties are shelling out $1,000 or more. Even some homes with solar panels are receiving surprisingly large bills.  The electric utility Arizona Public Service, or APS, says that between the hotter weather and higher rates, its average residential customer is paying 16.4% more for electricity this summer. APS supplies LeFevre and about half of Maricopa County, where most of the state’s population lives. Sunbelt states such as Arizona have seen a sharp rise in residents, drawing Californians chasing lower housing costs and retirees looking for warm weather and a low tax rate. What they also find is severe heat that strains government resources and individual budgets. Former President Donald Trump has seized on the issue, promising in several campaign stops in Arizona to slash AC and other energy bills—something that is easier said than done. Ruben Gallego, the Democratic Congressman running for Senate, called on the federal government to provide more resources to help vulnerable Arizonans pay their AC bills.

Article Source: WSJ

2. MIT ECONOMIST SAYS ONLY 5% OF JOBS RIPE FOR AI IN NEXT DECADE

Daron Acemoglu wants to make clear right away that he has nothing against artificial intelligence. He gets the potential. “I’m not an AI pessimist,” he declares seconds into an interview. What makes Acemoglu, a renowned professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, come off as a doomsayer locked in on the mounting economic and financial perils ahead is the unrelenting hype around the technology and the way it’s fueling an investment boom and furious tech stock rally. As promising as AI may be, there’s little chance it will live up to that hype, Acemoglu says. By his calculation, only a small percent of all jobs — a mere 5% — is ripe to be taken over, or at least heavily aided, by AI over the next decade. Good news for workers, true, but very bad for the companies sinking billions into the technology expecting it to drive a surge in productivity.

Article Source: Bloomberg

3. AI BOOM SPARKS DATA CENTER SHORTAGES AND RESISTANCE FROM LOCAL COMMUNITIES

A. The frenzy to build data centers to serve the exploding demand for artificial intelligence is causing a shortage of the parts, property and power that the sprawling warehouses of supercomputers require.  The lead time to get custom cooling systems is five times longer than a few years ago, data center executives say. Delivery times for backup generators have gone from as little as a month to as long as two years. A dearth of inexpensive real estate with easy access to sufficient power and data connectivity has builders scouring the globe and getting creative. New data centers are planned next to a volcano in El Salvador and inside shipping containers parked in West Texas and Africa.  

B. PECULIAR, Mo. — The day in June that Wendy Reigel received a shipment of 200 “No data center” yard signs, she learned they were obsolete. The developer she had been fighting to keep out of Chesterton, Ind., announced it was pulling out. But the signs would find new life a few weeks later. Reigel packed them into cardboard boxes and shipped them to Peculiar, where a similar fight against a data center was underway. On Wednesday, locals there celebrated an announcement by the city that they said left the data center proposal as good as dead. “This is incredible for the people of Peculiar,” Reigel said on hearing the news. The victories spring from a growing community-level resistance to the tech industry’s massive expansion of data centers. The nondescript warehouses packed with racks of servers that power the modern internet have proliferated in recent years as companies such as Meta and Google have expanded their influence, and the race to compete in artificial intelligence has driven a surge of new investment. Many state and local officials welcome the tax dollars and infrastructure these projects can bring, and tech companies say they need the facilities to advance AI and keep the United States competitive with China. But over the past year, resistance to data centers has sprung up in places such as Fort Worth; Burns Harbor, Ind.; and Fayette County, Ga. The campaigns have similarities to local fights against wind turbines and other developments, with complaints about spoiled views and construction noise. But opponents of data centers also cite the unique and massive power and water demands that these projects impose on local infrastructure.

Article Source: WSJ, WaPo

4. GOOGLE ORDERED TO OPEN ANDROID TO APP STORE RIVALS AFTER COURT LOSS

Alphabet has been ordered to open its Android operating system to rivals, allowing them to create their own app marketplaces and payment systems to compete with its dominant Google Play Store, in the latest blow for the search giant that has lost recent antitrust cases. A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the changes on Monday following a successful lawsuit from Epic, the maker of popular video game Fortnite, which argued Google suppressed competition in Android apps and used its monopoly to charge excessive fees.

Article Source: FT

5. FOREIGN AFFAIRS BRIEF: MEXICO IN TURMOIL AS NEW PRESIDENT TAKES ON ORGANIZED CRIME AND TRADE

A. MEXICO PRESIDENT SHEINBAUM TARGETS HOMICIDES, CARTELS IN FIRST 100 DAYS 

Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum is using her first 100 days in office to try to lower homicides and loosen the grip of organized crime groups that control swaths of the country, extort businesses, smuggle drugs and kill with impunity. Among Sheinbaum’s top efforts to “pacify the country” will be a push to slash killings in the country’s 10 deadliest cities, including Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez on the U.S. border, according to a presentation of the strategy seen by The Wall Street Journal. She is also planning new efforts to combat the smuggling of the deadly drug fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of Americans a year, the presentation says.  In a graphic display of the violence that Sheinbaum must deal with, the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most violent states, was assassinated Sunday, officials said.  

B. SINALOA CARTEL POWER STRUGGLE ERUPTS IN VIOLENCE FOLLOWING EL MAYO BETRAYAL

Bodies dumped on the side of the road. Gun battles in upscale neighborhoods. Tractor-trailers set aflame on the highway. People plucked from their cars by armed men in broad daylight. This is what it looks like when war breaks out within one of the most powerful criminal mafias in the world, the Sinaloa Cartel, pitting two rival factions against each other in a bloody struggle to control a multibillion-dollar narco empire. The past few years had been relatively peaceful in Sinaloa state, in northwest Mexico, where the dominance of a single, cohesive criminal organization kept turf wars to a minimum, and official homicide rates were lower than in many major U.S. cities. Then, in late July, came an unthinkable betrayal: Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, a godfather of the cartel, was tricked by the son of his former ally, abducted, forced onto a flight to the United States and arrested by American agents, according to U.S. officials.  

C. MEXICO PUSHES FOR LESS RELIANCE ON CHINESE IMPORTS, SEEKS PARTNERSHIP WITH U.S. FIRMS  

Mexico wants to reduce its dependence on imports from China and is asking some of the world’s biggest manufacturers and tech firms operating in the country to identify Chinese products and parts that could be made locally.  The administration of leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last week, wants U.S. carmakers and semiconductor manufacturers as well as global giants in the aerospace and electronics sectors to substitute some goods and components manufactured in China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan, said Deputy Trade Minister Luis Rosendo Gutiérrez.

Article Source: WSJ, NYT

October 8 1945: First patent filed for the microwave

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/science/nobel-prize-physics.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

2. A https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/kamala-harris-struggling-to-break-through-with-working-class-democrats-fear-fe2038b8
B https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/arizona-electricity-bills-trump-election-2024-b665468c

3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-02/ai-can-only-do-5-of-jobs-says-mit-economist-who-fears-crash

4. A https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/why-the-ai-industrys-thirst-for-new-data-centers-cant-be-satisfied-93c7eff5
B https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/05/data-center-protest-community-resistance/

5. https://on.ft.com/3BzfJS5

6. A https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/inside-mexicos-new-plan-to-take-on-cartel-violence-fcff2a54
B https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/world/americas/mexico-sinaloa-cartel-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
C https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/mexico-wants-to-curb-chinese-imports-with-help-from-u-s-companies-bf169302