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ChatCGT Founder Has Massive Bugout Ranch

Is it a bad sign or a good sign that the boss of ChatCGT has made preparations for a serious collapse of the US economy? Sam Altman, 38, has already declared that Artificial Intelligence is likely to “break capitalism” if it becomes successful and widespread.

Chat CGT is a new search tool that is taking the internet by storm because of the way it replies to questions by combining the entire contents of the WWW and everything else out there.

Altman obviously believes in the potential for things in the US to go very badly. He has amassed a store of guns, gold, antibiotics, batteries, water and gas masks, and bought a patch of land on the California coast to which he can retreat. Preumably, this is in case OpenAI misses the mark and in the pursuit of profit, accidentally creates machines that enslave us all.

“Successfully transitioning to a world with superintelligence is perhaps the most important — and hopeful, and scary project in human history,” Altman wrote in a blog post.

At the heart of the transformation is Altman, 37, a billionaire university dropout. Before OpenAI, he ran Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator that has invested in hundreds of companies working on everything from 3D-printed rockets to reversing ageing and included Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit.

The breadth and ambition of Y Combinator’s companies could be seen as the expression of Altman’s belief in the power of technology to dramatically alter, and improve, the human condition. Paul Graham, the Y Combinator founder who chose Altman as his successor, said in a 2016 New Yorker profile: “I think his goal is to make the whole future.”

Graham, a revered figure in Silicon Valley, in 2009 named the 24-year-old Altman as one the most interesting start-up founders alongside Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Short and wiry, Altman is known for his intellect, deep connections among the tech elite and extreme work ethic. He once became so engrossed in a start-up he came down with scurvy. He admitted that he has, “no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people”.

A month after Musk stepped down, Altman quit Y Combinator to take over as OpenAI’s chief. It had become clear to him that to make the impact he wanted, OpenAI could not remain a charity.…

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Tesla’s solar tiles may be too costly

The solar roof tile seems set to transform technological necessity into desirable object.   Elon Musk’s launch event last week was a revolutionary moment because it integrated urban house design with solar technology.

Bring it on, if you can, Mr Musk-  but at the right price.

Consumer Reports says Elon Musk needs to price his tiles at no more than $73,500 for the average pitched roof. It calculated how much Tesla’s new solar tiles would have to cost to be competitive with a traditional roof.

Tesla (TSLA, US) has not yet provided specifics about how much the tiles will cost. Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the “beautiful” solar tiles would beat rivals in price, efficiency, and looks.

Instead of solar panels perched on roofs, that are visible from the outside and not exactly an architectural enhancement, homeowners would get a seamless product made with sleek glass that covers a house and powers it too. And the produce will be available in four styles.

Consumer Reports estimated that to cover the roughly 3,000 square feet of roof needed for the average U.S. home size, homeowners would have to shed $16,000 for clay tile, $20,000 for an asphalt roof, and $45,000 for a slate roof.

The magazine calculated $60,000 in added value from 30 years free of electric bills ($2,000 a year is a typical electric bill in states where solar is big, like California, Texas, and North Carolina) and did other calculations to arrive at $73,500 as the price point a Tesla textured or smooth glass solar roof could be considered cost-competitive with a $20,000 asphalt roof.

That competitive price point is lower for Tesla’s Tuscan-style solar tile and higher for its slate-looking solar tile.

Tesla shares were slightly higher Thursday, but are down 21% in the year so far, while the S&P (SPX, US) as gained 2.4%.

This, from news site TechCrunch: & It’s easy to dismiss the aesthetic import of how Tesla’s tiles look, but it’s actually important, and a real consideration for homeowners. The appearance of the tiles, which come in four distinct flavours, is going to be a core consideration for prospective buyers.& More about those & distinct flavours& there is Textured Glass, a metallic looking flat tile; Slate Glass, which is very hard to distinguish from traditional slate; Tuscan Glass, the old, curved Italian-style tile; and Smooth Glass.

In short, you will become a consumer living inside Musk’s vision of the future: an ecosystem that is modern, cool and green. And expensive.…

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Batteries not improving, so gadget efficiency is goal

WSJ 5th Oct – There is no Moore’s law for batteries. That is, while the computing power of microchips doubles every 18 months, the capacity of the batteries on which ever more of our gadgets depend exhibits no such exponential growth. In a good year, the capacity of the best batteries in our mobile phones, tablets and notebook computers—and increasingly, in our cars and household gadgets—increases just a few percent.

It turns out that storing energy safely and reliably is hard in a way that miniaturizing circuits is not. A pound of gasoline contains more than 20 times as much energy as a pound of lithium-ion batteries. And then there’s the expense: The battery pack in a Tesla Model S costs approximately $30,000.…

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