Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
Dang, it’s hot. We almost scratched 40 degrees Celsius today. I live in the North, I want snow in the winter and a really hot day should be just above 30 degrees.
Anyhow, to cool off, we went to the pool on Saturday and we drove to the pool my dad always took us in the 70s and 80s. Nothing much has changed at that pool and it still has the charm of an outdoor pool in a small village. It has a nice slide, some trees for shade and of course french fries. Obviously, nothing is as good as “Freibad-Pommes” - the fries they serve at an outdoor pool just hit different.
Earlier this week I went to Kiel to meet my brother and his family and stroll around Kiel Week, which is not just a huge sailing event, but also has plenty of things to do for people all ages, especially if they are interested in food and beverages… and I noticed that Corn Dogs are getting more and more popular!
Heat waves can leave homes dangerously hot – even for young, healthy adults, as Texas shows
Within hours, indoor temperatures can climb well above what the thermometer shows outside, especially on upper floors and in rooms with south-facing windows. Over longer periods, especially if temperatures don’t cool off overnight, conditions can become lethal.
Most heat-related deaths occur indoors. When a heat dome sent temperatures soaring in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, 98% of the more than 600 deaths in British Columbia happened inside homes. Washington and Oregon also saw high numbers of deaths in homes that lacked air conditioning.
In Europe, where only 1 in 10 households have air conditioning, heat waves killed an estimated 60,000 people in 2022 and 47,000 in 2023, largely inside buildings never designed for these temperatures.
My wife and I have discussed buying an air conditioning device for the first time. This is how hot it got around here. The staircase of our building is nice and cold, but sleeping there is probably not an option. Rain has been promised and then we will complain about a summer that is too cold and too wet again.
America’s Big Mistake in Iran
When the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran in February, their plan was simple: bomb Iran until either the Iranian public rose up and overthrew the government, or the existing government capitulated to American demands. It rapidly became apparent that neither was going to happen. The Iranian people didn’t revolt against their oppressors. The Iranian government hunkered down, closed the strait, and gambled that the U.S. would be unwilling to invade or strike at crucial infrastructure.
So it seems U.S. planners made an obvious, if common, mistake: They assumed that a war could be won via aerial bombing alone.
I still think that after decades of diplomacy and embargos, the war against the Mullah Regime was justified. I did however assume that there was more planned than just bombing Iran for a week or so., before realizing that Iran controls the the Straight of Hormuz.
AI Warfare Is at the Point of No Return. What Now?
Today, AI-guided weapons can autonomously home in on objectives a controller picks. That selection generally happens when weapons approach a target, involving a few drones with limited firepower.
Soon, though, swarms of drones will independently cross great distances by air, water or land to hunt down and strike targets without human intervention. And targets won’t necessarily be on a battlefield.
Killing isn’t AI’s only military assignment. Its role is ballooning across all the less-visceral chores that militaries tackle, particularly in giving priority to intelligence for selecting targets. U.S. commanders say they are selecting targets at more than 10-fold the tempo in Iraq. In the Ukrainian National Guard’s Khartia Corps, automation has tripled the pace of missions, said its top drone engineer.
Now would be a good time to have reasonable people in charge to figure out how we can prevent this from totally escalating.
Europe Is Fed Up and Wants Its Own AI
It sounds almost delusional for Europe to think that it can build the world’s second-best AI. More than 20 nations would need to work closely together, overcome their continental impulses to strangle innovation with red tape, and lure unprecedented sums of investment. Most of all, Europe must shift from a risk-adverse mindset to a moonshot mentality. But Macron has made some progress. His “Choose France” initiative has won pledges of over 100 billion euros in AI infrastructure, anchored by Softbank's 75 billion-euro commitment to build huge data centers in France—pending approvals, of course.
It just takes too long for European leaders to understand the impact of a new technology. It happens again and again, both in politics and business. And even now not all leaders fully understand what is happening.
(…continue reading.)
Heads in the game
For FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, SAOT is among the latest in a portfolio of innovations used at the World Cup. From goal line technology to video assistant referee (VAR) tools, officiating tech is now commonplace at the top level of the game.
But SAOT is part of a broader sports technology landscape that stretches far beyond soccer. And one of the major players in that landscape is the very team that collaborated with FIFA to bring SAOT to the pitch in the first place: the MIT Sports Lab. Founded in 2015, the lab focuses on using technology and data science to tackle real problems facing athletes, teams, and sports organizations and brands.
While I do acknowledge that the tech is both amazing and is getting better and better, I really don ‘t want all that. I want 90 minutes plus up to two minutes of extra time, I want the refs to make the decisions and I want the fans to debate the decisions. It’s part of the fun!
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico
… and now to having breakfast…