⤴⤵ Up Wing/Down Wing #19

A curated selection of pro-progress and anti-progress news items from the week that was

In case you missed it .. .

⚛ Why (lots) more nuclear power might make economic sense (Monday)

🚢 🤚 Some anti-progress lessons from the port workers strike (Tuesday)

⤵ Why populist economics is bad: trade protectionism edition (Thursday)

⤵ Why populist economics is bad: industrial policy edition (Friday)

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Up Wing Things

☢️ Nvidia is considering Nuclear. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discussed nuclear power as a viable option for powering the increasing number of data centers required for AI development. In an interview, Huang highlighted that while nuclear energy won’t be the sole solution, it is a valuable part of a sustainable energy mix. As global demand for AI infrastructure grows, some regions already face electricity shortages, influencing the location and capacity of new data centers. Huang also emphasized that Nvidia’s latest, more power-efficient chips can handle AI tasks faster, reducing overall energy consumption. (Bberg)

🔭 Hunting catastrophic asteroids with cutting-edge telescopes. While smaller asteroids hit earth all the time without much impact, larger asteroids pose significant risks, including city destruction. Planetary defense is an applied science field that works to detect and deflect such threats. NASA's Dart mission successfully tested deflecting an asteroid in 2022, but future protection relies on improved detection. Two advanced tools, NASA’s NEO Surveyor and Chile’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will enhance asteroid detection in the coming years, focusing on city-killer-sized asteroids. By the 2040s, they will map potential threats throughout the next century, helping safeguard Earth from catastrophic impacts. (Guardian)