David Galbraith @daveg Twitter profile

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

A physics based explanation of why life exists in the universe

Wolfram’s Computational Interpretation of the Second Law and a Physics Based View of Evolution.

A Computational Understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

daveg.medium.com

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Last Seen Profiles

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

Wake up Europe, the digital age is bypassing you. You have no Google , Amazon, Meta, Apple. You arrogantly called SpaceX a fanciful dream and it wiped out the European Space Agency. You have no Nvidia and your response to AI has been to regulate before you have anything domestic

Rodolfo Rosini ✨☕️

@rodolfor

4 months

Anyway speaking of dirigiste failure, here's another banger. Going from calling reusable rockets a dream to not having a space industry in 10 years. Good job guys!

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David Galbraith

@daveg

9 years

A Syrian migrants' child. http://t.co/sjBxuInpEp

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

Why France could implode. This is Germany - the feedback loop of incentives to work to create wealth where a portion pays for a welfare state (a good thing) doesn't work anymore and it's getting worse, with this specific example. But now, let's compare it with France.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

France and Germany now looking to join Italy in banning ChatGPT rather than focusing on how to build their own AI industry. This is what terminal cultural decline looks like. Not with a bang but a bureaucracy.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

Just tried this and they fit better

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

France is a lot worse, the state is 60% of the economy vs Germany's 45% and it hasn't made a profit in half a century, so its debt is increasing.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

So the French have refused to accept reality, are voting out the most socially moderate and fiscally sound party for ones that are socially divisive and fiscally illiterate. Both the extreme Left and Right want to increase spending which will create a spiral of increased debt,

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

Why the European model is in danger of collapse. Originally it was a Goldilocks one, rewarding effort without punishing bad luck. The issue now is that effort isn't rewarded enough to incentivise funding against bad luck, so the funding decreases. Meanwhile the cost of that

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@AnunaDe This is so sad and ultimately patronising and supremacist. It would create as much suffering and exploitation as colonisation. Unbelievable that someone like this is allowed to speak in the EU parliament.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

And raising taxes is very hard as you can see here, because French taxes (where most are hidden in 'social charges') are already very high (red) compared to Germany (blue). So if you think Germany doesn't work, France really doesn't.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 months

@RufusTSuperfly I used to work for a rock concert set designer. His exasperated uk manager (think Bill Nighy flatmate in Love Actually) came into our office in a rage “if that fucking little…’. Apparently Prince had decided he would only talk to him at right angles, looking into the distance.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

And the cost to service that debt is increasing for France both because zero interest rates are ending and because the French debt is becoming more expensive than Germany's, meaning it has to cut spending or increase taxes.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

@theJonnyboyP I think it's Ivor Ballshowing.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

And reducing spending by making retirement ages the same as nearly every other country, caused violent unrest. This is despite the fact that retirements cost the state more than five times as much as the 70s as there are more old people for working people to support and people

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

@CaseyNewton I have quite small ears so the stalk jams in perfectly - will wear them like that when jogging, from now on.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

I did this interview for the Guardian nearly a decade ago, shouting at clouds about the same thing. Since then, I’d argue, things have gotten worse. It needs a massive, multinational initiative to correct, urgently.

In search of a European Google

California’s Silicon Valley runs the show when it comes to successful tech companies. So why has the old world failed to produce a thriving digital industry to rival the US?

www.theguardian.com

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 years

The US is the sunniest inhabited place in the world. Much of Sub-Saharan Africa has same sunshine as Norway. Only Iceland, Antarctica and parts of Siberia are as sunless as parts of Northern England and Scotland.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 years

This is the UI to choose your cellphone country code on BA website. 🤯

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

All of the above is because I’m proud to be European. Post War Europe was the Goldilocks zone, globally. With grand scale innovation, peaceful resolution between nations, democracy,diverse and unsurpassed cultural heritage and a social pact that delivered health, education and a

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 years

Suggested UI improvements for North Korean hackers

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@MrEwanMorrison That’s like saying the Industrial Revolution can only burst.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@JurgenSpiess @HarmaninToronto How do two cars pass in the single lane in the center? And if the answer is there is no other car in the center, there is also no bike in the bike lane.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

In reply to the most contentious part of the above rant: infrastructure being configured for rail over self drive. It seems like a stupid point on the face of it, but I think it’s true. I thought self drive would never happen before ChatGPT was released, now I think it is likely

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

How's yer blockchain thing doing in comparison

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David Galbraith

@daveg

10 months

I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time playing with generative AI systems and a lot of my original enthusiasm has gone. It feels like they generate mediocrity and it’s impossible to get them to derive any new insights.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

And for those asking what the underlying problems are and what the possible solutions could be, I talk about them in this interview. I fundamentally believe in the European model (relatively free markets balanced with a safety net) and it could be the identity that defines being

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@tomfgoodwin God knows. Maybe we’ll end up having to click buttons after every prompt, like for cookies, to protect people’s privacy while actually giving people secrecy.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@primalpoly Building a culture that would build an alternative would be better. You can’t uninvent things.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

I wasn’t the first to point out the issue with Europe and technology, eight years ago, and I won’t be the last. AI was a new opportunity and it was led by European technologists (Hinton, LeCun).

In search of a European Google

California’s Silicon Valley runs the show when it comes to successful tech companies. So why has the old world failed to produce a thriving digital industry to rival the US?

www.theguardian.com

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

For those asking for the original source of the first graphic, which is an extreme, if real, special case, to illustrate the misalignment of incentives, It's is here

David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

Hat tip @TweetsOfSumit for the original chart, here

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@tomfgoodwin Aaaah. I though I was just buying defective ones!

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

And yes - I should have clarified that SpaceX wiped out the European Space Agency's launch program.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@Askemoon The US is an almost identical number of states, where, although united by language, fundamental values vary between them. As a competitor it’s apt as the EU is both a competing economic block and one which, unlike China has been utterly dominated by imported US digital era

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

@lara_hogan Passive aggressive action plan: Step 1 get up to use toilets. Step 2. On return get your bag out of overhead locker. Step 3 sit down and put your bag to your left as if you need to use and fetch things out, leaving it there.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 months

The world's most important and non-resilient supply chain.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@beckymbarrow @Frances_Coppola It is indeed appalling. She was the same age as Samantha Fox when she was paraded semi naked by your newspaper group to sell papers.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@SwannMarcus89 Literally:

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

Fintech is a niche internet sector that everyone thought would be huge, but outside of China it has resulted in very few platform companies like Revolut. Here’s why. 1. It’s a massive market sector that had everyone drooling but regulation means it’s not a level playing field

Linas Beliūnas

@linasbeliunas

2 months

Revolut just posted 2023 financial results and they are insane 🤯 - $2.2B revenue (+95% YoY) - $428M net profit, up from $7M in 2022. - A record 12M new customers in 2023 - $22.7B in customer balances on the platform (+38% YoY) The crazy part? 70% of new retail customers

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

@iamRobONeill You clearly didn’t read or understand it.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

6 years

The futuristic past, when you could travel to the moon, fly between London and NY at twice the speed of sound and have mail delivered several times a day.

Gary Forss

@garyforss

6 years

Milk delivery 25 years ago was essentially a subscription service offering products with recyclable/reusable packaging, delivered by electric vehicles. Part of me thinks that if a techie firm were to have proposed this same idea today people would think it was incredible.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 years

India could replace the US as the dominant driver of anglophone culture.

Balaji

@balajis

2 years

What happens when Indians become the majority of English speakers on the internet? It will happen over the next decade or so. And it'll change the world. This is a fun piece (not by me!) that extrapolates out what happens when the Empire Writes Back.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 years

Collapse of middle class bellcurve distribution in 15 US cities

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@Bernstein I had a swimmer friend who was approached by police on a beach in Florida and told to wear shorts rather than a Speedo because there were children around. Most French find that weirder.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

Nobody watching this report isn't focusing on the background.

Sky News

@SkyNews

5 years

"A lot of people are going to change their behaviour." Professor Robert Kelly tells Sky News he thinks South Korea will keep the #coronavirus outbreak under control, after the country reported more than 160 new cases. Get the latest on #COVID19 here:

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

All these pics of San Francisco are unbelievable.

anaïs

@anaisisdrawing

4 years

left: san francisco/bay area rn right: blade runner 2049

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

Young protesters in France failed to understand how pensions worked (the working young pay for the old) a tragedy that meant they were Turkeys voting for Christmas, when opposing retirement age increases. French pensions are between ten and twenty times more expensive for the

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David Galbraith

@daveg

9 years

Uber has raised twice as much money from investors as all combined Star Wars films' inflation adjusted global box office revenue since 1977.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 years

Riiiighty ho. First ever interstellar asteroid is rocket shaped and made of metal.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@AGItechgonewild @Andercot I agree US debt is a problem, but at least it is creating companies that could alleviate it. I’d argue that French debt will become an issue for France, sooner.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@Meijerhans2 Absolutely, and we need the cash to protect the European model.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

So the Matrix is the only movie that isn't living in a computer simulation?

Alberto Tretti

@albertotretti

5 years

Matrix 4 creating a war zone in downtown San Francisco. Super low flying helicopters and explosions right on Market and Pine St.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

The idea that we measure inflation against flat screen TVs and not the things that matter, then print money which drives these things further out reach for ordinary people, increasing inequality, should lead half the world's economists & central bankers to the dustbin of history.

Ben Hunt

@EpsilonTheory

5 years

So weird how rents and home prices are exploding higher across Europe when measured inflation is nonexistent.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

@historyinmemes "He lived to be 96"... when he tragically slipped and broke his neck

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 months

@jburnmurdoch This seems like an example of a chart crime that doesn’t show differing ideology but different tribal allegiance. Liberal means completely different things in continental Europe (capitalist), UK (centrist) and US (Left). But what is being measured isn’t actually liberal vs

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

With news the Amsterdam is emerging as a serious challenger to London, for center of European financial services industry, here is a list of why the Netherlands is one of the world’s most interesting and paradoxical countries:

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

Imagine having a resume with: founder of the world’s biggest space agency; founder of biggest car company; founder of the biggest fintech and founder of the biggest AI company. Driver of the biggest reduction in carbon emissions in the world and provider of broadband to all

Steph Smith

@stephsmithio

1 year

13 years of SpaceX launches from Cape Canaveral. Incredible example of the exponential nature of technology.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

9 years

When the worlds biggest company derives 2/3 revenue from a phone http://t.co/jV3taMfrJB

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David Galbraith

@daveg

10 years

"The future of digital communications is Domino's Pizza talking to KitKat, for ever, alone."

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

France has the best political leader in generations, a centrist, and he is hated by an increasingly extreme Left and Right wing populace. Careful what you wish for France, you will regret it for decades.

Darren Grimes

@darrengrimes_

1 year

Macron booed by an entire stadium.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

@EpsilonTheory It's surged by EXACTLY 50%, an impossible coincidence, which is probably a message to the outside world from the poor civil servant that was told to boost the numbers by a half.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

The vaccine roll out is revealing how France's entire education, bureaucracy and business ecosystem needs rebuilt. Its home developed vaccine won't be ready for another year (Sanofil), the entire country has vaccinated less people than a single nurse can do in a day (138) and...

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

🧵How to understand the French election result:

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 years

We're nearly at the point of information Dyson Spheres?

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

My 12 year old is learning to create stop motion videos during lockdown.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

So it seems that this is the most important machine in the world: a ventilator. The UK has less than Italy, for example. It looks complex, but could a simpler version be hacked together and produced quickly? What would the design specs be if we reduced it to a minimum?

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 years

Swiss are so organized, they've already got their post Brexit signage done

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 years

I met @jayrayner1 at the funeral of his best friend, David and we've been friends for nearly 40 years. I was roped to David when he died in a mountaineering accident. None of us ever forgotten him and here Jay talks about him, very movingly.

#137 Jay Rayner

This week I’m talking to writer, food critic, + host of Out To Lunch, Jay Rayner about his friend David, who died when they were teenagers ❤️ As ever we talk gr

podcasts.apple.com

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

Hat tip @TweetsOfSumit for the original chart, here

Sumit Kumar

@TweetsOfSumit

2 months

One of the toughest graphs to swallow. In Germany 🇩🇪, when a couple with 2 kids earns 1000€/mo more, they have less money. Grey is gross income. Orange is what’s left after taxes and social contributions.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

I can’t wait to have an AI that rips apart the logic of charlatans like Jung, Freud, Lacan, Foucault etc. etc. Then looks for circular references in academic papers and in combination, dismantles half of the University system as a fraudulent posturing.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@PatrickButler00 They are

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 years

Wordle 1/1978

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@MrEwanMorrison Which did nothing to slow down the continued progress, ultimately.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

Am bullish on France. Sleeping giant held back by Mitterrand's legacy of bureaucrats and anti-science, for decades. It has world's best mathematics, latent design culture, ultimate heritage and non class obsessed passion for quality (it's not posh to like good food and wine).

TechCrunch

@TechCrunch

5 years

The year of the French unicorns by @romaindillet

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@PicturesFoIder @Chris_Skinner I prefer the punchier "fuck's sake", without the 'for', in more important situations.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@MoistyPoisty @IamRamenPanda ARM is owned by Japanese

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

My ten favorite architects, and why cc @om 1. Scarpa. Created the paradigm for old in new.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 years

@espiers To be fair, entire Abrahamic trio of religions has an unhealthy issue with sex, period.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

Humans need to use more energy to save the planet. A paradox that nobody is grasping.

Tom Harwood

@tomhfh

1 year

Demanding that people simply use less energy makes us all poorer. Net zero can only be achieved by building lots and lots and lots of clean energy generation. Nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, and natural gas as a transition. Decarbonisation must be coupled with energy abundance.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

9 months

This tweet has more practical advice than the entire COP summit

Sabine Hossenfelder

@skdh

9 months

Yes, our climate targets will fail because plans to meet them are mostly empty words. They are slightly slowing down the developments though, so still better than nothing. Of course we should keep on trying, and of course activists will keep on insisting the impossible is

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David Galbraith

@daveg

7 months

One of the biggest opportunities in the world today. This is exactly why we need a TCP/IP for energy networks to create an internet of energy. Allowing anyone to connect a generator to the grid just like anyone could connect a server once the right protocols replaced

Christian Fong

@christiantfong

7 months

Good news: cost is no longer the key barrier to deploying clean energy. Bad news: interconnection queues have taken the place as perhaps the biggest barrier for clean energy. So, interconnection queues—what are they, why are they broken, and how do we fix them? A thread:

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@mr_james_c @balajis Swisher is like a Catholic bishop realising they don’t own the communication flow after the invention of the printing press.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

9 years

You can use this anywhere really - for example, easyjet pilot announcement.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

Exactly the kind of hacks that I hoped would be possible. #opensourceventilator

Luca Dellanna

@DellAnnaLuca

4 years

Ventilators inserting a 3d printed valve into a Decathlon snorkling mask. Patents are free to use 👏 (ht @itsgiangiacomo , cc @daveg )

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@daveg

7 months

@NateSilver538 Selection bias at work here. For example: 1.Human Genome Project Completion - 2003 2.RNA Interference (RNAi) Technology - Early 2000s 3.Targeted Therapies - Early to Mid-2000s 4.Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV/AIDS - Early 2000s 5.HPV Vaccine - 2006 6.Stem Cell Research: Induced

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David Galbraith

@daveg

3 months

@bethanyjbabcock @realEstateTrent So money laundering then, presumably.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@ysamjo Because there’s no use banning the new Google if you haven’t got a new Google

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

There's a whole subculture of prototype design that is a ruggedised reaction to the modernist dieter rams Apple era.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

12 years

Continues to be the most amazing stat in tech: Android phones outsell iPhones 5:1, but people who use IPhones access internet 15x more.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

My 12 year old's latest drawing is a parable

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

Putting things in perspective: WeWork lost 4 times more in a month than West Germany was given under the Marshall Plan for reconstruction after WWII. It has possibly halted Softbank Vision Fund II, the size of the entire Marshall Plan - and this is inflation adjusted for today!

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 years

The crab blood is critical to help detect contamination in vaccines

Florian Witulski

@vaitor

4 years

Atlantic Horseshoe Crabs have a milky blue blood. Each year, millions of crabs are captured, bled and released. The blood is used in almost all pharmaceutical vaccines, one of which being a Covid-19 vaccine -

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

Adyen decline is part of a pivotal shift in all Fintech from transactional to balance sheet driven businesses as low interest rate era ends. But Adyen is transforming itself in to a balance sheet business and investing in the future. So the shorts aren’t thinking beyond the

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David Galbraith

@daveg

2 months

The sad thing about the fashion for fillers etc. is that it actually makes younger people look like old people trying to look young as this demonstrates.

Mitten d'Amour

@MittenDAmour

2 months

Plastic surgeon guessing the Love Island girls’ ages is BRUTAL.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

This is a hugely important point. It was, some people say, Japan's plan but it was too early. However... AI takes mass production to the next level, and mass production means you need mass buyers (Ford realised workers need to be able to buy the Model T, movies makes more money

Radar🚨

@RadarHits

4 months

BLACKROCK CEO: Substituting humans for machines is going to be far easier in countries that have declining populations. It's over...

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David Galbraith

@daveg

23 days

A contrarian view from Forward to Nature is that we need more AC. Energy use doesn't cause the earth's temperature to increase, the wrong type of energy use does. (it can actually reduce it, exactly why is outlined here ). Air conditioning using non

Forward to Nature - F2N

f2n.co

@levelsio

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If you wanna get rich, install AC

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David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

It is regulation that is holding Europe back. But more generally bureaucracy and outmoded investment and capital markets models and more generally the upper hand of the culture that seeks to slow rather than accelerate growth and progress. As anyone that has had to sit through

David Galbraith

@daveg

4 months

@giorgosverdi Regulation is a subset of overall bureaucracy, which in Europe has become part of a cultural move to slow rather than accelerate technical progress. Only a Columbia Law school professor could possibly and willfully argue otherwise.

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David Galbraith

@daveg

5 years

Nothing is new, 1916

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 year

@EU_Commission The biggest danger to humanity, currently, isn’t that we use AI, it’s that we don’t use it to help understand complex systems to fight climate change. The EU has a tragic history of poor tech regulation and tech understanding, it should not be let within a million miles of AI

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David Galbraith

@daveg

1 month

Just one look at the interface on this brand new heat pump installation at my parents’, which is like something from a 40 year old device and you can see the problem with interacting with the energy ecosystem to build the internet of energy. Post Nest, this shouldn’t exist, I

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