💡 Warp News #337
💉 Ebola spread is slowing. 🌱 Galápagos plant that was down to six individuals is recovering. 🏭 India's coal power has stopped growing.
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Free newsletter with fact-based optimistic news about technology, science, and human progress with the angry optimist, Mathias Sundin. If you are not a subscriber, become one here.
🥈 First to be second out of the gate
I have a strange ability. When a new technology appears, I’m not among the very first users. I’m not one of the tech geeks who work their way through all the problems and growing pains. But as soon as the technology moves beyond that stage, I somehow stumble across it.
It has happened again and again. I didn’t use GPT-3, the model that came before ChatGPT. You needed a special login and it was a bit cumbersome. That was enough to stop me, even though I knew GPT-3 existed. But as soon as it was released as ChatGPT and all you needed was a chat box, I was there among the very first.
I’m never first out of the gate, but I’m almost always the first to be second out of the gate.
I’m not an early adopter of technology. I’m an early adopter of working technology.
The users who are there first are important. They help iron out the technology’s early problems and create its first market. But when it’s time to reach the rest of us, they risk being too geeky for us to understand them. There are exceptions who manage to be early geeks while still explaining things to mere mortals, like Joakim Jardenberg. Or they have already moved on to the next technology.
When you do what I do, being the first to be second out of the gate is a very good position to be in. What I’m really watching is a transition: from technology for enthusiasts to technology for ambitious everyday users.
And right now, we are at exactly that kind of moment.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT-6 Astra, we went from powerful but cumbersome technology to technology that is very powerful and much easier to use.
That’s what I write about in this week’s article.
Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist
💻 The biggest AI leap since ChatGPT launched
I rarely write about new AI models, but ChatGPT Astra gives those of us who are ordinary AI users several powerful and genuinely useful new capabilities.
💡 Fact-based optimistic news of the week
🥬 Fully automated farm in Norway cuts food waste with lettuce that lasts 12 weeks
No human touches the lettuce in the facility outside Oslo, from sowing to the finished package in the store. Shelf life increases from 2 to 4 weeks to 12 weeks, which reduces waste in stores. The growing takes place indoors year-round, without pesticides and without imports.
🚇 Delhi's subway has grown past New York's and cost less than one of New York's tunnels
In March, Delhi's subway became longer than New York's, at a total cost of roughly $10 billion, less than New York spent to build a 3.5-mile tunnel. The system is 33 percent solar-powered, captures brake energy in batteries, and 99.9 percent of its trains ran on time last year.
💉 Ebola spread is slowing and vaccines are on the way
The spread of Ebola is declining in most of the affected provinces in Congo, according to the WHO. A large Phase 3 trial of Ebola vaccines is expected to start within the next few weeks. Frontline workers will be offered a vaccine in a separate study that starts within days.
🌱 Galápagos plant that was down to six individuals is recovering
In 2007, only six Galápagos snapdragon plants remained. Today, 28 adult plants grow at two sites on Isabela island. In 2024, the plant returned to Caleta Tagus, where the only known specimen was collected in 1962.
🏭 India's coal power has stopped growing for the first time in more than 50 years
India is using more electricity than ever, and demand grew by 7 percent over two years. Yet the country is not producing more electricity from coal. Clean energy met the entire increase. India is the world's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
💣 Cambodia cleared mines from an area 13 times the size of Manhattan in six months
The Cambodian Mine Action Centre cleared 75,132 hectares of land contaminated by landmines in the first half of the year, reaching 82% of its annual target. The number of people killed or injured by mines has fallen from more than 4,000 a year in the 1990s to fewer than 100 a year.
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