Trump Puts off TikTok Ban-Again; Big Tech Lobbies Congress Over State AI Regulation; Giant Sand Battery Will Heat Small Finnish Town; Corvette ZR1X-1250 HP Hybrid

In a move that is reaching the comical level, Donald Trump has once again delayed a ban on TikTok with yet another extension. This is starting to resemble the ‘infrastructure week’ that was promised week after week in his first term which never happened….until Joe Biden actually got a bill passed. Techcrunch.com reports that Trump will sign another 90 day extension this week to put off shutting TikTok out of the US. Once again, we are being told that the administration will be working to make a deal that will keep TikTok, but with the app being spun off to a US company…something Chinese owner ByteDance has refused to do over and over again. 

The purveyors of AI are turning up the heat, lobbying Congress hard to keep states from regulating artificial intelligence over the next 10 years. Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft have unleashed their high-powered lobbyists and money on Washington. According to appleinsider.com, they don’t want AI to have to face safety regulations, or transparency requirements over where they scrape data from. While AI firms want to profit from other people’s work without payment or credit, this particular lobbying is centered on avoiding overly complex regulation. The problem is, a number of Republicans in Congress are skeptical, and feel it would be dangerous to tie states’ hands with a federal law blocking them from putting in safety rules. Traditionally, health and safety issues have been left primarily to the states. In the meantime,  the EU is slowly rolling out its Artificial Intelligence Pact, which consists of voluntary pledges to support safe and responsible development of AI. Mega, Google, and Microsoft have signed the pact, but Apple has not.

The US may be losing ground with the present administration’s reluctance to move away from fossil fuels, but the rest of the world is moving on. Thenextweb.com note that a small town of 5,000 in Finland will ditch fossil fuels for heating all the homes in town using a giant sand battery. The battery is about the size of a pretty small house….we’re talking 42 feet tall and 45 feet wide.  It’s from a startup called Polar Night Energy. They expect it to cut emissions by an estimated 70%. The battery contains 2,000 tons of crushed soapstone, which is a byproduct of the construction industry. When renewables are abundant, like on a sunny or windy day, clean electricity is wired to the battery. There, it powers a heater that sends hot air through a series of pipes into the giant vat of sand, heating it to a bit over 1100 degrees Farenheit. It has a power output of 100 Megawatt hours. The system can work anywhere there is plentiful solar and wind available. 

Because you can never have too much horsepower, apparently…Chevrolet has bowed the Corvette ZR1X with a whopping 1250 horses. Engadget.com reports that the fastest, quickest ‘Vette ever remains a hybrid. It still has a fire-breathing turbocharged V-8, but both that and the electric motor are beefed up from the previous Corvette hybrid to get all that power to the wheels. Speaking of wheels, note that I didn’t say rear wheels…it’s all-wheel drive! With all that power and speed, you need stopping power too..so the ‘Vette has oversized carbon brakes. So how much, you ask? Well the Corvette ZR1 starts at about $175 grand, so figure for this monster you will be forking over somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 grand! The ZR1X will go on sale later this year. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.