June 12 2024
Home ownership costs; green steel; Republicans for tax hikes; Apple-OpenAI; "Hellscape"
FLASH Hunter Biden found guilty on all felony charges of lying about drug use on gun application
1 Home ownership costs have increased 26% since pandemic
2 Breakthrough in “green steel” manufacturing
3 ELECTION 2024 Republican voters willing to accept tax hikes to fix deficit
4 OPINION Apple-OpenAI partnership first great use case for AI
5 “Hellscape” is secret US plan to deter China from invading Taiwan
6/12/1987 President Reagan challenges Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall”
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FLASH Hunter Biden found guilty on all felony charges of lying about drug use on gun application
1 Home ownership costs have increased 26% since pandemic
The cost of owning a home in the US has increased 26% since 2020, as expenses including taxes, insurance and utilities all soared during a period of high inflation across the economy. The average annual outlay for owning and maintaining a typical single-family home — not including mortgage payments — totaled $18,118 in March, the personal finance website Bankrate found. That works out to $1,510 a month, roughly $300 more than four years earlier, when pandemic lockdowns began. The calculation is based on Redfin’s March median sales price of $436,291. “It was really eye-opening to see just how much it costs to maintain a home,” said Jeff Ostrowski, an analyst at Bankrate. “Until you own a house, it doesn’t dawn on you how much money you’re throwing into the house every month and year.” In its analysis, Bankrate factored in property taxes, home insurance, energy costs, internet and cable bills, and 2% of the sales price for maintenance — expenses many buyers tend to underestimate.
Article Source: Bloomberg
2 Breakthrough in “green steel” manufacturing
Making steel has long been defined by flying sparks and blast furnaces roaring at temperatures hotter than molten lava. A startup backed by Amazon.com and steel producer Nucor says it has a new process that works at temperatures cooler than freshly brewed coffee. Colorado-based Electra has begun producing iron plates that can be used to make steel without consuming fuels such as coal, natural gas or hydrogen—an initial step to potentially reducing the industry’s huge carbon footprint. The company dissolves iron ore in a chemical solution, then runs electricity through it to separate pure iron from impurities. The process runs at temperatures around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, a fraction of the 3,000 or so degrees needed for conventional steelmaking.The breakthrough escalates a potentially lucrative global race to clean up a roughly $1 trillion industry that serves builders who erect everything from apartment buildings to bridges. The main production method used today generates roughly two tons of carbon emissions for every ton of steel, making the sector account for about 10% of global emissions.
Article Source: WSJ
3 ELECTION 2024 Republican voters willing to accept tax hikes to fix deficit
Americans across the political spectrum see the U.S. budget deficit as an urgent challenge that should be addressed with a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. That’s according to a poll released Wednesday by American Compass, a right-leaning think tank, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on their views on the federal budget. The survey shows that 85% of Americans agree that “the budget deficit is a serious problem and the nation must be willing to take even painful steps to solve it.”
Elected Republicans have opposed nearly all attempts to raise taxes for more than 30 years, but the American Compass poll suggests these leaders are out of step with their voters. “Republicans no longer support the position, if they ever held it, that taxes must never be increased,” the report reads, noting that even among respondents who described themselves as “strong Republicans,” 72% want tax hikes as part of a deficit reduction plan.
Article Source: Market Watch
4 OPINION Apple-OpenAI partnership first great use case for AI
For the past two years, as artificial intelligence rampaged into the public consciousness, Apple has been very quiet. Apple is a 48-year-old company — mature by Silicon Valley standards. Ancient by AI ones. To its younger competitors, the company’s lack of an AI strategy was a delightful sign of slippage. Wall Street more or less agreed. It wasn’t just silence and age stirring doubt, but Apple’s corporate essence. The company is a $3 trillion control freak. It takes all the messy bits of technology and subdues them with engineering and design until they feel ordered, inevitable and, crucially, profitable. How do you do that with AI — a technology that incinerates cash and that no one can completely explain, let alone control? At the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple provided its answer. It’s not a sexy answer or a risky one. But it’s the first rational theory of AI for the masses that I’ve heard, and it does what all great corporate strategy is supposed to: identify a gaping hole in the marketplace, and make sure it overlaps precisely with your strengths. Let’s start with the theory. Apple believes that much of the conversation around AI these past few years has been categorically insane. “We're trying to help people in their daily life,” John Gianandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, told me after WWDC wrapped. “We're not trying to make a sentient being or some nonsense. Talking about AI as a new species” — as the CEO of Microsoft AI recently did — “seems like complete nonsense to me. This is a technology, and we’re trying to apply it in the most practical, helpful way.” Early in the development process, Apple bet the franchise that most people do not want a trillion-parameter neural network, because most people do not know what any of those words mean. They want AI that can shuttle between their calendar and email to make their day a little more coordinated. They want Siri to do multistep tasks, like finding photos of their kid in a pink coat at Christmas and organizing them into a movie with music that flatters their taste. If AI is going to generate any original visuals, they’d prefer emojis based on descriptions of their friends rather than deepfakes. And of course they want all of Apple’s usual privacy guarantees.
Article Source: WaPo
5 “Hellscape” is secret US plan to deter China from invading Taiwan
President Xi Jinping has called on China’s People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. The United States, together with regional partners, must ensure a Chinese invasion can’t succeed. That plan hinges on quickly building and deploying thousands of new drones that would swarm the Taiwan Strait and keep China’s military busy until more help can arrive, according to the top U.S. military official in the Pacific. But time is running out to turn these plans into a reality.
Plan A is to deter Xi from ever attempting an invasion, by making sure that he never looks across the Taiwan Strait and sees an easy victory, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told me in an interview. “They want to offer the world a short, sharp war so that it is a fait accompli before the world can get their act together,” Paparo told me on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “My job is to ensure that between now and 2027 and beyond, the U.S. military and the allies are capable of prevailing.” China’s likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Paparo said. Xi doesn’t want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia’s initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition. The key to thwarting Xi’s assumed strategy is a U.S. strategy called “Hellscape,” Paparo told me. The idea is that as soon as China’s invasion fleet begins moving across the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response. “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.” “I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he replied when pressed about details. “But it’s real and it’s deliverable.”
Article Source: WaPo
6/12/1987 President Reagan challenges Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall”
Sources
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-10/homeownership-costs-in-the-us-jumped-26-since-pandemic-began?srnd=wealth&sref=nXmOg68r
2. https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/steel-production-startups-carbon-footprint-80a9e8ec?mod=latest_headlines
3. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vast-majority-of-republican-voters-favor-painful-tax-hikes-as-part-of-deficit-deal-poll-finds-217d288a
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/11/apple-intelligence-chatgpt/
5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/10/taiwan-china-hellscape-military-plan/
Thanks for reading!
