Ay, Ay, Ay
Or, rather, AI, AI, AI, It's everywhere in the news. Microsoft Azure revenue rose to $31.8 billion, rising 29% for the quarter. CFO Amy Hood said about 2 points of Azure growth would come from AI in this quarter. Seattle startup PerfectRec looks to make product recommendations based on AI.
Netanyahu
I've been riveted to the news coming from Israel. One of the biggest, if not the biggest problem for Israel's war against Hamas is that Hamas has a huge network of tunnels underground. This poses a two-fold problem: First, what technology can you use to find the tunnels? I've seen "LiDar" as the suggested technology, but haven't seen a convincing explanation of how that works on very deep tunnels, especially with rubble and buildings blocking LiDar reflections. Second, how do you destroy tunnels that might be 100ft or more underground? Again, I've seen bunker-buster missiles as the suggested answer, but I know of no known bunker busters that can reach such a depth. If there are clever technological answers to the problem of these tunnels, I suspect we won't find out about it until they're used.
Net and Yahoo
Have you seen Marc (of Netscape fame, back when Yahoo was the popular search engine) Andreesen's The Techno-Optimist Manifesto? In short, Marc says, "Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die. We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being. We agree with Paul Collier when he says, 'Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.'" Maybe Marc should be chatting with Netanyahu about the tunnel problem. Or perhaps ask Microsoft's AI what to do.
