What we’re reading (1/24)
“Airlines Cancel More Than 13,000 Weekend Flights As Massive Winter Storm Sweeps Across The U.S.” (CNBC). “Airlines canceled more than 13,000 U.S. flights this weekend as a massive winter storm swept across the country, bringing heavy snow, ice and sleet, followed by bitter cold. More than 4,000 flights on Saturday were canceled, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Many of Saturday’s cancellations were in and out of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, with nearly 1,500 scrubbed flights, and at Dallas Love Field, with 190 cancellations, the majority of the schedule at each airport.”
“The Wall Street Star Betting His Reputation On Robots And Flying Cars” (Wall Street Journal). “The job Jonas has is about as far away from the crustaceans as Earth is from Mars. Jonas, 51, is the bank’s chief robot strategist, a role it created for him in the fall. His actual title: global embodied AI strategist. The role is a first for Morgan Stanley as it dives deeper into the boom in private markets, an increasingly lucrative area across Wall Street. The ultrawealthy are able to buy and sell shares of the buzziest private companies via invite-only transactions long before the companies list their shares on public stock exchanges. The number of public companies in the U.S. is half of its peak in the late 1990s.”
“Streaming And Texting On The Moon: Nokia And NASA Are Taking 4G Into Space” (CNN Business). “Texting on the Moon? Streaming on Mars? It may not be as far away as you think. That’s the shared vision of NASA and Nokia, who have partnered to set up a cellular network on the Moon to help lay the building blocks for long-term human presence on other planets. A SpaceX rocket is due to launch this year — the exact date has yet to be confirmed — carrying a simple 4G network to the Moon. The lander will install the system at the Moon’s south pole and then it will be remotely controlled from Earth.”
“Schrödinger’s Cat Just Got Bigger: Quantum Physicists Create Largest Ever ‘Superposition’” (Nature). “Schrödinger’s cat just got a little bit fatter. Physicists have created the largest ever ‘superposition’ — a quantum state in which an object exists in a haze of possible locations at once. A team based at the University of Vienna put individual clusters of around 7,000 atoms of sodium metal some 8 nanometres wide into a superposition of different locations, each spaced 133 nanometres apart. Rather than shoot through the experimental set up like a billiard ball, each chunky cluster behaved like a wave, spreading out into a superposition of spatially distinct paths and then interfering to form a pattern researchers could detect.”
“Which One Doesn’t Belong?” (Scott Sumner). “Modern $20 bills and bitcoin are both examples of fiat money. They are not backed by any sort of real asset such as gold or silver, and their values are determined by a combination of “monetary policy” and private sector shocks to money demand.”
