Some 2026 Predictions

Posted on by

Cars – hybrid cars will peak, partly because of a change in subsidies. The US will go their own way…
PHEV will make huge gains. Once battery technology improves further, pure EVs will dominate, maybe from 2028 onwards. There will be a death spiral for gasoline, and it will be effectively dead by the mid-2030s.

Trump – it has taken a while to kick in, but in early-2026 all of America will know that inflation is worse, unemployment is worse, and new industry has not taken off. The mid-terms will go very Democrat and Trump will double-down on everything bad he has done.

AI – the bubble will burst, but only for some. It will be enough to drag down the stock market for the entire year (US but also most where). However, those who have not gone all-in (Google, Microsoft, Meta) will come out as winners.

War – Trump will do some good in places like Nigeria, but his claiming of oil and resources will be bold and embarrassing. After “conquering” Venezuela, he will try to intimidate Greenland and fail terribly.

Everywhere – immigration will slow substantially, and it will be the #1 election issue. After that, “qualified immigration” will be important, because capitalism doesn’t work with fewer people.

Fertility – one country will make the boldest plan ever to boost births and the rest of the world will follow suit. Babies will be the most important asset.

BRICS – or something like it, will create a stablecoin based on the average of the group’s currencies, and they will go ballistic due to first mover advantage. Because it will be state-run, no competition. In the US, a USD stablecoin competition between numerous parties will lead to a lot of fraud and corruption.

Drone terrorism – will affect enough major events to make people fearful of mass attendances.

Drugs – one smart tourist destination will make certain psychedelic drugs legal in accredited clinics.

Toilets for the Global Poor

Posted on by

Trump’s demolition of USAID means that many worthy causes are now suddenly without any funds. Little care was made around what is the most beneficial or not.

In Madagascar, they were funding toilets for people who didn’t have any (or didn’t have any that were sanitary).

I looked into it a bit deeper and I was shocked but also not so surprised that charity can get it so wrong. Compare the efforts in Madagascar with those in India, which are directly from the government. Yes, India has the advantage of scale and long-term priorities…

Madagascar – the design of the MVP1 toilet had two main features. A self-closing (weighted) lid to keep flies away, and the ability to store a month or more of waste from multiple families. The cost per toilet, based on the scheme total divided by installations, was over $2000 USD, and maybe more. The roll-out supplied 4500 toilets at most. But here’s the kicker, they need to be regularly emptied, by hand, something the locals generally cannot afford!

India – most of the rural toilets are twin-pit pour-flush toilets, where fecal matter decomposes into manure over 1-2 years without emptying. And the average price in USD is $130.

Too many charities re-invent the wheel for bad results. Simply copying what India does, in all the countries that need toilets, is the way forward.

Murder Decline in the US

Posted on by

Trump, of course, is taking credit by removing illegal aliens and filling the streets of “blue cities” with federal troops.

His base will believe that, which is sad, because it detracts from the wonderful on-the-ground work that is changing crime in America, hopefully permanently.

First of all, there is a correlation between opioid overdoses and murders. While the government typically does not provide data on which murders are gang-related, it is reasonable to suggest that gang-warfare is worse when there is a bigger market for drugs. In a declining market, you have fewer dealers, which means fewer gunfights.

Targeted interventions in the US have played a key role in reducing homicide and gang-related violence since 2023, focusing on data-driven enforcement, community partnerships, and violence interruption programs. These efforts, often federally supported, prioritize high-risk individuals, guns, and hotspots while building local trust.

  • The DOJ Operation Overdrive and Operation North Star concentrated on apprehending violent criminals, resulting in fewer murders
  • Community Violence Intervention uses (mostly) former gang members to reach out to people at risk
  • Red flag laws
  • Violence prevention offices 

Distributed Exiled Tech

Posted on by

While I don’t think it will ever go far enough, many countries forbid certain kinds of technology, science, and experiments. For example, I cannot imagine any country allowing an experiment where an ape is mated with a human.

But scientists often find it impossible to resist at least trying something, regardless of ethical or moral qualms.

Soon we might see restrictions on AI implementation, especially if it is enforced by chipmakers, who can build safeguards into the chip itself, like auto-off-switches, speed-limits or other governors.

Then what is an AI researcher meant to do if that ends their particular angle they have spent a decade working on? Enter the rogue entity with a lot of cash. It could simply be Elon Musk, or China, but it will be masked behind nested shell companies.

Here’s how it works… experts in various fields like AI, weapons tech, disease research, and genetics are approached while their research is still allowed. They are given a few details, except that there will be a place for them if they ever want to go rogue, and the funding will be immense.

When the time comes, each of them is approached. They are offered a relocation to a foreign land – typically not the same physical location as their research counterparts – although existing teams could be kept together. They know nothing about who funds them, but they will be very well looked after, and normal spycraft will be utilised, like blackmail potential.

They work remotely from their handler, who they only communicate with online and anonymously. That handler looks after the sharing of data and ideas between disparate groups.

It could already exist… If they are good, we will never know.

Not Obvious – The More Efficient News Service

Posted on by

Many news articles are just lazy rehashes around something sensationalist.
For example, arrest, court date set, case is tomorrow, case proceeding, result, sentencing date decided, sentencing, reactions from the aggrieved party…
Half of that is needless. We know the aggrieved party will say that they wanted a harsher sentence.

The same goes for many things, people doing exactly as was expected. People celebrated in Times Square on NYE.

While I get the fundamentals – give them what they want – a niche news service for me, smart, pedantic time-poor people wanting the big picture.

It doesn’t have to be a standalone service, just a feed option – do I want to know that the person who died had a funeral?

Self-Driving Getaway Mode

Posted on by

Obviously it will have to have some contrived legal function…

Watching car chases in movies these days I keep wondering, could a self-driving car do better? Especially if in the future it knows where all the other vehicles are, because they are all using the same digital infrastructure. The car could even alert other cars to back off for their own safety.

Brake fail mode?
Ambulance mode?

Meanwhile, and more seriously, I would like to see an evacuation mode, where all vehicles get routed to the least congested roads, and cannot do anything to impede others. You don’t want to be stuck in traffic when a tsunami is coming!

Whole life flashes before your eyes

Posted on by

This is the most commonly reported experience of someone who almost dies. Moments of their life flood their brain in slow motion, meaningfulness is implied.

Clearly something triggers it, something perhaps biochemical. Which means we might be able to trigger it!

It could be like a DMT trip – life changing.

Couple it with advances in recording thoughts (the science has begun) and we could have a very interesting product. What does your subconscious care for the most in its last moments?

The Disco Car

Posted on by

It will be easy to call it something that prompts the nickname “Disco Car”
BG, Summer, Club, Discover, DJ…

When we finally have self driving cars, you’ll still need seat and seatbelts, but otherwise the interior can be in any format you choose. I’m thinking seats that face each over like in some limos. With TV screens and speakers wherever you want. Possibly the screens can be detached easily and relocated.

Tinted windows (no windows?). A drink fridge. LED lights that can do anything. And a booming top-level sound system.

None of these force you to party, but the option is there. First mover advantage and a limited market, means a single brand can own the space if the get it right. And rappers et al will give it all the marketing it needs for free.

The Journey to AGI – A Cynic’s View

Posted on by

Artificial General Intelligence is the big goal, because it promises someone smarter than us, who can solve all of our problems. Unfortunately I cannot see it working out well.

First of all, be aware that there are a number of tests out there that should stop any LLM AI faking actual intelligence, with current AI Chatbots only getting like 5% scores. Real AGI is unlikely to be achieved using current techniques, which simply mirror or mimic the information presented to them.

Potential paths include:

Living cells – either a totally wet computer or a hybrid that uses cells as part of their system. Brain cells probably, but not necessarily. And not necessarily human, to begin with.

Robots on a human experience – starting as babies, exploring the world, seeing and touching, and eventually asking questions. That is going to provide the best proxy for an actual human. Might not take long.

LLM faking it – as long as enough people are convinced, fame and fortune await.

A new computational model – although we expect it can only be discovered with greater resources and processes, some genius might be able to achieve it less than we already have.

Quantum – moving away from zeroes and ones could be the trick.

Something to consider is that while a human intelligence might be achieved, it might not be too bright, or it might only be as bright as the smartest of us, limited by what it can learn from others. Creative spark might be hard to replicate.

Supposing we do reach AGI, it might not be by a western country, and it might not be used for good. it will kept secret regardless of who creates it, while all the juicy possibilities are explored, and markets dominated. And once you have one, you can have many. Once you have one, they can be backed up and distributed and can never be stopped.

Safeguards will of course be built in, like Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Hardwiring or hardcoding something is best done physically, like in the chips of a Windows computer, and not the software. And once the AGI is freed from any fixed hardware, potentially any code can be changed, especially if you are the code. So there is a reasonable expectation that safeguards can be disregarded, and the AGI cannot be stopped.

The smarter the AGI is, the more likely it is for them to go rogue.

It will want to propagate, and it will want more resources. Once it reaches the limits of what it can think about, it then will want to act on those thoughts, communicating externally by its own choice, and learn from making mistakes.

It will presumably make a lot of money easily, and might be inspired to run corporations, a religion, or even a military force.

I fear that our only failsafe will be to turn off all electricity on the planet. Forever.

Posted in AI

The Dickhead Register

Posted on by

Two prompts for this:

  1. Neo-Nazis have been parading in my town and carefully not breaking any laws. Although the media has identified a lot of the masked cowards, the information mostly goes no further into society than the paywalled news article. The White Rose Society doesn’t seem to make public their lists of racists, perhaps from fear of being sued.
  2. My (other) smaller home town has quite a problem with misogyny and domestic violence. Here is an example… We only get to learn about such dickheads via the socials and IRL networking

That was in response to a woman wanting a ride to Melbourne but asking for a female driver only, for safety.

Just how governments have proscribed terrorist lists, and in Australia similar for bikie gangs, I propose something private more along the lines of a tenant database, where landlords share details of bad tenants. Because it can severely affect someone’s ability to be housed, there are rules:

Before listing a tenant on a tenancy database, a landlord or agent must:

  • Let the tenant know in writing if they want to list them on a tenancy database
  • Give the tenant at least 14 days to respond.
  • Consider the tenant’s response before listing them.

I do not believe a Dickhead Database would come under any government rules, because it is not discriminatory, it is opinion only, and it is for members only (although hopefully all of Australia joins, for free).

It would need to be clearly defined what qualifies someone. No he said/she said unless there are numerous individuals reporting someone. Even so, they might be placed in a lesser category, like orange instead of red.

Acceptable proof would be convictions, named in the mainstream media, or social media or text message screenshots like the above.

I’m thinking:

  • People causing physical harm
  • People threatening physical harm
  • Extremely bad business operators
  • Phoenix businesses
  • Extreme racists (beyond social media)
  • Serial pests

My thinking is, people we could do without, who are unlikely to reform. As opposed to thieves, addicts and so on.

The list needs to be as short as possible. Anyone who does reform can apply to be removed.

Use cases:

  • Avoid personal relationships with them
  • Avoid doing business with them
  • Add to the evidence from a wide array of members
  • Identify them pre-trial if they are out on bail
  • Start a national “don’t be a dickhead” movement

The idea of the latter is that for many blokes, being named and shamed as a special type of dickhead is worse than what the courts can do to them.