Energy
Elon Musk Is Dropping a Boulder in a Kiddie Pool
He is about to take SpaceX public--pushing other AI companies to do the same. Elon Musk is about to set in motion a chain of events that will reshape the global financial order. For starters, when SpaceX formally goes public next week, he is all but guaranteed to become the world's first trillionaire. His rocket company is targeting a valuation of $1.77 trillion, which would make it one of the 10 biggest companies in the world--bigger than Meta, Walmart, and, for that matter, Tesla. All of this activity is less about colonizing Mars and more about providing the infrastructure for the AI boom: Musk wants to use his rockets to launch data centers into space, where there is abundant solar power to harvest.
Dead Directions: Geometric Singular Learning
Singular learning theory and information geometry have studied the same parameter spaces in mostly separate vocabularies: the former computes Bayesian invariants in resolved coordinates, the latter works in original coordinates under a non-degeneracy assumption that overparameterised models routinely violate. We bridge them through one primitive, the dead direction: a unit vector along which the Fisher metric degenerates, equivalently a tangent to the analytic singular set with a definite KL order, set by how fast the KL divergence vanishes. The two readings name the same vector; our central move shows its KL order is recoverable as the decay rate of the directional Fisher curvature approaching the singularity, in original parameter coordinates and without a Hironaka resolution. A selection rule on smooth fibres translates this rate into Watanabe's single-direction contribution to the real log canonical threshold, and we extend the recovery to multi-component crossings, multiplicity $m$, the singular fluctuation $ฮฝ$ (universal in the KL order for 1D directions), prior-RLCT shifts, and tempered posteriors. We then lift this rate to a deep network: a multi-layer K-FAC factorisation writes each Fisher block as a product of activation- and gradient-side rates with a duality between them, instantiated at modern-network primitives (residual streams, layer normalisation, attention). A quotient theorem carries the rate to the gauge quotient $ฮ/G$ under gradient flow on a $G$-invariant metric; SGD qualifies, standard Adam does not, and we construct a $G$-equivariant Adam-family preconditioner (DDCAdam) that does. The bridge yields a parameter-coordinate handle on singular geometry, closed-form per-architecture predictions, and a trajectory-rate readout of Watanabe's triple $(ฮป, m, ฮฝ)$ from one checkpoint's forward and backward passes, without posterior sampling.
Conformal Risk Sharing: Certified Cost Allocation with Participation Guarantees
Sharing the financial impact of rare adverse events across a group can soften extreme individual burdens, but any participant made worse off by the arrangement has reason to leave. A credible mechanism must therefore provide each agent with a trustworthy cap on their future obligation and should be deployed only if the aggregate harm across participants is bounded. We formalise this as the Certified Allocation Problem: from finite data and without distributional assumptions, find a redistribution rule, produce obligation caps for every participant, and verify that no participant is made materially worse off. We propose Conformal Risk Sharing, which solves this problem by pairing an interpretable sharing policy with split conformal calibration. The sharing intensity is tuned on training data, while held-out calibration data produces distribution-free per-agent guarantees (valid under exchangeability). Experiments on synthetic and real-world data, including precipitation and energy-cooperative data, confirm that the framework can substantially reduce extreme obligations for high-risk agents while controlling harm to others.
Mamba-Assisted Non-Markovian Closure for Reduced-Order Modeling
Wei, Zhi-Feng, Qadeer, Saad, Stinis, Panos
Reduced-order modeling of high-dimensional dynamical systems is often hindered by the non-Markovian closure term that represents the effect of unresolved variables on the resolved dynamics. Inspired by the Mori--Zwanzig formalism, in which the closure takes the form of a memory functional of the resolved trajectory, we recast closure modeling as a sequence modeling problem and propose the Mamba-Assisted Closure (MAC) framework: a Mamba-based sequence model, trained to predict the closure from the resolved trajectory, is coupled with the reduced-order governing equations through a numerical integrator to advance the resolved variables in time. A key feature of the framework is its exploitation of the dual representation of state-space models -- the model is trained in a sequence-to-sequence fashion via the convolutional form, and deployed for step-by-step autoregressive rollout via the recurrent form, yielding both efficient long-trajectory training and constant per-step inference cost. On the viscous Burgers' equation and the chaotic two-scale Lorenz '96 system, the MAC model substantially outperforms the Markovian reduced-order model, the GRU-based sequence model, and the Wilks method in predictive accuracy and long-time rollout stability.
The Download: AI-generated lawsuits and virtual power plants for data centers
Plus: The EU has proposed new legislation to end its Big Tech dependence. Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts through stacks of documents written by people without a lawyer. The number of these filings has more than doubled compared to before 2023. She puts that jump down to AI. But while AI appears to be expanding access to justice, it doesn't seem to be improving people's chances of winning. Judges are starting to question what rights and duties chatbots should have as they stand in for lawyers.
Ditch the niceties in AI prompts to save energy use, say researchers
ChatGPT now processes around 2.5 billion queries every day UN researchers are urging people to be less polite to artificial intelligences after a report found that cutting words from prompts could reduce ChatGPT's energy consumption by up to 25 per cent. Removing "please", "thank you" and other unnecessary words from AI prompts could save 87 to 98 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, the report from the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) found. That is the equivalent of the annual residential electricity use of up to 760,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa. 'Flashes of brilliance and frustration': I let an AI agent run my day To reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint, people should write concise prompts, avoid getting sucked into conversation loops and refrain from starting relationships with AI, the researchers said. "We are not saying be rude to your AI. But don't fall into the interaction trap and don't go falling in love with it either," says Kaveh Madani at UNU-INWEH.
Drone hits nuclear facility as Kyiv and Moscow trade strikes
Rescuers work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Saturday. Ukraine and Russia traded aerial attacks on Saturday as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held what he called a special meeting on next steps with top aides. A Ukrainian drone struck the machine room building of one of power units at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine on Saturday afternoon, causing unspecified damage, Interfax reported, citing Rosatom Chief Executive Officer Alexey Likhachev. Core equipment wasn't damaged, he said. Ukraine's southern military command denied any strikes, saying its military personnel "act exclusively within the framework of international humanitarian law and are aware of the consequences of any actions against nuclear facilities." In a post on Facebook late Saturday, it added, "It is the Russian Federation that has illegally kept the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant under military control since March 2022, turning a civilian nuclear facility into an element of military infrastructure."
The best new science-fiction books of June 2026
There is plenty of intriguing sci-fi on offer this month, whether it's solar-powered cities from Adrian Tchaikovsky or a strange future from M. John Harrison A father mysteriously slips through time in Joseph Eckert's Writing this as the UK swelters under an unprecedented May heatwave, perhaps it's small wonder that so many science-fiction authors are currently imagining miserable versions of an overheated future in which their characters are struggling to survive. I'm intrigued by the sound of sci-fi legend M. John Harrison's upcoming take on a dystopian future, but if post-apocalyptic hellscapes aren't your thing, I'm also happy to report that there are other options for sci-fi fans this month. Next, I'm going to explore Isabel J. Kim's sci-fi spin on immigration,, as soon as I can get my hands on it. I am excited about this book: M. John Harrison is a really classy writer, winner of all sorts of awards, and his latest novel sounds right up my street. It's set in a future years after an obscure "crisis" changed everything, in a world where the seas are full of new creatures.
Ukraine drones strike Russian oil facility, as Kyiv and Moscow trade blows
Ukraine has launched coordinated drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure across multiple regions overnight. The most significant strike hit Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, where a major port fire broke out after drones hit a tanker, fuel tank and administrative building, Russia's RIA Novosti state media agency reported. "A tanker, a fuel tank, and an administrative building caught fire at the port of Taganrog as a result of a drone attack," Slyusar wrote. "According to preliminary information, there are no casualties. The information is being clarified."
Blockbuster Game 7 showdown: Four best bets for San Antonio Spurs at Oklahoma City Thunder
Umpire Dan Bellino's baffling foul tip call on Seiya Suzuki renews calls for robot review in MLB Dakich: sports media has created an'industry' out of complaining about white athletes like Caitlin Clark Greg Sankey insists SEC is'strongest league' despite Big Ten winning three straight national championships Phillies look to upset Dodgers behind Zack Wheeler as Philadelphia's turnaround continues in LA Joey McGuire calls Steve Sarkisian's bluff, dares Texas to play Texas Tech in Week 1 Rams troublemaker WR Puka Nacua says he's a changed man after biting incident and stint in rehab Chiefs have no plans to release Rashee Rice and see jail time as a'life lesson' opportunity Dr Oz: Is this a flaw or a feature? Father Mike Schmitz: Pope Leo XIV wants this world view in line with humanity's good Pompeo warns Iran will rebuild nuclear facilities'the moment' it gets the chance Purple Heart recipient speaks out after Graham Platner's controversial remarks'Chipotle Karen' caught hurling burrito bowl at worker's face Oklahoma City is -162 on the moneyline and -3.5 favorites with the total set at 212.5 as of Friday afternoon Despite getting to a Game 7, the 2026 Western Conference Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder haven't lived up to the Game 1 double-overtime instant classic. While the winning team has alternated over the past four games, the margin has been at least 13 points. Plus, Oklahoma City's flopping has been the biggest storyline of the conference finals, which is a bummer for us die-hard NBA fans. However, that will be mostly forgotten if the Spurs-Thunder series finale is another thriller.