Signals
Signals from the future. A timeline of milestones in AI, space, robotics, and semiconductors. Things that happened that I think matter.
Each signal includes my honest take. I'm probably wrong about some of these.
Figure 02 completes 8-hour warehouse shift unassisted
"A full shift. No breaks, no supervision. We crossed a line here and most people didn't notice."
source →TSMC begins 2nm (N2) risk production in Kaohsiung
"Two nanometers. We're now building things at the scale of individual DNA strands. I can't wrap my head around it."
source →Starship completes first full orbital refueling test
"Refueling in orbit was the last big technical gate before Mars. This changes the math on everything."
source →Waymo surpasses 500,000 paid rides per week
"Half a million people a week riding in cars with no driver. Already normal in four cities. The future just shows up quietly."
source →Claude achieves gold medal on International Math Olympiad problems
"Not pattern matching anymore. Something else is happening. I keep rereading the proofs and I'm not sure what to feel."
source →Intel Foundry secures $8.5B CHIPS Act funding for Ohio fab
"Ohio is about to become the most important place in America that nobody thinks about."
source →Tesla Optimus robots deployed in Fremont factory
"Building cars that build robots that will build cars. The recursion is starting."
source →DeepMind AlphaFold 3 predicts structures for all known drug compounds
"Every known drug compound. Every single one. Molecular biology just leapt forward by a decade overnight."
source →SpaceX Starship catches booster on first attempt (Flight 7)
"A 23-story rocket falling from space, caught by mechanical arms. I watched it live. I'm still processing."
source →NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra ships to hyperscalers
"Each chip does what a whole data center did five years ago. The pace is hard to believe sometimes."
source →Cruise and Zoox receive California permits for highway autonomy
"Highway speeds. No safety driver. California regulators just said yes. The dominoes are falling fast."
source →Boston Dynamics Atlas performs unscripted parkour in outdoor environment
"Not choreographed. Not on a flat floor. A robot doing parkour over rocks and logs. In the rain. On its own."
source →SpaceX Starship catches booster with chopsticks (Flight 5)
"The moment I realized we're actually going to Mars. Not someday. This decade."
source →ASML ships first High-NA EUV lithography system
"The most complex machine humanity has ever built. One system. Costs $380 million. Makes the future possible."
source →Claude 3 Opus matches human expert reasoning on graduate-level benchmarks
"When I first read the benchmark results, I closed my laptop and went for a walk. Needed to think."
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