Robert Zevnik

Interested in technology, IT, science and psychology.

[AFP News Agency @AFP]

🇭🇷 🚕 Europe's first commercial robotaxi service rolls out in Croatia

A Croatian company has been rolling out what it says is Europe's first robotaxi service on the streets of Zagreb.

[Todd Jones 🦊 @toddrjones]

Here are some ways in which the world has gotten better.

[TFTC @TFTC21]

Jensen Huang: "If I have a choice between a new college graduate with no clue what AI is and one that is expert in using AI, I would hire the one who's expert in using AI. Accountant, marketing, supply chain, lawyer, salesperson. Every single time."

[Rok Trkaj Terkaj @Trkaj]

Nisem vedel, mogoče še kdo ni:
Po podatkih Mednarodne federacije za robotiko (IFR) iz poročila World Robotics 2024 (podatki za leto 2023) ima Slovenija 306 industrijskih robotov na 10.000 zaposlenih v proizvodnji. To jo uvršča na 7.–8. mesto na svetu (deljeno z Dansko).
Top 10 po gostoti robotov (2023):
Južna Koreja – 1.012
Singapur – 770
Kitajska – 470
Nemčija – 429
Japonska – 419
Švedska – ~347
7.–8. Danska in Slovenija – 306
9.–10. Švica / ZDA (okoli 295–300)
(Globalno povprečje: 162; povprečje EU: 219)
Slovenija je skupaj z Nemčijo, Švedsko in Dansko edina evropska država v tej elitni skupini. To je velik napredek – še leta 2022 je bila na 11. mestu (284 robotov/10.000 zaposlenih).
Posebej impresivno v avtomobilski industriji:
Slovenija je 3. na svetu po gostoti robotov v avtomobilski proizvodnji (1.762 robotov na 10.000 zaposlenih)! Pred njo je le Švica, za njo pa Nemčija in druge velesile.
To kaže, kako močno sta avtomatizirana naša avtomobilska in kovinsko-predelovalna industrija (Revoz, Magna, Gorenje, Hidria, Mahle itd.).
Vir: uradni IFR press release (november 2024) in slovenski mediji (Delo, Bloomberg Adria, Forbes Slovenija).

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is largely being ignored but it's easily one of the biggest China news of the year.

What China is doing with Hainan - a huge island (50 times the size of Singapore!) - is pretty extraordinary: they're basically making it into a completely different jurisdiction from the rest of the country, and an extremely attractive entry gate for the Chinese market.

You can now import most products in the world (74% of all goods) entirely duty free into Hainan. And, if you transform the product and add 30% value locally, you can then send it to the rest of mainland China completely tariff-free.

So for instance: import Australian beef into Hainan tax free. Slice it and package it for hotpot in Hainan: it can enter all mainland supermarkets duty-free.

They also have insanely low corporate tax rates: 15%, lower than Hong Kong (16.5%) and Singapore (17%) or the rest of the mainland (25%).

That's not all, Hainan now has different rules from the rest of China in dozens of areas:

HEALTH: Basically the rule is that if a medicine or medical device is approved by regulatory agencies anywhere in the world, it can be used in Hainan - even if banned on the mainland. Which undoubtedly makes it THE place in the world with the widest range of medical treatments available.

NO FIREWALL: Companies registered in Hainan can apply for unrestricted global internet access

OPEN EDUCATION: Foreign universities can open campuses without a Chinese partner

VISA-FREE: 86 countries get visa-free entry, probably one of the most open places in the world

CAPITAL: Special accounts let money flow freely to and from overseas - normal mainland forex restrictions don't apply

So they're running a pretty extraordinary "radical openness" experiment there.

They're basically building a "greatest hits" of global free zones: Singapore's tax regime, Switzerland's medical access, Dubai's visa policy - all in one giant tropical island attached to the 1.4 billion people Chinese consumer market.

[Robert Zevnik @robert_zevnik]

Food for thought is the name of my x list where I found this post 🙈

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I love the expression “food for thought” as a concrete, mysterious cognitive capability humans experience but LLMs have no equivalent for.

Definition: “something worth thinking about or considering, like a mental meal that nourishes your mind with ideas, insights, or issues that require deeper reflection. It's used for topics that challenge your perspective, offer new understanding, or make you ponder important questions, acting as intellectual stimulation.”

So in LLM speak it’s a sequence of tokens such that when used as prompt for chain of thought, the samples are rewarding to attend over, via some yet undiscovered intrinsic reward function. Obsessed with what form it takes. Food for thought.

[Robert Zevnik @robert_zevnik]

So American.. 🙃😉🫡

"So Trump went through all that drama just to end up right where he was in late March."

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I was actually wrong in my post below on the new tariffs on China after the Trump-Xi deal, because it looks like Trump lied with his "47% overall tariffs" figure.

The White House factsheet that was just released confirms that the "reciprocal tariff" (i.e. meaning the "Liberation Day" tariff) applied to China is now just 10%, the lowest applicable rate that I think only Singapore and the UK benefited from to date.

And when you pair this with the reduction of 10% of the so-called "fentanyl tariff", it effectively means that China's overall tariff rate is back to EXACTLY where things stood before Liberation Day (which I had calculated at 40.7%, see post below), which is pretty incredible when you think about it.

So Trump went through all that drama just to end up right where he was in late March.

[Robert Zevnik @robert_zevnik]

Sledilo bo več protestov, kjer bo opozicija izdatno pomagala z organizacijo. Potem bo jasno, da sestava parlamenta ne odraža več sentimenta ljudi. Sledijo predčasne volitve. Pretiravam?
Prove me wrong. #slovenija #novomesto

[Robert Zevnik @robert_zevnik]

Najprej: iskreno sožalje svojcem in vsem prizadetim. To se ne bi smelo zgoditi! 😔🤍🙏

Odmev: Odstopila sta 2 ministra in zadeva se ne bo umirila, dokler ne bo odstopil še Golob. Vse zato, ker so problematiko Romov kljub večkratnim opozorilom iz terena, v Ljubljani ignorirali.

[AF Post @AFpost]

Pete Hegseth has summoned hundreds of generals and admirals for an urgent meeting.

A senior Pentagon correspondent has said, "I've never seen anything like this in the past 30 years. We might be going to war."

Follow: @AFpost

[Andrej P. Skraba @SkrabaAndrej]

V teh dneh bo veliko izrečenega na temo novega šolskega leta, šolstva, šolskega sistema, izobraževanja, itd.

Od besed k dejanjem. 👇

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

Great chart, almost all knowledge workers in major Asian countries use generative AI at work. Different picture in developed countries. People there are complacent, spoiled, and are probably more focused on searching options for next vacation on the internet during office hours.

[All day Astronomy @forallcurious]

Mind=BLOWN🚨: Scientists have now found all of the DNA and RNA bases in meteorites ....... This means there's a possibility that life on Earth came from space!

[Igor Buinevici @Igor_Buinevici]

The most valuable skills by 2030?

They’re not technical. They’re strategic:

Sharing great insights from Jeroen Kraaijenbrink (@JKraaijenbrink) and the World Economic Forum (@wef ).

The top skills shaping the future aren’t about code or data.

They’re about how you think and lead.

In the high-impact zone, here’s what stands out:

A) Systems thinking
B) Creative thinking
C) Analytical thinking
D) Drive & self-awareness
E) Leadership & influence
F) Resilience & adaptability
G) Curiosity & lifelong learning

These aren’t “nice to have.”

They’re the power core for navigating change and delivering results.

Yes, digital tools and AI matter.

But they’re useless without the human engine behind them.

The edge in 2030?

Thinking sharper.
Leading stronger.
Moving faster.

That’s what wins.

P.S. Which of these are you actively building?
♻️ Repost so your network can level up for what’s next.

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[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

Live view of the countless manufacturing jobs that will go back to the US due to tariffs

[Jim Osman @EdgeCGroup]

BREAKING: The CEO of IKEA was just elected Prime Minister of Sweden.

The first thing he'll do is to assemble his cabinet.

[andi (twocents.com) @Nexuist]

This is such a fascinating graph. A frequency drop of 0.15Hz was enough to take down Spain and Portugal.

[Robert Zevnik @robert_zevnik]

Najbolj uveljavljena kitajska avtomobilska znamka pri nas je vsekakor Volvo 🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/6dQJi7F0GR

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is a truly extraordinary number: according to the latest IRENA report (https://t.co/AhZwHm9FTz), 64% (almost 2/3rd) of the world's renewable energy added in 2024 was added in China.

At this stage China is almost single-handedly driving the global energy transition.

For comparison the US, the world's second biggest emitter of CO2, added only 7% of global renewable capacity in 2024 and now has only 9% of the world's total renewable capacity to China's 41%. And you can bet that this will get even worse under Trump, who keeps dismissing climate change as a "hoax".

Even if, like Trump, you don't believe in climate change or believe that it isn't man-made, these numbers should make you reflect.

Why would China put such tremendous efforts into renewable energy? Is it because China is "woke"? Of course not.

First of all, it helps establish an image of China as a responsible great power because even if you don't personally believe in climate change, 86% of the world's population does (https://t.co/AqKXS9s3PX). What do they think when they look at what China does for it vs the US? 🤔

Secondly, there's a big price element to it. Solar electricity for instance is now vastly cheaper than electricity generated from fossil fuel sources. For instance, "solar PV’s global costs in 2023 were 56% lower than fossil fuel and nuclear options" (https://t.co/XbYfxDdDQ5). Same thing for onshore wind: it's now 67% lower than fossil-fuel alternatives.

Thirdly and most importantly, there's a strategic aspect here. Fast forward a few years to a world where the US and a few other countries are still clinging to their fossil-fuel powered economies while China dominates clean energy.

These holdouts would face crushing disadvantages: paying premium prices for increasingly expensive fossil fuels (less demand means higher prices) while China increasingly benefits from the near-zero marginal costs of electricity from its renewable installations (which, once built, produce power without the ongoing fuel expenses that burden fossil fuel plants).

We speak a lot about industrial and manufacturing competitiveness: what do you think that does?

And it's not only prices: this also secures China's energy independence, as well as its economic and technological dominance in what will undoubtedly be the global energy platform of tomorrow.

Here's another insane number for you: in 2024, 87% of Global South capital expenditure on electricity generation flew into renewable energy (https://t.co/DeCcbUAVCA).

In effect, this places China as the dominant supplier for the energy future of the part of the world that will account for 85% of all new electricity demand over the next few years (https://t.co/pALbjwbZnm).

The part of the world that houses the immense majority of humanity, and where billions of people are still gaining access to reliable electricity for the first time.

You don't need to believe in climate change to see the strategic and economic implications of China's approach and, conversely, the immense strategic miscalculation in taking a purely ideological stance against renewable energy development.