``. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."
- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
giving live ai to a 5 year old to learn Hindi sentences,
out of all who tried, GPT stuck around for some time. Claude vaporised quickly because of the language. Gemini the most promising, but by that time kid moved on to switching off the phone, free will
A $5 million Indian startup just patented the motor every global automaker has been failing to build for a decade.
Bengaluru based Vimag Labs has been granted its fifth Indian patent for something called a Virtual Magnet Synchronous Motor, or VMSM.
It runs an electric motor without any rare earth magnet inside it.
Almost every EV today uses a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor. These have fixed rare earth magnets physically built into the rotor.
Vimag's motor does not. It creates and controls the magnetic field using software, power electronics, and control algorithms in real time.
The supply chain problem it solves is enormous.
• China controls about 91% of global rare earth refining and separation.
• China produces 94% of the world's sintered permanent magnets, the exact type used in EV motors.
• China holds only 35% of global rare earth reserves. Its power comes from processing, not from owning the minerals.
China has been using that control as a weapon.
• In April 2025, China imposed export controls on seven heavy rare earth elements and all related magnets. Exports collapsed and carmakers in the US and Europe were forced to cut production.
• In October 2025, China extended the rules to any foreign-made product containing 0.1% or more Chinese rare earth content, even if made entirely outside China.
• Prices outside China have spiked up to sixfold. EV makers report roughly $500 in added material cost per vehicle.
• Licensing approvals for European firms have fallen below 25% in some sectors.
Every major automaker has been trying to escape this.
Tesla switched to rare earth motors in 2017 and has said its next generation motors in 2026 will go rare earth free again. Stellantis and GM are funding Niron Magnetics, a US startup building iron nitrogen magnets.
Neither has said when it reaches production.
Valeo has been working on a rare earth free motor since 2022. And It is not expected to reach the market until 2028 at the earliest. Honda has announced its own funding into alternatives.
Vimag has already run 87,600 engineering hours on this, has active pilots with two wheeler and passenger car manufacturers, signed a manufacturing agreement with Jendamark, and is scaling toward commercial vehicles and industrial systems from 200 kW to 600 kW.
It is also building versions for robotics, defence, and cooling systems.
Now the part worth being careful about.
This is still a $5 million Series A company running pilots, not mass production. Motors that work in a lab or a pilot fleet do not always survive cost, durability, and efficiency testing at scale.
Software defined magnetic fields require heavy power electronics, and that adds its own cost and failure points. Valeo has been at this for four years and is still two years from market.
Analysts estimate the West would need 15 to 30 years to rebuild an independent rare earth supply chain.
Building a motor that does not need rare earths at all skips that entire problem.
Hey @Google, we need Gemini to connect directly with Google Fit and Google Calendar. Using AI to log workouts, calories, and daily steps is great, and automatic syncing would help. #Gemini#GoogleFit#FeatureRequest
I think an AI's best use case currently is an AI that can manage business process from end to end, thus freeing up Davids of the world to compete with the Goliaths. That is the most interesting use case I can see of AI: it levels the playing field for everyone
this is actually insane
> be tech guy in australia
> adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live
> not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4
> pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA
> feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold
> zero background in biology
> identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets
> design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch
> genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own
> need ethics approval to administer it
> red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine
> 3 months, finally approved
> drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection
> tumor halves
> coat gets glossy again
> dog is alive and happy
> professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?”
one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline.
we are going to cure so many diseases.
I dont think people realize how good things are going to get