#8: Chip shortage, Joe Rogan, GMO's, Thorium Reactors, Kids, and more!

We all heard it in the news: there is a shortage of computer chips, impacting our daily lives. The Playstation 5 is almost impossible to buy, and car manufacturers need to suspend production.

But why is there a shortage of chips? Can’t we just make more? Turns out that modern chips are incredibly difficult and expensive to make. Manufacturing capacity has been planned years in advance, so it’s hard to scale up production quickly.

This article walks you through all the dynamics at play.

Joe Rogan’s podcast has been exclusive to Spotify since January 2021. This article investigates the impact of that exclusivity. They looked at how many followers a guest gained after being featured on Rogan’s show. They found that guests are getting way fewer followers since he moved to Spotify, indicating that fewer people listen to the show.

There are multiple possible explanations for this. Maybe it’s because Spotify isn’t available in all countries. Or maybe people dislike Spotify’s app, which is very limited compared to other podcasting apps out there.

Apple introduced new iPhones this week but did you know that you can speed up old iPhones by changing the location to France?

Apple says it does this to protect the batteries and prevent devices from shutting down unexpectedly.

I had an interesting discussion at work the other day. We wondered if handedness was determined by genetics or the result of growing up and observing adults.

It turns out there’s no consensus around this! Scientists have identified over 40 genes that play a role in being left or right-handed. But here’s where it becomes weird: children of left-handed parents are most likely to be right-handed.

A company in China is currently constructing the largest offshore wind turbine. When operational, it will generate 16MW of clean electricity, enough to power 20,000 homes.

But what’s interesting is that it’s only 19% bigger than the company’s previous model, yet generates 45% more electricity! Benefit? They have to build fewer of these units, which is handy when placing them in rough conditions such as the open sea.

Lead is poisonous to humans, and yet we added it to gasoline as an additive to prevent engine knocking. Burning lead causes all sorts of health problems, so why did we do it?

The reason: money. There were other anti-knocking additives at the time, most notably ethanol, which we use today. However, General Motors didn’t like ethanol because it couldn’t be patented, and they couldn’t control its production. Wow!

Leaded fuels have now been banned, and according to the UN, that has saved 1.2 million lives and avoided $2.4 trillion in healthcare costs.

China heavily invested in developing new nuclear reactor technology. One of those is a thorium-based reactor which is cooled by liquid salt. This is safer than traditional reactors because they operate under lower pressure (reduced risk of explosive meltdowns).

Thorium is interesting because it’s a waste product of the rare-earth mining industry, and it’s more abundant than uranium.