Serendipity35

"Hack" sometimes has a bad reputation. But there are some good hacks.In technology and computing, it has two meanings:
1. Unauthorized Access (verb): To gain illegal or unauthorized access to data, a computer system, or a network (e.g., "My account got hacked").
2. Clever Code Solution (noun/verb): An elegant, clever, or quick fix in programming that solves a tricky problem.

We turn to space. NASA's Voyager 1 is still moving through interstellar space at over 35,000 miles per hour (56,000 kilometers per hour). It is 15 billion miles (about 24 billion km) away from Earth.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wants it to keep going for just a bit longer.

There are two Voyagers, both launched in the late summer of 1977. They are wonderful relics. These older electronics give off waste heat - which is usually a bad thing - but it keeps practically every instrument onboard warm.

It will run out of power. That was expected to happen quite a while ago, but it keeps on going. So now, JPL is doing a critical power-saving hack on sister probe, Voyager 2. They’re toggling on and off Voyager 2’s key components across a coordinated sequence. It conserves energy but still keeps things from freezing.

Why Voyager 2? It was closer to Earth and had more power to test this hack. It worked and now they want to the hack on the farther-out Voyager 1.

What is their power supply? They both have modest nuclear power plants. These thermoelectric generators convert heat produced by the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into electricity. That plutonium isotope is decaying toward its 88-year half-life, so less heat is being emitted.

The probes launched with 10 instruments apiece. Some have been powered down because they served their purpose when they were moving through the planets in our solar system.

I hope Voyager 1 makes it to November and hits a historic milestone. It passes one light-day’s distance from Earth. That is a fraction of one light-year, but it is also 173 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

If it passes that point and stays online, it will take messages over 24 hours to reach it. Its 50th anniversary will be on September 5, 2027.

I wrote last week about plans to harvest solar power from space for places like data centers. If it sounds like science fiction, that might be because it was first imagined in a 1941 short story, "Reason," by Isaac Asimov. (see below)

It was formally proposed by engineer Peter Glasser in 1968, a space pioneer who introduced the idea of using satellites to beam solar energy from space down to Earth. Over the decades, what Glaser envisioned has been known by many names — space-based solar power (SBSP), solar-power satellites or satellite power system (SPS), as well as satellite solar-power system (SSPS). Glaser's contributions to space science and technology were not limited to the solar-power satellite concept. He also worked on NASA's Apollo moon missions and headed an experiment that flew aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986.

But solar power from space beamed to Earth has remained mostly theoretical due to cost and complexity.

It is difficult to keep up with AI advances and new tools. Recently, I have seen the term "superintelligence" being used and I had to look for a definition.

In AI terms, there are three kinds of intelligence. "Artificial Narrow Intelligence" is what we have now. It is "superhuman" at specific tasks like playing Go or translating languages. ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot and Meta AI, et al fit in there at the moment.

"Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)" is human-level across the board and can learn anything a person can learn. We’re not quite there yet as of May 2026.

"Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)" is far beyond human level. Philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized the term: and defined it as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.”

ASI is what people worry about — or get excited about — when talking about advanced AI. But AGI isn't quite the same as superintelligence. With AGI, you clone the best human brain in software, but with superintelligence that clone keeps upgrading itself until it’s as far beyond us. 

Two new tools are moving closer to the next level.

Google has released TurboQuant, a new compression method that makes AI models cheaper to run and faster to respond. In Google’s reported tests, it reduced the key-value cache, the model’s short-term working memory while it responds, by at least 6x and improved performance by up to 8x on H100 chips, Nvidia’s high-end AI processors used in data centres, while keeping benchmark performance, or standard test performance, close to the original model. That is a serious technical result with a clear business consequence: one of the biggest cost pressures in modern AI may begin to ease. For the past two years, the default logic has been simple. The best AI stayed in the cloud because that is where companies could absorb the cost of running it. TurboQuant starts to weaken that logic.

Meta TRIBE v2 is a foundation AI model that acts like a “digital twin” of the human brain. In plain terms, it’s an AI trained on real brain scan data so it can predict how a person’s brain will respond to things they see, hear, or read. It takes in video, audio, and text, then maps that to about 70,000 areas of the brain to simulate neural activity.  Meta itself says that you can think of it as Meta teaching an AI to “think” more as humans do, by learning directly from brain responses instead of just internet text.

Where did I get information anout Meta's products and path? From their own Muse Spark. That is Meta’s latest (well, as of today) AI assistant model.

Marian Croak, a name that may not be familiar to many, has had a profound impact on the way we communicate today. As a renowned American engineer, Croak has spent her career pushing the boundaries of technology, particularly in the realm of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). With over 200 patents to her name, Croak's work has enabled seamless communication over the internet, revolutionizing the way we connect.

Her  U.S. Patent No. 7,599,359 for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Technology was ultimately used to create applications such as Zoom, WhatsApp and many others.

Born on May 14, 1955, in New York City, Croak's interest in technology was sparked by her father, who built her a chemistry set that led to her early exploration of the sciences. She pursued her passion for problem-solving at Princeton University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in 1977. Later, she received a PhD in Social Psychology and Quantitative Analysis from the University of Southern California.

Croak's career spans three decades at Bell Labs and AT&T, where she worked on digital messaging applications and VoIP technologies. Her team convinced AT&T to adopt the TCP/IP protocol, which allowed for standardized communication over the Internet. Croak's work on VoIP enabled the conversion of voice data into digital signals, making it possible to transmit voice, text, and video over the internet.

Another of Croak's notable achievements is her patent for text-based donations to charity. Developed in response to Hurricane Katrina, this technology allowed users to donate to organizations using text messaging. The technology was widely used after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, raising over $43 million for relief organizations. Croak received the 2013 Thomas Edison Patent Award for this innovation.

Croak's contributions extend beyond her technical expertise. As a leader at AT&T, she managed over 2,000 engineers and computer scientists, overseeing programs that impacted millions of customers. In 2014, she joined Google as Vice President of Engineering, focusing on expanding internet access and developing Responsible AI.

Throughout her career, Croak has received numerous accolades for her work. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2016 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022, becoming one of the first two Black women to receive this honor. She has also been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

As Croak herself notes, "Inventors are usually people like you. Sometimes they're good at certain things, other times they're not, and that's ok. Just focus on what you want to change, and you become that change and can make that change happen."

Her legacy serves as a testament to the power of innovation and the impact one person can have on the world. As we continue to navigate the complexities of modern communication, we owe a debt of gratitude to pioneers like Marian Croak, who have worked tirelessly to bring people closer together.