Hi there! In case you didn't know, I created newgrounds. No, it wasn't made by some giant company - just some dumb kid who now has help. I also co-founded the Behemoth; we made Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Icon by Pegosho, banner by OmenaKettu.
I mentioned it in this post but then @BrandyBuizel shared a bunch of photos he took, so I thought a follow-up might be nice for people who like looking at pictures.
Last night was Short Short Fest in Prospect Park, PA, organized by Lee Thompson and the @Barnhouse Collective. The event was at Marty Magee’s indoor/outdoor patio and the weather just happened to be perfect for a night of watching animation under the stars.
I arrived early to meet up with @Luis and @Krinkels, which worked out well because we snagged a good table complete with drawing paper tablecloth. @MechanicalMantis joined us to complete the set.
I was enjoying the pre-show music and asked Lee who put it together, at which point I was pointed to a guy who just happened to be @topcatyo! Topcatyo has been on NG forever but we’ve never met in-person before. I couldn’t remember if he took a selfie so I reached out for pictures, only to learn he did not in fact take a selfie but did take other great photos.
Topcatyo was also screening “Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse DELETED SCENE.”
I bumped into @Jaime-R! He was there to screen Bet it was Becca, from the Paloni Show Halloween Special on Adult Swim. I don’t think this one is officially available on the web but it’s a must-watch and got the biggest response of the night, as it should because Jaime-R is one of the greatest animators to ever live.
@Brewster was there with a lovely new movie that hasn't been released yet, I'll just say everyone is in for a treat. The last time I saw him at Short Short Fest, he was screening "The Gold Men."
I think @NickSenny was there and I managed to miss him. @PukeBomb was representing with "Seymour Smiles!"
Ben, Raziel and Marcus from @StudioYGKrow were in attendance and screening their film, “Ned and Fred Don't Lose Your Head.”
@RomeoJr wasn’t in attendance but got a lot of laughs with “Kevin’s Mom.”
I don’t know if @chewgumseries was there last night but the Chew Gum Short Film was!
Lee from @Barnhouse screened his film, “Piece of Mind.”
I saw @tristious at a distance but he vanished before I got to say hi. He was there to screen the Hot Razor video he directed and animated for $UICIDEBOY$.
The final stop on my way out was the bathroom, where I bumped into @Knights!
I think there is at least one other movie that screened last night that is also on NG but it is escaping my brain at the moment. Let me know if you were there and I didn't include you in this wrap-up!
Here are some tech news videos I've enjoyed over the past month:
"Scientists in Copenhagen have successfully demonstrated a chip that can send enough data every second to cope with the entire internet's traffic, all at a fraction of the energy demand."
"A New Way to Achieve Nuclear Fusion" - this isn't related to the fusion announcement by the government last month, it's a different company that came out of stealth mode afterwards.
"6K Energy has developed an innovative process to produce battery material that leapfrogs legacy battery material processing technology with proven 6,000-degree Kelvin microwave plasma technology, known as UniMelt®. 6K’s UniMelt process can produce multiple chemistries ultra-fast and at substantially lower cost with significantly less environmental impact than the current process. 6K’s UniMelt can produce battery material using 90% less water, generating zero solid and liquid waste and significantly less energy and CO2 emissions."
Latest Boston Dynamics demonstration:
"How Physicists Created a Holographic Wormhole in a Quantum Computer" - interesting developments on the topic of traversable wormholes and the idea that black holes and quantum entanglement are the same thing.
There has been lots of battery tech news over the past month but it's always hard to know what will actually come to market and what technologies will win. BMW announced their Gen 6 battery will offer 30% improved range, 50% reduced cost and 60% reduced carbon emissions to produce. They plan to debut the new batteries in their Neue Klasse models in 2025.
StoreDot's Extreme Fast Charging batteries tout faster charging and higher energy density, have already been confirmed by third parties and are expected to be in production next year.
There are numerous battery factories coming to the US and some good news for Australia, too:
This video about flywheels is an interesting look at how old technology can also meet modern demands:
I've posted before about how I like to keep up with battery tech, so here's some updates from this past month.
NASA is making progress with a solid state battery that weights 30-40% less than conventional lithium-ion batteries with 2-3x the energy density. As a solid state battery it doesn't contain liquid, which solves the flammability issues associated with traditional batteries. It also doesn't use cobalt, nickel, or manganese. These batteries make electric planes a lot more feasible, due to the combination of reduced weight and improved energy density.
We're still gonna need a lot of lithium but as demand grows, the processes to extract and refine lithium will continue to improve. Here's a video about EnergyX, a company that is doing that sort of stuff:
As we move away from fossil fuels as an energy source, the alternatives will keep getting better. Batteries keep getting better, solar panels keep getting better and we keep finding better ways to make both of these with more common resources. More and more money and research will be invested in these spaces as it becomes clear that people won't be buying internal combustion engine cars in the future. As long as we don't get cold feet and turn back, things will continue to get better.
US factory production is apparently the highest it's been in 14 years and it should continue to improve as the US on-shores more of its chip, battery and electric vehicle production. Things still feel like a mess right now but there are a lot of signs that better days are coming. I'm hopeful!
I was in New York City yesterday and took three pictures. I would have taken more but I was trying to be in the moment. This was my first time in NYC since before COVID so I got to see the Little Island that opened there.
You can listen to this song while you look at the pictures:
This past weekend Adult Swim rolled into Philly to host a block party, with panels and concerts and other festivities.
One of the events was a Smiling Friends panel on Saturday, featuring show creators @psychicpebbles and @MichaelCusack. Nick Wolfhard was slated to moderate the panel but he couldn't make it to town, so I ended up being the moderator! I'm credited as Nick Wolfhard in this video, though:
The full panel was an hour long and included a premier of the Brazil episode.
This week there was a story going around about Choco Tacos being discontinued and as a Choco Taco fan, I tweeted about it. By some twist of fate, my tweet ended up on the Today show this morning! Maybe we'll increase our Choco Taco-aligned userbase on NG as a result.
In the past two weeks, I've made changes to 64 FLA files and 81 AS files related to Nightmare Cops. There's over 300 FLA files and over 130 AS files total. Not that sheer numbers mean much but this game represents a decade of us making a lot of stuff; it's gonna be cool some day when people can play it!
I tend to follow a lot of tech news because I get really depressed thinking about how Earth is retaining more and more heat in its atmosphere, which will eventually kill everything if left unchecked. We all have a long way to go towards decarbonizing but one area I enjoy reading about is ongoing battery research. The problem with battery research is there are exciting things being discovered all the time but most of them don’t scale, or it’s not something happening in the next decade. Still, there have been some interesting discoveries just this past month so I thought I’d share some!
Engineers at Drexel University (my alma mater) in Philly accidentally discovered an important step on the road to sulfur-ion batteries, which have the potential to be three (possibly even five) times as energy-dense as lithium-ion.
Using AI, researchers at the University of North Carolina have made interesting findings with a Fluoride battery, which could be ten times as energy-dense as a lithium-ion battery. Having a battery that dense could mean a car that goes over 3,000 miles on a charge but you could also have a much smaller battery, resulting in a lighter car that uses less energy to cover the same distance (with more charging stops).
Contemporary Amperex Technology just announced the Qilin Battery, claiming a 1,000 km (621 miles) vehicle range with mass production starting in 2023.
Alsym Energy just emerged from stealth mode with a water-based battery they claim is similar to lithium-ion but half the cost and with no risk of fires.
All these various solutions reduce or eliminate the need for certain rare earth minerals and lithium, replacing them with more common elements and more potential for rapid expansion without the traditional bottlenecks. The if and when remains unclear but it’s all hopeful stuff.
There’s also QuantumScape’s work on a solid state battery, which will be another step forward and could be something we see in the near future (as in the next few years). Full disclosure, I bought some QuantumScape stock when it was a SPAC and at one point my value had tripled but at the moment it's down by around half of what I invested. It could go up, it might not! Most of my attempts to invest in green tech have failed.
Besides making electric cars way more efficient and environmentally friendly, we need battery solutions for grid storage from sources like wind and solar. Sodium batteries are a big one to watch in this space; they aren’t as energy dense as lithium-ion but use salt (very abundant) vs lithium and are much cheaper, so you could see tons of large sodium batteries being used for grid or even home energy storage.
There’s also interesting things happening with carbon capture tech, something that could help pull CO2 from the atmosphere as we work to reduce the CO2 we’re putting out.
