Paul Fawkesley

Interesting things I read in July 2025

Sunshine, strawberries and stupid AI

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment

Last year, ninety-six per cent of the global demand for new electricity was met by renewables

Poland—long a leading coal-mining nation—saw renewable power outstrip coal for electric generation in May, thanks to a remarkable surge in solar construction. In 2021, the country set a goal for photovoltaic power usage by 2030; it has already tripled that goal.

Yes, yes, yes. Exponential growth curves are powerful. Solar is cheap everywhere.*

In a First, Solar Was Europe’s Biggest Source of Power Last Month

At least 13 countries saw solar output hit a new monthly high in June, according to an analysis from energy think tank Ember. Solar amounted to more than 40 percent of generation in the Netherlands and 35 percent in Greece.

In no small part due to the heat-wave we’ve been experiencing.

Staying Cool Without Refrigerants: How Samsung Is Pioneering Next-Generation Peltier Cooling

The team successfully developed a high-efficiency thin-film semiconductor Peltier device using nano-engineering technology and demonstrated refrigerant-free cooling, highlighting the potential to deliver outstanding performance without conventional refrigerants.

Important: today’s fridges use compressors to squish gas, move it, and uncompress it. It’s inefficient and many refrigerant gases are extremely harmful when leaked.

With Peltier effect devices, you apply electricity to a semiconductor and one side gets hot, the other gets cool. No gases or moving parts.

This feels equivalent to replacing coal-powered steam turbines to generate electricity with photovoltaic solar panels.

On Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption

Dyson puts an emphasis on design and technology in their products and marketing. It’s undeniable that the company has brought transformative new technologies into homes and changed the expectations for whole markets. … But as time goes on, that position becomes unsustainable and Dyson are forced to differentiate themselves not just through genuine back-of-house innovation but by simply shouting “TECH!” as loud as possible.

Great read. I’ve felt that something’s off about Dyson products before (why is my hand vacuum so uncomfortable?) but couldn’t pinpoint it. This post broke the Dyson illusion for me.

Strawberries – Dyson Farming

Growing quality strawberries at scale, in a sustainable way, out of season, draws on the expertise and experience of the Dyson Farming team.

Cool… weird? Dyson is building robotic strawberry farm polytunnels in the UK. Cool tech, but wrong solution to a stupid problem (Brits simply must have strawberries all year round).

London’s low-traffic zones ‘cut deaths and injuries by more than a third’

Dr Jamie Furlong from Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy, who led the new study, said its findings should reassure policymakers about the schemes. He said: “LTNs have led to considerable reductions in road traffic injuries inside their boundaries for all road users – from pedestrians and cyclists to drivers. At the same time, concerns about nearby main roads becoming more dangerous aren’t supported by the evidence.”

These often work by blocking the middle of a stretch of road, preventing through-traffic. Houses, shops etc are still accessible by car, but other cars can’t use the street as a cut-through.

Political aside: Rishi Sunak tried to politicise London’s ULEZ scheme by commissioning a report on LTNs, presumably hoping it would find that they didn’t work. When it found the opposite, he tried to suppress it. There’s a guy who puts consituents first.

Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

Turns out ChatGPT is telling people to go to Soundslice, create an account and import ASCII tab in order to hear the audio playback. Problem is, we didn’t actually have that feature. We’ve never supported ASCII tab; ChatGPT was outright lying to people. So that raised an interesting product question. What should we do?

Funny: Soundslice added a product feature because ChatGPT consistently hallucinated that they already had it.

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

The sat-nav effect: super helpful, but you’ll forget how to navigate.

With that in mind it isn’t surprising that LLMs make us forget how to write essays.

What other skills do we want to lose? Beware!

Discovered via Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Not So Fast: AI Coding Tools Can Actually Reduce Productivity

Study Shows That Even Experienced Developers Dramatically Overestimate Gains

Developers are particularly excited about AI coding tools, but tend to be wrong about actual productivity. Using AI tools can just feel nicer.

Good news for devs, not so good for the bosses who already laid off a third of their workforces.

Stop Building AI Agents

Here’s what you should build instead

Practical. It’s easy to get excited about running LLMs as “agents” (as I did last month). This post describes other ways of linking prompts together like chaining and routing.

fast - catherinejue.com

Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” We ask for features, we ask for volume discounts, we ask for the next data integration. We never think to ask for fast. But software that’s fast changes behavior.

100%. I love making things fast. Slow software is frustrating in a way that’s hard to notice at the time, but takes a toll. I’m thinking of you, Monzo, taking 15 full seconds to open from a “payment approval” notification.

Shoggoth Mini

For these future robots to live with us, they must be expressive. Expressiveness communicates internal state such as intent, attention, and confidence. Beyond its functional utility as a communication channel, expressiveness makes interactions feel natural.

Very cute: making an expressive robot. Despite looking totally alien, it feels very relatable.

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