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California To Adopt First US Energy-Saving Rules For Computers (reuters.com)
California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors -- devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state. From a report on Reuters: The state Energy Commission said that when fully implemented, the plan will save consumers $373 million a year and conserve as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes. Final approval of the standards, expected at a meeting in Sacramento of the five-member commission, caps a nearly two-year planning process that had input from environmentalists, industry, scientists and consumer groups. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group that helped devise the standards, has said the new standards would cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion in power generation by 700,000 tons a year. The California standards set a benchmark for a machine's overall energy use and leave manufacturers the flexibility to choose which efficiency measures to use to meet it -- an approach that the NRDC says fosters innovation.
Does that mean California will ban the use of Java?
I once worked for a company that had mandated GPOs which turned machines off at a certain time each day. If you were working past 7:00, expect to deal with the power cycle. Of course, coming in and waiting for the machine to come up was a time waster as well. Ironic thing is that the "IT" department that did this learned really quickly to not toss the DCs and SQL server boxes into the OU that this policy applied to.
California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors -- devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state.
Does these figures include or exclude the extra cooling needs due to the computers and monitors?
If your computer burns 200W, if you live in the South, you likely spend an additional 300+W on cooling to offset that heat production.
I don't know how much money that would actually save. I put a watt-miser on our 5-8 year old monitors at work and they don't even register, which means they're under 500ma.
No.
You're trolling, but I have something to contribute.
"You have the right to bear arms, but you don't have the right to use them." ~ © 32016 CaptainDork
RTFS where it says nothing about banning computers in California.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Maybe I somehow absolutely missed it, but looking at both the summary and TFA, I cannot figure out just WHAT the hell these new "standards" even are.
And really, with manufacturers shoving tablets that "act as laptops" which are meant to be desktop replacements and can be charged over USB cable, is evenergy efficiency of new computers even a concern at all anymore?
as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes
So what you're saying is that we could avoid all of this if we just cut off all SF homes from the grid? Has anyone considered this option as an alternative? I never liked those people anyway. And they seem to be exactly the kind of people who are against the free market and are likely behind this. It would serve them right to have them do without electricity.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A few articles have pointed out this paradox, including an episode of Freakonomics. It's been noted by various historians and economists that as efficiency improves, consumption tends to increase. This known as the Jevons Paradox.
The most famous example of this was 19th century locomotives. As engines became more efficient, it made the use of locomotives more economical and spurred an increase in the use of locomotives, leading to ever-higher consumption of coal.
...and I forgot to mention 500ma was measured when they were in their standby state.
Not an outright ban, no. But what happens when they deem your computer not energy efficient enough? I'm guessing hefty fines and/or taxes, enough to make people like the OP want to leave.
All devices I've purchased have energy start compliance and saving features. Due to the annoyance of some features I have to disable them.
Like power saving brightness settings that adapt to the room lighting. Because I have to keep fucking with the brightness from what the TV perceives as light level in the room. E.G Window shining light into the room but not directly on the TV so it dims but overall room brightness is much higher.
Plus the time it took to get the right color and brightness / contrast I wanted. My computer is also high performance, and I used to notice significantly if a primary HDD powered down. It was a real pain. I have an SSD now and my storage drive I let spin down, but if they are nit picky on it, some content and programs cache significantly, which would let the HDD power down and it would drive me nuts getting lag spikes each time it spins up.
So I obviously adjust the power down time. I also notice the lag when the processor clocks down when it thinks it can, but it was wrong and clocks back up. I don't like stutter. If I'm playing a game it's a death. So I don't let my CPU clock down most of the time. Occasionally I adjust the power settings when I know I won't be doing anything intensive for days, and do shut my PC down when not in use.
But what else? Auto suspend? I mean that shit is annoying. It's been 20+ years and we still can't go to standby and back safely all the time depending on what programs are in use.
I will shit bricks if they expect me to pay the same amount for stuttering shitty low power / power saving hardware. They can fuck off I won't buy it.
FTFA:
The California standards set a benchmark for a machine's overall energy use and leave manufacturers the flexibility to choose which efficiency measures to use to meet it - an approach that the NRDC says fosters innovation.
Really. I mean, really? So basically I (pretend I'm a manufacturer) can build a computer that has a slow processor that throttles constantly, a SSD drive for long-term storage that will cost more but not grant much benefit given the throttling of resources, a machine that enters hibernation-mode sleep after 30 seconds of non-use, a GPU that can have an entire video uploaded to it and plays it on its own with no other system resource usage beyond basic interface, or a new type of display that has near-zero loss (dreaming now).
I'm just saying.. that's what it sounds like. There's no "innovation" to be had in computers anymore; at least not ones that will screw with the power factor more and more, basically using more fossil fuel to use less fossil fuel?
Speaking of which, there's an idea.. How about a direct non-switching power supply that doesn't screw with the AC line harmonics and stores, in capacitors, what it will need for fast surges of use?
Alternate idea: turn ANY devices or lighting/etc off when you're not using it. Apparently that's not possible for some reason, so we have to start nibbling at things that eat smaller amounts of power rather than the largest consumers of electricity - HVAC and other AC motor-driven devices...? This is a bit fishy. There has to be another reason behind the pushing of law to accomplish something, unless it's basically a way to force consumers to do what saves power already instead of giving them the option not to do it if they don't feel like it.
TFS & TFA are light on details, but here gives a little more info:
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/p...
The new proposed standards require that desktop computers reduce power draw by half when idle (with no user activity), and establishes more modest power reductions for notebooks/laptops, which already are much more efficient when operating on battery mode, but that is not always the case when they are plugged in.
mac pro will need to be cut down even more to fit into the new power rules or they class it as a server to have it listed as an 24/7 full power system.
...was already powered by Smug?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...!
"...once there is a complete turnover in existing stocks of those devices." It doesn't kick in for 2-3 years and does not affect existing hardware. But, yeah, you should probably fucking leave. Take your shit to Texas.
So now not only do I have to leave the state to keep guns I've legally purchased, I have to leave to keep my fucking computer as well?
What sort of a computer do you own? An Itanium? An Alphastation from the 90s? Or an Alienware running the greatest games?
This legislation is meaningless given that computers consume just 3% of home electric bills and since the bulk of them are laptops, they are made as low power as possible to make the batteries last.
Perhaps they'll do what was a major flop in Ohio - Emissions Testing, but in this case power use testing. You have to register with the state every piece of computer or computer-related equipment you have, and have to take it once/year to a station somewhere within 20 miles of you to be tested to ensure it meets the legislatively-set guidelines of efficiency. If not, you need to take it to a repair shop where they will correct the problem(s) (read: get you a new machine) and then you have to go back to have the "fixed" device tested. Repeat process until all limits are met and you get a cute little sticker that shows you're allowed to use the equipment for another 12 months. Oh, that's after you've paid the fee for each visit for inspection.
Oh, wait, I said that didn't work in Ohio. N/M.
P.S. It would be hilarious to see if this actually happens. My first finger points to the energy being used to power the facilities for testing, and the power used for the testing itself, offsetting the savings of the device(s) that save power. Typical "energy is imaginary when it's not being metered" crud.
P.P.S. This is coming from someone living in a house with solar panels w/ microinverters who has saved 84.1 kWh out of 1600 kWh used over three months.
And this is supposedly a tech website but gets garbage like this modded insightful?
No office monitor uses 500ma (sic!) anymore even when on at full brightness. 500 milliampere is half an ampere, at 120V this means 60 watts. An energy meter generally measures watts, but if it would measure amperes, one that can only measure stuff above 500mA would be just the same kind of garbage as this post above: useless for general use.
In the EU, devices have had regulations for max standby power usage for some years now. Afaik for a PC it's half a watt or so. Since all hardware is basically internationally the same, the same standards by default apply to the US as well. It's easier to design and build hardware which can be sold everywhere, the power of mass production. Maybe the power supplies made for the US market use slightly worse components with higher tolerances, since those are cheaper and there is no such regulation there, but it probably won't be worse than 1-2W instead of the half watt in the EU.
I once worked for a company that had mandated GPOs which turned machines off at a certain time each day. If you were working past 7:00, expect to deal with the power cycle. Of course, coming in and waiting for the machine to come up was a time waster as well. Ironic thing is that the "IT" department that did this learned really quickly to not toss the DCs and SQL server boxes into the OU that this policy applied to.
I can see it now - stories popping up on /. about power companies in CA experiencing two period-tied brownouts in the morning hours because of all of the people turning computing devices on in their homes and workplaces. :)
San Francisco is 2% of the states population. So to power them they would need to decrease power used by computers from 3% to 1% over the entire state. Meaning a 67% decrease. How inefficient are computers that that is doable? Considering that computers now means tablets, which have a huge reason to be as energy efficient as possible, I do not see this being all that doable.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No I dont want my desktop to go to sleep ever. I certainly dont want a server doing that. No actual specifics to be found in anything this is just a fluff piece.
No sir I dont like it.
Will this save electricity, who knows? The whole save as much as SF is a over generalization that ignores all of the computing equipment that would not be up this new spec. What it will do is drive up costs as manufacturers re-engineer for a new spec that may only be required in CA.
And then sell a power supply as an easy add on component separately. Every computer wil be sold as a zero energy usage device, problem solved!
Too soon. That comes after three failures over a five year period of mandating and adjusting the allowable limits, throwing people into mass-hysteria. :)
I'm guessing ...
Why?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
secession
noun
the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state.
"the republics want secession from the union"
succession
noun
1.
a number of people or things sharing a specified characteristic and following one after the other.
"she had been secretary to a succession of board directors"
synonyms: sequence, series, progression, chain, cycle, round, string, train, line, run, flow, stream
"a succession of exciting events"
2.
the action or process of inheriting a title, office, property, etc.
"the new king was already elderly at the time of his succession"
synonyms: accession, elevation, assumption
"his succession to the throne"
So now not only do I have to leave the state to keep guns I've legally purchased, I have to leave to keep my fucking computer as well?
I use VMWare for energy efficiency. Sure, that box and the storage NAS use a ton of power. But when you divide by the 15 "computers" it is running, it's super-efficient!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I did read the article. It said a) nothing about what the standards actually require, b) nothing about how they will be enforced, c) gives estimates for cost increased/saved from the people responsible for the regulations (so, not likely to be unbiased), and d) actually, now that I look at it, tells me nothing at all besides said estimates (which like most government predictions are almost certainly worth considerably less than the paper they're written on). There's no listing of the standards, no link to the standards, nothing about them at all besides
The California standards set a benchmark for a machine's overall energy use and leave manufacturers the flexibility to choose which efficiency measures to use to meet it
which tells me nothing at all (for example: I build my own computers. Will the standards apply to self-built systems? Cause if so, that's really, really bad news for computer enthusiasts, whose systems frequently consume well over the average amounts of power). Will it constrain overclocking or otherwise tampering with the computer's power consumption? I don't know, because the article not only doesn't say, it doesn't link to anything that says.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You are more likely referring to the maximum load for all 3 of these. 90 W CPU's are labeled as such because that means they might reach as high as 90 W under a full load. However, many of these may not even be able to reach 75 W or 80 W when under a full load. And when you aren't encoding video or gaming, the load may be half that or way less.
I'm not a gamer, but I believe it is the same story for the GPU as well. Those high numbers are only reached while being taxed. They won't be anywhere near that while you are working on a spreadsheet.
Power supplies are also measured by the maximum amount of power they can supply. I can put a 1000 W PSU in my desktop, and it won't make it use any more power than it does now with a 300 W PSU. Ok, maybe a slight difference because of different efficiencies between the two, but they would be similar.
Lastly, the comment before yours was talking about "standby power". When a PC goes into standby mode, it is essentially turning everything off and keeping just enough power to keep information in RAM, and providing a tiny bit of power for other things. As soon as your start to use the PC again and wake it up, it will jump up in power usage.
Yes sorry, I admit my mistake. It was a watt-miser, which shows watts, not amps.
The one I have won't show a measurement under one watt, and a monitor in standby would have been 500mW. Whoops. That's what I get for typing without thinking things through.
~500mA at 120V is 60 Watts
Not for an AC current, it isn't. Also, it's likely a rather reactive load.
If it's got an energy star sticker on it, a monitor in standby should be using less than 2 watts, often far less.
Someone had to do it.
Vehicle emission testing is common throughout the US, if you think having clean air is too much of a hassle please keep all those smoking vehicles in Ohio where they belong so your kids can grow up with deficiencies from the exposure to the hazardous emissions.
Better yet, bring back leaded fuel and really show those government thugs that clean air is nothing to worry about and lead poisoning is something to be proud of!
At least my computer and monitor, out of the box, go to sleep after a while.
Please, , let them turn their attention to Cable and Satellite TV boxes that when turned "off" with the remote still pull 20+ watts. Let them turn their attention to items like the Roku 3, which didn't even have the concept of "off" (and which kept a moving logo on the screen permanently to keep your TV from turning off). Let them turn their attention to all the IOT thingies, for whom implementing low-power states is an even lower priority than providing basic security.
And the worms ate into his brain.
Thats the only consistent way to get around the law. Of course we could switch to monochrome Liquid Crystal Displays.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Reminds me of the current EPA standards mandating ethanol in gasoline. Tears up small engines, forcing people to re-buy stuff like that. Great for profit, great for the corn lobby, nothing beneficial for the consumer whatsoever.
Vehicle emission testing is common throughout the US, if you think having clean air is too much of a hassle please keep all those smoking vehicles in Ohio where they belong so your kids can grow up with deficiencies from the exposure to the hazardous emissions.
Better yet, bring back leaded fuel and really show those government thugs that clean air is nothing to worry about and lead poisoning is something to be proud of!
You're presumptuously dragging a comparison into a belief statement on my part. You only read the first and last lines. That's why I type things like that - to filter out comments of people who aren't paying attention. Since you were just blabbering and not being an ass, I'm telling you ;)
Exactly. CA has a solution looking for a problem.
Sure, under CA inflated electricity rates you'll save $40 for an additional $14 in hardware. But in other states you'll save $10 but pay $14. Oh, and lets add the additional design, supply chain changes, etc etc for another $10. So it will cost $24 to save $10. Typical SoCal logic.
Half a watt when "off". Whenever you turn a PC off, it's not off, the ATX standard specifies a 5Vsb (sb=standby) powerline for your PC.
Old Baby AT hat a real 120 or 230V powerswitch at the front of the case, meaning you routed a cable with 230V through your case. ATX did away with it since it's sorta dangerous for inexperienced people, making all the nasty voltages contained in the small, shielded power supply case. But now you need a standby circuit to actually turn on your PC, then there are things like Wake on LAN, etc, which also need it. For this: 0,5W are allowed, not more.
Yes, but I expect fucking computers will be exempted as soon as the cyber-queer community sues for discrimination. Business computers, on the other hand, are permanently screwed.
Your comparison was to the "failure" of vehicle emission testing as a government over-reach. You deserve to be ridiculed for such nonsense.
Reminds me of the current EPA standards mandating ethanol in gasoline.
Also the earlier standards that (at least in California) mandated MTBE. That rotted out the rubber gas lines in older cars, leading to engine fires. (It also contaminated a lot of ground water - it is very persistent, costly to clean out, and microgram quantities give water a bad taste. This is why it was eventually banned.)
But the engine fires got a lot of older, more polluting, cars off the road (leaving mostly low-income people carless or needing to buy a new car). So the envirowackos score it as a win.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is especially funny since California has long been known for Silicon Valley, the innovation center for the fastest and most powerful new computing technology. (Well, at least until China took the crown.) Now they'll be known for keeping their computers turned off, and running at throttled speeds when they are on. Software developers will have their beefy i7's replaced with anemic Atoms. Go California!! (just don't go too fast...)
This shit will end under Trump. We should have a return to a more traditional, freedom loving old-school American lifestyle where the government isn't all up your ass about every little thing.
Assuming you have a major account at Goldman-Sachs or similar wealth. For you little guys, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Will the Sacramento government count your 15 VMs as 15 computers? Good luck convincing them!
Exactly. CA has a solution looking for a problem.
Sure, under CA inflated electricity rates you'll save $40 for an additional $14 in hardware. But in other states you'll save $10 but pay $14. Oh, and lets add the additional design, supply chain changes, etc etc for another $10. So it will cost $24 to save $10. Typical SoCal logic.
Almost there. You have to think like a government regulator, though.
The Feds or each State will simply pass a law that raises electricity rates so that everyone saves hundreds or even thousands! You'll be literally *begging* for more energy-efficient PCs! (Because you don't want to freeze come winter!)
Easy-peasy!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"Not for an AC current, it isn't"
Basic math failure, and physics makes no distinction between which direction the energy flows - amperage is amperage, period. Any Kill-A-Watt plugged into the nearest receptacle with your chosen device attached will do more than enough to prove it.
Back to school with you.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"No office monitor uses 500ma (sic!) anymore even when on at full brightness"
Uhh, yea, just a couple years ago I worked for an LCD repair company.
You're so off on your amperage estimate that you're obviously clueless.
Question: How many amps runs across a typical 95W chip?
Prohint: Likely one order of magnitude higher than you think.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
" 90 W CPU's are labeled as such because that means they might reach as high as 90 W under a full load."
Wrong, you forget the rule of 80. Reality is they're rated to dissipate higher, and yet tend to fail at a similar percentage at lower temps.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You still didn't read all of it. The "emissions test" only served as a tax on the people who can least afford to repair their vehicles, while doing nothing to stop pollution. Think about it this way: anyone with the money to do so will be getting their vehicle repaired as soon as the "service engine soon" light comes on. That light is only off when all systems, including pollution control systems, are functioning normally. If the cost to repair exceeds the value of the vehicle, the well-off person just buys a new vehicle. So you won't save any emissions there.
Those who CAN'T afford to get the otherwise well-running vehicle repaired as soon as the malfunction indicator lamp comes on will continue to drive the car until the emission tests come up. The car will be tested, fail, have some "adjustments" made by a "mechanic" as cheaply as possible, then be tested, fail again, and then a waiver issued to continue to operate for 12 months. Each step of the way the process is taxed, and fees must be paid to the government. This person cannot afford a new vehicle, nor the repairs that exceed the value of the vehicle. So again, no emissions were actually saved because the car is still out of compliance, but the poor people were taxed up one side and down the other, so it's all good.
Explain to me how this isn't government over-reach and not just another thinly veiled tax on the poor that liberals supposedly hate so much but only when they disagree with the reason?
"Yeah, I want my computer to have a diesel generator"
This is already a given if you run nVidia GPU + AMD CPU.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Direction of amperage does indeed matter, but to see whether it matters you need to know the voltage at the exact time of the amperage. Here we are working with RMS values so we could just multiply V and I (though this is a short-hand that can backfire under certain circumstances.) But we can only do this for purely resistive loads where V an I are proportional. What's important is that unless you correct for the power factor, amperage and power draw are not well connected, and neither is Voltage and power draw.
Power factors for unloaded power supplies are extremely low. The current is reactive, meaning that power is stored in the coil and/or capacitors and then released back into the grid. So you have current, but the direction of power flow is sometimes out of the grid, sometimes into the grid.
Though, in this case, it turns out the original source of this figure meant to say mW not mA (unsurprizing, as 500mA would be a bit on the high side for a reactive load for computer equipment). However as to the quality of even that figure, you have to trust that the "watt miser" is able to perform the correct summation over possibly non-sinusoidal input... though for an unloaded device there's probably not much SVR going on so that's less of a concern.
People who work in industries where it matters have specialized meters for this... your run of the mill consumer grade multimeter will not do it.
Someone had to do it.
"P.P.S. This is coming from someone living in a house with solar panels w/ microinverters who has saved 84.1 kWh out of 1600 kWh used over three months"
I'm in the middle of the fucking SoCal desert and I don't even hit 1/3 of that monthly. To boot, if your panels and inverters suck that much, your fucking fault for falling for marketing instead of doing the math yourself. You're on this site, so you've got ZERO reason to have not done the math, here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Is it a VW?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
On the other hand, my home office UPS has a watt-meter on it. I can tell you exactly how much power my home office machines are gobbling up at any one time (loaded or not).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Those emissions tests are worthless. They don't actually get high polluting clunkers off the road. They're just another way that enterprising Republicans can make a buck while clueless hippies think something is actually being accomplished.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I left because the cost of living is high, salaries aren't high enough to compensate, you get hammered by both state and feds if you aren't a total bum, and insurance rates were insane.
There's no hope you will ever get out of the rat race.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It should be noted the regulation is going to effectively ban open source operating systems in California.
The regulation requires a certification that includes testing of the OS's power management capabilities, which means only OS's with a big enough corporate backer to get them through the certification process are going to be legal.
The 'clueless hippies' that I knew while in college drove cars like one guy I knew who had a Delta 88. This was in the late 80's and it was a 70's pig car. It even had the 8-Track player. He would boat up to the north woods in it to commune with nature.
I used to have a SparcServer 1000. That's a machine that uses thousands of watts of power when you just glance at it, without it even being plugged in. Also requires a room with a pretty solid floor.
Agreed, if you can only measure 500mA and above, I could seriously doubt it's accuracy or usefulness for anything but high energy appliances (the washer, dryer, fridge, etc).
Is that like how coal fired electricity plants don't have to meet new emission standards? You know like how they keep them running long past when they would have normally been replaced because no one can afford the fees, taxes, etc. that a more efficient but new plant could have achieved?
It's laws like this that keep us from having nice things.
Why is it that the global warming alarmists keep coming up with more regulations? I think I know the answer, because making new laws is easy but making more efficient devices is hard. They'd do much more in "saving the planet" by going into business and making more efficient computer power supplies than by imposing new laws on people. There is already an inherent incentive to save energy, energy costs money. Any business that wants to stay in business will already choose to buy the computers that cost an extra $13 to save $30 over the life of the computer, we don't need a government bureaucrat to tell MBAs how to save money.
By imposing a cost on getting new equipment, by doing things like requiring businesses to show compliance with energy saving regulations, means that businesses will be more reluctant to buy new stuff. This keeps the old inefficient stuff in use longer. MBAs know how to add up a balance sheet, they can figure out on their own that more regulation costs them money.
I think the government should be in the business of building roads and not much more. Keep them out of how to run a business. If these people were so smart they'd be running their own business instead of trying to run mine.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
Someone had to do it.
So long as the place (eg, California) shimmers brightly at night...
These energy saver 'micro-aggressions' against high technology devices and those who use them are transparently revealed for what they are,
1. Marketing of 'new' tech to replace embarrassingly reliable old tech
2. Under guise of carbon regulation, getting Government to enforce mandate same
3. Tiny little carbon-saver lollipops for guilty faux environmentalists to suck on
4. Promoting power up/down cycles to reduce lifespan from thermal variation and surge
Coming in low for a landing late at night over a sprawling metropolis once (I think it was Chicago), countless completely empty parking lots blazing from horizon to horizon... I'm musing, "Have they actually compared the cost of all this energy against the cost of the crime it is supposed to prevent?"
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>