Apple is plenty good at case design. They do not want to make user replaceable batteries because it would compromise the shape of the phone. Replaceable batteries need special "infrastructure" on the phone to hold them in place that would add to size and possibly weight.
In any case, none of the big manufacturers make flagships with replaceable batteries (LG G5 possibly excepted) and even then, it is not one of the true flagship smartphones out there,
This is quite tricky territory for companies such as Twitter, Google etc.
If they now censor speech as a matter of course, does this mean they are making editorial decisions? If so, does this make them liable for all speech on their platforms. Or will they only use this power to stop speech they don't agree with even if the speech is not illegal / defamatory etc.
Russia can be resolved by educating people better. And not by one side of the political spectrum trying to delegitimise the result of a democratic election by continuously bringing up Russian propaganda on Facebook.
With China, they are now big enough that even they can't believe they can continue to get away with straight up stealing technology from other countries and shutting off their market using tariffs and non-tariff barriers while continuing to receive favourable access to other countries markets. Add to it they now act more and more like a bully - targeting Republican districts with retaliatory tariffs is way more electoral manipulation that Russia sponsoring Facebook posts.
Google didn't overpay for Youtube. Google bought the largest video site on the planet. Google now controls two of the 3 largest websites on the planet (in the western hemisphere anyway). $1.65bn was money well spent to prevent a competitor either emerging, or another well funded competitor using Youtube to undermine their ad dominance. Youtube is now making quite a bit of money for Google. Money well spent.
We know it costs less right now, but that ignores a few issues:
- Wind (and solar) don't tend to have the costs of backup or storage attributed. At the moment, the get to free ride on the back of dispatchable sources which pick up the slack when they don't do so well.
One of the big problems with wind and solar (and I love both, especially solar) is that they don't just vary on a day to day to day basis, but also vary quite predictably by time of year. For example, in the UK, wind generated 5.3 TWh in January but only 1.8TWh in June. So, unless the usage follows the same variation as the natural variation in generation, this will require dispatchable sources to be idle until required, or large amounts of storage.
There is not anywhere near enough potential capacity for pumped hydro, let alone actual capacity.
The US had 82GW of wind capacity in 2016. If we assumed a capacity factor of 50% (generous) and that you require about 1 days worth of storage (somewhat of an understatement) and also assumed that we could do pumped hydro for this, we would need:
- 41 * 24 equals approximately 2TWh of energy storage required, or 1000GWh,
- The largest such facility in the world has a capacity of 34 GWh
- You would need to build about 30 such facilities to back up what is currently about 6% of the US electricity supply.
Just to show how much pumped hydro is not a solution, consider that the facility I have mentioned has a head of 385m. There are not many sites in the US where you could replicate that.
There is a huge difference. Solar eclipses demonstrably present no actual danger. Nuclear power plants demonstrably present a very real danger. No amount of education will change that fact.
The point isn't that there are or aren't any risks. It's that the fear is disproportionate to the risks. Your car is much more likely to kill you than a nuclear power plant in meltdown, yet people do not recoil in fear from their cars the way they recoil from nuclear.
Some people have decided they don't want to use all the tools at our disposal because they hold their vision of "green power" as more important than actual CO2 reduction progress.
That is being generous. Some really want us to regress to living "simpler" lives, and think if they can restrict access to energy, we will have no option but to stop doing the things we like.
Even the Apple style of laptops seems to be about the same as a 2002 powerbook. Thinner lighter, But still a gray metal laptop.
There are many things one could complain about Apple's laptops, but their design is still very good. Maybe making the same design for such a long time has allowed it to be super optimised, and removed many of the kinks in it. They would need very good reasons to change it in my opinion.
Human drivers have in general gotten better too; in parts of the world through programs like mandatory slick driving and obstacle avoidance courses, or it becoming easier to lose a license.
No they haven't. Cars have gotten better - ABS, power steering, ESP, better suspensions.
But why is Xi leaning on Kim? Is it because a madman in the White House has brought the issue to a head by threatening Kim into doing stupid things which finally annoyed China enough to lean on him.
CERN does research that the private sector wouldn't do.
AI is something the private sector is all over at the moment.
What is likely to happen is that the EU will legislate / regulate to make it difficult for anyone to do anything useful with AI, while the Americans (and Chinese) build up an unassailable lead in the technology.
The US will let companies experiment and then regulate later while the EU will kill everything by regulating them to death first.
The US could literally print $20 trillion dollars in $100 bills and pay off their bond holders as they fall due. Of course, this would cause inflation to shoot up, but the debt would be paid.
I am not against a basic income, but at the end of the day, one needs to appreciate that giving people "income" is tantamount to forcing other people to work for them. Everything that one consumes is something that has taken someone's labour to produce.
Just about every drop of oil that Norway sells ends up in the atmosphere - a large proportion of it as CO2. If Norway doesn't sell their oil, it doesn't contribute to the CO2 issue.
That chart only takes into account total energy generation. It doesn't account for the "quality" of the generation. For example, with a thermal power station, you can generate a known amount of electricity 24/7 with minimal investment in load balancing.
And the report states that they haven't considered any costs to deal with intermittency at all. All costs to deal with intermittency should be borne by renewables. In effect, we should match renewable capacity with some on-demand capacity. So, for example, the cost of putting together 1GW of solar should be 1GW of solar + 1GW of CCGT backup.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummmmmm, whoosh!
Or basically, in casino speak, "The House" wins again.
Apple is plenty good at case design. They do not want to make user replaceable batteries because it would compromise the shape of the phone. Replaceable batteries need special "infrastructure" on the phone to hold them in place that would add to size and possibly weight.
In any case, none of the big manufacturers make flagships with replaceable batteries (LG G5 possibly excepted) and even then, it is not one of the true flagship smartphones out there,
This is quite tricky territory for companies such as Twitter, Google etc.
If they now censor speech as a matter of course, does this mean they are making editorial decisions? If so, does this make them liable for all speech on their platforms. Or will they only use this power to stop speech they don't agree with even if the speech is not illegal / defamatory etc.
Exactly!
Or Microsoft buying Skype. Or Nokia. Or Google buying Motorola.
Yes, companies can and do make bad acquisitions, but Youtube is not one of them.
Russia can be resolved by educating people better. And not by one side of the political spectrum trying to delegitimise the result of a democratic election by continuously bringing up Russian propaganda on Facebook.
With China, they are now big enough that even they can't believe they can continue to get away with straight up stealing technology from other countries and shutting off their market using tariffs and non-tariff barriers while continuing to receive favourable access to other countries markets. Add to it they now act more and more like a bully - targeting Republican districts with retaliatory tariffs is way more electoral manipulation that Russia sponsoring Facebook posts.
Google didn't overpay for Youtube. Google bought the largest video site on the planet. Google now controls two of the 3 largest websites on the planet (in the western hemisphere anyway). $1.65bn was money well spent to prevent a competitor either emerging, or another well funded competitor using Youtube to undermine their ad dominance. Youtube is now making quite a bit of money for Google. Money well spent.
We know it costs less right now, but that ignores a few issues:
- Wind (and solar) don't tend to have the costs of backup or storage attributed. At the moment, the get to free ride on the back of dispatchable sources which pick up the slack when they don't do so well.
One of the big problems with wind and solar (and I love both, especially solar) is that they don't just vary on a day to day to day basis, but also vary quite predictably by time of year. For example, in the UK, wind generated 5.3 TWh in January but only 1.8TWh in June. So, unless the usage follows the same variation as the natural variation in generation, this will require dispatchable sources to be idle until required, or large amounts of storage.
There is not anywhere near enough potential capacity for pumped hydro, let alone actual capacity.
The US had 82GW of wind capacity in 2016. If we assumed a capacity factor of 50% (generous) and that you require about 1 days worth of storage (somewhat of an understatement) and also assumed that we could do pumped hydro for this, we would need:
- 41 * 24 equals approximately 2TWh of energy storage required, or 1000GWh,
- The largest such facility in the world has a capacity of 34 GWh
- You would need to build about 30 such facilities to back up what is currently about 6% of the US electricity supply.
Just to show how much pumped hydro is not a solution, consider that the facility I have mentioned has a head of 385m. There are not many sites in the US where you could replicate that.
The math on pumped hydro does not add up.
There is a huge difference. Solar eclipses demonstrably present no actual danger. Nuclear power plants demonstrably present a very real danger. No amount of education will change that fact.
The point isn't that there are or aren't any risks. It's that the fear is disproportionate to the risks. Your car is much more likely to kill you than a nuclear power plant in meltdown, yet people do not recoil in fear from their cars the way they recoil from nuclear.
Bing, Ask.com, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, Yandex, Baidu.
What is google supposed to do, slow down on indexing and making things better so that their competitors can catch up?
Some people have decided they don't want to use all the tools at our disposal because they hold their vision of "green power" as more important than actual CO2 reduction progress.
That is being generous. Some really want us to regress to living "simpler" lives, and think if they can restrict access to energy, we will have no option but to stop doing the things we like.
I sympathise with people living near those disaster areas, but the risks are rather overblown.
Death toll from Chernobyl is about 4000. Fukushima is at zero last I checked.
People used to be afraid of solar eclipses. Now they are bette informed. Maybe we need the same with nuclear.
From TFS:
The next version of iOS and macOS "will frustrate tools used by Facebook to automatically track web users,"
Even the Apple style of laptops seems to be about the same as a 2002 powerbook. Thinner lighter, But still a gray metal laptop.
There are many things one could complain about Apple's laptops, but their design is still very good. Maybe making the same design for such a long time has allowed it to be super optimised, and removed many of the kinks in it. They would need very good reasons to change it in my opinion.
Human drivers have in general gotten better too; in parts of the world through programs like mandatory slick driving and obstacle avoidance courses, or it becoming easier to lose a license.
No they haven't. Cars have gotten better - ABS, power steering, ESP, better suspensions.
But why is Xi leaning on Kim? Is it because a madman in the White House has brought the issue to a head by threatening Kim into doing stupid things which finally annoyed China enough to lean on him.
Someone could have fun with this.
What if I attempted to make and sell cheese, made in Stilton?
CERN does research that the private sector wouldn't do.
AI is something the private sector is all over at the moment.
What is likely to happen is that the EU will legislate / regulate to make it difficult for anyone to do anything useful with AI, while the Americans (and Chinese) build up an unassailable lead in the technology.
The US will let companies experiment and then regulate later while the EU will kill everything by regulating them to death first.
The US could literally print $20 trillion dollars in $100 bills and pay off their bond holders as they fall due. Of course, this would cause inflation to shoot up, but the debt would be paid.
I am not against a basic income, but at the end of the day, one needs to appreciate that giving people "income" is tantamount to forcing other people to work for them. Everything that one consumes is something that has taken someone's labour to produce.
Just about every drop of oil that Norway sells ends up in the atmosphere - a large proportion of it as CO2. If Norway doesn't sell their oil, it doesn't contribute to the CO2 issue.
If this works, then I forsee lots of documentaries on torrent sites.
Maybe not.
Only send an email if the email actually matches an account on the site.
That chart only takes into account total energy generation. It doesn't account for the "quality" of the generation. For example, with a thermal power station, you can generate a known amount of electricity 24/7 with minimal investment in load balancing.
And the report states that they haven't considered any costs to deal with intermittency at all. All costs to deal with intermittency should be borne by renewables. In effect, we should match renewable capacity with some on-demand capacity. So, for example, the cost of putting together 1GW of solar should be 1GW of solar + 1GW of CCGT backup.
So the costs in there are misleading.