The same could be argued of the US. It just ignores agreements and treaties when it suits itself. Pretending that China is any worse is just borderline racism.
No, it isn't racist. It is hypocritical, but race has nothing to do with it.
Additionally, China has a documented and lengthy history of completely ignoring the environment, so expecting them to continue to do so is a reasonable reaction.
I chose 25 degrees just since it is standard temperature. Either way if you don't believe me, look it up, a significant amount of energy use by humans is temperature related and cold areas use more than hot areas. Saul Griffith has done some great talks on the matter.
I know that it is something of an article of faith that AC is the devil and hugely wasteful but that just is not the case. Heat pumps (that's what an AC is) are very efficient and getting better but they only work if the evaporator coil is warm enough that water doesn't freeze on it, precluding their use as heaters in any place that gets near zero. Because of their thermal efficiency compared to heaters and the fact that sorry, but cold places DO get colder than hot places get hot, even if you set 20 as the benchmark, people use less energy when they live in warmer climates.
Guess what? Cold places use MORE energy than warm ones. While people like to hate on ACs as some excess, they are actually quite efficient. Since they move heat, they can move more energy than they use. A good AC can easily move 3-5 watts of heat for each watt of energy it requires to operate. No such luck with heating systems, they at best get you 1 watt of heat for each watt they take.
Then there's the issue of temperature delta. If we take 25 degrees (C) as a target room temperature, well then you can see why cold places have it even worse. The hottest inhabited places on Earth only tend to reach 40 degrees regularly and peak at 50 rarely. So a 15-25 degree delta from normal. The cold places? Hell, even a "mildly" cold place hits 0, and they generally drop a good bit below that. Denmark sees 15-30 degrees below zero. So a 40-55 degree delta. Of course the bigger the delta, the more leakage you have, the more energy you need, etc.
If you intend that heating energy to be renewable, that means no oil, gas, etc furnaces. You can use electric, so long as the electricity is from a renewable source. I guess depending on your definition wood might be ok too. That's about it, unless you happen to live near some hotsprings and can get some geothermal heat.
So re-run the energy calculation when all the district and local heating has to stop using anything non-renewable.
Remember we don't have battery technology that lasts forever, or really even for a long time. So you have to lifecycle those batteries, they will have to be replaced periodically. Probably once ever 5-10 years max. Well add in the cost of that now to the total cost. Also add in the energy required to create and dispose of said batteries to your calculation.
Ends up not being a great option with current battery technology.
There is NO silver bullet. You will always need and have programmers. It was true 30 years ago and it's true now. We have not automated our way out of needing programers to ply their craft.
Exactly.
The key is the ability to break down complex problems, and model them somewhat in your head before you model them in tools. The tools change and improve, sure, but you will always need programmers.
... that people are wiling to do any of this stuff at all?
I'm afraid you can't blame us evil old patriarchs for this culture of say anything you want do anything you want trash talking.
Of course you all supported sensible cultural restrictions on what you could say, and how you could act, for the last 50 years or so
Being an engineering college we see many Indian and Chinese grad students. In both cases we numerous students who have real difficulty with any kind of synthesis and application of knowledge. They want to memorize a bunch of facts and formulas and crunch numbers to get the result. Solving real problems is something they have a lot of difficulty with. In particular there's not a good concept of problem solving. If they don't know the answer to something they believe the solution is to seek the person that does, not apply problem skills.
It, unsurprisingly, comes from the elementary and undergraduate education they received. That is what learning is to them. It is a real issue since of course in real engineering, you don't get to work from a textbook.
Thank you for giving us the Netflix perspective. Counter arguments:
1) Residential broadband networks were never engineered as video delivery systems. The advent of mainstream streaming video completely changed the engineering calculus for last mile networks. Over subscription ratios need to change to accommodate the higher peak hour bitrates; this takes time and costs money. Where should this money come from? Why should I pay the same for my connection as the household that's running three or four simultaneous HD streams during peak hours? My 95th percentile is less than 0.5mbit/s, yet I pay the same as my neighbor who regularly runs three HD streams at the same time. Hardly seems fair, does it?
Internet is a utility in developed nations. Regardless of its legal status, people in developed nations can't function without it. The cost to build it out gets spread among everyone, because that's the only fair way. I don't get to complain when the city raises rates to upgrade a water main or drill a huge tunnel for sewage storage, even though I use 1/100th the amount of water of a nearby business. The cost to run the infrastructure to the endpoint, but the backbone is shared by all and the cost must be split by all.
Whatever else voters wanted, they wanted first their team to win.
As opposed to wanting the team they are most philosophically opposed to to win, which would of course make so much more sense.
Wha??
There would be no issue here if the state didn't have a BS licensing law.
Bingo.
A government that gathers lots of information
And "openness" sounds great, until it's your information they are being open with.
Guy is trying to play silly distinction games. Really, everyone in tech understands what people mean when they say "general purpose processor." Yes, said unit may have some specialized circuits and such, but it is made to be good at dealing with all kinds of problems. Integer, FP, branching, linear, etc doesn't matter its design can handle them all reasonably well.
That compares to something specialized like a GPU. For certain kinds of problems, specifically single precision vector math with fairly consistent branches, it does amazing. However for other things, not as much, though it is turning complete and capable of anything. Still a true processor and not an ASIC that can't be programmed, but not general purpose.
Try to play semantic games with it is silly. Are there going to be cases where the line might be blurred? Sure, but who cares? That's how life is. Everything doesn't always fit in to neat little boxes. It is still a generally useful way of looking at things.
I encourage all climate denialists to get at least 4, maybe 5-sigma certainty on any cancer diagnosis before taking any action. Cancer treatments are expensive after all, and you should wait until you're really, really, super duper extra sure you have it!
First of all, what on Earth is a "climate denialist"? Are there people who deny that the Earth has a climate? Or is it a farcical misnomer purposely intended to ridicule anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism about something that even the experts aren't 100% certain about? (hint: 95% from IPCC != 100%)
As for your medical advice, the next time you notice your body temperature rise by 1/2 degree in an hour, best go ice bath yourself immediately or you'll soon be dead.
I think this is a pretty shady practice, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite as "secretly" as the summary made it out to be.
Why is it shady? The dealer is agreeing to loan you money and trust you with the collateral, on the basis that you accept this device be installed and remain functioning.
They only bother with it for risky borrowers
Not again!
Are you having fun yet?
