They can have my smartphone when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Oh. Wait.

We told you that forcing people to return to the office was a bad idea! But did you listen? No. :0

Ok, all you climate sleuths, here's your assignment:

1. Find out which scenario this study is based upon.
2. Find out how likely that scenario is

Without looking, I'm guessing it's RCP 8.5.

"The EU is doing what it always does. For them it is about stealing from America what they won't or can't create for themselves.
That's all they have done for the last almost twenty years now.

If you or anyone else actually wanted a phone that worked like a desktop, you would have gone and built it. But they won't."

This is, obviously, nothing to do with the capabilities of the phones. Its only to do with the policies Apple is following. There already is "a phone that works like a desktop" in that its a phone (many of them) that let you install whatever you want: all Android phones are like this. Use FDroid or side load. Google does not stop you. But this is irrelevant, the action is not about a new phone with a given capability, its about what users can do with the IPhone they already have.

It similarly isn't an answer to the EU policy to say, fine, just buy an android phone. No, this is not what they want. They don't want there to be phones with the ability to install whatever you want on them. There already are such phones, many of them.

What the EU wants (whether iPhone users want it, we will see) is for iPhone users to have this same capability, to buy apps and install them without having to pay a percentage cut to Apple. This is not about developing a different phone, its about not preventing the user from using the Iphone they already have in certain ways.

The EU is attacking Apple anti-competitive Apple policies. If it is stealing anything from America in this respect, what its stealing is old fashioned anti-trust law and practice. Its pursuing the same policies America has pursued on subjects like linked sales, right to repair, aftermarket tied sales. Its the same approach that is the reason why GM cannot prevent people using third party replacement parts.

"Can you or someone actually make a list out of things that users will gain from all of this...?"

As usual here, you don't understand where the EU Commission is coming from. For them it is always about economics, its about opening competition for some players in some segments under some conditions. In this case its about dismantling the walled garden. Its about giving vendors (not just developers, though that may be a first step) the ability to sell apps to iPhone users. It is about making the application market for smart phones work in a similar way to that for the desktop or laptop PC.

People, particularly Apple fans, may not like this, they may not want it for themselves, they may also be very happy with the walled garden and positively like that it exists for everyone, they may like it because they think its good for Apple, but all that is immaterial to the EU. The EU wants to see competition for the Apple app store, so its going to, step by step, ensure that other suppliers can sell apps to iPhone users.

It isn't at all interested in whether, right now, the iPhone users want this. Its not interested in users. Its interested in markets and company power in them.

It has almost unlimited powers to bring about what it wants. It can give itself whatever legal powers it wants, it can issue orders and assign financial penalties to them which will give even a company the size of Apple very serious problems. As you would have seen, had you been following the recent EU legislation on this.

What we will now see is efforts by Apple to implement the letter of the regulation, but in such a way as to try and make sure that the alternative suppliers get as little as possible share. The EU will progressively slap down every measure Apple takes to enforce this. In this contest between a government the size of the EU and a company, no matter how large, the smart money is on the government.

If you want to understand the EU, its Bismarck's Zollverein updated. It has its earlier roots in Colbert. Competition internally, tariff and regulatory barriers externally. Rigorous enforcement of the rules on foreign entrants, less so for local players. When, through some accident of technology or innovation, you find yourself with a foreign player with dominant share of an important market segment, you get to work. The whole apparatus then focuses on how to clip its wings.

You all never heard of the Zollverein, and when you look it up, cannot see what that has to do with anything.

No, I guess not.

How I wish it was hard to "prove government doesn't work", but, man, this thing just proves itself, it needs no help from us.

Name me a government-run anything that is being done better than the private sector could have done it -- to say nothing of how much it costs, which would be in the territory of a joke by way of comparison.

We don't have a government because it works better, we have a government because we want it to have monopoly power over certain things such as police, military, infrastructure, etc. We put up with government.

They can obviously draft regulations and pass them into law. But is it really possible for the UK to affect AI use in its borders?

The servers may be anywhere in the world. Are they going to try and regulate access to them? If they are going to try and regulate the end product appearing in the UK, is it going to be provable that it resulted from a forbidden use? And then there is the difficulty of distinguishing in law the use of AI for some purpose which is unlawful, when to use just a non-AI model of some other variety is lawful.

Are they really going to get into regulatory detail about exactly how its legal for a model to use evolutionary adaptations? Some uses for some purposes count as illegal use of AI, others for other purposes are fine?

It reminds one of the last great ignorant IT mania in the UK, the demand that all children be taught how to do something called coding. This idea was promoted with fervor by people who had never seen a shell script, let alone written one, let alone ever written an application and had no clear idea what they were wanting taught. The idea seems to have died a natural death, just as well.

Something similar here, a sort of moral panic about something by liberal arts graduates who don't have the slightest real understanding of it. But who are confident they know it has to be regulated and are rolling up their sleeves to save civilization from its misuse.

I challenge you to look again at the original summary statement, and tell me you think it is an accurate, defensible description of the problem.

I say it is not. I say it is marketing-speak that really has no place whatsoever in a discussion forum targeted towards engineers. I say it is yet another low-quality statement that relies on hand-waving and alarmism.

Since I am an old fart and have been on this site for decades now, I am willing to put my name to my objections. I know in advance that I will be moderated down; moderation on /. has been broken by activists for many years now. But I have nothing to lose, and nothing to prove. I just want a competent discussion on the facts.

For example, I would like to know what caused the detected reduction. I suspect the study authors have some ideas, where are they? I would like to know where the measurements were taken. Were they in a field? In a city? Next to a factory? Next to a factory that recently shut down? I would like to have some intelligent discussion on how these results might be extrapolated to the world at large.

But we get none of this. We get more alarmist claptrap. I'm done with giving that a pass. I want some minimally competent science in these discussions. There are other forums where the PR types can ply their craft.

Also, read the Manhattan Contrarian on the New York plans.

https://www.manhattancontraria...

Very similar to the UK case. Anyone trying to convert to wind and solar to get to net zero is going to run into the same problem.

This gives an idea of the size of the task. The policy for net zero is to run on wind and solar. Since there are calms and nights, the question is how much storage you need to get through them.

California demand is 25-30 GW. This installation will supply 0.68 GW for four hours. Assume that is allowing for the fact that you cannot totally discharge to flat.

Typically wind has periods of calm when generation falls to about 5% of faceplate, for several days. To be able to move to wind and solar, you'd need to be able to supply at least 20GW for at least a few days.

You cannot do this with battery storage. You might be able to do it technically, though it would be a truly massive program, but you could not afford it.

This is no more than a gesture. Yes, you could use it to extend local solar generation by a couple of hours, and that might be worthwhile economically.

But what the proposal shows is the scale of the project, if you really want to move to wind and solar. This is why the UK Royal Society - essential reading - proposed for the UK Net Zero project the excavation of 900 caverns, which would be used to store hydrogen. For decades, because there are low seasons every so often, as well as calm weeks. This was for UK demand, which is around 45GW peak. Estimated to double or more as they move to heat pumps and EVs. So maybe Ca would do with 500 caverns for current demand?

Then of course you need gas plants to use the stored hydrogen. And you need someplace to get more of it, when the wind picks up and you are now running on wind and solar again.

So in summary, its overbuild to have enough wind and solar to replenish. And build gas generation plant in addition adequate to supply 90% of demand.

And then you're converting transport to EVs, at the same time. Double demand?

Well, good luck with it all. An heroic effort, best watched from a safe distance.

https://royalsociety.org/news-...

Researchers from UC Berkeley set up dozens of sensors across the Bay Area to monitor planet-warming carbon dioxide, the super-abundant greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuels are burned.

• The gas which most contributes to warming is H2O, not CO2. By a huge margin.
• There are only trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is not the direct effect of CO2 that alarms climate researchers, but the sensitivity of the climate to heating that acts as a multiplier effect. The degree of that multiplier is estimated, not known, which is why we have multiple modeled ranges of temperature trends.
• CO2 is emitted from many sources, not just when fossil fuels are burned. It is emitted when ocean water evaporates. It is emitted when rocks weather. It is emitted when volcanoes erupt. It is emitted when plants decompose. It is emitted when ice melts.
• CO2 is sequestered, too. It is sequestered in plant growth. It is sequestered by deposition in the ocean. It is sequestered in ice.
• The earth's climate is a dynamic, non-linear, adaptive system and has never, in its entire 4.8 billion years of existence, exhibited a "tipping point" that is irreversible.

They are trying to get electricity generation 80% carbon free by 2030. The only way to do this will be by sharply reducing demand and making supply unreliable, probably using smart meters to set very high prices for calm periods and also cutting off supply to selected areas and customers during calms.

This is just the price of moving to intermittent generation for all or most of your electricity generation when you have no viable storage solution for the week long calms which affect this part of the planet, summer and winter alike. And there are also season long low wind episodes every couple of decades.

Read the Royal Society storage report to get an idea of the size of the problem.

No rational business people with a business which depends on large and consistent electricity supply can consider moving to any country that is seriously intending to take its electricity supply to intermittent wind power.

If you happen to find yourself in situ when the country decides to do this, what to do? Don't invest any more in that country, build up alternative facilities in more sensible nations to eliminate dependencies on the net zero nation, wait for the disaster to unfold. Move your customers. Maybe the politicians will choke and reverse themselves and start building out more gas or coal, but in the meantime you will be ready for them to take their country over the cliff.

Which they show every sign of intending to do, though they would not put it quite like that. They would say they are saving the planet by reducing Ireland's carbon emissions, for the sake of the children. Right.