"In other words, the DMA is lobbing some serious stink bombs into Apple's walled garden."

This is the point. The Commission has an agenda of which this is part. Its not financial. Its to open the walled garden. Its not to compel anyone to buy or use anything. Its to make the iPhone as open a platform as an Android phone for those that want to exercise the freedom that openness will give.

"The EU is simply picking on Apple because none of their member countries can contribute much to technology, and Apple has a lot of money, so they're being total GOONS."

No, they are not interested in raising money from Apple. Their aim is much more serious, it really is totally to demolish the walled garden.

For some reason most Apple fans don't want the freedoms this will bring. But whether they want them or not, whether they use them or not, they are going to get them.

If may be that a lot of buyers of GM cars are very happy to buy only GM parts, and do not want to be able to buy from third parties in the aftermarket. All the same, the FTC makes sure they can, and then whether they do or not is up to them. Back in the day, people might have only wanted to buy their PBX from ATT or the local Bell company. When deregulation happened, no-one obliged them to go elsewhere. All that happened was that they had a choice whereas earlier they did not.

Same thing, just its the Commission doing it.

It is of course different if its done by a state agent acting on behalf of state censorship.

But Wikipedia in English is heavily censored and rewritten by activists, presumably acting as individuals or loose associations of them. Try expressing sketpicism on Wikipedia about whether there is a climate emergency and whether wind and solar are the solution, or part of it. If your entry lasts 24 hours that will be a miracle. So don't get too enthusiastic and complacent about the English version either.

As for the impulse to censor (and indeed criminalize) speech, the recent tendency in the English speaking world to criminalize something called 'hate speech' has quite strikingly, as expected, moved increasingly into attempts to criminalize dissent from a given approved line.

The latest and most striking example of this is the Scottish Hate Crime and Public Order Act. The Scottish government's own account of this is that

"New measures to tackle the harm caused by hatred and prejudice come into force today".

You notice the objective: to tackle the harm caused by hatred and prejudice. Not to tackle the harm that can be done from acting on hatred and prejudice, the aim is not to penalize that. Its to tackle the thing itself, hatred. Also prejudice. Good luck with that!

There is a BBC summary here, pretty reasonable account:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/art...

The result of this was that the day it came into force, the calls starting coming in, and in the first week reached 8,000.

The question of course is what is "hatred and prejudice". In Scotland it appears to include doubting that men can be turned into women. In English universities it can apparently include expressing skepticism about veganism while on the phone in one's own room, but unknowingly being overheard from the room next door:

https://freespeechunion.org/un...

In the English speaking world we do not have the kind of officially sanctioned censorship and penalization of some kinds of speech that the post cites in Russia. There is of course something similar in China. And in the US at least there is the Consititutional protection of the First Amendment.

But a similar role is being played now by the small army of zealots in the English speaking countries who define disagreement as hate, and vilify and target anyone publicly dissenting from the party line. And by 'target' is meant attempts to drive people out of their place of employment (the Guardian is notorious for this) or calling the police who then will record the accusation as a non-criminal hate incident.

Harry Miller for instance (obviously a Monty Python fan) received such a visit after tweeting:

âoeI was assigned Mammal at Birth, but my orientation is Fish. Donâ(TM)t mis species me.â Miller also tweeted: âoeTranswomen are women. Anyone know where this new biological classification was first proposed and adopted?â. He later wrote that the statement was âoebollocksâ."

https://www.theguardian.com/so...

So don't sit there reading about barbaric and authoritarian Russia and think that everything in the West is hunky dory. It isn't. It happens through different mechanisms, but it still is happening.

"Newsom announced the state now had battery storage systems with the capacity of more than 10,000 megawatts â" about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is needed to meet its climate goals."

And for how many hours can these 10,000 megawatts be supplied? That's the question.

Similarly with the 52,000. Again, how many hours storage are needed at this rate of discharge?

A 90% drop seems like a lot. But its over 15 years, starting from tiny production levels. The interesting question for the future of grid level battery storage is how much costs fell in the last couple of years. Not much.

The future of grid level wind and solar is parallel amounts of gas generation. The more wind and solar you put in, the more gas you have to put in. Wind and solar can supplement gas, not the other way around.

Read the UK Royal Society report on energy storage:

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

"....should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes... "

On a calm, dark evening? Its called intermittency.

It may generate enough in aggregate, but the question is whether it generates it in line with demand. And if not, how much storage and of what kind is being proposed to make it usable for the purpose.

Interesting.

Mod parent up.

It's pretty hard to popularize science. You have to simplify things down far enough to be understood by readers without any formal background, but not leave out anything important that would leave the wrong impression. One presumes your typical reader of the Independent newspaper in the UK would read this article and just think, "oh, very well, carry on".

But it's great to have so many eyes on everything now so people can fill in the context for us. This is a truly net positive of having an Internet. Social media isn't all bad.

I'm glad to see a "hard" science news post on Slashdot. There have been so many science posts here in the past few years that are just junk, in my opinion. Lots of science-y and scientism stuff, all mixed in with politics and talking points. This is supposed to be a place where engineers and technical people come to talk. We want the facts, not the spin.

Interesting!

I recommend stop gazing in the mirror and "making your bed" instead! :O)

Not so. Anyone who axquires a marketable skill, is reasonably competent, and has a strong work ethic will never go hungry in the US. That's why people immigrate here in droves. Kids don't care what your salary is. They need very little to thrive physically. I started raising my kids when I was in my 20s and earning just a mere fraction of what I earned later in life.

Correct, at tge monent there is no decline. But we will reach a peakout as early as 2065, and then start a long term decline. The long term trend is that birth rate is https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0...

It wasn't that long ago that Elon Musk was roundly criticized for saying we're facing a population decline, not an increase. He was right, having children is a blessing. As a family man, I can tell you that you won't find anything more amazing than being a Dad. It changes you. It gives you an enormous sense of purpose. When that first child is born, especially, you feel the weight of it: this wonderful creature, its very life and health, depends upon you now. You won't need to tell yourself to get up and go, not ever again, not until they leave home.

One of the great ironies of our time is how government apparatchiks implement rule after rule to constrain the evils of capitalism, and wind up creating more capitalists in the process. How many times do we need to learn the lesson that a dynamic, adaptive system can't be centrally controlled? You can't stop water from flowing, but you can channel it. If you're smart, you'll channel it to your benefit.

Non-competes are part of the employer's incentive package. In return for keeping this or that secret, they promise to give you this many shares, or this position of authority, or this much money. Take non-competes away, and business will respond by binding potential employees in even more creatively onerous ways. Far from causing businesses to cough up more in return, removing these will surely reduce benefits and pay.

Another misguided attempt at central planning. The government can't balance its own checkbook, but it's absolutely certain it knows exactly how employers and employees ought to write their employment contracts.

The issue is with the strategy. Its to remain at the high end and charge a premium. Its worked very well so far, but the problem is that the size of that segment tends to reduce in most markets over time as the low end suppliers catch up on features at far lower prices. In effect your price premium gives them a safe area where they can raise their game.

This happened to Apple in the PC market, its happened in the tablet market, it happened in the music player market. They have been able to draw the process out in the phone market by trading on linking different products together, the ecosystem strategy. But it delays rather than stops the process.

The first indicator is slowing sales growth. To be followed by real falls in sales. At that point you either tackle the problem head on, become competitive at lower prices, which is where the market is now. You retreat to the niche and forget growth. Or you find a new market, like for instance VR headsets. But that seems not to be going all that well.

To everything there is a season, and this is a season to sell the shares.

I'm calling for people to stop believing nonsense and to think for a couple of seconds before signing onto some political agenda. If there are in fact 950 more knuckleheads at Google who are planning to disrupt the workplace like the last 50, then everyone benefits if they get shown to the door.

They built the wall to protect themselves from Hamas, not to keep Palestinians in. Before Oct. 7th, people who lived in Gaza could commute to jobs in Israel.