Hope that we can go a la cart and opt out of the hundreds (thousands?) of extra dollars these infotainment systems add to the price of a car, from the extra screen cost, software programming costs, extra copper wiring, extra computer chips, lifelong extra pollution due to extra weight carried, ...

First job should be to be a car.

Technology equivalents of gameplay skins, which you cannot opt out of paying for, remembering your seat position, should be optional..

Try to by a Ford or GM full size truck for farm work and you have to pay a can't opt out of feature-itis tax in the form of unwanted extras on the vehicle i the $1,000s of extra dollars to the vehicle's cost. All ending in a lower standard of living via raising the floor price of a necessary work truck.

Same story again, like how Microsoft was giving away for $10 office, development tools, etc. since the 1990s to get students AKA future corporate decision makers into the life long Microsoft purchasing habit.

The AI chatbot, search tools, note taking, whatever are more of the same - capturing interactions (surveillance capitalism, Facebook, etc) to package and sell at a later date.

How many of the devices which were breached has a full OS on them?

How many of the devices needed a full OS on them and not just a small part of the OS to do the device's job?

It's probably cheaper and faster to land linux on a device then customize that it is to created a dedicated bare metal to the bare minimum needed code software for a device.

Corporate calls in most likely with a "We need it yesterday."

https://corpgov.law.harvard.ed....

CEO Tenure Rates are under 5 years per Harvard's study.

That means a newly hired CEO has 4 or 5 years of needing a "Grand Transformational Narrative" to keep the analysts favorable to the company.

Hype the latest trend, parrot what Gartner and McKinsey is selling as the next great thing, continually cut costs, and slowly buy back your stock is not a viable long term business plan.

Let's "tell the people that their TV can show Youtube videos" to increase our market share.

Film, cable and TV companies are trying to slow the decline...

> Open software has always counted on its code being regularly replenished. As part of the process of using it, users
> modify it to improve it. They add features and help to guarantee usability across generations of technology.

This still remains to be seen for the wider open source ecosystem once the first generation of open source developers has stopped writing code for 20 years (say about 2055)..

An interesting study would be to track Python packages and their downloads per year for the thousands of packages to track what is the likelihood that a widely used package goes dead in a 3 year time span.

There's a commercial product waiting to be made that scans your code bases, identifies all of the packages used, flags projects using packages with known security faults, and then also estimates that 5 year chance that the project is unworkable based on its referenced packages expected lifespan.

I meant to say that if a state, country or other taxing jurisdiction raises costs via direct taxes, regulation, fees or land use planning, a company such as Exxon or Chevron (formerly Standard Oil of California) will take that into its long range planning.

Each speed bump adding cost or increasing risk to a company that a state puts out will add to long term business risk. A state adding this cost every few years would drive suppliers away.

Right. The way Biden gave members of his own family like one of his children or an inlaw important government jobs is absolutely disgusting and proof that... that... um, wait, when did Biden do that? I mean, no modern President would ever do such a disgusting thing would they? I mean, I thought it was well established back with Kennedy how wrong and corrupt that was... Though, I do seem to recall something about a recent President doing that... who could I be thinking of?

That's a pretty odd thing to say. Renewables receive considerably less in subsidies than either nuclear or fossil fuels. Some of these subsidies are direct and some of them are indirect. For example, sometimes consumers might say "I thought renewables were supposed to be cheaper, why is my power bill so high!" and the answer (aside from the fact that only part of the bill is for supply costs and often more of it is for delivery costs) is that they are still paying for failed nuclear projects and will be for decades. For oil, the hidden subsidies are often quite out in the open, just that the oil excuse is obfuscated. Modern wars, for example, often have quite a lot to do with fossil fuels. Also, often subsidies for energy efficiency goals are conflated with renewable energy subsidies. For example, many include subsidies for EVs or for heat pumps along with renewable energy subsidies. While the hope with those subsidies is that the electricity produced will come from renewables, those are technically source neutral as far as the electricity goes.

Well, at least you're willing to admit that the level will go down. Of course, you seem to only be willing to attribute it to replacement of coal burning with natural gas burning, while completely ignoring the contribution of renewables. Let's be real here, however, and look at the last ten years. Currently, renewables are about 60% of the electricity mix of Germany, with nuclear negligible if any at all and fossil fuels very slightly below 40%. Over the last ten years, renewables have grown a little over 31% from their level ten years ago. In the meantime, fossil fuels have gone from over 50% to about 20%. While you are not incorrect that the fossil fuel mix is going to shift from being dominated by coal (currently lignite and hard coal are about 60% of fossil fuel use with lignite heavily dominating the coal mix now from 10 years ago when it was more of a 60/40 split for coal) to probably being dominated by natural gas, which will also reduce the CO2 per kWh, the actual proportion of fossil fuel usage in electricity generation is also on a downward trend. Even if the growth in renewables were only linear, they would still end up reaching 79% of generation.

So that would leave less than 20% of the pie (there's an "other category in the data I'm looking at that I assume is mostly trash burning) for fossil fuels and, as you pointed out, that percentage would also produce less CO2 (and other pollutants) proportionally as well from the shift to natural gas. So, even just with linear growth of renewables, the amount of fossil fuels used for electricity generation would be cut in half. Since natural gas simply produces less CO2 from burning, plus that the newer natural gas plants use more efficient combined cycle systems, the CO2 emitted by the natural gas portion would be about 50% of the coal portion. So, basically we take that 60/40 coal to natural gas split and say it becomes a 20/80 coal/natural gas split over ten years and the actual total between them is also cut in half by 50%. That would mean that the CO2 from fossil fuels would drop to about 38% of what it is now. There's that other category I mentioned earlier that is probably mostly trash burning, and that presumably produces CO2 at around the same level of coal. It is a fairly consistent 4%. Incidentally, that 4% seems like one of the reasons your numbers for France seem artificially low since France also burns garbage for power because it only makes sense to generate electricity from it if you are just going to burn it, and their proportion should not be significantly different from that in Gernany, but if it is, it should produce more CO2 than the numbers you keep using. Anyway, 38% of 60% is 22.8% and we'll tack on the estimated 6.7% from the other category for 29.5%. So, based on your numbers, that would bring the CO2 per kWh of electricity down to about 83.5 grams of CO2 per kWh in ten years.

Of course, all of that is based on the naive assumption that the growth in renewables is linear. All of the actual data shows it as closer to exponential or at least a j-shaped curve. That suggests that, in ten years, rather than simply increasing to around 79%, renewables would grow to something like 140% of power generation. That, of course is unlikely because 140% is clearly more power generation than needed. Not to mention that "other" category. For the time being, trash burning is not going away (it might be made carbon neutral through some form of carbon capture, which would require extra electricity beyond what it generates, of course). The point is though, that it is quite capable of displacing fossil fuel usage for electricity generation almost entirely. There are, of course, areas where it will not replace fossil fuels for electricity generation and that is for the off-grid and specialized areas that are covered in part by oil still being a tiny sliver of the fossil fuel electricity production. That mostly means generators. So either emergency generators or remote sites that use oil, natural gas, or maybe even coal for power. Of course, once again, those categories exist in France too, so I am wondering why those are not making it through to the CO2 per kWh numbers that you're using? There's also politics and business influence to consider. There are going to be generating facilities that are kept around to "save jobs", or because they are relatively new and therefore leaders will apply the sunk cost fallacy, or because it will be claimed that it will preserve tax revenue, or they might not even really bother with the excuses and everyone will know that it is because they are taking bribes, but nothing will be done about it, etc. Then there might be some semi-legitimate cases where there is an industrial process that uses fossil fuels and it co-generates electricity from waste heat. The point is that there is no good reason that Germany can not match France's CO2 per kWh for electricity generation or get close enough for all practical purposes.

Then we also have to consider that CO2 production per kWh of electricity generated is not really the only consideration. You can crow all you like about France's lower CO2 per kWh of electricity produced all you want, but the reality is that France only produces around 30% less CO2 than Germany per capita. The reason for this is that electricity generation is only a fraction of overall primary power usage. The solution for that is, of course, electrification. That mainly means transportation sector and replacing heat used in residential, commercial, and industrial settings where possible with heat pumps. Aside from that, a general efficiency push for wasteful processes in those sectors. This narrow focus only on electricity production is problematic since it distracts from the big picture. It has clearly distracted you, for example, if the CO2 per kWh in Germany didn't change at all, but the majority of cars and trucks in Germany became BEVs and the majority of fossil fuel burning heating systems were changed to heat pumps, Germany would end up producing less CO2 per capita than France, even with no change in the CO2 per kWh. Likely though, you would still be here spouting off about that rather than looking at the big picture.

As regards IBM it was earlier than that, though they disguised it a bit. The first layoffs were actually some people at an IBM printer factory in Lexington, Kentucky. Hence Lexmark printers. Must have been around 1983? Major discussion topic during one of my early stints at the big blue place... It wasn't the first time IBM had sold (or shut down) a factory (or office), but it was the first time when the IBM employees were not given any option to remain with the company. Not that those options were always a good deal, since they had often required relocations to odd places.

Going into ancient history, but it's funny. Do you know how IBM got through the Great Depression without laying anyone off? As I read it (in several sources), Senior moved lots of people into sales and the main thing they were selling was office equipment to help OTHER companies lay off more people. Not unlike the AI companies of today, eh? However now that tactic may turn the timing around and help create the Greatest Depression?

Moving to more recent history now... I saw the beginnings but I do wonder what has happened after I left. My last long stint in the big blue joint was mostly about "transitioning" the work force. As I "interpreted" the changes, the new foci on quick onboarding and smooth offboarding were about reducing the number of "lifetime" employees. Rather than build the company around long-term people with loyalty and all that silly jazz, the new idea was to have a lean kernel of meta-managers and super-salespeople, while the actual work would be done by short-term contractors brought in for specific projects and sent out as soon as the projects were completed and paid for. (But at least my age spared me the indignity of training my AI replacement?)

Let me ask this simple question then. What do you think the CO2 per kWh of electricity produced will be in Germany next year? In five years? In ten years? Let's see if you're at all capable of admitting that the numbers you keep touting are just a snapshot and actually thinking critically about this instead of being dogmatic.

I mean a non-perfect code that still isn't awful would, for example, not backup firewall configs plain text to the cloud.

There is also a moral difference between missing a flaw and not bothering to look for flaws in the first place.

I would bet dollars to pennies that quality control these days is shoddy (cause expensive) no matter the field. I wouldn't be surprised if they built nuclear plants with internet facing control software based on shady git packages.

These days, nothing really surprises me anymore.

Funnier than the other joke but I was looking for the obligatory joke about the dangers of potato chips to some folks...

I am curious, do you know how many GW's that would be? I assume that "reactors" may actually mean plants that might have more than one reactor there. Still what would we expect there, if all were built? 3 GWe per each seems like it's probably an overestimate, so that would be 63 GWe. Not really all that much compared to our potential power demands. Also, all of this is just for electricity generation. If we really want to deal with emissions, we need to deal with Primary power and not just electrical generation. Going by eia.gov the US uses 93.6 Quadrillion BTUs or 27.4 trillion kWh per year in total primary power (power from all sources, including all fossil fuel use, all nuclear, all renewables, etc.). Of that, something like 9.4 trillion kWh goes to electrical generation (although only about 4.09 trillion kWh is used, this is partly due to line losses, but mostly due to inefficiencies of thermal plants). So, in other words, CO2 from electrical generation is only a fraction of CO2.

The actual primary power mix is 38% petroleum, 36% natural gas, 9% coal, 9% renewables, and 9% nuclear (note that actually adds up to 101% since some of those numbers are all rounded). The actual end uses are 37% transportation, 35% industrial, 15% residential, and 13% commercial. If you electrified everything, such as everything you can in the transportation sector going electric (obviously planes are still a bit of an issue), producing heat for various things in the industrial, commercial, and residential areas through more efficient methods like heat pumps where practical, and of course reduce electrical sector losses from thermal plant inefficiencies, you can get the primary power required down to about 70%, which is about 19.18 trillion kWh per year. That works out to continuous power of around 2.2 TeraWatts of electricity generated to effectively decarbonize.