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And in Finland: 60% of Finnish wind energy 'collected' in the winter months (Oct-Mar)

https://suomenuusiutuvat.fi/en/wind-power/wind-power-in-cold...


> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly

That sounds similar to the 1984 Cable Communications Act (where large cable operators were required to lease channels to others, separating content delivery from content creation) but in reverse! requiring content producers to licence content to distributors


I've found we can usually watch what we want on a streaming platform in a month or two then cancel the subscription and move on elsewhere - it also makes us think about what we actually want to watch rather than what's available to watch.



Basalt Fibre (bonded with recycled PET) is also being used in yacht construction inplace of glass fibre

https://www.windelo-catamaran.com/en/recycled-and-biosourced...


So there are basalt boats floating on the not so salty Baltic.


It's the Basaltic, see?


Looking at the web page is kinda ironic. A yacht builder proclaiming how much better the materials are for the environment. We could just build less yachts, for example. Nobody needs a yacht.

There has to be an interesting commentary here regarding the necessity of productive endeavours that pay taxes and fund local governments and drive investors portfolios into the black, all funded by useless largesse.


Yachts are not just rich-kid toys. They're useful in supporting ocean research, tourism, transfer vessels, security, etc.

It's super cool to find an alternative to fiberglass.

Maybe they could be used in wind turbines as well.


Well, 'research vessels' don't need to have gold-plated luxuries, etc.


Many people live on sail yachts. They are a very economical way to live.


So technically, a yacht is any leisure vessel. ie not a working boat. In the UK, a yacht is usually a sailing boat though we also increasingly have motor yachts. In the USA though, a yacht is a large motor powered vessel. So, when an American says 'nobody needs a yacht' they generally mean one of those, rather than a sailboat. Not sure what context CrimsonCape was using.


Nobody needs Netflix either. Think of all the electricity we could save if we shut it down.


I think the same photographers ISS passing infront of the Sun and moon are more impressive:

https://www.demilked.com/iss-in-front-of-sun-and-moon-andrew...


> by exploiting compromised home routers and cameras, mainly in residential ISPs in the United States and other countries,

Presumably it’s possible to log the residential IP of the source of these packets.

Why isn’t there any industry group pushing for the ISPs to a) send the owners an email telling them or b) blocking off all traffic for a period to get them to do something - or is the economic cost higher than caused by the DDoS attacks?


This already happens in the Netherlands, your router will be put in quarantine mode and you have to prove that the "virus" is gone

This happened to me, at the time I thought it was strange but seeing this event happen it makes a lot more sense now


What percentage of the population would have any idea how to do this? How long does it take to go through the process? Is your work, education, and safety just put on pause during this phase?


was router not provided by your own isp?


In Australia you can byo router-modem which are generally better than those provided by isp.


The economic costs of that fall on the (residential) ISPs and they aren't really incurring very much cost in additional bandwidth from the outgoing attacks. In most cases it will be 0. It's not 'good', as it could affect quality to a certain extent for other subscribers and it's theoretically possible it could result in a slightly higher transit bill, but ultimately it's just not really a problem for them.

Setting up the infrastructure to email customers and tell them they've got an infected device is just going to cause the subscriber to: A) Call customer support and tie up an agent who can't really tell them much - you're also going to have to train all your CS agents on these letters and what they mean. B) Complain on faceybook/Churn off your network. or C) They'll ignore it

About one in a million will fix the issue themselves.


This is why we need an external rogue actor to send those notification emails without ISP consent.


Some of these devices are controlled by the ISP. The TMobile 5G routers for example are pretty much black box devices controlled by TMobile. The home owner can't fix the device and has very limited access (via a mobile app) to 'manage' the device.


I don't think there's a strong overlap between ISP-controlled black boxes and compromised botnet nodes. However, if there is, that just means that the ISPs should be partially held liable.


This has always been the elephant in the room. imho, US intelligence don't want this so congress won't do it. Intelligence controls or buys these botnets when they need them, so regulation here is always impossible to push, but in other countries is more common.


Hmm is there a haveibeenpwned for IP addresses found in botnets? Perhaps correlated at the time of known incidents.

I would like to know if I'm serving a rogue machine and not been paying attention.


That industry group would need to include the big cloud providers, and they also doesn't want to shut of abusive traffic.


Because then the ISPs have to provide support on how to secure those devices.


I will say most of the time the ISPs themselves provide the routers at residential homes


Sure, but if they now go out and say do this and that to secure them a big portion of the users will have support issues. They don't understand the instruction, the pressed the wrong button, they entered the wrong value, all sorts of things could go wrong and the ISP has to dedicate resources in fixing it while they don't gain anything in return.


Most routers shipped by ISPs have remote management enabled, they can be reconfigured by the ISP themselves without having to involve the end user in the process.


That would be an auction. Now we have a situation where a third party gets between seller and buyer, purchases large quantities of tickets then sells them for an inflated price to the buyer and both buyer and seller feel ripped off.


That's not an auction. It's just entity A selling to entity B and entity B selling to entity C.


Sorry, I should have quoted what I was calling an auction from the comment:

> a mutually agreeable trade that would otherwise have increased the utility of both parties.


You can still connect AirPods to an android device using Bluetooth, you just don’t get the seamless connection or support for Spatial Audio that use the extended protocols


You can't even change noise cancel's mode.


It's just on and off, and doesn't let you choose between the different ones (transparency, conversation aware, etc)


Apple have been ‘extending’ the Bluetooth stack for quite awhile. They introduced some BLE features before the spec was finished (I think some 3rd party hearing aids were also compatible).

I haven’t used non apple earphones for awhile but the seamless connectivity performance of AirPods would suggest this was done for performance, not to deliberately lock in devices.

This 2020 paper is great at breaking down some of the extensions: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/woot20-paper-heinze.pdf


> They introduced some BLE features before the spec was finished

In their defence, they went with Lightning shortly before the USB-C spec was finalized. Then, to avoid their customers being screwed over by constantly changing the connector, they kind of had to stick with it for a decade.

People will complain if they push features that are ahead of the spec, and they'll complain if they let the spec be finalized before they use it. Being guided by "What's the best we can do for UX, assuming out users are our users in every product category we enter" seems to be their reasonable middle ground.


The only reason Apple ditched Lightning port and finally gave USB-C port in the iDevices, is because EU forced Apple to do so. But do you think your oh-so-common USB-C cables will work with a new iPhone?

In my country (India), Apple still doesn't sell charger and cable along with its new iDevices, even though those gadgets are exorbitantly expensive. And Apple doesn't allow custom repair here, even though my country mandated the Right to Repair, like EU did so. My old Mac Mini 2012 is gathering dust in a cupboard, because Apple service center refused to upgrade it to new RAM and new SATA SSD, citing Apple policies.


Couldn't you just upgrade yourself in the pre Apple silicone days?

Like within minutes, with no big changes?

I didn't think it's rare that a company refuses to do any work on devices they no longer support. Their employees will no longer be trained to do this work, hence they'd have a nontrivial chance of causing damages. That's exactly why a right to repair is so important, so that other people can pick up their slack


Back when RAM and HDD were using standard parts, Apple packaged manuals with documentation as to how to proceed to such upgrades.


The higher end iPads started coming with USB C long before the EU mandate


That seemed like a product segmentation choice to encourage more laptop like use cases out of the higher end iPads.

Less friction for devices like passkeys, external hard drives, etc.

It doesn't seem like they were keen on moving that down the product line since they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so.


That was a much easier way to get usb3 on them than the special lightning port + cables they tried earlier.


>But do you think your oh-so-common USB-C cables will work with a new iPhone?

They seem to work just fine, yeah.


"Seem". Until they don't. I've had multiple instances of Airpods stopping to connect with phones until I charged them at least once with original Apple cables. They might work fine for months, then stop ehaving unless connected through an all-Apple power pipeline (cable and charger). It's probably firmware updates requiring some sort of validation every now and then.


Sounds like you have a flaky / damaged device or bad cables. If there really was some kind of conspiratorial timer requiring you to use 1P cables it would certainly be documented. Can’t hide that stuff. Loads of people use Apple devices with 3P cables all the time and they work just fine, as long as the cables aren’t junk. There really are quality and capability differences in USB C cables. Just because it looks right and physically connects doesn’t mean it can electrically do all the things.


I think this is a problem with USB-C. The cables all look the same, but they don't actually always work for every device, at least in my experience.


I know that Apple MFI certified Lightning cables work well with iDevices, but I found that third-party non-MFI-certified Lightning cables to be finicky with iDevices. But I never faced such problem with USB cables for non-Apple devices (Android phones, cameras, etc.).

Apple MFI certifies USB-C cables also, so I'm not sure if it is throttling its iDevices to be finicky with non-MFI USB-C cables.

I know for a fact that Apple did software updates to older iPhones to make them sluggish and drain battery quickly. I realised this when I went to Apple Genius Bar to get my iPhone 7 Plus battery replaced after it started draining too quickly daily, but even with new battery same problem persisted. The friendly staff member unofficially told me it is because of the recent software updates by Apple for older iPhones, and advised not to hold out hope that any future software update will fix the problem. Even a year later, his warning remained true. I gave away the iPhone to my nephew as a backup device for his studies, but he sold it soon, as it was a nightmare to keep charging it frequently.

Apple has faced multiple fines for deliberately slowing down older iPhones without informing users, including a €25 million fine in France and a $41 million fine for deceptive marketing practices. The company admitted to slowing down devices to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to aging batteries, but critics argued it was misleading.

These days, I wouldn't trust Apple with a barge pole, let alone the money from my wallet.


>Apple has faced multiple fines for deliberately slowing down older iPhones without informing users, including a €25 million fine in France and a $41 million fine for deceptive marketing practices. The company admitted to slowing down devices to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to aging batteries, but critics argued it was misleading.

These cases are much less convincing than they may seem if you just take a moment to read about them. iDevices would throttle the cpu to make the battery last longer as it's capacity falls, this kind of throttling is not uncommon and not malicious.

This wasn't misleading, and isn't something that warrants any genuine criticism.


In my experience, the only 2 mobile phone companies whose phones drain battery too fast are Apple and Samsung. Apple does this deliberately for older phones, whereas Samsung has this problem even for new phones.

You will not find this quick battery drain problem in Motorola, Nokia, Oppo, Sony, etc. Their phones last several years even with ageing batteries. An 10+ years old Oppo phone I have, still holds almost full charge at idle, throughout the day.

As batteries get older, their capacity to hold charge reduces, but if a phone battery is draining too fast even in idle mode, it is likely due to software, not hardware. And if it is due to software, then the manufacturer company is to blame.


I don't think you can find any evidence of a Apple actually deliberately doing things to make batteries drain faster on older models.

That would either require hurting the battery life on all models or require distinguishable behaviours that only occur on specific models and would be relatively simple to prove through reverse engineering.

Apple has been fined for the throttling, but hasn't ever been credibly accused of actually deliberately taking steps to reduce battery life on older devices.


What? Upgrade it yourself! Swapping the RAM in a mini 2012 doesn't even require tools. Both SoDIMMs are right under the bottom cover.

The SSD is a bit more fiddly, but can also be done at home. Check iFixit.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+mini+Late+2012+Hard+Drive+R...


That iFixit guide to upgrade the Max Mini is daunting for newbies.

But you've inspired me to gather courage and do the DIY upgrade myself next month during the holidays. No use having a working PC lying unused, merely because it is very sluggish due to old hardware. Wish me luck (for the upgrade), I think I'll need it.


You’re just limiting yourself for no reason. It’s not Apples fault that you are sitting in front of an un-upgraded computer that is tool-less (for one of your tasks, at least) and has step by step instructions meant for beginners.


If Apple wasn't forced by the EU, they would try to preserve their walled garden as much as possible. iMessage is the prime example of this.


Can another company federate with WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger?


Yes, because the EU mandated them to. Just no one seems to want to federate.


And you are perfectly capable of interacting with iMessage users now through SMS/MMS/RCS


Their RCS implementation is so incredibly broken, and I can tell as an Android user.

It seems like every other message gets downgraded to SMS.


That's because SMS is a horribly broken, hacky standard, and RCS has to inherit and deal with all the horrifying edge-cases of SMS, MMS, and legacy cruft going back prior to the turn of the millenium.

Then it has to accomodate every other intersted party, many of which hate each other. Apple has always been a bit of an odd duck ("Think Different" has been internalized for some time), but Verizon actively hates OTT messaging as they can't charge for it. Samsung would rather run their own RCS implementation to create and advertise "Samsung RCS", and Google can't push too hard without getting EU attention for antitrust (again).

RCS has been stuck in limbo-hell for years for multiple reasons, none of which are easy.


The specific issue I'm talking about is how Apple for some reason ties the presence of RCS persistently to a contact that requires the user to manually go in and adjust, otherwise the conversation switches back and forth between SMS and RCS as each participant texts back and forth.

This is a problem no other vendors have, and is solely caused by Apple.

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-iphone-rcs-messagin...


Yes, except that SMS/MMS sucks major ass, and RCS is really, really bad too. Not as awful as SMS, but close, and missing various barebones features.

That's not Apple's fault per se, but of course, they contribute to it. They should open up the iMessage protocol.


So what you are saying is that for Apple to create a better experience, they have to add to the industry standard - the same as AirPods.


Yes, that would be mutually beneficial both for Apple customers and people who are not Apple customers.


Why is that on Apple instead of the hundreds of other manufacturers and Google? If Google wants a better ecosystem, it’s on them since according to them Android was suppose to be the “definition of open”.


Because while Android is "open", Google has no carrot (Verizon can't charge for OTT messaging and has no major incentive to push it), and no stick (pushing too hard will draw regulators' attention again)

RCS has been stuck in limbo-hell for several years, and I expect it to stay that way (to your point, I expect it to stay that way even if Apple chips in)


Google has a big stick - Google Play Services. They use it all of the time to get manufacturers to do what they want.


both scenarios speak to either an incredible impatience, or deliberate incompatibility to tie people to their ecosystem.


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