Favorites August 20th 2023
Covering two days of news in one post.
There continue to be evacuations in parts of Northwest Canada due to the fires.
This was in response to an update on the continued steady growth of US Solar generation, up 20% YoY. We absolutely need to scale the solar part, but it's good that we're reaching the point where batteries are becoming the weak link. Meanwhile, there are patrols off Massachusetts to nitpick over which ship does which task in wind turbine installation.
Meanwhile, China's fertility rate has fallen from 1.3 to 1.09, putting it near the lowest in the world. Japan is 1.3 and South Korea is 0.84.
Check out the source for the extra panel too.
Longer Reads
• Senator Tuberville has blocked new military promotions for so long that we're missing people in a bunch of top positions. Here's a detailed plan for how to use Senate procedure to end his hold on nominations.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– CCP is to the right of the Democrats on several economic issues, in addition to being authoritarian. (src)
– The more administrative entities making zoning decisions, the more construction is restricted, duh. (src)
– Solar Cell efficiency has improved a ton over time. (src)
– Some crazy person put a slip lane on a roundabout, along with a service road. (src)
– India's lunar probe got the best photos yet of the Apollo landing sites. Do moon landing hoax people think India is in on the scheme as well? (src)
– Twitter's new name has really really hurt downloads. (src)
– Hawaii can't have a ferry because of NEPA (src)
– Apple put the charging cable under the mouse to purposely stop you from using it plugged in. (src)
– Old status signaling things like clothes got so cheap that they're no longer useful for purpose. Now all that's left is artificially scarce things, like homes. (src)
– Right turn on red is bad, and we should get rid of it (src)
– Russia's lunar lander seems to have crashed, their space sector is pretty corrupt. (src)
– Youtube's recommendation algorithm seems to pull people away from extreme political views. Although researchers found it pulls away more from the right than the left. (src)
It sometimes irks me when someone wants to make a point and gets basic technical details wrong. For the Magic Mouse, the older version took AA, not AAA batteries. This isn’t that interesting by itself, but what is much more relevant is that Apple also sold rechargeable AA batteries for the Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad. However, what they didn’t do was account for the fact that the discharge curve for NiMH batteries is not the same as alkaline, which would cause the Mac to report low batteries very quickly and persist for months, all while not offering a user-selected option to pick a battery type. Worse, if an alkaline battery leaked into the Keyboard or Trackpad, the batteries would become stuck in the tube, rendering the device useless. Using NiMH batteries, which did not leak (at least, it’s never happened to me) meant dealing with this charge level issue, which was persistently annoying and could not be disabled.
All of this is to say his point about not being intended to be used in a wired fashion for battery reasons is invalidated by the Keyboard 2 and the Trackpad 2, both which can be used constantly connected with accessible ports. The strain relief issue is interesting, but it’s not something that’s as universal as he claims. There are plenty of particularly Logitech mice without custom cords that can be used while wired and charging.