In Florida, top-flight electric golf carts are increasingly being used as second “cars” for short shopping trips and other brief journeys. CC-licensed photo by Daniel M. HendricksDaniel M. Hendricks on Flickr.
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On Friday, there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 9 links for you. Fore! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Zoom tells staff to come into the office at least two days a week • The Guardian
Tom Ambrose:
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It was the poster child for remote working and may have made more gains from people able to work from home during the pandemic than any other company, but even Zoom has told its staff to come into the office more often.
The company, which became a household name during Covid lockdowns because of the popularity of its video-conferencing tools, has told employees to travel in at least two days a week.
The policy will apply to those living a “commutable distance” – within 50 miles of the office.
The office working mandate is part of what the company has described as “structured hybrid approach” affecting its 8,000 employees at 12 offices worldwide, including in the UK where it has about 200 staff and offices in central London.
Many companies have brought in rules related to remote working after pandemic restrictions ended. However, Zoom held out on bringing in any formal guidance, perhaps because of its reputation as a figurehead for employees working flexibly and remotely.
Its share price rocketed from $89 (£70) before the start of the pandemic to a high of $559 in October 2020 as Covid lockdowns forced many workers to remain at home. The shares have since fallen to $68 as people trickled back to offices and rivals expanded.
A spokesperson said: “We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning a set number of days employees that live near an office need to be on site – is most effective for Zoom. As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers.
“We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently.”
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Ahead of the pandemic, we wouldn’t have been in the least surprised by a software company wanting its staff to come in to the office. Now, of course, because it’s Zoom, and they talked once about allowing people to work remotely forever..
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The surprising rise of electric golf carts as ‘second cars’ in the US • Electrek
Micah Toll:
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Electric golf carts have reaped the benefits of this technological revolution, becoming far more than just golf course cruisers. Today’s models boast improved battery life from compact lithium-ion batteries, increased power with higher quality brushless electric motors, and a surprising array of creature comfort options. Want a lifted electric golf cart with a sound system? That’s no longer a custom job – you can buy fancy carts right out of the dealer catalog.
Modern electric golf carts now offer smooth and silent rides with ranges sufficient to cover daily short commutes comfortably. There’s no gasoline engine to require regular maintenance. There’s no little red gas can to keep around the garage. And there’s not even the old problem of the cart dying in the middle of the street because the old-school lead acid batteries went kaput. Today’s electric golf carts are a significant step up with quality lithium batteries and high-power motors.
That convenience, combined with the increasing popularity of ordinances that scores of towns have passed to make golf carts legal on smaller public roads, has helped many families replace the need for a second car.
I recently visited Babcock Ranch in Florida, a planned town where a large number of the homes are actually built with golf cart parking. Check out the home below, which features a second smaller garage designed for a golf cart. Planners already knew that residents would likely be getting around by cart and built the homes accordingly. The town square has nearly as many golf carts buzzing around as cars, and the local supermarkets and restaurants have parking lots full of carts.
It’s just one example showing that it may be difficult to entirely wrestle cars away from Americans, but what were once two-car families are often turning into one-car and one-golf-cart families and saving money along the way.
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Needs good weather, but actually: not a bad idea.
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US scientists repeat fusion power breakthrough • Financial Times
Tom Wilson and Alice Hancock:
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Initial data from the July experiment indicated an energy output greater than 3.5MJ, two of the people with knowledge of the preliminary results said. That energy would be roughly sufficient to power a household iron for an hour.
Achieving net energy gain has been seen for decades as a crucial step in proving that commercial fusion power stations are possible. However, there are still several hurdles to overcome.
Energy gain in this context only compares the energy generated to the energy in the lasers, not to the total amount of energy pulled off the grid to power the system, which is much higher. Scientists estimate that commercial fusion will require reactions that generate between 30 and 100 times the energy in the lasers.
The NIF also makes a maximum of one shot a day, whereas an internal confinement power plant would probably need to complete several shots a second.
However, the improved result at NIF, coming “only eight months” after the initial breakthrough, was a further sign that the pace of progress was increasing, said one of the people with knowledge of the results.
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Did you spot it? The energy output was about 3.5MJ, but everything required to do this consumes at least 100MJ, maybe 300MJ. It’s nowhere near net energy gain. And nowhere near happening fast enough. Still 20 years away.
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Report: Apple buys every 3nm chip that TSMC can make for next-gen iPhones and Macs • Ars Technica
Andrew Cunningham:
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It’s been rumoured for several months now that Apple will be using a new 3nm [nanometre] manufacturing process from Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) for its next-generation chips, including M3 series processors for Macs and the A17 Bionic for some next-gen iPhones. But new reporting from The Information illuminates some of the favourable terms that Apple has secured to keep its costs down: Apple places huge chip orders worth billions of dollars, and in return, TSMC eats the cost of defective processor dies.
At a very high level, chip companies use large silicon wafers to create multiple chips at once, and the wafer is then sliced into many individual processor dies. It’s normal, especially early in the life of an all-new manufacturing process, for many of those dies to end up with defects—either they don’t work at all, or they don’t perform to the specifications of the company that ordered them.
Normally, chip designers would have to pay for each individual die whether it worked or not; that’s a major reason why companies sell cut-down or “binned” chips that run at lower clock speeds or have parts switched off. That way, they can recover some money from a defective die instead of none. Apple’s orders with TSMC are apparently large enough that TSMC can afford not to charge Apple for defective dies.
The savings can be quite substantial for a new manufacturing process. The Information says that roughly 70% of early 3nm dies have been usable, though this number can change based on the chip being manufactured and does generally go up over time as processes are improved.
The Information says that Apple was responsible for 23% of the $72bn that TSMC made in 2022, making Apple “by far TSMC’s largest customer.” Reports have been circulating for months that Apple has bought up all of TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing capacity in the short term, and The Information reports that TSMC’s 3nm technology will be exclusive to Apple for “roughly a year” before there will be capacity to allow any other companies to use it.
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Reminds me of when Apple cornered the market for flash memory when it was planning the iPod nano in 2004-5. That 70% figure sounds quite high to me – are there any industry metrics to compare it to?
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I’m a screenwriter. These AI jokes give me nightmares • Time
Simon Rich is a screenwriter:
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OpenAI spent a ton of time and money training ChatGPT to be as predictable, conformist, and non-threatening as possible. It’s a great corporate tool and it would make a terrible staff writer.
But OpenAI has some programs that are the exact inverse. For example, Dan showed me one that predates ChatGPT called code-davinci-002, and while its name does suck, its writing ability does not.
Taste is subjective, so you be the judge. Try to identify which of the following parody headlines were written by the Onion and which ones were generated by code-davinci-002:
“Experts Warn that War in Ukraine Could Become Even More Boring.”
“Budget of New Batman Movie Swells to $200M as Director Insists on Using Real Batman”
“Story of Woman Who Rescues Shelter Dog With Severely Matted Fur Will Inspire You to Open a New Tab and Visit Another Website”
“Phil Spector’s Lawyer: ‘My Client Is A Psychopath Who Probably Killed Lana Clarkson’”
“Rural Town Up in Arms Over Depiction in Summer Blockbuster ‘Cowfuckers’”
The answer: they were all written by code-davinci-002.
I can’t speak for every writer in the WGA [Writer’s Guild of America, currently on strike], particularly not the really good ones. But I’m not sure I personally could beat these jokes’ quality, and certainly not instantaneously, for free. Based on the secret stuff Dan’s shown me, I think it’s only a matter of time before AI will be able to beat any writer in a blind creative taste test. I’d peg it at about five years.
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The building that moved: how did they move an 11,000-ton telephone exchange without suspending its operations? • ArchDaily
Ignacio Rodriguez:
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In November 1930, in Indiana, United States, one of the great feats of modern engineering was executed: a team of architects and engineers moved an 11,000-ton (22-million pound) telephone exchange without ever suspending its operations either basic supplies for the 600 employees who worked inside.
In order to comprehend this milestone, we have to go back to 1888, when the architecture firm Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller (later known as Vonnegut & Bohn) was founded in Indianapolis by German-American architects Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn.
In 1907, Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller designed the Indiana Bell Building in Evansville, a 7-story building for the Central Union Telephone Company; an Art-Deco building later included in 1982 in the National Register of Historic Places of the United States for being part of the historical identity of Indianapolis as part of the German-American architectural legacy of the city.
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Yes, I have linked to this before. But previously I hadn’t spotted the detail about Vonnegut. That’s not a common name. And indeed, if you read the story..
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LK-99, the would-be “room temperature superconductor,” explained • Vox
Dylan Matthews:
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Room-temperature superconducting, if possible, opens the door to staggering technological breakthroughs. It could make transmitting electricity much more efficient; result in faster-charging and higher-capacity electrical batteries; enable practical carbon-free nuclear fusion energy; and make quantum computing — computers capable of solving problems too complex for even the fastest existing computers — feasible at a much larger scale.
A widely useful, easy-to-manufacture superconductor capable of running at normal temperatures would be an enormous breakthrough. Several commentators have compared it to the 1947 invention of the transistor, a technology without which the decades of subsequent progress in computing would not have been possible. Even if LK-99 itself is not that breakthrough, its emergence has revived public interest in superconducting generally, and serves as a useful reminder of how valuable progress in this area could be.
… Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES), by contrast, is just a looping superconductor wire: a circular superconductor that electrons spin around endlessly, never encountering resistance. It’s just an electric current that keeps going and going and going indefinitely, with no loss.
The ability of these systems to instantaneously release a huge amount of power makes them useful as a backup in cases where there’s a sudden loss of power from more ordinary sources. Right now, though, the huge energy required to keep such systems at a low enough temperature that superconducting happens makes their applications limited.
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It’s a good piece, though I paused a bit at this: Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. Who then says in the second paragraph that a week or so ago he knew nothing about superconductors. Wow.
Don’t check the clock! 15 ways to get back to sleep when you wake at 3am • The Guardian
Emine Saner:
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Time moves differently in the middle of the night. Hours can drag one moment, then race by the next, catapulting you between chronic boredom and violent panic that morning is clawing at the curtains. Yet, though it may not feel like it in the moment, it is entirely normal to wake up. “The natural human sleep pattern is not a consolidated eight hours,” says Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford University, and author of Life Time: The new science of the body clock, and how it can revolutionise your sleep and health.
Still, it’s not pleasant to lie awake in the early hours worrying about everything from climate catastrophe to whether that was an inappropriate joke to put on that group chat, or whether you’ll ever sleep again – especially if it happens regularly. Here is some expert advice on how to stay calm plus what to do so that – hopefully – sleep will follow.
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The advice I once heard was that if you can’t get to sleep, simply relax and don’t worry about not being asleep. Being relaxed does the same job as sleep. Weirdly, you’ll then get to sleep. But there is good advice here too: especially not to look at the clock or your phone.
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South Africa now has over 10 gw of wind & solar generation capacity • CleanTechnica
Remeredzai Joseph Kuhudzai:
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South Africa needs new generation capacity ASAP. While Eskom is working to bring up some of its plants’ performance, as well as work towards new electricity generation plants, one quick way of adding some capacity to the mix is from independent power producers through large utility-scale solar and wind plants. South Africa started off well in this area over a decade ago with its Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP), which is aimed at bringing additional megawatts onto the country’s electricity system through private sector investment in wind, biomass, and small hydro, among others. Since its inception, the REIPPP has successfully added 6,280.2 MW to South Africa’s energy mix.
Eskom’s recent system status update shows the following:
REIPPP Current Installed Capacity (MW):
• Concentrated solar: 500 MW
• Utility-scale solar PV: 2,286 MW
• Wind (Eskom plus Independent Power Producers): 3,443 MW
• Total, including other renewables: 6,280 MWThis is some pretty good progress. These numbers could have been even better had it not been for some delays in awarding some competitive bid rounds over the years. Another factor slowing this down is the lack of grid capacity in some provinces as the available grid capacity to accommodate new renewable power plants has been almost exhausted. South Africa therefore needs to work on expanding and upgrading its transmission and distribution network asap. This is something the government is urgently looking into, and I hope there will be some action asap.
Another quick way to add some capacity is through tens of thousands of distributed solar PV plants on the roofs, carparks, and ground mounts of homes and businesses. We saw how quickly this can add some important capacity in Vietnam, and also how much rooftop solar has been added to over 3 million rooftops in Australia. Now we have some good news from South Africa, as Eskom reckons that there is now about 4,412 MW of solar PV installed in the South African C&I and residential sectors. That’s 4.4 GW of awesome distributed solar.
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Microgeneration is often underestimated, but with prices falling it’s become important.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 