A proposed law in California might make “emitters” liable for damages such as the LA fires: but would it really stand up in court? CC-licensed photo by Scott on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Nonuninflammable. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
China delays approval of BYD’s Mexico plant amid fears tech could leak to US • Financial Times
Gloria Li, Cheng Leng, Thomas Graham and Kana Inagaki:
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Beijing is delaying approval for carmaker BYD to build a plant in Mexico amid concerns that the smart car technology developed by China’s biggest electric-vehicle maker could leak across the border to the US.
BYD first announced plans for a car plant in Mexico in 2023, along with intentions to make cars in Brazil, Hungary and Indonesia. It said the Mexican plant would create 10,000 jobs and produce 150,000 vehicles a year.
But domestic automakers require approval from China’s commerce ministry to manufacture overseas and it has yet to give approval, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Authorities feared Mexico would gain unrestricted access to BYD’s advanced technology and knowhow, they said, even possibly allowing US access to it. “The commerce ministry’s biggest concern is Mexico’s proximity to the US,” said one of the people.
Beijing is also giving preference to projects in countries that are part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure development programme, according to the people.
Shifting geopolitical dynamics have also contributed to Mexico cooling on the plant. Mexico has sought to maintain relations with US President Donald Trump, who has put tariffs on cross-border trade, threatening exports and jobs.
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Hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the reversal: it was always the worry of American companies that if they shifted their manufacturing to Chinese factories, their precious intellectual property would leak out. (They always did, and it always did.) BYD, of course, is the company which earlier this week announced a superfast electric vehicle charging system that would be nearly as quick as filling a car’s fuel tank.
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How much does Big Oil owe Californians for the LA fires? • Breakthrough Journal
Alex Trembath, Lauren Teixeira, and Patrick Brown:
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Last year, both New York and Vermont passed “climate Superfund” laws that impose financial liabilities on large carbon emitters for the damages caused by extreme weather and other climate impacts. California lawmakers introduced similar legislation last year, and are widely expected to do so again in the wake of Southern California’s recent devastating fires—the most expensive natural disasters in American history. With an estimated $250bn in economic damages and about 30 confirmed deaths caused by the fires, there will likely be significant political support for a law like this.
So how much would large carbon emitters owe Californians if the bill becomes law?
The legislative text allows one year for the California Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a “climate cost study” determining the total amount of climate damages owed by each large emitter, defined as institutions that are “responsible for more than 1,000,000,000 metric tons of covered fossil fuel emissions, as defined, in aggregate, globally during the covered period” of 2000-2020.
According to data collected by the UK nonprofit group InfluenceMap, there are 86 eligible entities, but most of them operate outside the United States. For the purposes of this exercise we confined our analysis to the 19 eligible entities headquartered in America.
If the bill becomes law, these large emitters collectively would be, hypothetically, liable for 0.2% of the damages from the LA fires, or just under $495.27m.
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It’s a fascinating idea, but I do wonder how enforceable it would really be in the courts. The two biggest “entities” are ExxonMobile and Chevron, both oil companies. But, your honour, are they actually emitters? My clients simply supply the product in its unconsumed form. It is not their fault what people then do with it, such as burning it in their vehicle engines.
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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones • Eric Migicovsky
The Pebble Is Back guy points out that you still can’t do everything you’d like to with a third-party smartwatch connected to an iPhone:
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The problem is that 40% of everyone who signed up on rePebble.com still uses an iPhone. So we’re going to make a damn iOS app. I guess we’re gluttons for punishment. Just understand a few things:
• Our watch will always appear to have less developed functionality on iOS than Android. This is Apple’s fault, not ours.
• Some features will appear first on our Android app, and then eventually we’ll add them to the iOS app. This is because the majority of our development team uses Android phones, and generally we’re building things for ourselves, so naturally Android comes first.
I don’t want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. I’m publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.
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John Gruber’s response is, well, roll with it. I’m not sure the European Commission would see it that way.
The Pebble is still going to feel like a retro statement. Not that that won’t sell; vinyl is making a comeback, after all.
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Superior replication, pathogenicity, and immune evasion of a Texas dairy cattle H5N1 virus compared to a historical avian isolate • Nature Scientific Reports
Cassio Pontes Octavani et al:
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The current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses of the H5N1 subtype clade 2.3.4.4b in dairy cattle in the United States has affected nearly 900 dairy farms and resulted in at least 39 human infections, putting health authorities and the scientific community on high alert.
Here we characterize the virus growth properties and host-pathogen interactions of an isolate obtained from a sick dairy cow in Texas in vitro and in vivo and compare it to an older HPAI isolate. Despite so far being associated with mild disease in human patients, the cattle H5N1 virus showed superior growth capability and rapid replication kinetics in a panel of human lung cell lines in vitro. In vivo, cattle H5N1 exhibited more intense pathogenicity in mice, with rapid lung pathology and high virus titers in the brain, accompanied by high mortality after challenge via different inoculation routes.
Additionally, the cattle H5N1 demonstrated efficient antagonism of overexpressed RIG-I- and MDA5-mediated innate antiviral signaling pathways. In summary, this study demonstrates the profound pathogenicity and suggests a potential innate immune escape mechanism of the H5N1 virus isolated from a dairy cow in Texas.
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Octavani and the other authors are all based at the University of Texas. Basically, what they found is: it’s bad! Only a watching brief, of course. 🤞
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No one knows what the hell an AI agent is • TechCrunch
Maxwell Zeff and Kyle Wiggers:
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Silicon Valley is bullish on AI agents. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said agents will “join the workforce” this year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted that agents will replace certain knowledge work. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that Salesforce’s goal is to be “the number one provider of digital labour in the world” via the company’s various “agentic” services.
But no one can seem to agree on what an AI agent is, exactly.
In the last few years, the tech industry has boldly proclaimed that AI “agents” — the latest buzzword — are going to change everything. In the same way that AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT gave us new ways to surface information, agents will fundamentally change how we approach work, claim CEOs like Altman and Nadella.
That may be true. But it also depends on how one defines “agents,” which is no easy task. Much like other AI-related jargon (e.g. “multimodal,” “AGI,” and “AI” itself), the terms “agent” and “agentic” are becoming diluted to the point of meaninglessness.
That threatens to leave OpenAI, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, Google, and the countless other companies building entire product lineups around agents in an awkward place. An agent from Amazon isn’t the same as an agent from Google or any other vendor, and that’s leading to confusion — and customer frustration.
Ryan Salva, senior director of product at Google and an ex-GitHub Copilot leader, said he’s come to “hate” the word “agents.”
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I’ve been hearing about software agents since, let me see, the late 1990s when British Telecom did a concept demo (yes, that vague) about how “software agents” would patrol the telephone system discovering bugs and fixing them. I have no idea if this ever happened. Anyway, now they’re back, for about the third time.
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Global VR market declines 12% YoY in 2024; ‘AR+AI’ smart glasses to take centre stage in 2025 • Counterpoint Research
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Global virtual reality (VR) headset shipments fell 12% YoY in 2024, the market’s third consecutive year of declines, according to the latest update from Counterpoint’s Global XR (AR/VR) Headset Model Tracker. In Q4 2024, the shipments fell 5% YoY. Hardware limitations, lack of compelling VR content and usage scenarios, and decreased consumer engagement continued to impact the market. However, demand from the enterprise market, though relatively limited in size, remained more resilient, particularly in large-scale immersive Location-Based Entertainment (LBE), education, healthcare and military.
Meta continued to dominate the global VR headset market in 2024 with a share of 77%. In Q4 2024, Meta’s market share rose to 84% primarily due to the launch of the more affordable Quest 3S headset. Sony’s PSVR2 shipment share surged to 9% in Q4 2024, fuelled by aggressive promotions and discounts during the Black Friday and Christmas sales. Apple’s Vision Pro shipments saw a steep 43% QoQ decline in Q4 2024, reflecting a slowdown after the initial market hype. In Q4, Apple expanded the Vision Pro’s availability to new markets, including South Korea, UAE and Taiwan, which helped partially offset the overall decline. The device’s enterprise sales also saw an uptick.
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Meta dominates the market, with more than two-thirds of sales. Guess why? Because it’s affordable and has lots of content. Apple meanwhile isn’t even in double figures (the Q4 estimate is 2% of what should be the Christmas market). Guess why? Because it’s expensive and has basically no content.
(In passing: all hail Counterpoint, using the British spelling for “centre” in its prediction of the future for smart glasses.)
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Factcheck: why Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is wrong about UK’s net-zero goal • Carbon Brief
Simon Evans:
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In a speech launching a “policy renewal programme” to shape the Conservatives’ approach to key issues, Badenoch disowned the target passed into law by her own party in 2019.
She offered no alternative to the 2050 net-zero target and failed to cite any evidence in support of her assertion that meeting it would be “impossible” without “bankrupting” the country.
…Despite the clear evidence of the need to reach net-zero emissions to stop global warming, Badenoch said in her speech that reaching the target by 2050 was “impossible”. She did not offer any evidence to support this supposedly “unvarnished truth”.
Announcing the adoption of the target in 2019, Conservative then-secretary of state Greg Clark said that it was “necessary and feasible”, pointing to the CCC’s advice as evidence.
Indeed, the 2019 advice set out in detail how it would be “feasible” to cut UK emissions to net-zero by 2050. In its latest advice to the government, the CCC set out a “balanced pathway” to net-zero by 2050 that showed the target was “feasible and deliverable”.
Similarly, in 2024 the National Energy System Operator (NESO) published three “credible” and “affordable” pathways to net-zero by 2050, as part of its annual “future energy scenarios”. It said: “Our net-zero pathways identify three credible, strategic routes to reach net-zero…Decisive action is needed within the next two years to deliver the fundamental change required for a fair, affordable, sustainable and secure net-zero energy system by 2050.”
A peer-reviewed research paper in 2022 identified and compared seven pathways to net-zero by 2050, published by four different organisations.
Directly contradicting Badenoch’s speech, the study concluded that “the breadth of pathways analysed in this paper has shown that there are several possible routes to net-zero”. Moreover, the Conservative government in 2021 published its own strategy for reaching net-zero by 2050, including an entire section titled “why net-zero”.
In a foreword to the 2021 strategy, then-Conservative prime minister Boris Johson wrote that “reaching net-zero is entirely possible”.
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It is astonishing how the Tories’ latest policies suggest that whoever was in charge between 2010 and 2024 was completely mad and useless. Robert Hutton, sketch writer for The Critic, calls them Hot Dog Tories – after the sketch of the Hot Dog Guy who has crashed his Hot Dog Car into a shop saying “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” – and it’s completely true.
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shifts its mission • The New York Times
Lisa Friedman and Hiroko Tabuchi:
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The E.P.A. has “no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment,” the first administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus, said as he explained its mission to the country weeks after the E.P.A. was created by President Richard M. Nixon. He said the agency would be focused on research, standards and enforcement in five areas: air pollution, water pollution, waste disposal, radiation and pesticides.
Perhaps the most significant of the agency’s regulatory changes is an effort to revise a 2009 legal opinion known as the E.P.A. “endangerment finding,” which concluded that rising greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health.
The finding gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating it would make it virtually impossible for the E.P.A. to curb climate pollution from automobiles, factories, power plants or oil and gas wells.
Some of the other significant policy changes Zeldin said he planned include:
• Rolling back restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Currently the E.P.A. requires existing coal-burning power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90% by 2039.• Rewriting tailpipe pollution standards that were designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
• Easing limits on mercury emissions from power plants, as well as restrictions on soot and haze from burning coal. A Biden-era rule had aimed to slash by 70% emissions from coal-burning power plants of mercury, which has been linked to developmental damage in children.
• Greatly reducing the “social cost” of carbon, an economic estimate of the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That figure plays a significant role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulating industries.
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This is completely insane. It’s the Environmental “Eh Who Cares” Agency. It might as well not exist; it isn’t going to do anything to protect the environment, nor the people who rely on it (ie everyone). Pollution levels will rise, people will get ill and/or die, and that cohort will include the rich who are old – air doesn’t discriminate.
Also, excuse me, but: “the EPA shifts its mission“? I know the American papers and the NYT particularly are terrible at headlines, but wouldn’t “abandons its mission” be more truthful? Or “says yes to pollution”? Almost anything would be more accurate.
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Bryan Burrough on Graydon Carter’s memoir and Vanity Fair’s heyday • The Yale Review
Bryan Burrough is a successful author in his own right, but also wrote for Vanity Fair in its heyday – the 1990s:
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By 1994, Vanity Fair was “hugely profitable,” and Graydon received unyielding support from the magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, and its owners, the Newhouse family—especially the enigmatic Si Newhouse, who adored magazines and adored Graydon. Not to mention the river of Newhouse cash that flowed Vanity Fair’s way. Oh, the money. Good Lord, the money.
As i look back today, Graydon’s Vanity Fair does feel like some lost world, a gold-encrusted Atlantis ultimately inundated by economic and technological tsunamis, its glories only now being picked over by media anthropologists. I’ve never talked much about what it was like to write there. Because I have always worried about how I’d come off. I mean, the money alone. I’m probably breaking some unwritten law of publishing, but here it is: For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story. Then, as now, $166,000 was a good advance for an entire book. Yes, I realized it was obscene. I took it with a grin.
Then there was the Hollywood money. Every third or fourth article I wrote ended up optioned for the movies. Most were in the $15,000 to $25,000 range for a renewable eighteen-month option. A handful crossed into six figures. (You haven’t lived until you’ve sat across from Robert De Niro on a film set as he reads your own words back to you—although, sadly, that adaptation of my piece “The Miranda Obsession” never made it past development.) This was an era when management allowed writers to keep that movie money. These days? One magazine I love takes 90% off the top.
I am aware of peers who did just as well. Nowadays, though, such windfalls are a distant memory. Today, for a rare magazine article, I’m lucky to receive two dollars a word, or $20,000 for that same ten-thousand-word story. (Don’t even ask what they’re paying me for this piece.) People sometimes wonder why I don’t write more. It’s a chore to explain that, at these rates, it is hard to get that excited.
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Burrough gets TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for a magazine article?! I don’t think he realises what life is like for the many, many freelancers scratching around for £150 per thousand words, and never getting a sniff of being asked to write ten thousand.
It’s like glimpsing another world. The article is fascinating. You can read it for free, so don’t ask me how or what the Yale Review pays for it.
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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 