Electric cars were nearly one in five of new cars sold in Britain in 2024, according to new data. But the number of ICEs in use still rose. CC-licensed photo by David Howard on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Charged up. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Smartphones and computers are now exempt from Trump’s latest tariffs • CNN Business
Auzinea Bacon:
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Electronics imported to the United States will be exempt from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, according to a US Customs and Border Protection notice posted late Friday.
Smartphones, computer monitors and various electronic parts are among the exempted products. The exemption applies to products entering the United States or removed from warehouses as early as April 5, according to the notice.
The exemption, which comes after the Trump administration on Wednesday imposed a minimum tariff rate of 145% on Chinese goods imported to the United States, does not include the 20% tariff on Chinese goods for the country’s role in the fentanyl trade. The tariff exemption would have a major impact on tech giants like Apple, which make iPhones and other products in China.
Roughly 90% of Apple’s iPhone production and assembly is based in China, according to Wedbush Securities’ estimates.
Analysts at Wedbush on Saturday called the tariff exclusion, “the best news possible for tech investors.”
“Big Tech firms like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft and the broader tech industry can breathe a huge sigh of relief this weekend into Monday,” Wedbush said in a statement. “A big step forward for US tech to get these exemptions and the most bullish news we could have heard this weekend…now onto the next step in negotiations on the broader China tariff war which will take a number of months at least.”
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A note sent out over the weekend: “According to IDC, more than 723 million devices* were sold in the US in 2024, generating $325bn in revenue. Smartphones alone accounted for 32% of that value.”
However on Sunday evening, Trump posted on Truth.Social that “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday. These produces are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket’… We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”
So.. fentanyl tariffs? Nobody now knows what the hell is going on. By the time you read this, it may have change a couple more times.
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Nuclear power is back. and this time, AI can help manage the reactors • WSJ
Belle Lin:
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A revival in nuclear power—partly fed by ravenous demand from data centers for artificial intelligence—is leading to greater interest in harnessing AI to make those nuclear plants more efficient.
The Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, based in Lemont, Ill. and known for its work on nuclear reactors, has developed an AI-based tool that can assist with reactor design and help operators run nuclear plants, according to Richard Vilim, a senior nuclear engineer within the lab’s nuclear science and engineering division.
Argonne’s tool, called the Parameter-Free Reasoning Operator for Automated Identification and Diagnosis, or PRO-AID, marks a technological leap in a field that saw its heyday in the last quarter of the 20th century.
“The nuclear plants were built over 30 years ago,” Vilim said, “so they’re kind of dinosaurs when it comes to technology.”
Today, nearly all of the nation’s 94 operating nuclear reactors have had their licenses extended, and together still provide almost 20% of U.S. electricity. Their average age is roughly 42, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Argonne’s plan is to offer PRO-AID to new, tech-forward nuclear builds, but it’s also eyeing the so-called dinosaurs, some of which are being resurrected by companies like Amazon and Microsoft to help power their AI data centers. The global push for AI is poised to fuel a sharp rise in electricity demand, with consumption from data centers expected to more than double by the end of the decade, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.
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You just knew that AI was going to get in on the act here. DeepMind said it could use it for helping to optimise the grid in the UK, which it demonstrated on a wind farm in 2019; no clear indication it got taken any further.
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iPadOS 19 will be “more like macOS in three ways” • MacRumors
Joe Rossignol:
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Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today said that iPadOS 19 will be “more like macOS.”
Gurman said that iPadOS 19 will be “more like a Mac” in three ways:
• Improved productivity
• Improved multitasking
• Improved app window management“I’m told that this year’s upgrade will focus on productivity, multitasking and app window management — with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac,” said Gurman, in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter. “It’s been a long time coming, with iPad power users pleading with Apple to make the tablet more powerful.”
Gurman did not provide any specific details.
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Ohh, Apple’s going to improve those things. And you thought it was going to make them worse as part of its update. This is the most amazingly vague report: how was it even worth Gurman’s time to report it?
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Netflix is testing a new OpenAI-powered search • The Verge
Jay Peters:
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Netflix is starting to test search that’s powered by OpenAI, according to Bloomberg.
The new search engine will let users “look for shows using far more specific terms, including the subscriber’s mood, for example, the company said,” per the report. This OpenAI-powered search will also allow users to make queries that “go well beyond genres or actors’ names.”
The feature, which is opt in, is already available for some users to try in Australia and New Zealand on iOS.
Netflix spokesperson MoMo Zhou confirmed to The Verge that Bloomberg’s story is accurate. Zhou says that the test will expand to the US “in the coming weeks and months” and that there aren’t currently plans for the feature outside of iOS.
“It’s early days for the feature and we’re really in a learn and listen phase for this beta,” Zhou says.
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I don’t understand how this would work. My mood? Why not just do it by things that are like what I’ve watched. Or – how about this for a wild idea – things that are actually rated highly by other viewers. Unfortunately Netflix’s recommendation algorithm seems to be too weak to do that. (Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
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More than a million EVs on UK roads as vehicle ownership reaches new high • SMMT
Paul Large:
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The number of vehicles on British roads reached its highest ever level in 2024, rising by 1.4% to 41,964,268, according to new Motorparc data published today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
The number of cars in use also reached a new high, growing by 1.3% or 470,556 units to 36,165,401, marking the third consecutive year of growth and the second-biggest volume gain since 2016.1 The increase reflects growth in the new car market, which in 2024 saw 1.953 million new cars registered, with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) making up 19.6% of the market.
Van use grew to record levels, up 1.8% to 5,102,180 units, with more than one million of these workhorses added to roads since 2015.2 Heavy goods vehicle volumes remained almost unchanged, down just -0.1% or 364 units, at 625,509 units. Bus and coach volumes fell by just -0.1% to 71,718 units, although this means that the UK public transport fleet is now the smallest since records began.
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Those BEVs sold number 383,000 by my calculation, which means that the number of fuel-powered (internal combustion engine, ICE) cars still rose. But perhaps we’ve reached peak ICE?
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Musk’s latest fraud finding isn’t what it seems • The New York Times
Emily Badger:
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Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency announced this week that they had found something especially startling in their government-wide hunt for fraud: tens of thousands of people claiming unemployment benefits who were over age 115, under the age of five or with birth dates in the future.
“Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” Mr. Musk posted on X, his social media platform. “This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it sank in.”
He shared a claim by the group that it had even uncovered someone with a birth date in 2154 who claimed $41,000 in unemployment.
These were, indeed, probably fake people — but in a different way than Mr. Musk seemed to realize. It was also most likely a case of his team discovering fraud that had already been discovered by someone else.
The issue dates to early in the pandemic when millions of Americans surged onto state unemployment rolls in an unprecedented expansion of the safety net. The emergency aid program enacted during President Trump’s first term was also susceptible to fraud. As many as 15% of unemployment claims were fraudulent, often using stolen identities.
To preserve records of that fraud and protect victims of the identity theft, the U.S. Labor Department encouraged state agencies that administer unemployment benefits to create “pseudo claim” records — in effect, to tie real cases of fraud in their data to make-believe people. The implausibility of the records was the point. Agencies were seeking a way to keep track of fraud claims while detaching them from the identities of innocent people who might one day apply for unemployment benefits themselves.
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How surprising that Elon Musk and his team of eager beavers haven’t bothered to find this out.
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Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency • Science
Paul Vooren:
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President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), one of the country’s premier climate science agencies, according to an internal budget document seen by Science. The document indicates the White House is ready to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA’s climate research centers and cut hundreds of federal and academic climate scientists who track and study human-driven global warming.
The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, according to media reports today.
The proposed NOAA cuts—which could be altered before the administration sends its 2026 budget request to Congress in the coming weeks—would cut funding for the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), to just over $171 million, a drop of $485 million. Any remaining research funding from previously authorized budgets would be moved to other programs. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” the document states.
If approved by Congress, the plan would represent a huge blow to efforts to understand climate change, says Craig McLean, OAR’s longtime director who retired in 2022. “It wouldn’t just gut it. It would shut it down.” Scientifically, he adds, obliterating OAR would send the United States back to the 1950s—all because the Trump administration doesn’t like the answers to scientific questions NOAA has been studying for a half-century, according to McLean.
The administration’s plan would “eliminate all funding for climate, weather, and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes,” says the document, which reflects discussions between NOAA and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about the agency’s 2026 budget request.
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Taking the US back to the 1950s seems to be the principal aim of the current administration. It’s mad.
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Two in Oregon die of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease • oregonlive.com
Kristine de Leon:
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Health officials in Hood River County say that two people have died of a rare brain disease.
County health officials say they’ve identified three cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the last eight months. One was confirmed by autopsy, while two are presumptive diagnoses.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob is a rare brain disorder caused by infectious proteins called prions, which causes rapid, progressive dementia, movement disorders and behavioral changes. It is considered incurable and universally fatal. There are about 350 cases per year in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health.
There’s no evidence the disease can be spread from person to person except through organ or tissue transplants or other unusual exposure to contaminated tissue.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 85% of all cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are considered sporadic, meaning there’s no clear cause. Most of the remaining cases are hereditary, linked to a genetic mutation passed on from a parent.
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Of course one has to wonder whether these people ate meat from wild deer, and whether that has any bearing. No ages have been given for those who died.
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The action figure trend is the latest way people are misusing the power of AI – and I wish I could stop doing it • TechRadar
Lance Ulanoff:
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I can understand why everyone is doing it. First of all, these images look just like real action figure packaging. The addition of interest accessories and, though I didn’t ask for it, an optional head, is perfect.
There is a proportional relationship between this quality and how quickly these AI image trends spread. The generative images are so good that as soon as they started to appear on social media, others started investigating how to make one for themselves.
AI Action Figures in packaging are so popular that there are, unsurprisingly, YouTube tutorials. That’s how I figured out how to do it. I found a Spanish-language one created about a week ago. The translation gave me just enough detail to know how to form the proper action figure prompt.
This is all good fun, but there are concerns.
First of all, AI image generation is not without cost. Sure, there’s the price of a ChatGPT Plus membership (around $20 / £16 / AU$30 a month), although you can generate around three images a day on the free tier, depending on current demand. Perhaps more importantly, there’s the cost of AI models like 4o.
A Queens University Library report claims, “Artificial Intelligence models consume an enormous amount of water and emit large amounts of carbon in their production, training, operation, and maintenance.” Another Cornell University study calls out AI’s growing freshwater use footprint, claiming “training the GPT-3 language model in Microsoft’s state-of-the-art U.S. data centers can directly evaporate 700,000 liters of clean freshwater.”
If you don’t think these AI trends and the memes they spawn are attracting wide use, stressing the system, and possibly eating natural resources, just look at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s comments. [“The GPUs are melting” Altman commented.]
We have a joke in my house that every time we create one of these AI memes, it kills a tree. That’s hyperbole, of course, but it’s safe to say that AI content generation is not without costs, and perhaps we should be thinking about it and using it differently,
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The “action figure” viral meme vanished as quickly as it arose over the weekend.
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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 