Android Play store doesn't have the same user protections as iOS Appstore. There is no reason to force sideload on Android because you can already spy on everything the user does with your Playstore apps (why would you even expect anything else from Google? The whole thing is set up for spying). That's not the case on iOS. You're comparing incomparable.
But then for those of us not in the EU, Facebook et al suddenly have access to a plethora of data they didn’t have before via side loading thanks to a European law.
No need to worry. EU laws concerning iOS only apply to products sold within the EU. Apple is within their rights to keep their operating system locked down outside the EU, and all recent reports indicate that this is exactly what they'll do. So unless your country decides to pass similar legislation, you're free to enjoy Apple's restrictions.
And so your concern is because of... the EU, and not your own politicians for failing to regulate a completely out of control corporation running psychological experiments on users without their consent ?
How do you know how to change the laws if nobody is allowed to try different things (thus innovate)? USB-C didn't come from nowhere, and it wasn't a given that it's better than MicroUSB - first the market tested it, then it became a standard.
EU laws have worldwide effects, there's no land of cable freedom anymore.
You're free to try other things. You're just not free to leave out a USB-C plug as long as that is the standard, and you will run into trouble if you try to play stupid games with adding power delivery profiles to your USB-C support that try to circumvent the goal of these regulations of removing device-specific cables or chargers.
If Apple "only" ends up offering a certification mark for USB-C chargers that have been tested with the iPhone and makes that easily accessible, they might well be in the clear. If they try to add power delivery profiles that are unavailable to everyone else, chances are the EU will react.
EU laws don't expand beyond EU. EU consist about 5% of the population, 95% can have whatever they like. Yes, there's Brussels effect but that effect work when the trouble of designing or producing something else is not worth it.
Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
EU is the second largest market in the world. Of course everything is going to be made in a way that's sellable in the EU.
> Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
We are discussing under an article where the regulator has sent a "stern warning" to a company. I don't think what you're saying makes sense. If I tried to sell my better plug in my home market, the police would come knocking.
You mean like how EU-compatible AC plugs/voltages are sold everywhere else in the world? Of course, manufacturers can have different versions of things for different geos--or just not sell in the EU if it's not profitable to do so (which presumably won't be the case with the iPhone).
No they wouldn't, because you are not a giant corporation like Apple. Stop assuming your scrappy little startup and a trillion-$ corporation with massive market share have similar interests, this is like an ant worrying about a fence designed to block elephants.
In reality if you come up with some kind of better plug, you will sell to a specialist market that would recognize the benefits (dentists or musicians for example) and then expand into other markets. You could try selling direct to consumers but guess what, nobody would buy it unless it had connectivity with other devices, and manufacturers wouldn't go out of their way to adopt it unless it delivered overwhelming advantages at low additional cost.
If you need to sell it on both markets and can't have two production lines, I guess your product will have USB-C port and your superior charging port, like the new MacBooks having type-C and magsafe.
Having three computers of different brands in the family (an HP, a Lenovo and a Microsoft Surface), it's certainly been useful in the past to be able to share a single charging port for all computers and most phones in the family.
In fact, USB-C and magsafe are complementary. USB-C is commonly used by displays to provide docking station functionality, so I can buy any display and use it with any computer (instead of having to buy a proprietary docking station that is different for each model). If I'm travelling, I can enjoy the more robust magsafe connector but I can also use USB-C if needed.
It's good because until you invent this new cable, we can have everything work with USB-C.
Not betting on your ability to come up with a new type of charging cable is not as big deal as you imagining it is. Maybe you should come up with a prototype before demanding all type of charging cables be allowed?
This probably means your invention don't add enough value. Throw it away like all other prototypes who fail to create enough value to warrant a production line.
Depending on the rest of the world for tech, research and innovation is why us, Europeans, are worried about these authoritarian EU mandates which can only cause us falling further behind the rest of the world.
Gaia-X funneled money to large corporations that used it to market their shitty corporate services and that allowed them to beat actually innovative cloud computing startups.
I'm not familiar with this. Did it happen due to the EU regulation which dictated that Gaia-X have to funnel money to large corporations? Which regulation specifically you are blaming this to?
By definition, we cannot know the creations and innovations we are missing due to the unintended second-order freezing effects of regulation. This is why we need to be extremely skeptical of regulation and only accept it in truly important and non-trivial cases (unlike a damn charging plug).
There is a clear push from European elites for a halt in progress, aiming to maintain a status quo and preserve their existing advantages. Modern corporation not under their control threaten them. As progressives, it is crucial that we fight to ensure that Europe continues to advance instead of turning into an Amish village and we won't have all to emigrate to the US.
EU citizens are sceptical of the corporations and their ability to regulate themselves. Different attitudes, the American psyche definitely allows for better innovation and business environment but on the other hand in EU we don't have carcinogens in our bread.
It is O.K. to have two or more different societies, those feeling like they need more freedom for business can go to the US. It definitely makes the US much more competitive but a lot of people like Europe the way it is.
EU is not some company in Belgium, it is made of elected and appointed people from all the EU countries. It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for. EU creating a regulation is not like Twitter forcing a new policy over its users.
> It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for.
The EU does opinion polls to find out what people's top concerns are. Guess what: mobile phone connectors, cookie popups, GDPR and all the other crap the EU engages in never gets anywhere even close to the top of the pile.
We saw what the EU does when a member asks for changes requested by their "EU citizens". It told the UK to fuck off and then threw a hissy fit when the Brits actually did so.
Opinion polls are one thing, the EU itself is mede up of elected officials and officials appointed by elected officials.
If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets, that's obviously where the EU has to say fuck off. Non-British have opinions too and the opinions are overweeningly that if you want to be in EU you have to have the same rights and obligations like everybody else. No one is obligated to provide others with privileges just because they threaten to leave, they are free to leave and enjoy not being in the club. Which is silly because all those "EU rules" are put in place together with the British anyway.
In democracies opinion polls are regarded as important because people's opinions matter. The EU doesn't care about them because the EU is not a democracy.
Even if you pretend the distance between voters and decision makers doesn't matter, here's a simple test: did your countries elected official vote for von der Leyen? You don't know the answer because the process by which she was selected is totally opaque by design. We don't even know if there was a vote at all. We don't know why she was selected. The MEPs were given a choice of her or nobody else. So please don't tell people that the EU is democratic or made up of "officials appointed by elected officials".
"If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets"
The EU granted residency rights automatically to everyone from the EU who was living there, and the EU still told everyone in the country to fuck off - including millions of those so-called "EU citizens" whose so-called rights suddenly stopped mattering.
But this is really a sideshow. The fact is, nobody in Europe was going on protest marches about USB-C or kettle speeds. The EU spends time on this stuff because it's made up of powerful but bubble-living bureaucrats who don't care and don't have to care about what matters to everyone else.
I was in UK when the Brexit referandum was held, it wasn't about EU granting residency rights or anything like it. After UK let EU, nothing was done that couldn't have been done when EU. That's also why UK's public opinion changed.
Anyway, you are entitled to believe in alternative facts. You are also entitled to believe that all EU does is regulating USB-C, that's fine. You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
I haven't claimed anywhere that all the EU does is regulating USB-C, why do you think that? I gave several other examples of micromanagement.
> You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
The EU officials who create regulations are the Commissioners, who are not elected. That isn't an alternative fact, it's just a fact. I continue to be amazed at how EU supporters keep pretending this isn't the case. Can't tell if it's ignorance about their own political system or just too embarrassing to admit.
We can't know what innovations are missing due to corporate greed or the ubiquity of AC power transmission either. You're making the same argument as people who think Tesla had the secret of cheap and abundant wireless power transmission but the knowledge was suppressed by shadowy elites.
It's kinda hard to believe you seriously believe you might end up living in an Amish village. Perhaps you should visit the US and be surprised at how mediocre a lot of stuff is.
I know that if a corporation fails to innovate competition and free markets ensure other more innovative companies have the opportunity to come up and eat their lunch. That mechanism simply doesn't work with governments and regulation because they are absolute monopolies without competition.
I lived in the US and while Europe (where I live now) has pretty old towns and manicured lawns I know that nothing modern and innovative comes from here: iPhone, software, SpaceX, even Tesla. Largest European company is a luxury brand and the most powerful economy in the EU turned out to be an empty shell controlled by and built on on cheap Russian energy. California alone dwarfs the largest EU countries put together.
Wtf are you smoking? You can add other ports, the law is about mandating usb-c. If you want thunderlightening port or anything you want besides usbc, like HEADPHONE JACK, you can doo this...
Why is it inferior? Last time i checked lightning can't do 240W charging or 40gbps data transfer? Just like afaik typec doesn't have corrosion problem lightning has, also type c is universally used across the majority of brands, heck even in ipads and macbooks, you say apple deliberately choose to replace 'superior port' with 'inferior type c'? Lmao)
Lightning connector is smaller, more robust being a straight male connector as opposed to some weird female-in-male contraption. The port is beveled so it slides easier unlike USB-C whose edge catches and I always have to fumble around. Not as bad as the old USB connector were, with their legendary 3 flips to find the right orientation, but still.
No idea what corrosion you are talking about as I never encountered it. I don't need 240W to charge my iPhone, is't not a freaking Tesla and I prefer to prolong the battery life. I will give you the data bandwidth even though today's wifi is quite fast but for laptops MagSafe is an even better charging port, and I hope someday for iPads too.
So your only argument why type c is inferior is that it is smaler and slides easier and you deliberately choose to ignore all it's advantages... I had used both and I don't really see a difference in connecting a cable to the phone, both are easy to manage. Corrosion is a problem for lightning, if you didn't get it, you are very lucky, but you can find a lot of complains with a google search. You want to preserve battery and that's fine, I want too, that's why I use ADAPTIVE CHARGING that decreases charging speed at the end for exactly that. The thing is, if manufacturer wants to add faster charging, it can. Wifi is not fast enough for transfering gb's of data, especially when dealing with proraw 4k footage. Magsafe is faster, but you see, they still left type c, because some people don't want to carry 3 charging cables with them to charge iphone, ipad and macbook. And tbh max speed for magsafe is what? 140w? They could have done this with usbc, but at least they gave consumers a choice, a choice that doesn't exist for lightning
Choice is exactly what we had before the usb-c authoritarian mandate. Now it's only that for devices that are size-limited.
I am glad you are happy about your connector - but please understand I am not. I was happy with lightning and now I have to throw a bunch of cables away and replace them with an inferior (for me) alternative.
Apart from all the existing answers - usb-c did not come to the phones first either. It was available and tested in many other places first. And it makes sense, because if we ever need over 40Gbps of data, or over 200W power, it's extremely unlikely we'll need it for the phones.
If you have any hallucinations at all, you're not microdosing. Microdosing is right before the tipping point of recognizing you took something at all. It should be recognizable from long-term effects, not immediately.
A while ago I've microdosed 1 to 2g of fresh truffles(which should not induce a trip), a few days/weeks after a real trip, and I had some hallucinations, which should not have happened
IDK, is it possible that a microdose could trigger some kind of a release of a previous buildup of some hallucinogens?
Doses seem to accumulate, that’s why you need days off, too, and they recommend not to mix macro and micro doses. I’ve read somewhere that after a big dose you should wait ~1 month for the effects to wean.
Not really, it is about achieving some effect with a specific dose. The effect is about some improvements in your life without tripping. If you're tripping, you're not microdosing.
So what if you don't "just put it into a loop and hope" but actually make a complex AI agent with static code analysis capabilities, a graph DB, a work memory etc?
I'm doing just that and it works surprisingly well. Currently it's as good as people with 2-3 years of experience. Do you really believe it's not going to improve?
Now I'm making a virtual webcam so it has a face and you can talk to it on a Zoom meeting...
What information about the user does the plugin get? Can you store authentication keys somehow? I want a plugin that just runs stuff in an EC2 instance.
I'd also like a plugin that could connect to my email provider and read or send out emails based on my requests. I'd ask it stuff like "summarize all my unpaid bills".
The plugin spec allows for user authentication--But it seems to be in process.
> Due to current UI limitations, we are not allowing plugins with User authentication into the plugin store. We expect this to change in the near future.
For now if you get development access you can run it on localhost and just make it available to yourself. So something early access could be a GitHub download and make your own copy for yourself kind of thing.
ETA: I do like the idea of some email integration. Assuming one is fine with ChatGPT knowing your email contents.
Gas distribution is a very different problem from electricity distribution, though. Gas was initially sold at pharmacies and it worked just fine before specialized shops cropped up. You can't have that with electrical grid.
I am literally building an electric jerry can in my workshop right now so that you can carry around car recharges in your trunk. There are solutions to all of these problems and the technology is getting better all the time. All you have to do is stop looking for reasons why it can never work, and start looking for ways to make it work.
I'm not sure how that helps if the grid is already nearly overloaded and we need gas/coal to cover peak demand. The problem is not the charger and its small battery, the problem is generating clean power and transmitting it.
He’s solving the transmission problem. A portable battery does not need to be charged from the grid.
Edit to add: I have about 1.2kW of storage that can be charged by solar in a few hours that takes up about the space of a 5 gallon NATO jerry can. It can be charged thousands of time for the initial price paid. That’s with 2020 tech. Certainly density and efficiency will improve as market pressures increase.
I don’t know if you saw my edit, but in my case, it’s charged by either a portable solar panel or (optimally) home solar panels.
In the not so distant past there were plans for neighborhood scale nuclear reactors. That would go a long way towards distribution, redundancy, and scale issues.
Why does it have to be a grid? There are plenty of electronic devices that don’t get power from the grid, some at dwelling scale. What prevents power from being delivered by truck, just like fuel is today? (Density is definitely an issue, but technology evolves)
Haven't really considered that. I guess the problem is conversion loss. If we're making some sort of fuel at power generation points, why not use that fuel in cars instead of doing another conversion back to electricity? We could make hydrogen or even synthetic gas/diesel and just keep the cars we already have.
Where? I haven't seen anyone upgrading all the powerlines and power stations around my home... I haven't even seen any plans to do so. The local power distribution monopoly says it can't be done unless they raise prices 5x - which nobody wants to pay.
Also, power generation - if everyone wants to charge at night, we need to completely change the concept and stop the move to solar energy in favor of nuclear.
It's just not happening near your home (probably intentionally). Go down to the Mojave desert between Barstow and Vegas and there are massive solar farms built over the last decade. Same with the California mountain passes and wind energy - there are large wind farms on the Altamont, Pacheco, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio passes. Many of these are also getting large upgrades with more energy-efficient turbines, eg. the Pacheco Pass windfarm (18 MW, 162 turbines, built in the early 1980s) is getting upgraded in 2023 to 147.5 MW and 200 MWh of battery storage with fewer turbines.
Also I think that workplace charging is the future of EVs. With the peak of the duck curve at mid-day, the obvious way to match that up to battery demand is to provide incentives for ubiquitous EV chargers in office parking lots, as well as charging the consumer for electricity consumed by their car.
Except between 2021 and 2022 california lost 3GW of generation capacity. They're building new plants at the same time they're taking other ones offline and the totals aren't increasing.
This is probably why California continues to warn that rolling blackouts may become a thing. They raised that specter last year, and they're preparing to do it again this year.
Total system capacity is not improving at a rate commensurate with the forced adoption of EVs in the state.
The trend was a net increase in capacity from 2011 to 2017. From 2017 until today the trend has been a net decrease in capacity. There were 206GW available in 2017, there were 194GW available in 2022. Which is a 6% loss overall.
Which may be fine on it's own, but if you're planning on bringing a bunch of new demand on to the grid, you're headed towards an uncomfortable corner.
My question is “how much capacity is in the pipeline?” These projects happen on the scale of years. Looking at current and past trends doesn’t tell the whole story.
The answer is "not enough." The states dual mandates of "electrify all cars" and "green all the energy" are, again, reaching an ugly corner. This is not controversial at all.
Well, that's US. I am in much more densely populated Central Europe - several orders of magnitude compared to California. For most people here, workplace is 15-30 minutes walk/public transit away, that's not going to solve anything about car charging.
Wind is now opposed by people here because it ruins the landscape. Funny but it's what it is. And there's not enough physical space for solar arrays of this size.
> Well, that's US. I am in much more densely populated Central Europe - several orders of magnitude compared to California.
The average population density of California is 250 per square mile, for Germany it's 620. Considerably less than one order of magnitude in difference.
> For most people here, workplace is 15-30 minutes walk/public transit away, that's not going to solve anything about car charging.
If people are not driving to work, their cars can charge at home during the day, so it's already solved.
> And there's not enough physical space for solar arrays of this size.
There most certainly is. People overestimate the required space to a ridiculous degree.
I don't live in Germany. Germany is a large state with a lot of empty space. I live in a much smaller, much more densely populated state.
Anyways, the average is deceiving - I think you should compare the average of a city like Berlin, Cologne or Amsterdam, not the average of an entire large state like Germany.
The city where I live has nearly 3 million residents on just 50km2, and it's not even the most dense city around. Compare that to San Francisco (second most dense US city) - which has 815k residents on 120km2.
People here live in very dense cities with agricultural/natural space in between, you don't have that in US cities which are mostly long stretches of single-family households. We don't have single-family households at all except for the few villas of the ultra-rich and the few people living in the villages around the cities.
> If people are not driving to work, their cars can charge at home during the day, so it's already solved.
That's not solved at all! That's exactly where the issue is - the grid isn't able to provide that much power and especially not during peak hours, not to mention the missing power generation capacity. The grid is already nearly overloaded. It would need significant capacity upgrades and the people here don't want to pay for it.
People don't use the car to go to work, but they use it a lot after they come home. Families with children use their cars a lot. Even with good public transport, handling affairs of a family of 5 takes a lot of time on the bus - so people use the car to go shopping, drive the kids to their after-school sports/clubs, visit grandparents etc.
Many households have multiple cars - one or two for the parents, then maybe one for the eldest child that still lives with the parents. Each car is used daily or almost daily.
There definitely is less daily driving per vehicle - but there's much more vehicles per square kilometer.
Oh, we most certainly do. Look at how much energy in the form of gas/diesel is used in Europe - it's definitely not insignificant. The average household has almost 2 cars, many have 3 - and they use them, just not to get to work.
IMHO the usage patterns and the population density make this a much harder problem here than in the US.
Upgrading the power lines isn't the full answer, certainly some upgrades will be required, but the wires are designed for peak demand. EVs have flexibility, and can mostly be charged in non-peak times, drastically reducing the powerline and power station upgrades required.
This flexibility has to be managed, and there are many companies working on this. For example: https://ev.energy/
I did a back of the envelope calculation some time back for both Canada and the UK (I imagine the US numbers are proportionally similar to Canada). If we replace all private passenger cars with EVs, using average mileage, it increases annual electricity demand by about 20%. The difference between daytime peak and nighttime off peak is more than 20%. In a lot of cases, there will be no need at all for new power plants or distribution networks. The reality, of course, is more complicated as we are electrifying much more than passenger cars.
You better believe, however, that the distribution networks are planning around this. I was in a meeting with someone from the National Grid (UK central grid authority) who is responsible for planning for the transition. Basically, all new housing developments are being provisioned assuming heat pumps and EV chargers. Existing areas are being monitored and upgraded as they near the grid limits. Plans go out years in advance. It is a lot of work, but I am confident that it is being well managed. I cannot say that everywhere is as well managed, but I think it is safe to assume that many of these people and organisations do, in fact, know what they are doing. It sounded like the biggest problem in the UK was NIMBYs fighting against the new distribution networks needed to land the power from the offshore wind farms which are rapidly replacing the old fossil fuel generators.
NIMBY is indeed the issue here as well. People don't want wind and solar arrays and they don't want to pay even 20% more for electric distribution or electricity itself.
The power distribution company is competent, I have full confidence in that. Yes, they have plans and know what they're doing and what's coming - but they need money to do it, and they're not going to get it anytime soon.
In many, many places all over the world every day, just maybe not in your backyard just yet. Your local power distribution company is lying, and if you want to solve a fun problem you could get into the weeds and figure out how to work around them.
Diesel doesn't have to be fossil. Unfortunately, I can't make them switch to algae. But I'd be OK with paying more for it, if it was available. My regular long distance trips are impossible with current electric cars, so that's really not an option. Yes, I considered an online call.
I wonder if that could work on my 1200km-long trip. It'd have to be a truly pan-European company and network. So far we don't even have telecoms like that - I switch between 3 different national networks during the trip... But on the other hand, the Tesla Supercharger network spans the route, so why not I guess.
There’s none in the Brussel area of Belgium. In fact, we’re stuck for the foreseeable future to a grid at 3x220 (nearly the only one in the world) because it’s too costly to update the network, cabin and so on.
We’re speaking about industrial level of power delivery to charge all those EV. Things need to change at a huge scale and the operator are not ready for that.
Source ? I discussed that with my operator for high power need - their answer was to move elsewhere.
I was curious about the "grid at 3x220" mention so I did some research. Couldn't find what you meant by this, but did find a page from the electric utility in Brussels explicitly saying there are no problems or work required by the EV conversion plans by 2030.
Yes, exactly. Where I live it's a political thing so I'd know. The situation now is that they say they're not going to do it because people oppose the higher prices.
They even stopped allowing people to connect their solar arrays without large batteries because the grid is that overloaded.
(of course they're doing work on it - but definitely not the sort of work required to allow everyone to charge their 1-3 cars per household).
Synthetic/bioprinted biological muscles are right around the corner (commercialization within 10 years). There are working proofs of concept today. There's also significant leap forward in soft robotics (not based on biology) - check out Keplinger Research Group.
I wouldn't bet on hands saving humans their jobs. My bet is on stuff that is "better" with the human touch - not objectively, but people just feel like that about some things. Mostly luxury items/services, and some classes of art.
