I think those authors have been trying to figure out what I've long suspected- infrastructure can't be build locally as easily as one that can be exported with extreme modularity. Building a nuclear power plant, even a small modern one, still requires a ton of permitting and environmental review. Setting up a portable solar power plant, with imported panels and inverters, in theory allows for much more adaptability and affordability.
I've heard/read common criticisms about NGO's having more power and private funding than weak and poor governments, but then again, if there isn't a centralized effort to develop infrastructure, citizens are more likely to prefer outside funding/investment https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/internation...
"What the ESL crowd missed was the massive gain that comes from compounding little gains. I am still somewhat blinkered by going for the big win (that would probably make me a bad gambler), but content recently gathered for a couple of articles has provided examples of how those small gains are a better use of time and money than gambling on the next big thing.
The first example is from Marc Swinnen at Ansys, who talked about power optimization. I had asked about the amount of power being wasted in a typical design. “In the past, I have talked to customers about this very problem. I might tell them that using my tool will save them 10%, 15% power. Their response might be, ‘That’s not going to make my day. That’s not worth it to me. Then there is another technique. What will that save me? I tell them that it will save you 5% or 7%. That’s not worth my time.’ Every technique was shot down because it wasn’t worth their time. And at the end they say, how is it that my competitor can manage to get these really low-power designs? Because they pay attention to power at every single step along the way, even the small increments, it all adds up. You can disregard the small contributions at every step, but in the end, it’s like going on a diet. Any particular cookie, any particular walk, isn’t going to make a big difference, but it all adds up over time. And that’s how you achieve a result — by being conscientious at every step.”
Many others agree this is the only way to achieve a low-power design, except some add that it only takes one bad cookie to spoil the whole thing. A very power-efficient piece of hardware cannot provide the expected savings if bad software is put on it, especially if it doesn’t use the very features that the hardware inserted to make it power efficient. Lots of small improvements can make a very big difference."
I wanted to write an article or short blog post about how Windows 10, menus and javascript, increasingly tuck away important tools/buttons in little folds. This was many months ago.
I want to write it and title it, "What the tuck?" But tuck refers exactly to the kind of hidden menus that make those so called sleek and simple UIs for the the 80% of users.
The problem is that it stupefies computing literacy, especially mobile web versions.
Perhaps not every casual web browser needs to sit at a desk to learn website navigation. Then again, they may never learn anything productive on their own.
I do agree- i hate when an article doesn't include a thumbnail that Google News might indicate includes, but in this case, they just buried the lede, which is slightly different, and sometimes just as annoying: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PKJG!,w_1456,c_limit...
this has such great marketing zingers, I probably didn't know I needed TigerBeetle for something. I don't know yet, but I promise you, I'll find something to use it for.
36 years later, making the internet more widely available is still important to the rest of the world. While the U.S. is building and refurbishing nuclear power plants for AI datacenters, semiconductor process nodes have shrunk to the point where solar panels the size of a credit card can power an entire mobile device.
A 3D printer is symbolically considered the part of 4th industrial revolution- owning the "means of production" (though maybe not the supply chain). But just as the internet decentralized telecommunications and broadcast media, renewable energy has the ability to minimize coverage gaps, much like how 5G cell towers increase range.
The next step is owning the means of energy production. People are willing to pay $1100 for an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone and yet unwilling to integrate a $5 solar panel, because it is thought to be useless compared to the amount of power needed to run iOS or Android. Yet, there are other, lower power ways to send data, and an article about TCP/IP should be a reminder of that. https://indico.cern.ch/event/1331906/contributions/5606846/a...
I'm not saying he's resting on his laurels or that we shouldn't look back towards the success stories. I'm just encouraging people to wonder what a 34 year old Tim Berners-Lee would be developing today if he were adding another component to the internet.
I've heard/read common criticisms about NGO's having more power and private funding than weak and poor governments, but then again, if there isn't a centralized effort to develop infrastructure, citizens are more likely to prefer outside funding/investment https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/internation...
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