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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Thinking of the hypothetical scenario where in a short timeframe energy would become near unlimited and almost free:

    On the positive side: with no energy limitations, Direct Air Capture technology could be scaled massively. That’s one really promising technology that can take carbon off the air and use it for other things (like sustainable air fuels) or removing it altogether.

    Also this would accelerate the transition to electric cars and well, electric everything: why pay for fuel for your car, your stove or boiler, when they can be almost free? That has a potential for good effects on the environment too.

    On the negative side: this opens the door for more, cheap transport. If people don’t have to pay for fuel, they’d be more willing to take the car everywhere. This would mean more roads, more infrastructure, more destruction of ecosystems, less space for pedestrians… A trend that is already too difficult to reverse in a world of expensive fuels.

    In terms of economics, I could see this accelerating the gap between countries. Those who could benefit from semi-free energy first would have an immense competitive advantage and also lower their manufacturing costs, leaving worse-off countries in a position where they can’t compete because of technology nor because of cheap labour.








  • I’m trying to defend here a product I don’t really believe in, so bear with me.

    The portal lets you play PS5 games, in PS5-ish quality (-ish because it’s obviously not the same as a 4k TV). The best the switch can do is 7-year-old No Man’s Sky, with no multiplayer. Recent Pokémon and Zelda (first party Nintendo games) can’t even reach a constant 30 FPS in the whole of the game.

    I don’t think graphics are THAT important, but I know there are people who think that. And in that case, the PS5+Portal is going to beat a standalone steam deck or a switch. If you have a beefy PC maybe a steam deck can stream in better quality, but if you’re in the PS5 ecosystem it’s the best quality handheld gaming you can achieve.

    Would I buy it? Absolutely not. 80% of the fun with my steam deck is taking it places. The airport, the plane, a hotel on a business trip, my partner’s place, the dentist waiting room, the bus/train… All that’s missing with the Portal, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see a (niche) market for it.


  • I firmly believe the solution is autonomous shuttles, not cars. Imagine having bus routes that can dynamically change and adapt to demand. Say we replace every bus with 2 smaller shuttles: during normal service the route could have the same capacity, but if there is an extraordinary event (sports event for example) you could divert them from the low-demand areas to the extraordinary-demand zone.

    During lower demand times, you can also have more routes at no extra cost. If you’re clever and make an app to call the shuttle (think Uber but through pre-established routes) the demand can be determined in real time to ensure you don’t have empty shuttles.

    And because they’re bigger than passenger cars you’re still increasing the ratio of passengers per vehicle, unlike robotaxis which merely replace private cars, with mostly 1- or 2-passenger trips.




  • I agree, but they’d get a large number of users to subscribe.

    And then maybe they wouldn’t complain when they raised the price to $3. And a few months later maybe $3.50. Then $5.

    A few years ago, people wouldn’t have paid over $15 for a standard Netflix tier without 4K. But the way to boil a frog is to make them nice and comfy in lukewarm water, then keep increasing the temperature slowly… So even if they lose money, maybe a low price for the ad-free YouTube could make sense, from a business perspective.




  • Jrockwar@feddit.uktoTechnology@lemmy.worldSo long, small phones
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    1 year ago

    No, I agree with his point. Features do take space. Maybe we can make space for a headphone jack (🙄), but consumers demand more cameras, with a larger sensor, faster and more power hungry processors, bigger batteries. With any space limitation (even the Pro Max comes with a space limitation because it can’t become an iPad…) there are feature tradeoffs, and obviously a smaller phone will fit fewer cameras, less cooling, a smaller battery, etc.