A) why?

B) they can't. Because XP is not like some notepad app someone wrote. Rather it is a collection of software, a lot of it owned by not-microsoft and licensed to them. And that's before we talk about the security implications to existing systems still running XP.

Thirdly, what possible benefit could they get for doing this? I can see plenty of down-sides, including some very large potential economic and legal downsides. But I can't think of an upside.

And subsequent systems still using some of that code

I was brought up to "save energy ". Lights switched off when not in thevroom, that sort of thing.

Now I gave solar on the roof. There's an excess production capability, so now, during most days it doesn't matter if stuff is on or off. That especially applies to AC which I'll happily turn on on hot summer days. In effect I use more "because it's there to be used".

My EV is coming soon and given I can charge it on solar I plan to do a lot more day-trips-out over weekends etc.

So you're right, availability and affordability- but electrifying is great (for me) for both those things.

Assuming all the physics are completely solved tomorrow;

Private capital can easily get better returns, not to mention sooner returns, doing pretty much anything else.

Public capital requires a very long-term govt spend spanning multiple governments. China could do it, but hard to see a western govt doing it. Plus it would add a decade to the schedule and costs would spiral upwards.

All of which is a huge bet against improvements in grid-level storage.

In some cases though the reply opens the door to a wider exploration. The poster may make a valid argument or might add nuance which is meaningful. I've found some dialogs offer me a different point of view and my position doesn't necessarily change, but understanding becomes deeper.

But yes, a lot of people's positions are tribal and buried too deep in psyche to be easily changed. Our positions on most things are not based on facts, or at best cherry-picking facts that support our view of the world.

I get that "parking" a ship this size is expensive, but is it more expensive than sailing?

My initial thought is that since fuel has become untenable its better to spend (much) more time just parked somewhere. The article mentions sailing less, but doesn't seem to quantify that, or discuss mooring costs.

Or perhaps there are other reasons (visa etc) which limit stop-overs?

When they are at sea they have to pay fuel (probably 100k€ per day), but they also have paying customers on board which is priced to be profitable. If cruise ships wouldn't earn money they would not exist. Without customers they don't have money.

Fuel costs are a deal breaker for ships, trucks, and RVs, too.

A collection of things happened at the same time, including the weather, a lot of generating capacity offline for various reasons, lines to Ireland unavailable and so on. And yet despite all that, local blackouts (not a national system collapse) was averted.

But yes, anti-EV proponents will likely to to make hay from this.

Yes the incident occurred in the evening as demand increased, partly because demand increases in the evening snow partly because solar production (some part of which is invisible to the grid) goes offline in the evening.

Certainly there are lessons to be learned here. Better planning, more contingencies and so on. Removing solar isn't helpful (that would just move the problem to earlier in the day.)

Incidentally east-west transmission is a key factor in solving this problem. The extra power came from France where possibly evening demand had started to drop etc. Connections to the West would bring in solar still generating excess. Those countries with good east-west coverage will be least impacted but the evening demand issue.

East-west transmission wouldn't have helped here. France is less than an hour ahead, so the solar curve is going to look virtually identical. What really helped is that France had spare hydro capacity able to quickly compensate for the shortage. If anything, the UK's limited north-south transmission capacity making the use of Scotland's spare capacity impossible should be a bigger priority.

With the grid increasingly relying on decentralized solar and short-term battery storage, you just cannot operate it like you would with a bunch of on-demand essentially-unlimited fossil fuel plants. It is going to need a huge mentality shift from an operational perspective, and a large overhaul of the power trading market in general.

Not really! There were several systemic failures:

1. It happened due to forecasting errors. Nothing remarkable happened that day, there were no sudden station trips or natural disasters. The margin was gone mostly due to planned maintenances combined with incorrectly forecasting demand. Whether the root cause is decentralized PV or not, the core issue is that the lowest frequency ever recorded happened on a totally unremarkable day. That can't be said to be the system working correctly.

2. The UK had to suddenly cut exports that had already been agreed and paid for, outside of normal systems. That puts it in a bad situation in future where allies may now do the same in reverse. A sudden unannounced cut in exports can be absorbed by the European grid but might not be absorbed by the British grid, which is smaller.

3. There were no EMNs issued and in the aftermath whistleblowers inside NESO claimed control room staff had been forbidden from taking notes or letting people know what happened. Information about this came out via newspaper articles in a drip drip months after the event. We're talking about this now and not in June because of this. That lack of transparency can't be said to be the system working.

4. The French were able to ship power hundreds of kilometers across France and under the sea to the south of England, but the UK couldn't move power the much smaller difference from its own north to south. That's another form of planning failure.

> Removing solar isn't helpful (that would just move the problem to earlier in the day.)

That depends what you think the problem is. The root of the event was forecasting errors, and the root of those come from the apparent difficulty of predicting how decentralized solar behaves especially at a sub-region level. Removing solar, or simply having never built it at all, actually would fix that problem.

All of this was predicted decades ago by conservatives so it's no good to just despair that they will "make hay" from being right (nobody will benefit from a big UK blackout, it will be bad news for everyone). They warned repeatedly that putting too much solar/wind into the grid will destabilize it and create huge price increases. Both of those warnings have come true in Europe. Solar/wind aren't reliable and so need thermal/hydro that's staffed, warmed up and ready to spin at a moment's notice but government policy ignores this and the stresses are now showing - both engineering and political (the apparent need for whistleblowers shows this).

N.B. the root cause of the Iberian blackout was a solar farm malfunctioning and desynchronizing from the grid, and when the control room tried to bring gas generation back online to stabilize things they couldn't do it fast enough because the plant was cold. It had been taken offline in the morning to make way for solar.

Raising VC money makes VC the customer. Like any business you then need to know your customer, including their needs, wants and goals.

If you are looking to build a profitable business with some other kind of customer then VC is not for you. Rather you need to tailor your business to that customer.

Most disappointment comes from seeing the VC as a partner rather than a customer. That is not their model. Rather they are a customer looking for suppliers who will deliver a very specific product to them. Most of their suppliers (95%+) will go broke trying to supply them. But some will succeed. A few suppliers will get very rich.

Since you are starting a business you get to decide who your customers are and see if you want to take the risk providing what they want.

And comfort. With a 1.5m swell, you're gonna feel that in a boat. A hydrofoil will still go up and down.

Whereas a ground-effect vehicle is still flying, so a lot smoother.

The world has changed many times already. The industrial revolution changes humanity away from agriculture (95% of people then, 2% today). The transport revolution (first ships, then planes) improves trade and makes countries interdependent.

Medicine has transformed life expectancy in less than 100 years. The human population has exploded since ww2. The dystopia imagined in the 50s was "4 billion people".

The arrival of the computer transformed offices within a couple decades. Secretary, Filing Clerk, Typist et al are all jobs considered good when my mom grew up. All gone forever.

Phones move the needle as well. Travel Agents become a tiny niche (to name just 1 profession.)

I get that when it's your job being threatened it feels existential. But many, many jobs have become obsolete in my lifetime, and in the lifetime before mine.

So to answer your question, humanity will do just fine. This is just another step on a long road, and it won't be the last.

Your real question of course is "what will happen to you?" And that depends on where you are.

If you are in the US its likely your standard of living will drop. The US is currently in late-stage-empire, and some correction is inevitable. But drop doesn't mean crater. You'll all be just fine.

The rest of the world will likely improve. Some places (like Europe) are post-empire and have reached a (mostly) stable equilibrium. Asia has seen enormous improvements, and will likely continue to do so.

South America and Africa have so much opportunity for growth and will like progress into powerhouses.

I'm not worried. We'll be just fine, and likely better than before.

When I was growing up movies were watched in cinemas. It was a big event and we saw maybe 5 a year.

Over time more start appearing on TV, but those tended to be a bit older, but also cherry picked the good ones. (I don't live in the US).

PayTV didn't appear until mid 80s. They had more movies, but again tended to cherry pick. VHS meant we recorded the ones we wanted to see. All these things together meant we tended to watch "good" movies.

Hollywood of course were making lots and lots of movies we never saw, or had and way to see. The bad stuff simply didn't have a channel to the world.

The arrival of Video Stores changed that. Suddenly the mediocre (and worse) had an outlet. And trust me, there was plenty of rubbish in there. But there was still a cost to distribute.

Today, distribution cost is zero. If Netflix commission a movie it'll get onto Netflix. Regardless of the result. Some really good stuff, most mediocre, lots of real rubbish.

Repeat for Amazon, Disney, Hulu, et al.

Overall movies haven't gotten worse. Objectively production values are higher. But your access to mediocre and bad movies has increased.

Judging past output though introduces survivor bias, which in turn makes comparison to today misleading.

The scene workers have gotten better though. And there are a lot of good movies being made still, but not by the mainstream industry that used to really deliver.

1. Beverly Hills Cop

2. Ghostbusters

3. The Terminator

4. Gremlins

5. A Nightmare on Elm Street

6. Police Academy

7. Dune

8. Repo Man

9. The NeverEnding Story

10. Karate Kid

11. Romancing the Stone

12. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Or pretty much any year from the 1980s and 1990s.

At some point we lost good writing in favor of silly jokes and narrative in favor of spectacle.

For a while in the oughts I taught a film history class, though, and even 2 decades ago the kiddos thought anything in black and white, much less with no sound or with subtitles, was literally unwatchable. I'm okay with the idea that the students' tastes in media are legitimate, though I have my own tastes and think they are differently-informed.

And further, I dunno if "silly jokes and narrative in favor of spectacle" are new. Think Keystone Cops and Busby Berkley.

I like Battleship Potemptkin and Citizen Kane as much as the next person, but that's not all of what was popular.

Paring the thousands of films from the 80s down to a list of 10 does a lot of work to make that looks like it was better, when in fact I was in middle school and I could literally go see a movie for 75c. I remember some really bad ones, and I am certain I've forgotten a lot of bad ones.

I also have problems making a list of good films from the last decade, but I think that's because I got burnt out and stopped watching long-form video mediums when I left my PhD program. I am not sure I have seen 10 long form narrative works in the last 5 years.

Funnily enough, those happen to be two movies I didn't enjoy beyond their historic relevance.

I'm not saying that spectacle and one-liners are bad - movies like that are included in my list for 1984. It is when you substitute good writing with funny lines and have spectacle instead of a compelling narrative that I see a problem.

...No wait, to be fair, they're very good at influencing. They can influence like no previous generation ever could.