Oh the irony, the irony!

CNN Business: The Iran war has the world buying more clean energy. China stands to benefit the most.

The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel. Many are opting for energy alternatives — and turning to the renewables king of the planet: China.

Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicles all reached record highs in March, according to energy think tank Ember, a sign that the historic oil supply shock is accelerating the adoption of clean energy around the world.

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As countries invest more in renewable energy, China stands to benefit as the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels.

A Thursday report from Ember said China exported 68 gigawatts of solar technology in March, surpassing the previous record set in August by 50%. Fifty countries set new records for Chinese solar imports, with the most significant growth coming from emerging markets in Asia and Africa hit hardest by the energy crisis, according to the think tank.

Ironic that Trump has been the driver of this! And American car companies, cornerstone employers, are very poorly prepared to compete with China when this passes due to Trump’s interference in the American truck and automobile market.

End of the News item: Colombian Hippos

In the end of the news, not important but interesting or amusing category:

UPI: Colombia asks India to assess relocation of 80 hippos to avoid culling

The government of Colombia has formally asked India to assess whether to authorize relocation of 80 hippos to a conservation center in that country as an alternative to culling part of the invasive population, the Ministry of Environment said.

The request, sent Thursday, considers possible transfer of the animals to the Vantara wildlife rescue center in the state of Gujarat, western India, which has offered to receive them.

The relocation proposal was put forward by billionaire Indian businessman Anant Ambani as an alternative to the euthanasia of some of the animals.

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The Colombian government declared hippos an invasive exotic species in 2022. The animals are descendants of a small group illegally brought into Colombia more than 30 years ago by drug trafficker Pablo Escobar for his private zoo.

After his death, the hippos were left unattended and gradually spread into nearby rivers, where they reproduced rapidly in the absence of natural predators.

How to greatly improve the electrical grid

Undecided with Matt Ferrell: The National Grid Is Dead. Here’s What Replaces It.

In April 2025, most of Spain and Portugal went dark. A cascading failure knocked out the Iberian peninsula’s grid in seconds. Just four years earlier, Texas came within 4 minutes and 37 seconds of its own total collapse. Not a temporary blackout. A full shutdown. What engineers call a “black start,” a process that could take days to weeks to recover from. Not to mention all of the people that died as a result. According to the Department of Energy, 70 percent of US transmission lines are over 25 years old. We’re running 21st century lives on a mid-20th century grid. But back in 1997, energy consultant Karl Rábago wrote a blueprint for a radically different grid. His model? The internet. Seriously. And no, I’m not talking about today’s internet, which is just five billionaires in a trench coat. I’m talking about the ‘90s internet. Decentralized. Collaborative. And really, really cool. So how would the internet stop a blackout? And why did the guy who figured it out get ignored for 30 years? But first, we need to understand what went so wrong.

Are you team DER [Distributed Energy Resources] or team “leave things as they are”?

The virtual utility is the “Internetification” of electrical supply. It has numerous benefits, and of course will be fought by the current centralized utilities, just like big oil is fighting renewables.

QuickTime, Book, Sculley, develop Magazine

Daring Fireball: John Buck on the Invention of QuickTime

Fun anecdote from 1990:

He asked Peppel to create a product plan that he could announce at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on May 7th. That day, Casey took to the stage and announced QuickTime to a stunned audience, saying, “Apple intends to develop real-time software compression/decompression technology that will run on today’s modular Macintosh systems. A system-wide time coding to allow synchronization of sound, animation, and other time-critical processes.”

Casey explained that Apple’s new multimedia architecture would be delivered by the end of the year. He did not say that QuickTime had no budget, staff, or offices.

WORTHINGTON: We were dumbfounded.

KONSTANTIN OTHMER, QUICKDRAW ENGINEER: I was standing next to Bruce Leak, and asked him, “What the heck was that?” He said he had no idea.

QuickTime actually shipped by WWDC 1991, …

John Scully was the CEO of Apple at the time. Although he was much maligned by Steve Jobs and others for some of his decisions, he did have a positive lasting impact on Apple.

This also reminded me of the wonderful Kon & Bal column in Apple Develop around that time.

New conservation sites, new funding model?

CBC: Carney announces $3.8B to protect nature, new conservation sites in James Bay and Manitoba

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $3.8 billion in funding to protect nature on Tuesday, as the federal government moves to meet its conservation targets.

In addition to public money, the government is seeking private sector investment to fund the conservation strategy, which will involve the creation of new national parks and marine reserves.

“Creating these spaces is ambitious and requires significant funding,” Carney said during a news conference in Wakefield, Que. “We can’t do it with public money alone.”

“Private sector investment” Hmmm. Voluntary taxes? A new federal “pay what you can” strategy? The new “ScotiaBank Nature Reserve”?

Today I was thinking about Will Shipley. He hasn’t posted anything about software in quite a while (since he joined Apple five years ago). I wonder what he thinks of useability in current Apple operating systems? (I wonder if he could say?)

The Ultimate Short Term Greed (US Politics)

NYT: Trump Repeals Key Greenhouse Gas Finding, Erasing EPA’s Power to Fight Climate Change

President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.

Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be.

This is beyond moronic. If there is evil in this world, it is embodied by Trump and his acolytes.

On my brother’s recommendation I downloaded & listened to Althea Raj’s podcast It’s Political (today’s edition) about the Liberal Alberta oil pipeline/environment rollback perfidy. She handled it really well.

How-To Geek: The 1st and 2nd Gen Nest Thermostat Are Dead

  • Google cut cloud support for original Nest thermostats, disabling the app and remote control.
  • They still work manually as basic thermostats, but smart features and integrations are gone.
  • Google emailed a discounted upgrade: 4th-gen Nest Learning Thermostat for $149.99 (regular $279.99).

They’ve been “Doctorow’ed”!

My life these days seems to primarily consist of recharging my Apple product batteries, and recharging myself with coffee. 🔋 ☕️

I listened to Core Intuition 26.1: Mess Everything Up tonight while making dinner. So great. Maybe Manton and Daniel would consider doing a month end podcast? That’d be nice.

Our solar panels have done surprisingly well with almost no significant degradation over 16 years. (We got the first few panels on in 2009, and then added panels each of the next two years until we reached our full complement.)

Hoping to be in Cardiff this spring for a week or more, and maybe a bus trip up the west side of Wales. Really looking forward to it!

It’s getting hard to find my way through the thicket of Trump craziness and distractions to get to the meat of other significant political events.