gwright

This is just stating an opinion that you disagree with the philosophy. Do you think leftist judges also don't have a philosophy but just aim for outcomes?

Citizen's United seems like a pretty clear cut case of individual rights from my point of view. If your definition of "activist" is strengthening individual rights and refusing to give power to the federal government and its giant bureaucracy then I guess I'm OK with an "activist" Supreme Court.

Roe v. Wade had been criticized for 50 years as an example of an activist judiciary and was held in place by rigid adherence to stare decisis.

Would you be as confident with stare decisis if we were talking about Plessy v. Ferguson, which held sway for 58 years before being overturned? Where the judges in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka "activists"?

If "activism" is used to describe all sorts of political philosophy then it isn't really a useful term to bring to the discussion. I think it does have meaning though and that "activism" is not what conservative members of the court are doing.

Too much "Orwellian" language manipulation going on these days, IMHO.

Now you are just pushing "activist" towards meaning "having a legal philosophy". And in practice it means having the wrong legal philosophy with respect to the person who labels you an "activist" as opposed to having a particular philosophy.

It isn't a particularly useful term because no one agrees on what it means. This has been illustrated quite nicely by the comments to my original comment.

Your comment illustrates the problem. Do you think that everyone agrees that "activist" means "hunting for cases"? What does "hunting for cases" actually mean?

The term "activist" is often interpreted as "legislating from the bench" where the judiciary usurps the role of the legislature. Some people actually want that. Other people don't want that.

Refusing to solve a problem and instead requiring Congress to clarify the law is another judicial philosophy. Is that being an activist?

Deciding that the federal government has no authority and that state authority or individual rights are more paramount is also a course of action that some people agree with and some people don't. Supporters probably don't call that "activism" but detractors might.

So I think the term is mainly used to slur your political opponent as opposed to being a succinct term for some particular judicial philosophy.

Activist? You clearly don't have the same definition of activist that I do. Half the problem with these sorts of conversations is there is no agreement on definitions.

Please don't interpret my comment to mean that Supreme Court decisions can't be criticized, I just don't find the "activist" accusation to be particularly insightful.

It all hinges on "reasonable", which is a lot different than making sure a product is "safe" or that advertising isn't "fraudulent" and so on.

I'm going to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" answer but once you get past that necessary first step I do have a few tips:

    * get comfortable reading legal documents, this will allow you to have more
      intelligent conversations with your attorney
    * don't let your attorney make your business decisions, one of their jobs is to
      point out risks, one of your jobs (owner/ceo/leadership) is to figure out how
      to mitigate risk but that is not the same thing as avoiding all risks
    * learn to draft legalese, it will help minimize your attorney's billable hours

FWIW, my observation of Google's app store policies over the last 8 years or so is that they simply trail behind Apple's policies by a couple of years. Google is constantly expanding their store policies in order to better vet who is distributing apps, restricting the behavior of apps, etc. and they almost always mirror what Apple has already put in place.

I would agree with you that Apple isn't the only entity that can provide that type of vetting process but it also seems clear to me that a vetting process is actually a useful and desirable service.

> That is literally the entire point of legislation, to change things that aren't working how we want them to, for example to be more beneficial to society.

Where do you get this idea? What is the limit on this principle? The DMA that you keep referring to is an European legal framework. Is it your opinion that everyone must bow down to what European legislators and regulators deem "beneficial"?

An argument that derives entirely from the idea that "the government has decided it is beneficial" is unpersuasive, IMHO.

So you want to utilize the power of the state to force a private entity to sell its products under terms that are "reasonable" to you?

Where is the limit on that sort of approach? Do you want the state to force everyone to set prices so that you can purchase everything at terms "reasonable" to you? How do we decide what is "reasonable"?

Given the existence of the Android alternative it is hard for me to support the argument that the government should mandate how Apple conducts its business. Even when I agree that Apple's policies have problems, I still don't think heavy-handed regulation by government is necessarily better.

Who are you talking about? I explicitly said that I can understand the interest in both types of ecosystems and even that one person may like different scenarios for different devices.

> Apple absolutely doesn't offer that right now, but even if they ever do offer something like that would you really want that to be the only way to get software on your device?

Did you read my entire comment? Both models should be available.

I think this perspective goes too far.

Some people (me included) would actually like to have a secure, vetted ecosystem for software that gets installed on my phone (and even my computer). I realize that other people want something different. And think it is reasonable for people to want different approaches for different devices.

Any regulations designed to ensure the "open" model shouldn't prevent the "closed" model from existing. Your comment just seems a bit to heavy handed to my ear.

That being said, it seems to me that Apple's attempt is guaranteed to satisfy no one.

> Probable cause is supposed to be that by a preponderance of the evidence ..

Really? IANAL, but this sounds like a muddling of what is required for arrest and what is the evidentiary standard for resolving a civil case in the US.

I think realistically the trigger for a search or an arrest is going to be much less than what is necessary to successfully convict in a criminal case or to prevail in a civil case.

This is the first time I've seen it suggested that Aurora is implemented on top of S3.

This overview doesn't mention S3: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide...

It seems disingenuous to talk about "short-term" costs when we are talking about grid-scale energy systems. It is the long-term costs that are important when evaluating capital intensive systems.

So you need to have two generation systems. Certainly possible, not cheap.

I assume in this conversation that we want:

    * reliable power
    * affordable power

If you relax those assumptions you open up the solution space. It isn't clear to me how much you can relax those assumptions though.

I'm willing to accept I'm missing something, but overbuilding is not a sufficient approach because you still need to have generation available at night when there is no wind. Doesn't matter how much you overbuild solar and wind you can't overcome the problem of no sun and no wind.

That study isn't hiding anything, it is an attempt to estimate how much storage is required. If you adjust the solar/wind capacity (i.e. overbuild), you'll reduce the storage requirements but there are diminishing returns resulting in very expensive systems long before your solved the storage problem.

If we had grid-scale storage that was economical, it should be very easy to build a production system to demonstrate that capability. I've not seen any examples. And it certainly seems wise to actually build a system that demonstrates the viability of grid-scale storage before decommissioning base load generating capacity.

Problem is much easier to solve if you accept that some people won't get any power when it is dark and calm. How many days of no power would people accept?

> gas backup for such scenarios (which are relatively rare, and during which renewables will still operate at some non-100% fraction of the required energy)

Now you have built two energy systems and one of them has to be on standby and ready to be used only rarely. Cross your fingers and hope everything still works. You also have to maintain long term storage of gas, staff that knows how everything operates, etc.

Which is why I asked if the weather conditions changed the calculus in Hawaii. Great for Hawaii, but doesn't help in other locations.

Why do you think that can't be right?

Solar and wind generation themselves are seasonal and don't match the seasonal patterns of demand. So you need to time shift across seasons if you don't have the instantaneous (base load) capacity available all the time.

You might say, well, just build more windmills or solar farms. Doesn't help when it is dark and calm. Your "overbuild" is useless in that situation. So you need storage (or other base load generation, fossil or nuclear).

In this study, it is estimated that Germany and California both need about 25TWh of storage to time shift energy supplied by intermittent sources to other parts of the year. The study claims $5 trillion to purchase batteries to store that much energy.

http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries...

Here is a study for two areas, Germany and California:

http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries...

Well in terms of the various capabilities the article highlighted

    * dark starting
    * capacity
    * grid stabilization

it sounds like the battery plant is successful. But the article itself says that the plant does not replace the "energy" component of the old coal power plant, which is why I asked the questions I asked. And it is the energy component that is critical for really retiring base load capacity provided by fossil fuel plants at grid level. Without the ability to retire the base load capacity you aren't really solving the problem. Costs rise dramatically (you now have two energy systems) and/or you have to accept less reliability (running out of power when wind/solar/hydro/battery are inadequate).

I think you are mis-interpreting my comment and being unfair in characterizing what I'm saying as "narrow minded" or "grasping at straws".

> The old coal generator provided three key values to Oahu, Keefe explained: energy (the bulk volume of electricity), capacity (the instantaneous delivery of power on command), and grid services (stabilizing functions for the grid, wonky but vital to keeping the lights on).

> The battery directly replaces the latter two: It matches the coal plant’s maximum power output (or “nameplate capacity,” in industry parlance), and it is programmed to deliver the necessary grid services that keep the grid operating in the right parameters.

The main problem with replacing a fossil fuel plant with renewable + batteries is finding a battery system that can hold energy over a sufficiently long period of time and has enough capacity to replace solar/wind when it is dark and calm.

In the studies I've seen the time shift required is on the order of seasons and the capacity required is cost prohibitive.

It may be that the weather patterns in Hawaii are sufficiently stable that it makes it possible to remove the companion base load generation capacity. The article seems to hint at the fact that the total capacity of the coal plant was much higher than the storage capacity of the battery system:

> With 565 megawatt-hours of storage, the battery can’t directly replace the coal plant’s energy production ...

So it isn't clear how much capacity has been lost in this switch. They may also be other changes in the generation portfolio that aren't discussed in the article.

> Your social standing will also take a hit.

I can wrap my head around the usability and interoperability arguments but this idea that "social standing" is contingent on iOS vs Android just seems alien to me.

Are there really people that adjust their social circles based on what type of phone someone is using?

This is a good example of why capturing coordinates in a local spatial reference system may be better than capturing coordinates in a global spatial reference system.

Global coordinates of a place of interest will drift relative to a global coordinate system but remain stable relative to a local coordinate system. This article illustrates that "stable" is not the same thing as unchanging in the presence of 7.5 earthquakes.

I agree that they are different scenarios that may lead to different legal frameworks. My point though was that asserting that the "profit" motive is sufficient to conclude something is owed to the creators is faulty logic. Individuals can generate profit from what they learn and we don't generally require them to share their profits with the creators of copyrighted material that they used to educate themselves.

I didn't anthropomorphize the LLMS. It isn't about laws for the LLM, it is about laws for people would build and operate the LLM.

If you want to assert that groups of people that build and operate LLMs should operate under a different set of laws and regulations than individuals that read books in the library regarding "profit", I'm open to that idea. But that is not at all the same as "anthropomorphizing these AI black boxes".

I think this is a misleading way to frame things. It is people who build, train, and operate the LLM. It isn't about giving "rights" to the LLM, it is about constructing a legal framework for the people who are creating LLMs and businesses around LLMs.