The Year in Cheer
192 more stories of progress from 2021.
Link tags: energy
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99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2021
Some welcome perspective on healthcare, conservation, human rights, and energy.
Brian Eno on NFTs and Automaticism
Much of the energy behind crypto arises from the very strong need that some people feel to operate outside of a state, and therefore outside of any sort of democratic communal overview. The idea that Ayn Rand, that Nietzsche-for-Teenagers toxin, should have had her whacky ideas enshrined in a philosophy about money is what is terrifying to me.
The Case Against Crypto | Pervasive Media Studio
The underlying technology of cryptocurrency is based on a world without trust. Its most ardent proponents want to demolish institutions and abolish regulation, reducing the world to a numbers game which they believe they can win. If the wildest fantasies of cryptocurrency enthusiasts were to come true, if all the environmental and technical objections were to fall away, the result would be financial capitalism with all the brakes taken off.
The promotion of cryptocurrencies is at best irresponsible, an advertisement for an unregulated casino. At worst it is an environmental disaster, a predatory pyramid scheme, and a commitment to an ideology of greed and distrust. I believe the only ethical response is to reject it in all its forms.
Solar Protocol
This website is hosted across a network of solar powered servers and is sent to you from wherever there is the most sunshine.
A Black Cloud of Computation
SETI—the Search for Extra Terrestrial Information processing:
What we get is a computational device surrounding the Asymptotic Giant Branch star that is roughly the size of our Solar System.
Age of Invention: The Paradox of Progress - Age of Invention, by Anton Howes
If you make an improvement, it’s not going to be to the industry as a whole — it’ll be specific. And actually improvements have always been specific; it’s just that the industries have since multiplied and narrowed. Inventors once made drops into a puddle, but the puddle then expanded into an ocean. It doesn’t make the drops any less innovative.
Burnt out? - The Midult
It me.
And yet now, in this moment of semi-stillness, the pause button may have slowed down our geographical dashing, but it has only accelerated our inner flounder. The dull thrum of imprecise apprehension. The gratitude for semi-safety made weird by the ever-blooming realisation that there is little to get excited about.
Same Energy Snap
Match up images that have been posted in pairs to Twitter with the caption “same energy”. This is more fun and addictive than it has any right to be.
Jeremy Keith ‘We’ve ruined the Web. Here’s how we fix it.’ - This is HCD
Did you hear the one about two Irishmen on a podcast?
I really enjoyed this back-and-forth discussion with Gerry on performance, waste, and more. We agreed on much, but we also clashed sometimes.
The Decade in Cheer - Reasons to be Cheerful
Since 2010
- The developed world used less water, despite population growth
- The (whole) world became less transphobic than it once was
- The ozone layer started healing
- Investment in green energy far, far exceeded investment in fossil fuels
- The world got greener
- Homicide rates fell worldwide
- Weather forecasting became a lot more accurate
- The number of people without electricity fell below one billion
- Universal health care went from privileged ideal to global ambition
How creating a Progressive Web App has made our website better for people and planet
Creating a PWA has saved a lot of kilobytes after the initial load by storing files on the device to reuse on subsequent requests – this in turn lowers the load time and carbon footprint on subsequent page views, making the website better for both people and planet. We’ve also enabled offline access, which significantly improves user experience for people in areas with patchy connections, such as mobile users on their commute.
99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2019
The goal in putting these stories together has never been to create a warm glow, or lull anyone into a false sense of complacency. The challenges facing the human family right now are big and scary and there’s no guarantee we will overcome them.
As millions of people have demonstrated in the past 12 months though, action is possible, better solutions are available and a better future can be built.
To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution | Technology | The Guardian
Decomputerization doesn’t mean no computers. It means that not all spheres of life should be rendered into data and computed upon. Ubiquitous “smartness” largely serves to enrich and empower the few at the expense of the many, while inflicting ecological harm that will threaten the survival and flourishing of billions of people.
5G Will Definitely Make the Web Slower, Maybe | Filament Group, Inc.
The Jevons Paradox in action:
Faster networks should fix our performance problems, but so far, they have had an interesting if unintentional impact on the web. This is because historically, faster network speed has enabled developers to deliver more code to users—in particular, more JavaScript code.
And because it’s JavaScript we’re talking about:
Even if folks are on a new fast network, they’re very likely choking on the code we’re sending, rendering the potential speed improvements of 5G moot.
The longer I spend in this field, the more convinced I am that web performance is not a technical problem; it’s a people problem.
Website Carbon Calculator – Calculate your websites carbon emissions
Get an idea of how much your website is contributing to the climate crisis.
In total, the internet produces 2% of global carbon emissions, roughly the same as that bad boy of climate change, the aviation industry.
How Web Content Can Affect Power Usage | WebKit
The way you build web pages—using IntersectionObserver, for example—can have a direct effect on the climate emergency.
Webpages can be good citizens of battery life.
It’s important to measure the battery impact in Web Inspector and drive those costs down.
Earth day at Clearleft
Isn’t this just lovely?
Cassie made a visualisation of the power we’re getting from the solar panels we installed on the roof of the Clearleft building.
I highly recommend reading her blog post about the process too. She does such a great job of explaining how she made API calls, created SVGs, and calculated animations.
Is the universe pro-life? The Fermi paradox can help explain — Quartz
Living things are just a better way for nature to dissipate energy and increase the universe’s entropy.
No anthropocentric exceptionalism here; just the laws of thermodynamics.
According to the inevitable life theory, biological systems spontaneously emerge because they more efficiently disperse, or “dissipate” energy, thereby increasing the entropy of the surroundings. In other words, life is thermodynamically favorable.
As a consequence of this fact, something that seems almost magical happens, but there is nothing supernatural about it. When an inanimate system of particles, like a group of atoms, is bombarded with flowing energy (such as concentrated currents of electricity or heat), that system will often self-organize into a more complex configuration—specifically an arrangement that allows the system to more efficiently dissipate the incoming energy, converting it into entropy.
How to Build a Low-tech Website?
This is fascinating! A website that’s fast and nimble, not for performance reasons, but to reduce energy consumption. It’s using static files, system fonts and dithered images. And no third-party scripts.
Thanks to a low-tech web design, we managed to decrease the average page size of the blog by a factor of five compared to the old design – all while making the website visually more attractive (and mobile-friendly). Secondly, our new website runs 100% on solar power, not just in words, but in reality: it has its own energy storage and will go off-line during longer periods of cloudy weather.
Ping! That’s the sound of my brain going “service worker!”
I’ve sent them an email offering my help.