McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: September 9th 2024 Edition

• Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong. Excellent interview covering lots of what's wrong with surveillance capitalism and what we need (more folk) to do in order to build a better alternative.
• Solar will get too cheap to connect to the power grid.

  In the UK in 2024, I can go online and buy a solar panel with the same dimensions as a fence panel, for only double the cost. In five years, the cost of solar will have halved again.

  We need to electrify more things. We need more manufacturing that takes advantage of spiky energy gluts; making things when the sun shines, or overnight when the wind blows.
• Some bullet-points about regulation.

  In Britain now, for instance, the actual government of the sixth largest economy on earth – a nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN security council – has no mechanism to stop executives from pumping shit into rivers while routing profits off-shore.

  I have a half-theory that larger organisations are plausible deniability generators, which allow blame to be avoided and dissipated; this feels like a related structure.