Reads, Takes and Links

Category: Uncategorized

  • Is the UK using loads of gas on the grid or not?

    This was a thing that had me scratching my head when prepping a few stories for a newsletter this weekend, and I figured it might be of use to others too. In the UK, if you follow the decarbonisation of the grid, you’ll likely have noticed that the UK succeeded in getting coal off the…

  • Fixing a stricken iPad mini 6th gen

    This post is here to make it easier to get help fixing an iPad I bought from Backmarket a couple of years ago. Last week I left it in a bag with a water bottle that leaked, and I’m hoping that being able to share pictures and links should help me find someone to fix…

  • Does the EU AI Act really call for tracking inference as well as training in AI models?

    Does the EU AI Act really call for tracking inference as well as training in AI models?

    I’m sharing this post as it I think it helped me realise something I hadn’t appreciated til today. I don’t build AI models, and to be honest, while I make sparing use of Github Co-pilot and Perplexity, I’m definitely not a power user. My interest in them is more linked to my day job, and…

  • Emily Atkins on the vilfying the fossil fuel industry

    This extended snippet is from the Heated Newsletter: For readers who are new to this newsletter, I think it’s important to note that I am not a climate activist. I’m a journalist who went went to college for journalism and have only held journalism jobs. I’ve worked at news outlets with both liberal and conservative…

  • Making sense of the energy reporting deadlines for datacentres in Europe

    In the last 12 months, we’ve had a few laws passed in Europe that are likely to lead to us having access to new data about the energy demands of datacenters. Which laws specifically is a bit more complicated, and this post is an attempt to explain the mechanism to others, as well make sense…

  • What makes the web different from the internet?

    I’m not talking about specifics of protoocols like HTTP, but more the idea of who they should work for. Let’s look at the W3C Web Platform Design Principles They start with a short preamble about principles. I think this is a good summary what many web developers who love the web appreciate about it. Principles…

  • Being in the Green Driving Foundation

    I wrote this early one morning to partly as a way to help figure out what bothered me about many of the conversations around Green IT, and Digital Sustainability. I’ve phrased it in a way that I hope helps less technical people understand some of the dynamics in the industry, that are an open secret…

  • Notes on the Deutschland ticket

    I recently got round to subscribing to the Deutschland-ticket in Germany, and it got me thinking a lot about mobility in the wider sense. I’ve dashed out some thoughts now to come back to later. In Germany, where I know live, one of persistent areas where the country is underperforming on climate targets is on…

  • What gets to be called green online?

    I work at the Green Web Foundation, and part of my job is maintaining a platform to help people find providers of green digital hosted services. I was asked about whether recent changes in the law might impact what gets called a green hosted service there. I’ve shared my thoughts here because a) LinkedIn has…

  • I had no idea Nigeria had so much off grid energy

    While doing some research for a coming episode of the Environment Variables, I ended up looking up information about Nigeria’s power grid – I knew grid coverage was patchy, but I had no idea, there was so much off site generation. Look at the map below, from the IEA page! Most of the time these…