GTG Links No.9: September 30th

A lot going on with some pretty neat news. Let's dive on in.

iOS 16 to get emissions optimised charging

iOS 16 to Gain ‘Clean Energy Charging’ Option Later This Year

In an update coming to iOS 16 later this year, Apple plans to add a new “Clean Energy Charging” option in the United States. The information...

MacRumorsJuli Clover

This could be pretty neat, and help lower the already quite small footprint of mobile gaming. Looks like it's going to be powered by the sorts of real-time emissions APIs I pointed to in DGACC - like WattTime in the US. We still need something like this for Australia.

Etherum's 'merge' to proof-of-stake actually happened

Ethereum cryptocurrency completes move to cut CO2 output by 99%

Software upgrade, known as ‘the merge’, will change how transactions are managed on its blockchain

The GuardianDan Milmo

In all honesty, I didn't think it would ever actually happen. But it did, and kudos to those responsible. A really pleasant surprise. Meanwhile...

Schadenfreude

‘No One Is Profitable’: GPU Mining Faces Dark Days After Ethereum Merge

Crypto-miners are shutting off their rigs and mulling selling their GPUs since few, if any, cryptocurrencies are currently profitable if you try to mine them, following the Ethereum merge.

PCMag AustraliaMichael Kan

Time to keep an eye out for cheap GPUs. LTT's testing from a year ago suggested that used GPUs perform just as good as new.

What are the greenest programming languages?

This came out in August, but I only just came across it thanks to a post in the IGDA Climate SIG. There are some pretty interesting implications for what languages we choose to code games and other applications in, though perhaps hard to fully implement:

A very common misconception when analyzing energy consumption in software is that it will behave in the same way execution time does. In other words, reducing the execution time of a program would bring about the same amount of energy reduction. However power doesn’t follow this rule.

I also have to admit, I think I would have probably assumed the same about execution speed as well. The findings do make sense though once you consider that a computing system is more than just the CPU, there's also RAM, caches, long-term storage, and all sorts of other odds and ends performing lots of different functions.

What are the Greenest Programing Languages?👩🏻‍💻

The Answers may surprise you.

Datascience Learning CenterMichael Spencer

The Tech Workers Coalition is hosting a teach-in, mid October

This event is in part-organised by TWC volunteer (and friend-of-GTG) Tamara Kneese, green computing researcher at Intel, who you should all be following. It looks like a great event I'm going to try and get to some of the sessions where the timezone works for me:

"This teach-in is hosted by volunteers in the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) newsletter crew to facilitate intergenerational oral history, relationship building, and strategizing among fellow workers. Over the past year we’ve assembled a community of elders who were active decades ago in groups like the IBM Black Workers Alliance, Computer People for Peace, Polaroid workers against apartheid, The Lucas Plan, and workers organizing at National Semiconductor, and on October 19-21, 2022, we’re hosting our first teach-in to invite these workers into a community with younger organizers to learn from and support one another.

TWC Teach-In

An intergenerational learning event on tech, labor, and organizing

TWC Teach-In

Grief and Climate Games

Games and climate scholar, Laura op de Beke wrote about grief and climate change for First Person Scholar in July:

Griefing the Climate Apocalypse in ECO - First Person Scholar

Laura op de Beke (www.lauraopdebeke.com) is a PhD fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway. In her doctoral project she looks at Anthropocene temporalities in videogames, which manifest as temporal affects: for instance anxiety over the future, petro-melancholia, a preoccupation with death, failure…

First Person Scholar - Weekly critical essays, commentaries, and book reviews on gamesLaura op de Beke

Mandatory Maintenance Corner

Stories about steam deck users now able to get repairs, iPhone 14 design improving repairability, more government support for circular principles in the UK, and the value of maintenance.

Steam Deck Repair Centers Are Now Open

Users can send in their Steam Deck for free repairs during the warranty period.

GamespotGrace Benfell

iPhone 14 iFixit teardown shows Apple’s learning on repairs

Or was forced into a rethink by legislation

The RegisterBrandon Vigliarolo

Wales’ support for reuse highlighted at RWM - letsrecycle.com

Dr Andy Rees OBE, head of waste strategy at the Welsh government, has outlined the steps Wales is taking towards achieving a circular economy, including greater support for reuse and repair hubs. The Welsh government’s goal is to support 80 reuse and repair hubs in town centres, Dr Rees said during…

Let's RecycleBarbora Vaclavova

And lastly, a slightly more conceptual piece:

Maintenance could serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints that, if left unaddressed, could recreate on a global scale the localized austerity of a cash-strapped transit agency. Indeed, maintenance as a concept could encompass both the built environment and the so-called natural world. Perhaps maintenance, rather than sustainability, is the more useful framework for a green transition, because it can account for how human infrastructure is now deeply entangled with the environment in the age of the Anthropocene.

The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance | NOEMA

The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints.

NOEMAAlex Vuocolo

This is what a Just Transition looks like

Solar power set to relieve thousands of Belgian low-income households

The project is being carried out by a Belgian cooperative made up of 62 social housing companies in the region of Flanders. #EuropeNews

EuronewsChristopher Pitchers

Climate Impacts at work report

RMIT research centre has a new report with Friends of the Earth on preparing for climate change in different workplaces. Direct link to the PDF is here.

Climate impacts at work: supporting a climate ready workforce - Centre for Urban Research

Undertaken with project partners Friends of the Earth and with the assistance of six Victorian unions, it is based on a survey of paid workers’ experiences of climate-related disruptions and stresses. Respondents reported numerous impacts on their capacity to do their jobs properly, including impact…

Centre for Urban Research

Monarchy & empire both driving forces of climate change

the frantic analysis of the monarchy remains blind to its role in the existential climate crisis we face: the surrogate sacred object it offered to a society that ceased to find meaning in the earth and fellow beings.

The British Monarchy Helped Mortgage Our Collective Future

Queen Elizabeth II’s death should bring about a reckoning in understanding how the British Empire helped destroy the planet

TimePriya Satia

IEA commentary on role of ESG in securing mineral supplies

Why is ESG so important to critical mineral supplies, and what can we do about it? – Analysis - IEA

Why is ESG so important to critical mineral supplies, and what can we do about it? - A commentary by K.C. Michaels, Louis Maréchal, Benjamin Katz

IEAK.C. Michaels, Legal Advisor, Office of Legal Counsel

Detailed plan for getting the EU & UK off Russian gas

China gets to remind Europe of climate commitments

China tells Europe to not backslide on climate commitments

Europe insists rise in coal use is only temporary and will have no long-term effect on targets to cut gas emissions.

Al JazeeraAl Jazeera

After the sort of summer of extreme heat that China just experienced – I think I would too.

Climate change has come for the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter

China’s catastrophic summer shows its climate adaptation plans still have a long way to go.

VoxMuizz Akhtar

California grid demand response

Mentioned this piece in the post earlier this week, but worth linking again.

Californians saved the grid again. They should be paid more for it

Smart thermostats, solar-charged batteries, EVs and other household devices can shore up the stressed grid. Why isn’t the state going all in on incentives?

Canary Media

Hope you have a great weekend – next week I'm down in Melbourne for the Game Connect Asia Pacific conference, part of Melbourne International Games Week. I'm presenting on 'How game developers can help save the planet' on Tuesday 4th October, 10am in Room 103. I'll be at the conference for all three days, looking to meet with any game developers interested in climate action. I'm also on a panel on Thursday at the Games4Change festival.

It's been mentioned that GCAP talks are being recorded, so it might pop up online at a later date if you can't get along in person. Not sure about the G4C panel. Hope to see a GTG reader or two there!