What Do Printers, Fossil Fuel Car Sales Bans and Sanctions Have in Common? They Don't Do What You Expect Them To
This edition covers the struggle of finding printers that actually work, potential scenarios from banning fossil fuel car sales in Europe and the impacts of Russian sanctions on Europe.
Searching for the Mythical Creature: The Printer that Works
I’ve recently had to print a lot of papers . My printer is rated at 21 black-and-white pages per minute, so in a typical geek fashion, I sat down to figure out how long it would take to print out all my documents. My back of the envelope math showed it would take around 2 hours (I did say I had to print a lot), so I clicked print. Seven hours later and 741,000 fewer hair strands my printer had finally finished. During this time, the printer’s WiFi connection failed several times, meaning that several sheets were printed halfway through before getting stuck and pages were skipped. At this point I should probably add that my printer is exactly 3 years old. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that it behaved like a toddler – a lot of noise for little meaningful activity.
Why, when technology was supposed to make life easier, it ends up making you want to smash it with a sledgehammer? The short answer I found is that most modern (and recent) technology tries to do too many things at once and, in the process, fails to adequately perform its basic functions. I’ll go into more details as to why and how digital technology fails so often at its most basic tasks.
In the meantime, if you’re facing the same problem as I am, I did find a solution: disconnecting the printer from WiFi and cabling it directly to your PC. Most printers don’t come with the USB-A cable anymore, but the $5 spent on the cable will be the best money you’ve spent in a while. If you’re facing problems with work printers which force you to print through the cloud, most of them also have a USB port to which you can attach a USB key. Granted, you will lose your ability to send documents to print while sitting on the toilet but hopefully the efficiency/comfort trade-off will be worthwhile.
I’ve spent some time looking for reasons why printers and digital technology in general seems to be getting worse at doing their job and I’ve narrowed it down to two key factors: (i) planned obsolescence and (ii) intrusive features. Planned obsolescence is designed product failure. Most examples of planned obsolescence are semi-intentional engineering design choices of parts manufacturing, non-replaceable or integrated components and spare parts manufacturing suspension (see Apples 2016 MacBook Pro Flexgate issue – the slightly too short $6 integrated display cable which leads to the display failing and requiring a $700 repair). More recently, planned obsolescence has been software driven. Have you noticed that Windows tends to frequently disconnect from Wi-Fi when it’s update time? You’ve seen planned obsolescence in action. Apple is the king of this practice with its iPhones which magically slow down around the time when a new model is released.
Planned obsolescence affects printers too. Most printer ink cartridges aren’t interchangeable even within the same printer brand and some are designed to stop printing even when they still have ink. Some printers themselves are simply programmed to throw out errors or refuse to work at some point. The most likely outcome is a trip to a hardware store for a new printer, hopefully better than the last one. New printers come with exciting new features like voice-activated printing, wireless connection, and cloud printing capabilities but rarely perform their main purpose (PRINTING) better than previous models.
This brings me to the second point, intrusive features. Digital tools have become increasingly intrusive. Any tool that has name containing the word ‘smart’ has two features: internet connectivity and is audio and sometimes video enabled. Although there’s always a reason for why these features are installed, and most often convenience, these features also allow manufacturers to collect data about the technology use and their users. Your thermostat must have a microphone so you can lower the room temperature from your couch. Your robot vacuum cleaner needs to be connected to Wi-Fi so you can order it to clean your house while on holiday. Some Smart TVs come with a camera as well, though I don’t know for what reason, must have something to do with convenience. In the meantime, these tools collect and transmit data about usage and users back to their manufacturers.
Intrusive features are also increasingly introduced in printers. Printers connected to Wi-Fi now require software updates- mostly to patch security vulnerabilities introduced from the fact that they’re connected to the internet, they also transmit usage statistics to manufacturers. Printers also come with voice activation to save time, out of all things! Now you can be sure your printer will sense desperation in your voice when you’re in a rush and trying to print something. The resulting product attempts to do too many things and ends up prioritising its key function, printing, last.
The easy (partial) fix is to disconnect printers from your Wi-Fi network and connect it to your machine via cable. Most printers will likely need a driver re-install. When that happens, install just the drivers for printing and/or scanning and not the bloatware (touch up your photos, analyse your usage in a friendly format, buys you coffee etc). As long as the printer is disconnected from the internet it’s much less likely to be targeted by cyberattacks also and more likely to perform its function, PRINTING!
In Other News
Back To Horse and Carriage?
Keeping to Europe, the E.U. has also voted on banning fossil fuel car sales from 2035. This doesn’t sound as fantastic news. In fact, this looks like a majestic policy failure. Not only are European countries facing huge energy cost increases and shortages to satisfy existing electricity demand, but battery production capacity is far below what would be required to meet the demand for new vehicles. In 2020, close to 10 million cars were sold in the E.U. (down from 13 million in 2019). In the same year Li-Ion manufacturing capacity was around 450 GWh/year (80% of which manufactured in China).
The global battery manufacturing capacity is expected to rise to 1.3 TWh by 2030 (enough to manufacture batteries for 10 million electric vehicles). So, if any other country outside the E.U., such as, China, Australia, the U.S., Canada diverts batteries for their markets, there won’t be enough for European car sales. In the meantime, Lithium prices have increased 430% year-on-year which has and will continue to affect electric vehicles (EV) purchase price.
Several possible scenarios are possible from here on out:
Sensible decision-making
Policymakers will notice that achieving this ban by 2035 is unlikely and will revert on the policy, extending the availability of traditional cars.
Vintage is the new cool
The ban will drive an increased adoption in EVs which will in turn increase their price and issues with electricity consumption and distribution. More people and organisations purchasing EVs and facing challenges, the less likely others will be to replace their own vehicles with EVs. The result can be that fewer older, less efficient, vehicles get replaced.
Back to horse and carriage
The ban will be accompanied by a progressive decrease in fossil fuels availability or affordability to ‘incentivise’ adoption of EVs. Several classes of people will likely be pushed out of affording mobility. The return to horse and carriage will however only be possible if lawmakers don’t tax poop or burps like a recent initiative in New Zealand.
When Sanctions Hit Energy Supply Chains
Gasprom, one of the main Russian energy companies, has restricted its gas deliveries to Germany to approximately 67 million m3, down from around 167 million. This move, following Russia’s suspension of natural gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria in April this year, puts additional pressure on European energy markets. The suspension was considered a ‘political’ move by the German economy minister. The LNG sourcing strategy, on which the Union had been banking on to replace Russian gas, has suffered a setback with the fire at the Freeport LNG facility in Texas, which accounts for about 20% of U.S. exports, many of them to Europe. The facility is now expected to be offline until September and be partially operational until the end of 2022.
It may be worthwhile to review the timeline of events over the last 4 months. Following the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the E.U. issued a set of Russian sanctions, one of which was removing its access to the international SWIFT banking system. Many companies ceased operations and trading with Russia. The idea was that depriving Russia of its access to financial markets and European products will cripple its economy. The ruble lost more than 40% of its value in the weeks following the start of the conflict.
In response to the sanctions, Russia pegged the ruble to the gold standard, introduced capital controls and subsequently demanded payment in rubles for gas deliveries. While several European countries refused to comply with the new payment conditions, including Bulgaria, Poland, and Finland, others such as Germany and Italy allowed their energy companies to open accounts with Gazprombank to pay for Russian gas in rubles, effectively circumventing the E.U. sanctions against Russia.
Four months into the sanctions, all E.U. countries are facing increased energy prices, shortages while Russian energy sales increased by 20% (to $285 billion) compared to last year’s. The main problem seems to be one of leverage. The E.U. primarily banked on monetary sanctions. Money has no intrinsic value but is a medium of exchange and of storing value which is mainly based on trust. De-banking Russia eliminated these values from foreign currency (what’s the point of accepting euros if I can’t to spend them anywhere?). The flipside is often overlooked. When money loses its ability to store value and to provide a medium of exchange, things become more important in trade – commodities, products etc. Here, Russia has significantly more leverage. While Europe produces advanced manufactured goods which Russia needs, it requires energy to produce them, as well as keeping its citizens alive. And much of that energy comes from Russia. If Russian energy flows stop, so does European manufacturing and much of Europe’s competitive advantage.