I enjoyed about your blog post, but I was curious about the claim in point 2 above. I asked Claude and it seems the claim is false:

# Fact-Checking This Climate Impact Claim

Let me break down this claim with actual data:

## The Numbers

*US Air Conditioning:* - US A/C uses approximately *220-240 TWh/year* (2020 EIA data) - This represents about 6% of total US electricity consumption

*Global Data Centers:* - Estimated *240-340 TWh/year globally* (IEA 2022 reports) - Some estimates go to 460 TWh including cryptocurrency

*AI's Share:* - AI represents roughly *10-15%* of data center energy (IEA estimates this is growing rapidly)

## Verdict: *The claim is FALSE*

The math doesn't support a 4:1 ratio. US A/C and global data centers use *roughly comparable* amounts of energy—somewhere between 1:1 and 1:1.5, not 4:1.

The "40 times AI" conclusion would only work if the 4x premise were true.

## Important Caveats

1. *Measurement uncertainty*: Data center energy use is notoriously difficult to measure accurately 2. *Rapid growth*: AI energy use is growing much faster than A/C 3. *Geographic variation*: This compares one country's A/C to global data centers (apples to oranges)

## Reliable Sources - US EIA (Energy Information Administration) for A/C data - IEA (International Energy Agency) for data center estimates - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studies

The quote significantly overstates the disparity, though both are indeed major energy consumers.

see Nominative Determinism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

TIL you can still buy fax machines!

I still have a 25 year old HP LaserJet printer that has a built in FAX function. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to use it since we gave up our landline about 20 years ago. Still prints well, however.

It's still included on some office multifunctional printer/scanner machines.

We have one in our office.

The aha moment for me was to type a space after the characters I'm searching for - then hit tab. You then get the list of options ranked (and a nice view showing the contents of each folder).

Release blog post with more details: https://swinsian.com/blog/2025/08/19/swinsian-3/

The best macOS music player. Highly recommended - I use it every day for a huge collection of music and it's fabulous.

Obsidian recently introduced a native 'Download attachments for current file' which you can invoke with cmd / ctrl + p.

I like this as I don't always want all the images for something I've clipped from the web. This gives me the choice.

For people who have tried the new agent panel in Zed, how does it compare to something like Cursor or Windsurf?

(I've yet to dive deep into AI coding tools and currently use Zed as an 'open source Sublime Text alternative' because I like the low latency editing.)

I'd say it's closer to Claude Code than to either of the two IDE-oriented ones. I say this because it actually does the right thing more often than either Cursor or Windsurf. It gathers the right context, asks for feedback when needed and has yet to "go back and forth between two failing solutions" like I've seen Cursor do.

I don't know what Zed's doing under the hood but the diffing tool has yet to fail on me (compared to multiple times per conversation in Cursor). Compared to previous Zed AI iterations, this one edits files much more willingly and clearly communicates what it's editing. It's also faster than Claude Code at getting up to speed on context and much faster than Cursor or Windsurf.

what about the vscode agent? is there a reason it is never in the conversation? I thought they added an agent early 2025?

Claude created an SVG as an artifact for me - it's pretty good: https://claude.site/artifacts/b6d146cc-bed8-4c76-a8cd-5f8c34...

The hour hand is pointing directly at 9 when it should be between 9 and 10.

It got it wrong the first time (the minute hand was pointing at 5). I told it that and it apologised and fixed it.

Because your image is code.

Try something that outputs pixel.

Then you see the curse of limited training data

I can recommend Wipr 2 - excellent blocker from a great developer. I've now switched to Safari for all my YouTube watching. Universal purchase works on macOS, ipadOS and iOS.

I just downloaded it.

It works way better for Youtube than the one I had, and after some more testing I don't need the additional annoyance blockers I had. I might just go back to Safari!

Thanks for the recommendation.