Population Implosion

The March 3rd edition of The New Yorker had a long article (it was the only thing I got read this AM during my usual Saturday AM breakfast out) about the global declining birth rate. The whole thing reads like science fiction, not unlike Children of Men.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population-implosion

The poster child for this issue is South Korea (half of whose population lives in Seoul, BTW), whose birth rate stands at 0.7. (2.1 is considered a "replacement rate"). Each successive generation is a fraction of the size of the previous one. There are schools in the country that had one thousand students at their peak that now have five.

The U.S. rate isn't nearly that low: 1.66, but still well below replacement. But even immigration won't address the issue of who is going to do the work and pay the taxes that fund Social Security, since for the U.S. the nations from which people immigrate also have declining birth rates.

Reasons? Lots of them. But a big part was the deliberate planning on the parts of non-governmental organizations and governments who panicked about population growth, the food supply, and the environment decades ago. If you think about it, NGOs and governments have, at best, very coarse control over the "birth rate" knob, so getting it tuned perfectly to the desired rate - whatever that may be - is almost impossible. Most got it too low. South Korea got it way too low.

I won't live long enough to have to worry much about this. But eventually we'll have to use AI and automation just to do fundamental stuff like farming and distribute basic goods; there won't be anyone to do the work, and the people that do exist will be too old.

This won't really effect the climate change issue, since climate change is happening on the span of decades, while population decline is on the span of generations.

It occurred to me that this would be an interesting SF story: aliens - perhaps "obligate reproducers" (adults have to procreate or they die) - show up and say "Hey, no sweat, we're patient, we'll stick around until you aren't using your planet anymore. It's just a matter of time."

Edit: capitalism seems to depend on an ever growing population of consumers. What it really means when the population explosion trend reverses - as inevitable as this may seem - is anyone's guess... but it can't be good.

Let Them Burn

A recent article in MIT Technology Review (probably paywalled) is about dealing with electric vehicle battery fires.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/24/1111551/ev-lithium-ion-battery-fire-first-responders-firefighters/

It's based on the research by an EV battery pack designer who is also a volunteer firefighter, and who now consults with fire departments on this issue. His conclusion: let them burn, while trying to isolate them from surrounding vehicles and structures. Isolating can mean anything from covering them with a fire blanket, to (as one case study illustrated) moving the EV to a vacant lot with a forklift while it is burning. Wow.

Fires need three things to continue to burn: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Typical firefighting techniques involve interrupting one or more of these constituents. But lithium battery packs provide all three all by themselves, as part of a "thermal runaway" chemical reaction.

Traditional vehicle fires are typically centered around the easily accessible engine compartment, and can usually be put out in minutes with hundreds of gallons of water. EV fires are centered around the huge battery pack often underneath the vehicle, and - if they can be put out at all - may take hours and thousands of gallons of water, and may later spontaneously reignite.

The article has many worrisome case studies, including one where an EV owner accidentally drove his car off a pier in Florida. When the battery pack became saturated with electrically conductive salt water, it shorted and ignited... and continued to burn under thirty feet of water. Wow again. EV batteries igniting when saturated with salt water from flooding in coastal areas due to hurricanes is apparently a growing phenomena.

As a typical homeowner with lots of lithium battery packs - some quite large, for power tools - I've gotten concerned enough about this that I don't leave the packs on chargers when no one is at home (not even phones, laptops, or tablets). And I have a small chest of drawers inside the house just inside the door from the garage in which I store my expensive charged lithium battery packs (which don't like the cold either, but that's more of a longevity issue). I do keep rechargeable gear in both automobiles and on both motorcycles (jumper battery packs, tire inflators), and I worry about that.

Mrs. Overclock recently bought some small fire blankets, one of which is now out in the garage next to the wall mounted fire extinguisher.

Update: another recent article on the same topic from the same source, the gist being preventing EV battery fires is a lot more practical than extinguishing them.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/27/1112556/battery-fire-safety/

When The Minimum Viable Product Is Too Minimal And Not Viable

All technology product development is fractally iterative, whether you want it to be or not. The agile development processes at least recognizes this. But agile, and its idea of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), replaces the waterfall development process' requirements - which consumes a lot of thought, research, and consensus ahead of time - with a competent product manager and close proximity to the customer. My long professional experience working in both waterfall and agile processes suggests that this can work. Except when it doesn't.

This past spring I was the victim of a Minimum Viable Product strategy when I bought BMW Motorcycle's latest GPS device, the Connected Ride Navigator (CRN-1), for my 2024 BMW R1250GS Adventure ("The Horse With No Name"), my fourth BMW motorcycle. I spent about US$800 on the CRN-1, and it was a disaster. Prior BMW Motorrad navigators were built by Garmin, and to be fair, had their own hardware issues. But this one was a BMW product, reportedly with TomTom maps like those used in the in-dash navigation system in my 2016 Subaru WRX Limited ("The Batmobile"). The hardware seemed pretty solid, but it was as if the software had been designed and written by someone who had never used a navigator (BMW's or otherwise), and had never even ridden a motorcycle.

Besides having lots of professional experience writing code to use GPS devices and to use Open Street Maps, I had used an old Garmin standalone unit on many car trips, and my Subaru WRX has an in-dash TomTom. My basic navigation needs are simple. I want to know what road I'm on. I want to know what the next cross street is. I want to know what direction I'm going. Basic stuff like that. The CRN-1 couldn't do any of that. On a recent trip through northern New Mexico, the screen typically was all gray with a single green line - presumably indicating the road - on it; no labels, no other information - no speed, no direction, etc. And when there were labels, the font was so tiny as to be unreadable with my old eyes using my progressive spectacles.

Here's the MVP thing: since I bought the CRN-1, there have been two software updates, and with each one the device has gotten a little better. But after the New Mexico debacle I had already bought a Garmin Zūmo XT2 navigator, a motorcycle-specific model from BMW's now-competitor, for about US$500. Since I had to modify the navigator cradle on the motorcycle for the XT2, I am unlikely to ever go back.

Sure wish I hadn't spent the money on the CRN-1. You'd think I'd know better than to buy the first release of any tech product. After all, that's why I bought the R1250GS instead of its R1300GS replacement. I'm used to BMW's motorcycle products being well designed and overpriced; the new BMW navigator got one of those right. The MVP CRN-1 was too little and too late.

Update (2025-03-11)

After just short of a year with the eye-wateringly expensive BMW Connected Ride Navigator sitting on a shelf in the garage while the Garmin Zumo was mounted on the bike, I am prepared to give the CRN another shot. Although I haven't road tested it yet, this latest software update looks promising. I can actually read the labels on the streets as I walk around my semi-rural neighborhood between Denver and Golden Colorado.

But this experience - deeply personal with respect to my wallet - has not made me a fan of agile software development, a process I have worked in professionally (and kind of liked). Advocates of agile processes will note - probably correctly - that the mistake wasn't the process itself, but in BMW (or to whomever they contracted this out) not having the right definition for what constitutes a Minimum Viable Product. But, see: those same agile advocates will claim the process eliminates the need for requirements. But I say: the definition of the MVP are the requirements. Shipping a product many months before it was useable is a great - or maybe a terrible - example of casting your users as unpaid (in fact, just the opposite) beta testers.

For sure, I'm keeping the Garmin Zumo XT2 handy.