Yes, it can handle very large photo and video libraries! Users have reported successfully backing up over 20k photos and videos without issues. I don't have 150k photos and videos for testing.
Currently, direct backup of photos and videos stored only in iCloud is not supported. I will consider adding iCloud integration in a future update.
The original album and photo information will be preserved. Photos and videos will be organized into backup folders by Device Model/Year/Month.
This is where superconductors come into play, i.e. materials that allow you to move electricity at no loss due to electrical resistance. The problem with those (traditionally, at least) has been that they usually operate at very low temperatures, which of course again require energy to be maintained.
A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor would be the breakthrough required for doing this at scale. This of course would still require significant infrastructure investment.
A room-temperature, ambient-pressure, non-ceramic superconductor would be the breakthrough, because you need your superconductor cable to be transportable, repairable and not be a kilometer long piece of ceramic with zero tolerance for defects.
There's a project here proposing to transport 1.75GW across 5000km between Australia and Singapore.
The project is reported as costing $30 billion (22.6 billion USD) - but I think that also includes a 12,000 hectare solar farm and a bias battery as well.
A kilometre of a 1GW HVDC ground line costs $0.7-1mln. Double or triple that for sea lines[0].
China has had 2000km+ lines online for years now, so there's precedent. Not for solar specifically, but plainly to connect distant grids.
We have huge fiber optic connectors wrapping the planet, so there's precedent here as well.
Overall a global solar grid is technically feasible and actually not terribly expensive, but we need to solve the political issues preventing it first.
EDIT [0] for comparison highways cost $4mln per kilometre in the US and double to triple that in the EU.
It’s frustrating that there are no consequences for companies and organizations that don’t have enough security/know-how/motivation to prevent data theft. Would it make sense to have a law that would penalize leaks and theft?
There are financial consequences for healthcare data leaking (actual monetary fines) and some consequences for payment data leaking (primarily in the form of higher rates) but there's no significant penalties for leaking SSNs. So every adult feels like they get their data leaked on an annual basis and only get free credit monitoring. I think adding penalties for SSNs leaking would help.
Admittedly there are some macro effects that are causing security to be taken more seriously by companies in general. The proliferation of compliance programs especially SOC2 had made basic security the default for a large portion of b2b tech companies. Cyber insurance requirements are increasing. Newer state regulations and SEC regulations have pushed other companies to increase resources dedicated to security.
That said this is an uphill battle after a decade or so of companies having no security with passwords or SSNs in plaintext and everyone having access permissions.
> Would it make sense to have a law that would penalize leaks and theft?
GDPR has such provisions, if the company didn't do enough to protect the data. E.g. British Airways were fined for bad practices and because their website had a card scraper for multiple days which they should have detected.
