https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-french-fishing-war-post-brexit-relations/

Why Britain and France can’t stop fighting about fish

Fish is a tiny contributor to both countries’ national incomes — 0.06 percent of France’s economy and 0.1 percent of the U.K.’s. — but could nonetheless trigger a trade war and poison the U.K.’s relationship with its closest neighbors.

Fishing represents a tiny percentage of the GDP for Britain and for France but it’s highly symbolic in both countries.

It just never ends.

Click the headphones button.

Ah, gotcha. Hmm.

I’ve no familiarity with it, but it looks like this runs on iOS, might also be an option:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabora

Collabora’s department Collabora Productivity is the main developer of LibreOffice.[3][4][5][6]

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/collabora-office/id1440482071

Collabora Office is a text editor, spreadsheet and presentation program based on LibreOffice, the world’s most popular Open Source office suite — and now it’s on iOS, enhancing your possibilities to work on mobile devices.

It looks to be open-source and on GitHub.

https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online

Just run LibreOffice locally?

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Ah, fair enough, maybe the target here is default DNS-over-HTTP in browsers.

Italy is using its Piracy Shield law to go after Google, with a court ordering the Internet giant to immediately begin poisoning its public DNS servers

I don’t know why Italy is wasting time on this.

Italy is not going to be able to force all public DNS servers out there to block things that they want blocked. Anyone using Google’s DNS servers is already going out of their way to use an alternate DNS and can probably plonk in another IP address if they want. It’s not as if Google has the only publicly-accessible DNS server out there.

If Italy really and truly doesn’t want a DNS server that is doing this to be accessible in Italy, go after Italian network service providers, and instead of playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole until they run into someone who just tells Italy to buzz off, just block it. Now, some portion of Italians are probably going to still get to DNS servers that ignore Italy’s views on things via VPNs unless Italy wants to ban those too, but it’d at least be more-effective than trying to go after every DNS server provider out there, which is definitely is going to leave DNS servers that don’t block sites accessible online.

Frankly, I don’t even think that DNS-based censorship is very effective in the first place anyway, but if you’re going to do it, might as well at least do it as effectively as possible.

Vidoc posted on local job boards, like the one in Poland. But whoever was behind this operation figured out that it’s profitable to pose as Serbian, Polish, and other eastern European profiles

I’d think that this could be pretty easily resolved by just having a real-life interview, at least for the final interview.

It sounds like Vidoc is in Poland. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were being hired for an engineering position, I’d think that it’d be reasonable to be willing to travel to a final interview, and for the company to cover any costs.

But, okay, say that it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the finances don’t work, maybe they want to hire from somewhere where it’s not practical for people to travel to their location. I’d think that it’d be possible to have an “interviewing company”. That company just obtains some office space, sets up videoconference conferencing rooms, and has their own trusted cameras and suchlike present.

Combating “Skynet”-level threats

During the experiment, the professionals were faced with a typical national security threat: A foreign government interfering in an election in their country. They were then assigned to one of three scenarios: a control scenario, where the threat only involved human hackers; a scenario with light, “tactical” AI involvement, where hackers were assisted by AI; and a scenario with heavy levels of AI involvement, where participants were told that the threat was orchestrated by a “strategic” AI program.

When confronted with a strategic AI-based threat — what Whyte calls a “Skynet”-level threat, referencing the “Terminator” movie franchise — the professionals tended to doubt their training and were hesitant to act. They were also more likely to ask for additional intelligence information compared with their colleagues in the other two groups, who generally responded to the situation according to their training.

That’s a human-level (well, superhuman) AGI. I don’t think that we have a good handle on what the limitations or strengths would be. I’d try to gather as much information or thoughts from others as I could too.

In the same vein, if someone gave me a scenario where they said “You’re facing a demonic necromancer. How do you counter them?” I’d probably be a lot less confident about how to act than if they said “you’re facing someone with a pistol”, because this is kind of out of the blue, and I don’t even really understand the nature of the threat. There’s no AI there, but it’s a novel scenario with a lot of unknowns, and it’s not as if I’ve read through histories of how people dealt with that or recommended doctrine for that. I don’t think that it’s the AI that’s so much the X factor here as it is the sheer degree of unknown factors that show up.

If you’ve already got a VR headset and you’re happy with it, I’m envious. But for the rest of us, it’s worth asking the question: just what is it going to take to get on board?

Speaking for myself, if I can use a headset about as well as I do a regular display, that’ll do it for me. I’m less-interested in a gaming-specific peripheral, though that’d be nice frosting on the cake. If I can just carry a headset in a case and a display-less laptop, that’d probably be sufficient to get me onboard the HMD train.

There are real benefits to that:

• Privacy. My screen isn’t visible to anyone nearby.

• Wider field of view possible.

• No glare issues.

• Potentially less power use, since one isn’t blasting light everywhere just to get a little into one’s eye.

• Able to use in any orientation easily, like lying down.

My experience so far has not led me to believe that this is near. I’ve found HMDs to be twitchy about the location relative to the eye, prone to blurriness if nudged a bit off. Blurriness around the edges. On my Royole Moon, fogging up is an issue, due to shields to eliminate light from bleeding in. Limited resolution. For some, inability to easily see the surrounding world. Limited refresh rates. Many headsets can’t really be used with headphones, which is okay, as long as you’re fine with the headphones that come with the headset. [EDIT: As someone else pointed out, setup time is a hassle as well. I want using one to be as trivial as it is today for me to open my wireless headphones case and throw the headphones on my head, with just the addition of a cable.]

I don’t personally really care all that much about price, if the thing can serve as a competitive monitor replacement, since then it’s not just a toy.

I’d also add that I think that there are some genres, like flight sims, where VR has legitimately succeeded. Like, compared to multiple-monitor rigs that some serious flight sim fans have set up, VR is pretty much better in all ways. No physical control panels and such, maybe, but they really want the wide FOV and ability to use the head/eye as an input device.

I’m sure that there are probably some AR applications where you can find an AR headset making sense. Maybe stargazing or something.

But what the article author seems to want is a transition to a world where basically all or a large chunk of new video games are VR-based. And yeah, that hasn’t happened.

EDIT: Honestly, most of the games I find myself spending a lot of time playing aren’t even 3D in the first place. That’s not due to lack of hardware. I have a pretty maxed-out PC, can run them fine. It’s just not what I think is most-entertaining to do — many of the games that I find really deep and replayable are 2D, so I’m not playing the 3D games that I do have. If the games aren’t 3D, it’s hard to see how VR buys much.

The SouthH2 Corridor is a 3,300-kilometre-long infrastructure from North Africa to Germany, via Italy, to transport hydrogen produced largely in Tunisia.

Large scale, export-oriented (green) hydrogen production on the African continent is encouraging a model of development in African countries that is perpetuating the extractivist legacy of the past. It is not welfare promoting but results in export-oriented economies that remove and transport commodities as quickly as possible to meet global demands. This is often accompanied by pollution and exploitation that are unfairly burdening on African people.

goes to look at list of signatories

I can’t help but notice that on a statement principally making the case that the pipeline should not be built because it would harm Tunisians, only six of the signatory organizations objecting are actually out of Tunisia.

For their mod, it sounds like all they need is a momentary switch. You can go to any electronic parts provider and get switches.

Probably not the best for a foot, but one thing that is durable — arcade buttons.

Could get yourself a chunk of plywood board, drill holes in it — sounds like you need a 1 1/8" spade bit — and stick a Happ button in. Those arcade consoles are pretty durable.

There are a bunch of momentary foot switches I see on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pedal+momentary

These ones look metal:

https://www.amazon.com/Hotone-Momentary-Footswitch-Controller-Switcher/dp/B08H1NQCGJ

twice as fast as Tesla’s.

Also, BYD’s CEO presumably isn’t presently involved in trying to set his brand on fire.

One thing I would keep in mind is that the Win64 API does change from release-to-release and that my guess is that if very few people using a software package are still using a version of Windows, application software developers may stop intentionally avoiding newer API calls and features, and will just have their new release require a newer version of Windows.

That may be okay for some use cases, like if you just want to keep an existing system working with existing software. But I think that it’s worth keeping in mind that you may increasingly not be able to use:

• New software packages.

• Newer releases of existing packages.

• Software packages that make use of cloud-based services that drop support.

• New hardware that requires software support.

They’re probably going to take into account the percentage of people using the thing in setting their compatibility targets for developers and their testing.

Windows 11 is the most secure Windows ever built, with comprehensive end-to-end security

Does “end-to-end security” actually mean anything in this context, or is it just intended to evoke “end-to-end encryption”?

One thing I’ve always found funny though is that if we have AI’s that can replace programmers then don’t we also, by definition, have AI’s that can create AI’s?

Well, first, I wouldn’t say that existing generative AIs can replace a programmer (or even do that great a job at assisting one, increasing productivity). I do think that there’s potentially an unexplored role for creating an LLM-based “grammar checker” for code, which may be a larger win in doing debugging work that would normally require a human.

But, okay, set that aside – let’s say that we imagine that we have an AI in 2025 that can serve as a drop-in replacement for a programmer, can translate plain English instructions into a computer program as well as a programmer could. That still doesn’t get us to the technological singularity, because that probably involves also doing a lot of research work. Like, you can find plenty of programmers who can write software…but so far, none of them have made a self-improving AGI. :-)

Like, the Powerwall things? Yeah, sure, they’re in the same sort of class. I think — not gonna go looking through all of 'em — that the things I linked to above all are intended to have someone plug devices directly into them, and the Powerwalls get wired into the electrical panel, but same basic idea. They aren’t really devices where energy density matters all that much, because once you put the battery somewhere, it probably isn’t going to move much after that.

If people want to get one for the hell of it, I’m not going to stand in their way, but I really don’t think that this product plays well to the strength of sodium-ion batteries.

My understanding is that sodium-ion batteries are not as energy-dense, but are expected to be cheaper per-kilowatt-hour than lithium-based batteries.

But this is a small, very-expensive-relative-to-storage-capacity, portable battery.

I’d think that sodium-ion batteries would be more interesting for things like an alternative to this sort of thing — large-capacity, mostly-non-moved-around batteries used for home backup during power outages, stuff like that. Maybe grid buffering.

Don’t connect your Roku to the internet.

I thought that Roku was some kind of streaming service to a device. Doesn’t that need to be Internet-connected to function?

kagis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roku

Ah. Apparently that’s what they originally did, but they’ve also subsequently come out with smart TVs, which I assume can operate without an Internet connection.

It concludes that “estimates about the magnitude of labor market impacts (by AI) may be well above what might actually materialize.”

I can believe that in the short term. Especially if someone is raising money for Product X, they have a strong incentive to say “oh, yeah, we can totally have a product that’s a drop-in replacement for Job Y in 2-3 years”.

So, they’re highlighting something like this:

A 2024 study by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, on labor force perception of AI (“IIMA Study”) states that 68% of the surveyed white-collar employees expect AI to partially or fully automate their jobs in the next five years.

I think that it is fair to say that there is very probably a combination of people over-predicting generalized capabilities of existing systems based on what they see where existing systems can work well in very limited roles. Probably also underpredicting the fact that there are probably going to be hurdles that we crash into that we don’t yet know about.

But I am much more skeptical about people underestimating impact in the long term. Those systems are probably going to be considerably more-sophisticated and may work rather differently than the current generative AI things. Think about how transformative industrialization was, when we moved to having machines fueled by fossil fuels doing a lot of what had to be manual labor done by humans in the past. The vast majority of things that people were doing pre-industrialization aren’t done by people anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States

In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population

https://www.agriculturelore.com/what-percentage-of-americans-work-in-agriculture/

The number of Americans employed in agriculture has been declining for many years. In 1900, 41% of the workforce was employed in agriculture. In 2012, that number had fallen to just 1%.

Basically, the jobs that 90% of the population had were in some way replaced.

That being said, I also think that if you have AI that can do human-level tasks across-the-board, it’s going to change society a great deal. I think that the things to think about are probably broader than just employment; like, I’d be thinking about things like major shifts in how society is structured, or dramatic changes in the military balance of power. Hell, even merely take the earlier example: if you were talking to someone in 1776 about how the US would change by the time it reached 2025, if they got tunnel vision and focused on the fact that about 90% of jobs would be replaced in that period, you’d probably say that that’s a relatively-small facet of the changes that happened. The way people live, what they do, how society is structured, all that, is quite different from the way it had been for the preceeding ~12k years, the structures that human society had developed since agriculture was introduced.

It sounds like the issue is the bytes that come before the data it wants, rather than after.