PaulRobinson

Or do they have to do that and eliminate their dependence on Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Intel, AMD, nvidia, Apple, Mastercard, Visa, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Juniper, Cisco, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Adobe and Uber?

Some of those are not like the others. Some are B2C and will face (indeed, are facing), tougher regulations. Some are B2B or B2G and there are already companies squaring up to take some of that pie. Many are ultimately reliant on ASML tech which I think Europe is prepared to weaponise in a trade war if they need to.

And yes, it'll take leadership, and constitution of the United States, or constitution of the physical body: one of them is taking that man out of the White House in the next 10, 20 or however many years.

But the tone has been set. Trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy. The direction of travel has been created, and while it might take a generation to get to an end goal, the process has started already.

US tech does not understand or comprehend the amount of damage they’ve self inflicted in the last couple of years. There will be a steady drip of this in years to come, I suspect.

Allows you to move stuff from capex to opex while remaining in compliance and governance lines.

They’re not idiots. A lot of thought went into it, and the idea it’s all just incompetent BS dreamt up on a golf course is madness.

The UK straddles the 55th parallel North. Due to the jet streams (and formerly, trade winds) carrying warm air from the Caribbean, it has often benefitted from a milder climate than other regions at similar latitudes: Alaska, Siberia, the Baltic states.

But this is wild. I am only in my 40s but I've seen the climate change significantly and it having a major impact on flora and fauna.

When I was a kid, English wine was a joke and now it's winning prizes because we have the same climate French vineyards did when I was a child. The idea of growing olives in the UK was laughable, but now in the South East of England it's starting to look commercially viable. Only 10 years ago I remember days with highs over 30C being rare, but we just had two weeks of them, accompanied by tropical nights (not dropping below 20C), for the first time I remember.

And now... bananas. Which is, pun intended, utterly bananas.

It feels too late to stop the worst of the damage, but the idea of this accelerating and getting worse is just astonishing to me, that within my lifetime I'd witness such a huge swing in climatology.

I've been on loops for people with a PhD in ML and associated fields to work on R&D roles for the FAANG I work for, so I think I have more of a chance of deploying this view in reality than most.

Yes.

I disagree. I'd immediately have a ton of questions for most ex-OpenAI and ex-Anthropic people as my default position would be "poor business/economics judgement in role, chose to ride a hype cycle, now sat in front of me for a reason".

I'm not saying it's toxic to have it on your work history, but it's far from gold plated. They'd have work to do for me, and for many, many people in the industry, to prove that I'd want to work with them.

Well, that's not true, is it?

I say this as somebody who is paternally British and maternally Irish. My great-grandfather was in the Royal Irish constabulary, but his eldest daughter (my great Aunt), married a leader of the IRA. Most of my Irish great uncles came to England from Ireland and enlisted in the British Army and the RAF in WW2 while Ireland remained neutral. After the War, some of them returned to Ireland, some of them stayed in England.

The real picture of life on the ground is complicated, and I'm going to assume you are not living amongst it, by your use of "their" when talking about Ireland.

At the point of Irish independence it was decided that those parts of Ireland who majority wanted to be part of the Irish republic should form a republic, and those that didn't (the six counties of Northern Ireland), would remain part of the United Kingdom. And so it is today.

The 100+ years since have held multiple chapters in the story, including murders on both sides, terrorism in the UK (including an attempt on a sitting Prime Minister's life), oppression of republicans in Northern Ireland, and a hard-fought and wrung out peace agreement.

The current First Minister of Northern Ireland is the leader of Sinn Fein, a formerly proscribed (read: banned), party that was considered the "political arm of the Provisional IRA" (they are the terrorists who bombed PM Margaret Thatcher).

The way we got to that state was the Good Friday agreement in 1998. That allows people in Northern Ireland to express both their Britishness and their Irishness (yes, they can have both! In the same person!), without fear of reprisal or judgement, either culturally or officially. People explore their cultures as they see fit. They vote for people as they see fit, even if London doesn't particularly like the leaders they vote for. They live. And they have a say in how things should be.

There is no oppression of the language. Gaelic is slowly flourishing again in the Republic, and those who wish to use it in Northern Ireland can do so. There's no mandate for dual language road signage in Northern Ireland as there is in Wales, but there's no real ask for it either: at some point it might happen, in the same way the Welsh Language Act came about in 1993 (another sign of UK government encouraging self-determination - the Welsh Assembly).

Successive recent governments of the Republic of Ireland for their part are happy with this situation: the price of keeping the peace if the six counties were handed over to the Republic today would likely bankrupt the Irish treasury (and it would have been worse during The Troubles): it would break the Good Friday agreement, there would be a rise of terrorism and so on. They know they'd have to ask for external assistance, and then we're just back to the worst of The Troubles.

The vast majority accept the right to self determination is the way, now, and for the future. Over time, it's expected the appetite within Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic will grow within the population itself. This is because of demographic change: the unionist population is slowly becoming a minority (funny how when a Catholic demographic of Republicans are told not to use birth control their birthrate is higher than the Protestant population who do use birth control - I am here today thanks to this marvellous papal determination :) ).

One day, there will be a vote. One day, change will happen.

But it won't be because of something being imposed. Or an imposition being removed.

I suggest you do a little more research, and look into what's actually going on with the UK here. The history of it - as with the history of most things - is rich, complex, sad, hopeful, and lived. It's not a slogan. It's not a talk given by a politician at a fund raising event. It's not the quip given by a guy you hear talking about it in a bar or at a dinner table who never set foot in any of the countries he's talking about. Just be a bit more curious.

Headline could read: "RISC-V adoption is 'inevitable' according to RISC-V advocate at RISC-V conference to people who are invested in RISC-V who had come to hear about state of RISC-V adoption".

I'm curious where the data is to support the argument.

I am struggling to see the adoption appetite outside of niche applications where licensing costs of existing architectures are a key barrier.

Not according to the people who live there. Or in fact, Spain, who ceded it to the UK hundreds of years ago.

Or do you think Spain has a legal right based on geographic proximity to enforce a culture on those people despite existing treaties, laws, culture and democracy?

The British government have a strong, well-established (since ~1950), and arguably inflexible attitude towards "right to self-determination".

Meaning: the people who live in a place get to decide who governs them and their society.

People in Gibraltar, The Falklands, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland all have different wants, needs and asks of the UK, and the UK honours all of them. There are other overseas territories with different relationships, plus the Commonwealth too.

If that ask changes (and in Northern Ireland it likely will in our lifetimes, the others less so), the governance will change.

Sometimes there is an ask for a closer relationship through the British Commonwealth (such as South Africa). Sometimes there is an ask for the UK to go away, thanks but no thanks (such as Malta). Each relationship is handled individually, but through a lens of self-determination. That's the priority in the FCO, in Parliament, in UK media. If a tiny nation wants to be British, the UK will go to war over it despite it making little sense (Falklands). If a tiny nation wants independence despite tactical advantage for UK to keep it, independence will be fought for (Malta happened, Diego Garcia is a WIP - watch this space). Where there is division (Northern Ireland), the majority view is observed, but with democratic and cultural structures created to try and make sure minority views have a voice in that governance.

That said, there is a caveat: observance of treaties tend to over-ride local preference in some cases, so if there is a legal argument to ignore the wishes of the locals, those wishes may be ignored: Hong Kong is the most prominent example of this in recent times (locals seemed to want to stay British, China said the 100-year agreement was up and there'd be no renewal, end of, so China it became).

Diego Garcia is another example, which has got messy because of the Whitehouse not understanding the UK's perverse inclination towards local democracy and the right to self-determination (see also non-UK entities the Whitehouse has not understood well: Greenland, absurd noises about Canada, and so on).

When able, the UK has consistently been committed to restoring governance to a local population's preferred model peacefully since ~1950 (India being the last real mess), and if the people of Gibraltar want to be governed by the Spanish, they'd be governed by the Spanish within ~2-3 years.

The idea that local people should have no say in this because "it's obvious" who "they belong to", is the colonialist notion here. A land isn't about geography. It's about people. It took a long time for the UK to understand this. Eventually they did. Most European colonial powers did. Others are still trying to catch up, it seems.

If the unsubscribe button is hidden behind 3 screens and is in 3 point font that's pretty clearly a dark pattern.

According to who? US law is established as heading into this absurd notion of subjectivity, so the interpreter and viewer of the law as written is now as important as the law being written in the first place.

Gerrymandering black voters out of being able to elect a black representative? Well as long as the people doing it don't admit being racist, it's all fine! Want to take bribes from foreign governments? Well, if you're the head of the executive branch of government or a close personal friend, you can interpret that better than the bestest out there so those anti-corruption laws clearly don't apply, right?

"That's not a dark pattern, your honour!", Shady McShadeface attests in court, "we're just trying to make offers we think the customer is interested in before they confirm their final and terrible decision with awful consequences for them!". How else would the poor uninformed consumer not be aware of that special deep discount (today only, 4 hours left!), on that pillow set that they absolutely must need to consider on their way out of the door?

Infinite scroll is deemed by many a dark pattern, and by others a particularly clean way of dealing with a UX challenge. Subjective, eye of the beholder, and all that.

It reminds me a little of the "I know pornography when I see it" argument, and I think it's fair to call it a dark pattern given the evidence against it, but like pornography, consenting adults should be able to consent to exposure to it for their own "convenience", perhaps. I just personally think the button to turn it on should be hidden behind 3 screens and in a 3 point font...

All games should have the option to have the timer turned off.

I regularly do cryptic crosswords (so this sort of game is in my wheelhouse). My goal is to complete the puzzle, not do so in a particular time. Completing it is often hard (depending on which paper I've picked up). There is no timer when I'm say with paper and pen, so it baffles me that every online newspaper cryptic has a timer on by default, and in some cases it can't be disabled.

It's also the thing that "ruined" the LinkedIn puzzles for me. They're generally fun puzzles, but timing it against my PB or - worse - people I'm connected to on LinkedIn just wrecks the experience. I opted out of leaderboards, because I don't really want to know a guy I worked with years ago trashes me at Queens every morning.

Strong agreement that a "relax" mode is needed here - at longer word lengths its becoming a test of recall and anagram ability, and that's fun in its own right. The timer just makes it a bit "meh", and I won't be returning as a result. Shame.

Like XMPP?

Or, perhaps the asynch chat thing is a distraction and we need something asynchronous that's well proven. Like... email?

Slack should never have been a thing IMHO. I remember first using it at a startup I was CTO of at the behest of the CEO ("everyone is using it"), back in around 2013. Instantly hated it. Just wish we could go back to good old email, TBH.

Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.

Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.

TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.

Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?

Demonstrably, provably: yes.

Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.

Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?

Donate your tokens then.

LLMs are many things, but one thing they definitely are not is cheap/free to run at scale.

The mild alarm for me is that this won't be limited to just games.

I've spent almost 30 years building applications for the web. I've been switching my attention to different models of distribution in part because I see a desire for people to not be paying monthly seat subscriptions, but also because it can simplify my own operations - I want to move to a solo indie dev model, and giving you an executable you run means you look after "operations", and I don't. Desktop applications in particular have the potential for you to integrate them with your agent workflows.

But if I put effort into building some secret sauce into an application, and there is then a risk that by distributing it, it gets reverse engineered and then rebuilt by competitors, malicious actors, whoever, there is now the same economic risk to software distribution as there is to DRM-free media distribution. As a result, I might just not do it.

Now, some people will argue software wants to be free - build on the F/LOSS economic model, this becomes less of an issue - but there isn't really a viable F/LOSS economic model for most developers.

Per seat monthly subscriptions with remote access seems like the way we need to be, then...

It's a criminal act to not pay the license fee if you own a TV capable of receiving BBC channels (i.e. it's plugged into an aerial, satellite or cable box). Prison time is theoretically possible, but most prosecutions result in a fine.

There's more info on how the license fee works here: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...

As a result, and given that most political parties sense bias in the BBC (it's telling for me that the right-wing think it's too left-wing, and the left-wing think it's too right-wing, meaning it's probably just quite balanced and open and apolitical), the funding model is a hot political potato.

Recent announcements have suggested that the license fee should apply to anyone with a car radio (radio licenses were phased out years ago), and/or using streaming services regardless of whether they consume BBC content at all. This has not gone down well.

For me, I think regular consumption of at least some part of the BBC's very wide and diverse output is the only monocultural thing in the UK that helps people feel a common sense of belonging - we're a very multicultural society (and have been at least since WW2, and arguably since the Romans). People who hate the BBC are, in my experience, more likely to voice racist, homophobic, Islamophobic or Covid-hoax views.

So, in short, making almost every household in the country fork out £180/year to fund it is not something that goes without political consequence or debate, and it's likely that rolling it back in some form is on the cards in the next 10 years.

True, I'll take that. I haven't been on a machine without bash in ~25 years though, but I have been on machines without vi. But yeah, from a "what can I expect from a POSIX-like environment bare-bones minimum install" perspective, you're right.

It's not python that's the dependency that needs managing. It's pip and the keystone cops it brings along.

Known system dependency that's (almost) always on the system you're on.

I remember somebody once telling me that they had learned vi because "it was always installed". Well, no, technically, the only editor you can be sure is there is ed. So, you know, learn that. I was surprised that they actually did.

Bash is syntactically not perfect, I agree. However it's a well known, mature, stable environment. LLMs can write it well if you need them to. If it was perfect, we'd never have had Perl, and as a result we'd never have had Ruby, Python and other scripting languages.

But I like it's a tool that doesn't require me to go reach for a package manager and some build tools I don't always have on every system.

By OP's framing, it seems so.

But I think there's more nuance here. I can buy a copyrighted book, read it, and then sell it or give it to you for free. The copyright holder's rights have not been violated: I've not copied it, the clue is in the name copyright.

It's not legal for me to go into a library, borrow a book, and then make a copy of it. It's a larger breach to then share that copy more broadly by making more copies.

In the digital era copying is cheaper, and distribution is broader. This caused panic within publishers of all media - they wanted to provide the convenience of digital distribution and consumption (and realise the cost savings), but noted that without DRM, copying would mean there was a risk they'd only ever sell one copy of a game, film, album or book.

This is a snap back to the extreme interpretation of enforcing copyrights. Publishers could structure their DRM and licensing to mimic physical media better. For example, the license could be irrevocable and provide a right to the user of a copy in perpetuity, so it can't be withdrawn. The license could be transferred to other owners: I could lend you my copy, you could then return it to me, digitally; I could donate it to a charity; I could sell my license to another individual; it could be part of my estate and bequeathed at my death.

Physical media has flaws, so does digital media. With a little vision and not much technology we could make digital media as awesome as physical media while retaining copyright to drive investment.

Or, we could go the way OP seems to be nudging towards: we try and grow the copyleft media industry to something economically viable and put the entire economic model of controlled distribution into a place of no longer being viable as a business. Big ask.

Not sure how accessible all this is outside of the UK (you'd need to check the BBC Sounds website & app), but the BBC has perfected a couple of great "gets you to sleep" radio outlets.

The oldest is Radio 4, the BBC's national spoken word radio station (there's also Radio 5 which focuses on sport and news, Radio 4 is more a mixture of comedy, arts, culture and news).

Late at night (UK time), there are programmes that were for many years my soundtrack to getting to sleep - news, a short programme (on Sunday it's a recording of some church bells from some church somewhere in the UK countryside - it changes each week), followed by the shipping forecast. The service "signs off" with the national anthem before switching over to the BBC World Service at around 1am through until 6am when it switches back to the iconic Today programme.

The shipping forecast though - that's the gold. If you've never listened to it before, try and find a recording. As an island nation with a decimated but still strong fishing trawler fleet, it's framed as essential safety information, but in truth its just an iconic, beautiful, ever-changing structured poem, read on national radio several times a day. It is perfect for helping calm the mind, it's a weighted blanket for the brain.

Somebody, somewhere realised that a continuity announcer slowly rattling through the shipping forecast was so good at putting over-active minds to sleep that they created a podcast - "The Sleeping Forecast" - which is a mix of slow/ambient music with old shipping forecasts read over them. I love it, but my partner finds it "weird" so I can't listen to it without wearing headphones late at night.

This, somehow, then led to the realisation that Radio 3 (the national classical music station in the UK), could provide more of the same. Cue other programs - Sleep Tracks, Night Tracks - where there is a composition of calming, quieting music, mostly rooted in classical tradition but overall just very ambient and calm.

And then the final inevitable chapter: in the world of DAB radio and digital platforms (including the BBC Sounds app that seemed absurd at its inception but now slowly becoming loved), the BBC realised they could cheaply put together a whole new station: BBC Radio 3 Unwind (or "3U" for short).

All of this being the BBC, there are no ads. No pledge drives. 3 Unwind has no news programming. It's my new go to when anxiety hits.

The BBC isn't perfect, the funding model needs to evolve, but while we have this - just in case one day we don't - do try and enjoy this stuff if you can.

Apologies for the late reply, 10 days on.

I think the human mind is more complicated than regurgitation. I think repeating things we've seen is key to learning and reasoning, but there's a ton of other stuff we don't full understand that LLMs are not even attempting to solve for.

To get to being able to simulate it, I am reminded of the Borges story On Exactitude in Science [0], where we end up just building, well, an actual brain. Can we do that within 3 orders of magnitude as efficiently as the sum of human evolution in our lifetimes? I doubt it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

The physical copy will only get used by one reader (at a time). The ebook is going to be, err, "liberated" more often than not around a dorm?

In all seriousness, this is likely a nudge to a preference they have for how they want to sell this and how you should want to buy it.

I was saying something like this a few years ago when people were getting first excited about ChatGPT. The gap has narrowed, but not by as much as people think.

AI produces output that is very convincing to a non-expert, and (dangerously), it's so good at looking like an expert, they might believe that it is an expert. But the moment you ask someone to use it for something they're an expert in themselves, the holes appear wide, consistent & obvious.

My favourite moment of seeing this in action was watching AI-worrier TV host/comedian Bill Maher. He has spent years talking about the dangers of AI taking everyone's jobs, destroying civilisation, ruining the economy, starting wars, "it's just getting better and better all the time", and so on. But one night he let slip a tell. "It's no good at writing jokes. Not yet, anyway". There you go, Bill... connect those dots...

There is real utility in it being a tool to help experts apply their expertise, as in this story where it speeds up some tasks to help the translator do part of the work, enhance their expertise, allow them to be more productive.

It's a better screwdriver, a better hammer, in the hands of somebody who knows what needs a screwdriver or a hammer. It doesn't replace them. It can't replace them. It's a tool that enhances the human, not an alternative.

I don't understand why this is not widely understood yet, but I'm sure it will in due course.

And I don't expect this to change. Even if the latest model scores 100% on every benchmark, all that really tells us is that it's now more productive/efficient than it was before at helping experts do that work, not that it can replace everyone in that category of work.

Maybe try and get away from the strip malls. :)

I bet there is a river somewhere near you. Explored all of it? What about a hill? Is there a road you've never driven down? It might have some stuff down it you've not seen before. Have you explored all the flora and fauna around you? Obviously you need to stay off private land, but I would be amazed if there is absolutely zero variation in any topology, geology, animal/plant life, or other factor within a 100 mile radius of you.

If that is the case, can you tell us where that is? I want to visit exactly once and never go there again. It sounds both magical and terrifying in one instance, and reminds me of a friend who drove down Route 66 and found the expansive empty plains "the most claustrophobic thing I've ever experienced in my life".

If you email a CEO or President, you're not emailing them. You're emailing a team of EAs who are filtering for them. Their fame leads to a lot of problems in the inbox: begging letters, death threats, and irrelevant noise more than you can imagine.

They also don't know much that you can probably make use of. They might think they do, and you might think they do, but they got there mostly through knowing how to talk to boards and investors, not by being able to engage deeply in expertise that is applicable to most people looking to make their way in the World - and if becoming a CEO of a major tech firm or President is the thing you need the help with, you probably know them or people like them already.

I've met quite a few famous people in tech over the years, particularly open source, and have had some short and some long conversations with many of them. I've found most people pretty approachable.

I also know through another side of my life quite a few people in the media and am an acquaintance of someone who is a household name in the UK. Through him, I've met famous sports people, writers, actors, etc., and through that and other networks I know people who have worked behind the scenes on major TV and theatre shows who have met hundreds of famous people.

The one thing that unifies all of them is obvious, but seemingly lost on a lot of people who "other" those whose names are known to them despite never meeting them: they're all just human.

They're not "other", they're us. Including everyone you see on TV, everyone you have read about in magazines, everyone you see on a stage.

They have to put up with being recognised and people dealing with them in strange ways (how would you really deal with a stranger asking for a selfie while you were eating dinner with your family in a restaurant?), but they still do all the things you and I do. As the old saying goes, they all have to put their trousers on one leg at a time in the morning.

I'd definitely encourage people to seek out experts (not just "famous people" unless those people are famous for expertise), and engage them as you'd want to be engaged about your expertise. You'll find most people will be approachable.

But emailing that specific list of people is unlikely going to get you much beyond a template reply from one of their army of assistants.

The "If it's on substack, it's not a real blog, it's just sparkling page bloat" take is a little strained for me.

The content is great. The tool gives writers a low-friction mechanism to charge for premium content, and works on most people's devices. I would rather have read this on substack, than the author get frustrated at having to learn how to publish pages by hand and give up.

Maybe we just need a better alternative to substack if that's the problem.

Energy efficiency as a "my language is better than yours" point was not on my bingo card for 2026.

JIT as an energy saver intuitively makes sense, and is probably the model most languages need to think about for "shipping to prod". I'm aware Python has started developing this, and given the install base, it's encouraging that results like this show it could have significant benefits for users.