Posts by localzuk 1653 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2011
I'm not sure if you know your history, but during WW2, one of the biggest issues the UK faced was the difficulty importing things from its allies. Europe was at war, so couldn't import from there, and the stuff we imported from the US often ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic due to Uboats... So, all in all, we do need to improve our national strategic resilience.
Not sure any country can go around making these sort of claims without being called a massive hypocrite, especially not China. Questioning government legitimacy is a no-no? So, Taiwan, Tibet? We just don't talk about those then.
And their support for Russia?
Seems like a "do as we say, not as we do" kinda deal.
Their hacking is so prolific as well - their industrial espionage is constant. The amount of secrets they steal and then turn into photocopies of Western technologies is plain to see. Such as the J-20 jet.
This report is obviously just for the home audience, to ensure everyone thinks the US is the big evil.
Yet, here we are. Using the WWW... So, if other systems existed and what TBL did was not overly important? Why didn't those other systems take off like TBL's system did?
This arguing against what TBL did seems really bizarre to me. Do people argue that Ford didn't do anything great with his release of the Model T? There were other cars around at the time too. Your argument doesn't really hold any water to me.
I feel you're missing out the fact that the web as it stands now is due to decades of development to make it more useful than it originally was.
Originally, you couldn't access email via the web. You couldn't chat via the web. You couldn't do a lot of things via the web. They each had their own services that sat upon the Internet. Email had its own clients using IMAP, or even local clients directly on the server you received email on. Chat was done via IRC, via dedicated clients. Transferring files was done using FTP servers via their own client.
It has taken decades for decent web alternatives to each of those things to appear. But, those web alternatives often still use the original tools behind the scenes. Gmail still sits atop an email server running SMTP and the like.
So, the distinction is pretty important. The Internet and WWW are not the same thing.
Far more animals die due to fossil fuels than wind ever will kill.
Not because of windows. That's a dumb argument.
But because of habitat destruction for mines. Pollution destroying other habitats and causing illness. Pollution causing climate change, and again, destroying habitats, wiping out entire species.
Not overly sure why you've provided wind energy production stats in isolation...
Nuclear energy from that same site: minimum: 2.061 GW maximum: 5.747 GW average: 4.239 GW
So, on average, nuclear - the super reliable energy we are promoting a lot in the UK (and which costs significantly more to build), produces less than wind.
Gas, CCGT: minimum: 1.424 GW maximum: 24.536 GW average: 10.782 GW
So, on average wind is only just a little behind wind in average production. A few more wind farms built and it'll be on par.
Back in the old days, no wind meant making flour manually, or using donkeys/horses instead to drive the grinding wheels. Not "no bread"... And just like that time, we have alternatives to wind now too. Its why the concept is often referred to our "energy mix".
And subsidies for green? Not really. The estimates for the world-wide subsidies provided to the fossil fuel industry in 2022 hit $1tn for the first time. To put that in context. That's more than double the entire investment, both public and private, that was put into green technologies in the same period.
We need animals to survive. We need biodiversity. Without a thriving biosphere, we won't have food.
Kill off random species (as there are several endangered species in the area in question), and that has a knock on effect to both predator and prey species in their food chains. You can entirely destroy the ecology of an area with actions like this.
So, proper environmental studies are a necessity.
Intel needs to rationalise its product line-up.
The number of products to choose from is ridiculous.
Intel Atom, Intel Process, Intel Core, Intel Xeon, Intel Xeon Scalable.
Atom is then split into Atom C and Atom P. There are 43 Atom C lines listed on their site, and 11 Atom P. There are 6 Intel Processor chips, split into N and U lines.
The Core range is split into i3, i5, i7 and i9, with the i9 being split into normal and X series. There's 44 i9 products, 104 i7 products, 124 i5 products, and 51 i3 products listed on their site.
Xeon is split into Xeon E, W and D. Plus their Max and Scalable branding. Totalling 390 listed current CPUs on their product pages.
That's 1163 different processor products listed on their site as Launched/current. Sure, some are now being listed at "end of servicing life", so are due to disappear from the list soon, but they will be replaced with the Meteor Lake models instead.
1163 CPUs! Insanity.
The issue isn't about legal liabilities. It is about heading off regulatory involvement. Governments are less likely to get involved if an entirely new organisation comes along and says "we've taken over, we've got rid of XYZ, have restructured, have implemented our own, known to be excellent, policies and procedures regarding the problematic policy areas, there's no need for thorough involvement". Sure, MS would need to provide that evidence. But cutting off the investigation at its early stages with this fairly easy to produce evidence due to the takeover, vs not doing anything and having the full force of the regulators come along and start kicking over rocks. Very different things.
Its the same behaviour as MS has just tried to do with its olive branch to unbundle OneDrive and Teams from Office. Try and offer enough to make regulators go "eh, they seem to be doing good things, we won't dig any further... Don't let it happen again MS".
Investigations can and do go away when a company is effectively taken over and its parts absorbed. It has happened before, and no doubt will happen again.
Twitter isn't a good example to use as the takeover there has done the exact opposite to what MS was doing. The new owner has taken a company that was working hard to try and fix its issues, thrown away all those efforts, and doubled down on the problems as its new business model...
Former executives may be on the hook but that has absolutely nothing to do with a new owner.
To get Activision out of the rather tight spot they've found themselves in regarding sexual harassment. With the deal dead, there could now be more regulatory involvement in the company to ensure they're improving. MS taking over effectively would've ended that attention - as they can simply say "we're fixing the problems by making them MS".
Its funny really, as I highly doubt the EU would green light the acquisition either. When you've got countries like France who *strongly* fight against major corporations damaging their home-grown companies involved, the EU have a high bar to cross to allow such a merger. Add in the UK's ruling, which they will have a look at as well...
I think giving the EU praise is premature on MS's part.
The government are the contract holders. As in, they signed a contract for the implementation of this system. It is 100% on them to ensure the system is provided in a sensible timescale. The fact that government seems to consistently sign contracts that fail miserably to set proper deadlines and non-performance clauses is again, their own fault.
And EE's - it doesn't take 12 years to build new masts to fill the gaps. The entire 3g roll-out took less time than that.
“The UK does not have a semiconductor industry of any consequence from a size point of view (and never will have)" and "“What would we do with it? We’re not going to build high volume fabs to compete"
Why not? What is it that prevents us from doing this? Taiwan has a third of our population, yet manages to produce the majority of the world's semiconductors. Why can't the UK produce some as well?
This seems like circular logic. We shouldn't invest in producing chips, because we don't current produce chips...
What an odd attitude.
"the automatic login into OneDrive, Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps together with the Windows login."
That's something ALL software providers can offer. So, if they try and make the experience worse for everyone because they as developers are either too incompetent or too lazy to implement it properly themselves, then they'll not experience a good time in court.
So, like most fines and the like, the point of them is deterrence. The goal is for companies not to get fined at all - as they won't engage in the behaviour that they are legally prohibited from engaging in.
If they do then "do the naughty", then they get fined and that goes into the UK's general tax pot usually. This can then be used to improve the country in general.
Its like being fined for not wearing a seatbelt. The government isn't rubbing its hands with glee that people will be caught. They're hoping to get people to wear their seatbelts and not die horrific deaths on the roads...
It isn't really "digital GBP" though. The currency is processed via a bunch of third parties to move it around. A centrally controlled digital currency, the ultimate processor is the central bank. So, no need for Visa/Mastercard.
Ultimately, the idea is to increase ease of moving money around. But, at the expense of much greater control of your money by the central govt.
It doesn't make sense, logically. Patents are there to protect inventions for their creators. Meaning, they provide an avenue to recover money from those who use them. As an "AI" is not a person, it would never have standing in any court, and therefore could not then use those patent protections to sue anyone.
So, an invention protected by a patent belong to an AI would be pointless - it would be unenforceable.
The only way this could change, legally speaking, would be to either give "AI" personhood (which would then present problems of slavery), or to allow AIs to sue in court. Both options would be odd. Especially as current "AI" is not in fact intelligent.
I think the latter part of your post is a key point here.
You know full well that in such a role, if anything went wrong you would be the person scapegoated as the root of the problem. That's one of the reasons you pay people in high risk roles more - high risk? High reward. Such a failure and loss of the job at the Treasury would effectively be the end of your career.
The FTC coming in and forcing them to withdraw their product would be a great way to make OpenAI move to another country. One not subject to the US's trade laws... I'm sure the UK would welcome them with open arms. To be honest, I expect the government would rewrite laws to get them to come here.
Your phone froze, so you wrote off an entire tech ecosystem?
I'm now on my 7th or 8th Android phone, spread across a number of different manufacturers and I've never had any issues like you describe. In fact the only issues I've ever had are physical - charging ports breaking, and buttons wearing out.
And your Android had a tiny amount of RAM and storage vs iPhone? I simply don't believe you if you're comparing similarly priced phones. One of the biggest complaints about iPhones has always been lack of RAM and the extremely high price of more storage.
You are clearly not the target audience.
Except, it isn't. The numbers do not agree with the statement that Redhat is "standard". It is 4th most popular within enterprise according to OpenLogic and OSI's annual survey/report.
And if you think Linux distros only differ by theme, then your experience certainly doesn't match reality.
Again. You're focusing on a specific type of business I'd say.
In reality, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux OS in enterprise, followed by Debian, CentOS and then RHEL. This is based on the yearly survey and report by OpenLogic and OSI in 2022, spanning 2600 organisations around the world.
What is popular in your industry and country does not mean it is everywhere else.
I'm not entirely sure you have an accurate view of Linux if you think Redhat is "standard".
The corporate culture of certain large US owned corporations is not the same as the rest of the world.
Having choice leads to innovation - different systems offer different things to different people.
Don't we have the tools to allow encryption services already? GPG/PGP? Is it so hard to figure out such a solution for the encryption part, and allow access via whichever platform you want?
The interoperability aspect shouldn't be too difficult either - there's been a wide range of protocols that can handle that created already. Such as XMPP.
We're talking about companies with billions in profits each year. I'm 100% sure they can come up with both E2E systems that operate well, and interoperable communications systems as well.
I don't think the issues are technical at all. Rather political and commercial.
The US and other countries are rushing to get their own chip industries sorted, so of course it would end up hurting Taiwan, and not just from the POV presented here - that China will invest internally.
One of the largest fears the USA has is that China takes over Taiwan and controls the vast majority of chip fabrication. The US would effectively be in-thrall to China for strategic resources. This is one of the reasons the USA is so keen on defending Taiwan.
If the US manages to get a larger percentage of chips produced at home, it reduces the reliance on Taiwan - so over time, I can see the US's support for them dwindling as well. I mean, if the US is so keen on democracy and freedom, they wouldn't have just left Afghanistan and handed the keys back to the Taliban would they?
I'm not sure what they could do with the info about people who downloaded it? I mean, if someone stumbled across it, downloaded it and had a look, what exactly have they done wrong? They would have a defense that they thought it was free to download as it was on a site specifically designed to allow people to download code.
So, what could Twitter do with their info, other than send them a letter saying "you must delete the code you downloaded"?
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