A Letter To The New German Chancellor – politicalbetting.com
A Letter To The New German Chancellor – politicalbetting.com
Firstly, the impact on US demand for European products will be less severe than you expect. Why? Because there aren’t thousands of empty US factories waiting for slightly higher prices for European products.
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The two best reasons not to retaliate when your exports are discriminated against are, firstly, that you raise your own cost of living and reduce the efficiency of your industries to no benefit as the tariff increases are passed on, particularly if they are expected to last a long time. Secondly, the other side may retaliate against your retaliation, especially with somebody as spiteful as Trump in charge, setting off a downward spiral.
A small change in your currency or whatever is trivial compared to those drawbacks.
I agree that Germany should be less dependent on international demand. For decades it has been dumping its deficient domestic demand on other countries, including us. This leads to instability in the financial system, as Germany accumulates assets in other countries and weakens their currencies. But Germany isn't actually that dependent on exports to the US, which is only about 2% of its GDP. And a shock to that trade is too small to make a country question its entire macroeconomic model.
I would suggest quite targetted tariffs on discretionary goods, particularly from red states.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/15-times-to-use-ai-and-5-not-to
I thought this a good point:
"Knowing when to use AI turns out to be a form of wisdom, not just technical knowledge. Like most wisdom, it's somewhat paradoxical: AI is often most useful where we're already expert enough to spot its mistakes, yet least helpful in the deep work that made us experts in the first place. It works best for tasks we could do ourselves but shouldn't waste time on, yet can actively harm our learning when we use it to skip necessary struggles. "
They are already dead by the time they make contact.
What kills birds (and onshore, bats) is the pressure wave that moves in front of the blades. That pressure wave bursts their lungs. So the colour of the blades really doesnt matter.
The Daily Express reported it a month ago::
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2002169/wind-turbines-painted-black-save-birds
Is the pilot study continuing to November 2029 by any chance?
(Update: I see it is a four year project. Bingo - maybe, or at least conveniently. There are going to be a lot of tactical pilots running until the end of 2029.
The scheme will run for four years, and test a variety of paint jobs, including striped turbines and all-black design. )
Full piece: https://archive.is/20250226164405/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/26/wind-turbines-paint-black-donald-trump-birds-keir-starmer/
In the case of the EU it is not as entwined with the US, so the effect may be at the margins - but for say Canada, making sure Americans feel some pain for tariff imposition is an essential threat.
It's a case of the prisoner's dilemma, where the rational choice from an individual perspective is worse for everyone as backing down is specifically worse for you as it encourages your adversary to screw you.
I can live with that.
Suella's comment had me searching for the Cecil Rhodes comment about being born an Englishman i.e. your nationality (until 1983 in the UK) was down to luck. However the Wikipedia page on Rhodes stated that in his will he wanted to finance a secret society for the purpose of:
Back home after three months mostly in the world of the 15%.
A propos very little, in horse racing hurdle boards and rails were painted white as vets discovered horses see white better than green.
ISTM that making citizens' data never-accessible for criminal investigation (the Apple position), and getting into a strop about it, is strange. The US Head of National Intelligence security defending the privacy rights of child abusers and terrorists is not what I would expect.
Plus there's the old Usonian problem of assuming the US Govt has the right to direct the entire world as to what their laws should be, as if the US Govt defines the privacy rights entitlement of their citizens in other jurisdictions:
In a letter, Ms Gabbard said she was seeking further information from the FBI and other US agencies and said, if the reports were true, the UK government's actions amounted to an "egregious violation" of US citizens' privacy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kjmddx2nzo
I'd say the debate needs to be around what level of approval is required before access can be ordered - whether "Home Office", "Chief Constable", "High Court Judge", or some other.
Backkground: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvn90pl5no
Did you visit the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch?
What did you think?
https://www.cardboardcathedral.org.nz/
Tuesday, 7th March 2023
In the meantime, Gary Lineker tweets provocative comments about small boats (comparing Tories with Nazis) and creates a huge storm. Instead of leaving the BBC to sort it out amongst themselves, some of our people, including the increasingly voluble Sir John Hayes, weigh in making it look like it’s ‘Tories vs Football’. There will be only one winner, and it won’t be us.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
As an aside, Changi Airport in Singapore has changed since my last visit in 2006 - it is stupefyingly awesome and the one thing it does which I’ve not seen elsewhere is they do the security check of the cabin luggage and passengers at the gates instead of at one central point so once you’ve checked in and done the passport check to go airside you can explore.
I know people snipe at UK border control but it’s okay - much better than the US where we spent nearly an hour in the queue to go through their immigration.
New Zealand are very quick with the passport control but they then scan all your luggage just in case you aren’t bringing in anything which will disrupt the ecosystem. You can be an illegal migrant and that’s fine but try bringing in the wrong fruit and veg and you’re about as welcome as a durian on the Singapore MRT.
So whilst the future humans' ancestors will have been in the real world, statistically it is far more likely that we are one of the billions of scenarios run for entertainment, rather than the one real path.
ETA @foxy I just saw your comment. As for why they'd bother - same reason we (well, some of us) played Theme Hospital back in the day. Imagine being able to run your hospital/world just the way you want to and be able to answer that age old question from the history books...what would have happened if President Harris had lost to that orange-buffoon who went to prison so soon after the election?
Unfortunately, credulity about AI output is quite common.
I have a partner who insists on sending me AI generated "analyses" of
companies and economies: in vain have I pointed that these read like the work of an earnest error-prone 16 year old swot....
...who has read ALL the available material, yet produced a "synthesis" which fails to get below the surface froth and to boot makes a series of
asinine errors.
AI Gets Rapidly Smarter, And Makes Some Of Us Dumber (Sabine Hossenfelder)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipLA7E-X7Lk
Or if you just want a laugh, here is an AI-generated fake Jeremy Clarkson car review:-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eF_hrD8va5Y
https://www.racingpost.com/news/international/japan/how-japan-is-using-ai-to-train-racehorses-and-assist-data-push-to-find-perfect-candidate-for-arc-breakthrough-a9UMY6u1nhqj/ (£££)
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,”
Further, the original demands to Apple had no territorial limits. They wanted universal access to *all* Apple customers data, worldwide.
Apple responded by ending end-to-end encryption (which they can’t provide access to) in the U.K.
Yes, the UK Government's approach is ridiculous and, once again, betrays the political class' almost total ignorance of basic tech matters. Sunak in some ways was rather better at this, recognising the importance of AI.
The age of voters being even a teeny bit grateful to politicians seems to have passed. Try not to enrage them and hope your opponents fcuk up even more seems to be the way.
1. Mo Salah: 42
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2. Harry Kane: 28
3. Omar Marmoush: 27
https://x.com/Betfred/status/1894865610401624422
The main drawback currently is their turf horses run on firm tracks and the Arc is usually run on a soft or heavy surface.
Tate brothers have boarded a private jet to US, Florida.
https://x.com/TateNews_/status/1894999365292564606
That will give President Trump something to talk about. Hope Starmer's been briefed.
I wonder what roles in the Trump cabinet have been pencilled in for them?
Adding a back door does not mean something is not effectively encrypted. It means that it works in 99.999999999999% of situations
It’s been shortened to 3 lines, since
#!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
$m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa
2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print
pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length$n&~1)/2)
That’s the whole game, right there.
2) strong encryption protects our world. Not just your money, the ownership records of your property….. If you build in back doors, mathematically, this is a common vulnerability. That’s trying to make Die Hard 4 actually - imagine the fun if Russian hackers got into such a back door? And turned off all the infrastructure?
3) So what is going on? In past times, the police and security services tapped into unencrypted communications. Not exactly legal and it wasn’t used in court. That door is closing.
What has really changed is the incorporation of high quality encryption (written about in books etc since before computers) into everyday apps.
You are using it right now - https in your browser.
For a start you've got the basic, recent location shoot in Berlin, of the Reichsbank, next to the famous enormous Marksmacht coin-printing machine, from 1908, with its half mile high steampunks cogs etc. Sure, that's easy enough to photograph, once you're in Berlin. Ditto the curious but majestic "Grossreichsletter" - the German method of propulgating laws by turning them into six kilometre long gold scrolls and suspending them over government buildings. Again, easy enough to shoot, IF you get the right moment - especially as at that moment the Germans always send out huge trucks and planes delivering news of the law to outlying parts of the Bundesrepublik - that lends the image a natural drama, ably captured here...
But, if you look top left, you can see the tell tale traces of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites. How did Rob arrange that? Surely only by paying Elon Musk several millions. So though the image looks natural enough at first glance, almost a boring stock shot of Berlin, in reality it must have cost the PB Team squillions and I for one will bear this in mind the next time they ask for donations
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/an-icloud-backdoor-would-make-our-phones-less-safe.html
Note the story of Greek telephone system.
Tariffs are game theory. If you give others a free option to impose tariffs on you with no response, then you are also saying they can increase them further with no response. It also gives you no leverage to get them to remove them in future. The rational play on their part is to keep the new status quo.
Now the response could be something other than wide ranging tariffs. Let's say, a 25% internet services sales tax on a narrowly defined set of companies. Or targeting red state exports only with 50% or 100% tariffs.
It you do that, the rational play for both parties is to, perhaps after a couple more rounds of escalation, negotiate to return to something that looks a lot more like the status quo ante. Perhaps with some moderate shifts (e.g. Germany introducing policies to increase demand, buying more US oil etc).
Result? We are yielding
"UK willing to renegotiate online harm laws to avoid Trump tariffs
Starmer may be prepared to alter social media safety Act to accommodate US president and his ‘tech bros’ to secure favourable trade deal"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/09/uk-willing-rework-online-harms-bill-avoid-trump-tariffs/
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
But it’s a trade off between that and giving bad actors a completely private communication channel.
A single-fibre computer enables textile networks and distributed inference
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08568-6
Despite advancements in wearable technologies1,2, barriers remain in achieving distributed computation located persistently on the human body. Here a textile fibre computer that monolithically combines analogue sensing, digital memory, processing and communication in a mass of less than 5 g is presented. Enabled by a foldable interposer, the two-dimensional pad architectures of microdevices were mapped to three-dimensional cylindrical layouts conforming to fibre geometry. Through connection with helical copper microwires, eight microdevices were thermally drawn into a machine-washable elastic fibre capable of more than 60% stretch. This programmable fibre, which incorporates a 32-bit floating-point microcontroller, independently performs edge computing tasks even when braided, woven, knitted or seam-sewn into garments. The universality of the assembly process allows for the integration of additional functions with simple modifications, including a rechargeable fibre power source that operates the computer for nearly 6 h. Finally, we surmount the perennial limitation of rigid interconnects by implementing two wireless communication schemes involving woven optical links and seam-inserted radio-frequency communications. To demonstrate its utility, we show that garments equipped with four fibre computers, one per limb, operating individually trained neural networks achieve, on average, 67% accuracy in classifying physical activity. However, when networked, inference accuracy increases to 95% using simple weighted voting...
We operate our country in the way that is right for our country.
We stand up to Russia. We stand up to China. We should stand up to Trump, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for a few years.
And, to be clear, if Apple wants to operate in the UK it must abide by UK law. It is up to us if we want to amend our laws under pressure from the US but Apple has to abide by the final result.
However, he is certainly no skeptic. He often expresses wonderment and bafflement, and openly speculates if/when AI will be conscious and sentient. And he thinks proper AGI is close, and will likely transform the world
" Yes, an unwillingness to price in even the possibility of AGI, even a weak sort-of AGI that dominates a few key industries, is weird.
(And no, markets do not perfectly account for disruptive effects of new technologies, historically, especially when the effects are unclear)"
https://x.com/emollick/status/1885942656158564585
The confidence the text they generate projects regardless of whether they’re right or wrong is a real problem. I don’t think anyone has managed to solve it yet, although the “thinking” variants might do a better job: What happens if you give the same problem to Deepseek R1, or Claude with thinking turned on?
eg Let's say Apple responded to a wild new UK lawby saying "We will withdraw all apple products from the UK and they shall cease to function in five weeks, unless you change this law", meaning all owners of iPhones, Apple watches, macs, etc, are fucked
Apple could afford to do this, quite easily, it is so big - it might be painful but Britain is not a huge market for them, it is not China or the EU. And it would be an impressive show of strength pour encourager les autres
Such would be the outcry from voters any UK government would fold and seek a humiliating compromise, or maybe we could ask the UN or the Hague or the government of Mauritius to step in and help us tell those Americans a thing or two?
Government doesn't seem to understand that there's no real way to give only government privileged access.
As an aside, both Apple and Samsung have already tested new hardware encryption systems, in anticipation of quantum cracking of RSA, should it ever happen.
Politically, its a different story. The pressure of the EU as a whole to respond will be immense, not least from some countries such as France, that already run trade deficits. The EU also has an overinflated view of its own importance. There is also the risk of becoming a punch bag for Trump who is an arrogant bully. Responding threatens further retaliation but so does not responding if he finds, as Robert suggests, that the effect is minimal. Having had a free hit he will try something else confident that the recipient will once again just take it like the victim of a school yard bully.
The more important response, as Merz has already said, will be to reduce the links between the US and Europe in defence, the supply of strategic services (such as in IT) and in political terms. They are no longer a reliable friend. All of Europe, including us, must act accordingly.
I submit that you are on ketamine, but other than that, a flawless argument
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Europe - and the UK - need to come to the same realisation that's just occurred to Leon.
Without technological near parity with either/both China and/or the US, then our options to determine our own futures are quite heavily constrained.
More on the subject here:
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/wind/wind-turbines-kill-too-many-birds-and-bats-how-can-we-make-them-safer
Of course this is an extreme example, but I am testing an extreme hypothesis, showing that the tech giants will cut off entire markets if suitably provoked. But of course it would never get that far, voter pressure on the UK government (which Putin does not have to worry about) would mean London would seek a compromise with Cupertino, probably quite a humiliating compromise for a sovereign nation cowed by a mere corporation
The FDA vaccine committee meeting on how to update next season's flu vaccine was abruptly cancelled today with no explanation, CBS confirms via Dr Paul Offitt
https://x.com/margbrennan/status/1894893405609541707
One of the big two - probably both? - will go FOOM soon and then they will be so far out of reach the attempt to catch up will be futile
That said, once the robots are really ruling the world, they might turn Beijing and Washington into gloop, just for the lolz, so it won't matter. Such are the unique properties of an Event Horizon
Edit - though once again the Telegraph should sack their writers -or reprogramme their AI.
"Hollywood star best known for his role in Bonnie and Clyde ..."
I mean really??
The French Connection, Unforgiven, Mississippi Burning, Superman, The Royal Tenenbaums?
And they say his best known role was Bonnie and Clyde?
#!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
$m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa
2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print
pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length$n&~1)/2)
That’s unlimited key length encryption. Right there.
Putting a back door in everything will make the whole world vulnerable.
And here’s a fun one. The politicians are addicted to WhatsApp. With a back door open to law enforcement under a sealed warrant…. Do you think Trump would hold back?
Andrew Tate has left Romania for US by private jet, reports say
https://x.com/thedailybeast/status/1895032468605915429
https://wildlife.org/painting-a-single-turbine-blade-saves-birds-lives/
Good morning, everybody.
Can I ask AI experts a question. When AI is asked whether or not it possesses sentience, consciousness, awareness etc, has AI yet produced interesting or convincing replies, dialogues or conversations in either direction?