"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. "
This seems very sensible.
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?
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
Apple couldn't afford to do it as nobody anywhere in the world would buy an iPhone again. Apart from that a flawless argument
You think if Apple withdrew from the UK market because of some obscure legal dispute between Apple and His Majesty's Government, then everyone else in the world would throw their iPhones in the bin and never buy a new Apple poduct ever, such is the infuence of UK soft power?
I submit that you are on ketamine, but other than that, a flawless argument
No I think if Apple made "all Apple products" in the UK "cease to function" over an "obscure legal dispute" nobody in their right minds would buy Apple again.
I realise you have a mental age of about 7, but do try to remember what you wrote a few minutes before.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
1) Strong encryption is, essentially, un-bannable. I have a T-Shirt, back from when the US government was trying to declare all strong encryption a munition. It has a 4 line Perl script that implements unlimited key length RSA.
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.
As an aside, RSA public key cryptography was invented in Britain but made an official secret because espionage (which was probably fed back to Moscow anyway) was deemed more important than squillions of pounds of ecommerce (and then the Americans RSA re-discovered, patented and announced it and now we can buy stuff off Amazon 24x7).
It was actually unusable at the time - not enough computing power.
"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. "
It's certainly useful as a kind of intelligent robotic search assistant, but only so long as you remain sceptical about the factual accuracy of everything it says.
That's quite some flaw. It's only useful for things that don't matter much, such as arguing on the Internet.
Here's an example I got just recently, trying to use AI to get some veterinary advice on a complex matter, where AI got the basics 100% wrong and consequently fed me a load of terrible advice. I know it's just a search engine and not actually thinking (hence the error), but the way if you challenge it, it fesses up straight away, is just weird. I have been meaning to try and tell it it's wrong on a factual matter where it's actually correct, to see what happens....
You can challenge a true response & it will probably ”fess up” in the same way & agree with your challenge. These public LLMs have all been RLHF tuned to be very agreeable to their human conversation partner & to pretty much go along with whatever they say. You can counter this to some extent with a decent prompt, but not completely.
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?
I see its advice on solutions (no pun intended) is confusing neutralising acidity/alkalinity with castration!
The EU will have to impose retaliatory tariffs on US imports, anything else would be seen as weak and just encourage Trump to impose even more tariffs. Even if the dollar strengthens somewhat reducing the impact.
Of course China now has tariffs on its US exports, Canada and Mexico have only likely a temporary reprieve from US tariffs and Japan and South Korea likely won't avoid them either. So there won't be many foreign alternatives for US consumers anyway nor enough increase in US production to replace them.
Both the UK and EU should encourage their consumers to buy more of their own goods and products certainly as Trump wants Americans to put American goods and products first
On topic, on the economics I agree with Robert. The cure to the lack of growth in Germany is to increase their domestic demand, not run up ever larger surpluses. Economically, it will be easy to offset the effect of the tariffs and then some by doing that very unGerman thing of running deficits. The real risk to their economy is the challenges Merz faces in overcoming debt limits so he can do that.
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.
Agreed.
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.
It is possibly too late for the EU/UK to reach tech parity with the US or China
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
On topic, on the economics I agree with Robert. The cure to the lack of growth in Germany is to increase their domestic demand, not run up ever larger surpluses. Economically, it will be easy to offset the effect of the tariffs and then some by doing that very unGerman thing of running deficits. The real risk to their economy is the challenges Merz faces in overcoming debt limits so he can do that.
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.
Agreed.
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.
It is possibly too late for the EU/UK to reach tech parity with the US or China
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
Baby steps. Build a few datacentres dotted around the country and use them to host BritCloud (or ScotCloud etc) and then migrate all government systems off of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure and the other American clouds. Then market BritCloud to local businesses, and even privatise it down the road. All this is old technology but you can expand it to AI if you like.
On AI, again much of the pioneering work was done here but DeepMind was sold to Google. One of its boffins, Demis Hassabis, won a Nobel Prize for AI-powered protein folding. Oh, and we've just cancelled Edinburgh's supercomputer.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
Apple couldn't afford to do it as nobody anywhere in the world would buy an iPhone again. Apart from that a flawless argument
Lol that's delusional.
Thinking that Apple would make all its products in the UK cease to function in 5 weeks isn't delusional? Moron
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
Apple couldn't afford to do it as nobody anywhere in the world would buy an iPhone again. Apart from that a flawless argument
You think if Apple withdrew from the UK market because of some obscure legal dispute between Apple and His Majesty's Government, then everyone else in the world would throw their iPhones in the bin and never buy a new Apple poduct ever, such is the infuence of UK soft power?
I submit that you are on ketamine, but other than that, a flawless argument
No I think if Apple made "all Apple products" in the UK "cease to function" over an "obscure legal dispute" nobody in their right minds would buy Apple again.
I realise you have a mental age of about 7, but do try to remember what you wrote a few minutes before.
Apple did almost exactly that in Russia, in 2022
In 2022, Apple withdrew from Russia abruptly and thoroughly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. The company took a series of decisive actions that effectively cut off its operations in the country:
1. Immediate Halt of Product Sales
On March 1, 2022, Apple announced that it had stopped selling all its products in Russia, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other devices. Russian customers were no longer able to order Apple products from the official Apple online store, and shipments to Russian retailers were suspended.
2. Restrictions on Apple Pay and Financial Services
Apple disabled Apple Pay in Russia, making it difficult for Russian users to make payments via their Apple devices. Several Russian banks were also removed from Apple Pay, aligning with Western sanctions that targeted Russia’s financial sector.
3. Removal of RT and Sputnik from the App Store
Apple removed Russian state-controlled media outlets, RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, from its App Store globally to limit the spread of Kremlin-backed propaganda.
4. Disabling Key Features in Russia
Apple disabled traffic and live incident reports in Apple Maps in Ukraine and Russia to protect civilians from military movements and avoid potential misuse.
5. Suspension of Advertising and Services
Apple paused advertising on the App Store in Russia, affecting developers who relied on Apple’s ad services for revenue. Subscription-based Apple services like Apple News were also cut off.
6. iCloud and Software Restrictions
While some existing Apple devices in Russia continued to work, Apple restricted new software updates and services for users in Russia. Developers also found it far more difficult to distribute apps and services in the Russian market.
7. Corporate and Retail Exit
Apple closed its physical offices and corporate operations in Russia, effectively cutting ties with the country’s market. Employees in Russia were relocated or let go.
Impact and Russian Response:
Apple’s withdrawal made iPhones and other Apple products scarce in Russia, leading to a resale boom and gray-market imports from third-party countries like Turkey and Kazakhstan.
Many Russian users switched to Android as Apple services became inaccessible.
The Russian government pushed for homegrown alternatives, like promoting its own smartphone operating systems and digital payment solutions.
Apple’s withdrawal was one of the most comprehensive exits in history by a major Western tech company, and unlike some firms that found ways to stay indirectly, Apple has never returned to the Russian market.
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...
What are the washing instructions?
Good morning, everybody.
It's washable - presumably avoid the hot cycle though.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
Apple couldn't afford to do it as nobody anywhere in the world would buy an iPhone again. Apart from that a flawless argument
Lol that's delusional.
Thinking that Apple would make all its products in the UK cease to function in 5 weeks isn't delusional? Moron
Apple have already responded by switching off the highest levels of security which mean that all Apple products in the UK are now less safe and more prone to hacking and cyber attack than the same products anywhere else in the world.
How is that good for UK consumers? The UK Government has just made the online environment significantly less safe for UK citizens. Great job
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
"Gene Hackman joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman were voted "The Least Likely To Succeed"..."
On topic, on the economics I agree with Robert. The cure to the lack of growth in Germany is to increase their domestic demand, not run up ever larger surpluses. Economically, it will be easy to offset the effect of the tariffs and then some by doing that very unGerman thing of running deficits. The real risk to their economy is the challenges Merz faces in overcoming debt limits so he can do that.
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.
Agreed.
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.
It is possibly too late for the EU/UK to reach tech parity with the US or China
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
Baby steps. Build a few datacentres dotted around the country and use them to host BritCloud (or ScotCloud etc) and then migrate all government systems off of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure and the other American clouds. Then market BritCloud to local businesses, and even privatise it down the road. All this is old technology but you can expand it to AI if you like.
On AI, again much of the pioneering work was done here but DeepMind was sold to Google. One of its boffins, Demis Hassabis, won a Nobel Prize for AI-powered protein folding. Oh, and we've just cancelled Edinburgh's supercomputer.
I just read Supremacy - about the "battle" between Hassabis and Altman to reach AGI
I believe @rcs1000 knows Duke Demis of Datashire? Both studied comp tech at the Poly?
Anyway it's an interesting book if not quite as good as the FT's hysteria suggests, and it makes it painfully clear that the UK had a real lead in AI thanks to DeepMind (and a couple of smaller companies) - more than any other European nation, for sure
Was there a way we might have saved them from being swallowed by Google? Interestingly, Elon Musk lobbied the UK and others to prevent that sale, figuring it would give Google too much concentrated AI power....
In another steampunk world Britain is home to five tech giants and we can now order the Chinese to give us Formosa or we cut off their banking
RIP Gene Hackman. Looks like he went out on his own terms.
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?
Add in The Conversation, Reds, Postcards from the Edge, A Bridge Too Far, Get Shorty...
...Under Fire, Young Frankenstein, Poseidon Adventure...
One of the true greats.
(TBF to the Telegraph, Bonny and Clyde was the movie which helped make him famous.)
That's what made me think it was an AI script. Taking the first film he was Oscar nominated for instead of all the later work he was better known for.
It could be an age thing. A lot of the younger generation don't watch older films and a twenty-something might just have cribbed it from wiki/imdb without actually ever having watched any of his work.
The EU has a surplus with the US in traded goods mostly offset by a deficit in services. The EU is the US' most important market in digital services. The EU has been regulating these services in ways the US doesn't like.
If Trump's tariffs were purely pressure to achieve a desired result, the EU could offer something on digital services to get them removed. But Trump seems to think tariffs are desirable in themselves. They reduce imports and deliver revenue. In which case the EU would do better to remove its economic dependency on the US to the detriment of all, but particularly the US. Everyone else is trying to do the same thing of course.
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
It isn't, Cleverly only came third with Tory MPs and is focused on running for London Mayor in 2028. If Kemi went it would be probably replaced by her Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride or Shadow Foreign Secretary Chris Philip, though given the Conservatives were ahead in a poll yesterday she might survive anyway
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
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.
No the legal authority required is not the issue. The issue is that building a backdoor is a bad idea.
If you have one way into a cryptosystem and add a backdoor you now have two ways into a cryptosystem. It is inherently less secure. Anyone who argues it has equal security is bluntly put an idiot.
Secondly because these golden-key, key escrow, secondary key, or key-wrapping techniques — whatever term or approach is used doesn't matter — are intended to operate at a large scale not only have you added a second door, but you have created a master key in effect. By necessity they give one of few people access to everything, a master key level of access.
The US built such a system into their telecoms networks, CALEA, the Chinese Salt Typhoon* hackers have exploited it at scale across most US telecoms companies. The FBI has actually been warning Americans to avoid this threat by using end-to-end encryption. The very thing the UK government wants removed from iCloud at a global scale.
If the UK had some master key level access to iCloud it would be one of the top targets for Russian and Chinese intelligence services. Rightly Apple have decided not to cooperate with such a terrible idea.
* Salt Typhoon don't even break any cryptography they simply backdoor the servers that run the CALEA lawful intercept/backdoor. The very existence of the backdoor IS the vulnerability, not a flaw in the cryptography. If anyone in the UK government thinks that they will be immune to such attacks they are idiots.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
Indeed, thanks. But it's a common misconception - we've seen it on PB - and used as an anti-vax line of argument.
The EU has a surplus with the US in traded goods mostly offset by a deficit in services. The EU is the US' most important market in digital services. The EU has been regulating these services in ways the US doesn't like.
If Trump's tariffs were purely pressure to achieve a desired result, the EU could offer something on digital services to get them removed. But Trump seems to think tariffs are desirable in themselves. They reduce imports and deliver revenue. In which case the EU would do better to remove its economic dependency on the US to the detriment of all, but particularly the US. Everyone else is firing to do the same thing of course.
The EU isn't the most important market for digital services for US companies IMO, it's very low growth and heavily regulated.
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...
The EU has a surplus with the US in traded goods mostly offset by a deficit in services. The EU is the US' most important market in digital services. The EU has been regulating these services in ways the US doesn't like.
If Trump's tariffs were purely pressure to achieve a desired result, the EU could offer something on digital services to get them removed. But Trump seems to think tariffs are desirable in themselves. They reduce imports and deliver revenue. In which case the EU would do better to remove its economic dependency on the US to the detriment of all, but particularly the US. Everyone else is firing to do the same thing of course.
The EU isn't the most important market for digital services for US companies IMO, it's very low growth and heavily regulated.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
Vaccines may also reduce transmission to others if you are not spluttering microbes into the air.
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
So we should lay Cleverly for London Mayor, which was his previously-mooted objective?
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
RIP Gene Hackman. Looks like he went out on his own terms.
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?
Add in The Conversation, Reds, Postcards from the Edge, A Bridge Too Far, Get Shorty...
...Under Fire, Young Frankenstein, Poseidon Adventure...
One of the true greats.
(TBF to the Telegraph, Bonny and Clyde was the movie which helped make him famous.)
That's what made me think it was an AI script. Taking the first film he was Oscar nominated for instead of all the later work he was better known for.
I don't tend to have a favourite actors. It is not my thing. But if I did, Gene Hackman would have been in the running. Seemed like a pretty decent man as well. And on that subject, I have always liked Telly Savalas. Again mainly because he appears to have been a decent human being as well as a good actor.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
Vaccines may also reduce transmission to others if you are not spluttering microbes into the air.
Yes, that matters too.
Vaccines work best if everyone takes them, but are useful even when most people don't.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
They do prevent measles trashing your immune system. Which it tends to do, as the cell receptor it targets is greatly overrepresented in the memory cells of the immune system.
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
So we should lay Cleverly for London Mayor, which was his previously-mooted objective?
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
The Fukkers have turned Stupidly's constiuency into an almost marginal. He could get unhorsed at the next GE which wouldn't be ideal if he were leader.
The EU has a surplus with the US in traded goods mostly offset by a deficit in services. The EU is the US' most important market in digital services. The EU has been regulating these services in ways the US doesn't like.
If Trump's tariffs were purely pressure to achieve a desired result, the EU could offer something on digital services to get them removed. But Trump seems to think tariffs are desirable in themselves. They reduce imports and deliver revenue. In which case the EU would do better to remove its economic dependency on the US to the detriment of all, but particularly the US. Everyone else is firing to do the same thing of course.
The EU isn't the most important market for digital services for US companies IMO, it's very low growth and heavily regulated.
RIP Gene Hackman. Looks like he went out on his own terms.
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?
Add in The Conversation, Reds, Postcards from the Edge, A Bridge Too Far, Get Shorty...
...Under Fire, Young Frankenstein, Poseidon Adventure...
One of the true greats.
(TBF to the Telegraph, Bonny and Clyde was the movie which helped make him famous.)
That's what made me think it was an AI script. Taking the first film he was Oscar nominated for instead of all the later work he was better known for.
Back in the day, it used to do the best obits.
I remember reading the Telegraph Obit for Fitzroy MacLean - the first time I ever saw a full page obit in a newspaper. And even then they couldn't fit in half of hs remarkable life.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
Vaccines may also reduce transmission to others if you are not spluttering microbes into the air.
Yes, that matters too.
Vaccines work best if everyone takes them, but are useful even when most people don't.
Yes one of worst aspects of sufficient people refusing to take a vaccine is not only are they putting themselves at risk, but are also putting at serious risk those who are unable to take a vaccine who would have otherwise been protected by herd immunity.
@rcs1000 I like your article. In a previous thread I asked a question about your YouTube channel. I know about https://www.youtube.com/@rsmithson1000 , but do you have something more recent? I need something to listen to whilst I work
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
So we should lay Cleverly for London Mayor, which was his previously-mooted objective?
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
The Fukkers have turned Stupidly's constiuency into an almost marginal. He could get unhorsed at the next GE which wouldn't be ideal if he were leader.
Morning all!
IIRC Conservative Central Office sent assistance to Cleverly last time, rather than to his neighbour, Priti Patel. In the event it was about even.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
Degrading, violent and misogynistic online pornography should be banned, a review of the industry is expected to say.
Measures proposed in the review, commissioned by the previous government and led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, are understood to include making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing women being choked during sex. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q1wx3nzy9o
Only in porn or will the government also ban simulated strangulation in mainstream drama, along with simulated shootings, stabbings and other forms of murder? It is a hard problem given this may condition real life behaviour but this looks like simplistic drivel. At least Mary Whitehouse was consistent.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
Terrible year for moths as well. And moths do much of the heavy lifting on pollination. Not that they get much credit. It's always bloody bees this, bees that...
(They travel further than bees when pollinating, resulting in a greater genetic mix...)
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
It's quite amusing watching the bees drinking in our bird-bath. Usually a lot more bees than birds. There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
The header is at least arguably reasonable from an economic viewpoint, but unwise from a political viewpoint. The US needs to feel that further sanctions would be uncomfortable.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
Terrible year for moths as well. And moths do much of the heavy lifting on pollination. Not that they get much credit. It's always bloody bees this, bees that...
(They travel further than bees when pollinating, resulting in a greater genetic mix...)
Thinly-veiled attack on cousin marriage in the flowers community.
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
So we should lay Cleverly for London Mayor, which was his previously-mooted objective?
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
The Fukkers have turned Stupidly's constiuency into an almost marginal. He could get unhorsed at the next GE which wouldn't be ideal if he were leader.
If the Tories are losing appreciable numbers of seats at the next election from an extremely low base, then whoever is leader isn't going to be leader for very long anyway.
The idea that a leader might lose their seat is interesting only if it's pivotal in some way - if they could have been important in the next Parliament if only they'd clung on.
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows. 'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
So we should lay Cleverly for London Mayor, which was his previously-mooted objective?
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
The Fukkers have turned Stupidly's constiuency into an almost marginal. He could get unhorsed at the next GE which wouldn't be ideal if he were leader.
Given Cleverly opposed the cuts to overseas aid to fund defence, a position that puts him left of Starmer let alone Farage, the idea Tory MPs would move him from third to first is for the birds, let alone that Tory members would vote for him.
As I said before he is going for London Mayor, where his more Cameroon/LD positioning will better place him
I think Rolls Royce is the most impressive British corporate turnaround story of all time. I can't remember anything that comes close, good for shareholders who got in during COVID too, I'm sitting at 9x now 👌
Marks & Spencer has pulled off a 'dog to star' transformation. The shares have quadrupled in the last two years after a long period of underperformance.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
It's quite amusing watching the bees drinking in our bird-bath. Usually a lot more bees than birds. There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
Tree bumblebees are something of a success. They were virtually unknown in the UK twenty years ago, but now have made it up to the Scottish borders. They are the only bumblebee that nests above ground, and have a liking for bird boxes. I had some in a multi-box formerly used by house sparrows (another sad tale of decline...)
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
It's quite amusing watching the bees drinking in our bird-bath. Usually a lot more bees than birds. There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
Tree bumblebees are something of a success. They were virtually unknown in the UK twenty years ago, but now have made it up to the Scottish borders. They are the only bumblebee that nests above ground, and have a liking for bird boxes. I had some in a multi-box formerly used by house sparrows (another sad tale of decline...)
Any pictures ? Good use of your daily allowance ..
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
And Apple withdraw from the UK. There is an inevitablility about this that you don't seem to comprehend.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousin marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
In the measles outbreak in the US, up to one in five kids has not been vaccinated. And the new regime is going to do nothing to improve that. Far from it...
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
Note that a few vaccinated people are getting it (as is to be expected given the high infectivity and the trashing of herd immunity).
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
Vaccines don't prevent you catching disease (except via herd immunity) they make it so your own immune response is much stronger, thereby preventing serious illness, or even being symptomatic.
What's that supposed to mean? If your immune system stops measles viruses multiplying, and you neither pass the disease on or have any symptoms then in what sense have you caught measles?
That's a big difference between the covid vaccines which mainly prevented serious illness, but still allowed transmission and less serious symptoms (hence no herd immunity was possible via vaccination), and measles vaccines which stop 97% of children with 2 doses catching measles.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
And Apple withdraw from the UK. There is an inevitablility about this that you don't seem to comprehend.
Note that the next one to go is Signal - they will quit the U.K. market if they are given the alternative of a backdoor or cease trading.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
It's quite amusing watching the bees drinking in our bird-bath. Usually a lot more bees than birds. There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
Tree bumblebees are something of a success. They were virtually unknown in the UK twenty years ago, but now have made it up to the Scottish borders. They are the only bumblebee that nests above ground, and have a liking for bird boxes. I had some in a multi-box formerly used by house sparrows (another sad tale of decline...)
I had a bumble bee nest in a box usually used by tits. After they departed/died I took it out and my daughter took it to (junior) school. As she is 24 that would be something like 15 years ago. That was in Surrey.
Also a few years ago while tidying up a pile of western red cedar branches I disturbed a bumble bee nest (so stopped). I looked them up, but can't remember the name now. They were small for bumblebees and very yellow so not the typical big ones that have a lot of black.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
Degrading, violent and misogynistic online pornography should be banned, a review of the industry is expected to say.
Measures proposed in the review, commissioned by the previous government and led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, are understood to include making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing women being choked during sex. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q1wx3nzy9o
Only in porn or will the government also ban simulated strangulation in mainstream drama, along with simulated shootings, stabbings and other forms of murder? It is a hard problem given this may condition real life behaviour but this looks like simplistic drivel. At least Mary Whitehouse was consistent.
Yet we are persistently told the liberals are apparently in charge. Which liberals? In charge of what precisely?
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
As I have said I was using an extreme case to prove an extreme hypothesis. In reality, it would never get this far, the UK government would cave in to Apple, because voters would demand it
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
Apple couldn't afford to do it as nobody anywhere in the world would buy an iPhone again. Apart from that a flawless argument
Lol that's delusional.
Thinking that Apple would make all its products in the UK cease to function in 5 weeks isn't delusional? Moron
Apple have already responded by switching off the highest levels of security which mean that all Apple products in the UK are now less safe and more prone to hacking and cyber attack than the same products anywhere else in the world.
How is that good for UK consumers? The UK Government has just made the online environment significantly less safe for UK citizens. Great job
It's not good. But it doesn't make "Apple threatening to make all Apple products cease to function in the UK in 5 weeks" (even if technically possible) plausible.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
I'm an innocent in these matters and hesitate to butt in, but don't all the other US tech giants use encryption too? Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc? Why is Apple particularly exposed to Starmer's machinations?
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
It's quite amusing watching the bees drinking in our bird-bath. Usually a lot more bees than birds. There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
Tree bumblebees are something of a success. They were virtually unknown in the UK twenty years ago, but now have made it up to the Scottish borders. They are the only bumblebee that nests above ground, and have a liking for bird boxes. I had some in a multi-box formerly used by house sparrows (another sad tale of decline...)
I had a bumble bee nest in a box usually used by tits. After they departed/died I took it out and my daughter took it to (junior) school. As she is 24 that would be something like 15 years ago. That was in Surrey.
Also a few years ago while tidying up a pile of western red cedar branches I disturbed a bumble bee nest (so stopped). I looked them up, but can't remember the name now. They were small for bumblebees and very yellow so not the typical big ones that have a lot of black.
Apparently "wild bumblebee honey" was considered a delicacy by rustic folk and diddycoi in 19th century Britain
It's probably horrible, but I've always liked the notion
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
As I have said I was using an extreme case to prove an extreme hypothesis. In reality, it would never get this far, the UK government would cave in to Apple, because voters would demand it
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
In your scenario it would be Apple US not UK but in any case, how will they explain it to a hostile White House and what would be the point given they would have been demanding the impossible?
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
And Apple withdraw from the UK. There is an inevitablility about this that you don't seem to comprehend.
Note that the next one to go is Signal - they will quit the U.K. market if they are given the alternative of a backdoor or cease trading.
Well, I sincerely hope Apple don't withdraw services from UK. Both Mrs C and I have Apple phones, although by no means the latest. I suppose it would provide an excuse to buy new phones.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
And the same if (eg) you want to start smoking. We'll soon balance the books with that model.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
And Apple withdraw from the UK. There is an inevitablility about this that you don't seem to comprehend.
Of course. But a legal judgement can be enforced in other countries.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
I'm an innocent in these matters and hesitate to butt in, but don't all the other US tech giants use encryption too? Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc? Why is Apple particularly exposed to Starmer's machinations?
The issue is end-to-end-encryption
That is, Apple themselves cannot access your data.
This is the gold standard for privacy and security.
Other companies, that use E2E encryption may well follow Apple. Signal (A better version of WhatsApp) almost certainly will
The government passed a law demanding a backdoor. It also demanded that compliance with the law be secret. We only learned of Apple’s refusal via a leak in the US.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousin marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
I don't know. It is a hard problem and no doubt clever people are, well, let's face it, looking the other way.
Maybe something could be done around visas where one partner is flown in for an arranged marriage but then all that would do is move the marriage ceremony abroad.
It may be that time and education solve the problem, with younger, UK-educated women rejecting the practice, as in the family in the article.
One complicating factor is endogamy (about halfway through the article) where any concentration of marriages within small communities can lead to similar outcomes owing to common ancestors further back.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
And the same if (eg) you want to start smoking. We'll soon balance the books with that model.
£50,000 one off tax is very cheap if you're a pack a day man or woman.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Apple has withdrawn the facility in question from the British market.
I understand. The interesting question is what happens if a UK citizen in the US uses the facility and the UK courts request the data.
If British courts request the data, and American courts do not intervene, then Apple cannot provide the data because it is encrypted in such a way that Apple cannot decrypt it. That is a key point. What Britain is demanding is that it should not have been strongly encrypted in the first place. (This also might be taken as meaning Britain is telling American companies to weaken security for Americans, because it cannot tell whether a customer is American or British in America.)
IANAL but I don’t believe that “I can’t” is a sufficient defence against a court order especially as Apple has demonstrated in advance by withdrawing the product from the UK market that it is not willing to comply with the law.
What is your point? It is mathematically impossible and if you think a British court can overpower the government of the United States (and mathematics) then I've got a bridge to sell you. And that is betting without American courts nixing any warrant served on Apple.
Then the courts can hold Apple UK in contempt.
And Apple withdraw from the UK. There is an inevitablility about this that you don't seem to comprehend.
Of course. But a legal judgement can be enforced in other countries.
Of course it’s not going to get that far.
Apple not providing a back door has been legally judged in the US as their right. All the way to the Supreme Court.
So any attempt to go after Apple US in the courts, by the U.K., will fall on constitutional grounds.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
And the same if (eg) you want to start smoking. We'll soon balance the books with that model.
Isn't that effectively what happens (and more when you consider social health savings when smokers die relatively early)?
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
And the same if (eg) you want to start smoking. We'll soon balance the books with that model.
Smoke 20 a day for 60 years is over a quarter of a million in tax.
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
An interesting read. I wasn't actually aware that Queen Victoria and Albert were first cousins.
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousing marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
£50,000 up front payment to the NHS if you really want to go ahead with it.
And the same if (eg) you want to start smoking. We'll soon balance the books with that model.
£50,000 one off tax is very cheap if you're a pack a day man or woman.
This Tulsi Gabbard one is weird, from a regime that have just handed over much of the USA citizens' private data to an unlawfully appointed oligarch.
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.
The row with America was predicted on pb. Indignant talk of America dictating privacy entitlements around the world misses that is precisely what Britain is doing, or is seeking to do.
Not at all.
Britain is saying that a court order grants access to information
Think about the mechanism by which Apple can access that information, and you will see the problem. If it is effectively encrypted then Apple cannot decrypt it, and therefore cannot comply. Britain is seeking to ban strong (ie effective) encryption.
And what is wrong with that?
Sidestepping whether it is good or bad, the diplomatic problem is Britain is telling American companies to weaken their security (and in a way that would be hard to confine to British customers).
If Apple wants to operate in the UK it has to obey UK law. What’s wrong with that?
Trump has just told us to go fuck ourselves with the new Online Safety Act, because it will impinge on US tech giants
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"
We are in a new era of power politics, that's "what's wrong with that"
Because whatever our starting point he’s going to ask for something.
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.
But that isn't true, is it? We are so economically, politically and militarily dependent on the USA - and now ALSO technologically subjugated - we have no option but to jump yay high when asked
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?
They could do that, but they wouldn’t as it wouldn’t be value maximising - it would undermine all sales in other markets.
But don’t you think there is a fundamental problem in society where privately owned company are more powerful than governments?
Apple did it to Russia in 2022. Apple seems to have survived this near-total withdrawal from the Russian market
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
I am going to assume you are trolling.
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
I'm an innocent in these matters and hesitate to butt in, but don't all the other US tech giants use encryption too? Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc? Why is Apple particularly exposed to Starmer's machinations?
The issue is end-to-end-encryption
That is, Apple themselves cannot access your data.
This is the gold standard for privacy and security.
Other companies, that use E2E encryption may well follow Apple. Signal (A better version of WhatsApp) almost certainly will
The government passed a law demanding a backdoor. It also demanded that compliance with the law be secret. We only learned of Apple’s refusal via a leak in the US.
Funny thing is that American telecomms companies have been subject to similar laws – for backdoors with secret compliance (like superinjunctions, I guess) – for decades. I've seen one American CEO sit in silence when asked at a shareholders' meeting because it would have been illegal for him to confirm, deny or even acknowledge the possibility. As someone (you?) noted above, this led to infestation by Russian and Chinese spies.
Comments
I realise you have a mental age of about 7, but do try to remember what you wrote a few minutes before.
Of course China now has tariffs on its US exports, Canada and Mexico have only likely a temporary reprieve from US tariffs and Japan and South Korea likely won't avoid them either. So there won't be many foreign alternatives for US consumers anyway nor enough increase in US production to replace them.
Both the UK and EU should encourage their consumers to buy more of their own goods and products certainly as Trump wants Americans to put American goods and products first
Aka The Rapture For Geeks.
On AI, again much of the pioneering work was done here but DeepMind was sold to Google. One of its boffins, Demis Hassabis, won a Nobel Prize for AI-powered protein folding. Oh, and we've just cancelled Edinburgh's supercomputer.
"Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18."
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-measles-surge-inevitable-vaccine-exemptions-2035228
Also, the Telegraph ??
In 2022, Apple withdrew from Russia abruptly and thoroughly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. The company took a series of decisive actions that effectively cut off its operations in the country:
1. Immediate Halt of Product Sales
On March 1, 2022, Apple announced that it had stopped selling all its products in Russia, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other devices. Russian customers were no longer able to order Apple products from the official Apple online store, and shipments to Russian retailers were suspended.
2. Restrictions on Apple Pay and Financial Services
Apple disabled Apple Pay in Russia, making it difficult for Russian users to make payments via their Apple devices. Several Russian banks were also removed from Apple Pay, aligning with Western sanctions that targeted Russia’s financial sector.
3. Removal of RT and Sputnik from the App Store
Apple removed Russian state-controlled media outlets, RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, from its App Store globally to limit the spread of Kremlin-backed propaganda.
4. Disabling Key Features in Russia
Apple disabled traffic and live incident reports in Apple Maps in Ukraine and Russia to protect civilians from military movements and avoid potential misuse.
5. Suspension of Advertising and Services
Apple paused advertising on the App Store in Russia, affecting developers who relied on Apple’s ad services for revenue. Subscription-based Apple services like Apple News were also cut off.
6. iCloud and Software Restrictions
While some existing Apple devices in Russia continued to work, Apple restricted new software updates and services for users in Russia. Developers also found it far more difficult to distribute apps and services in the Russian market.
7. Corporate and Retail Exit
Apple closed its physical offices and corporate operations in Russia, effectively cutting ties with the country’s market. Employees in Russia were relocated or let go.
Impact and Russian Response:
Apple’s withdrawal made iPhones and other Apple products scarce in Russia, leading to a resale boom and gray-market imports from third-party countries like Turkey and Kazakhstan.
Many Russian users switched to Android as Apple services became inaccessible.
The Russian government pushed for homegrown alternatives, like promoting its own smartphone operating systems and digital payment solutions.
Apple’s withdrawal was one of the most comprehensive exits in history by a major Western tech company, and unlike some firms that found ways to stay indirectly, Apple has never returned to the Russian market.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c241pn09qqjo
Data from Bradford suggests the drawbacks are more extensive than thought.
. I hope thta isn't used to try and do down vaccination even more than it is already being.
How is that good for UK consumers? The UK Government has just made the online environment significantly less safe for UK citizens. Great job
https://x.com/dominic2306/status/1894719592129343971
NB. the Establishment plan is to shuffle in thicko Cleverley when Kemi blows.
'We thought we had the Black Thatcher, she turned out to be the Black Truss, but now we got the Black Boris, ta-da!'
Unfortunately sounds like he and his wife committed suicide
"Gene Hackman joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman were voted "The Least Likely To Succeed"..."
I believe @rcs1000 knows Duke Demis of Datashire? Both studied comp tech at the Poly?
Anyway it's an interesting book if not quite as good as the FT's hysteria suggests, and it makes it painfully clear that the UK had a real lead in AI thanks to DeepMind (and a couple of smaller companies) - more than any other European nation, for sure
Was there a way we might have saved them from being swallowed by Google? Interestingly, Elon Musk lobbied the UK and others to prevent that sale, figuring it would give Google too much concentrated AI power....
In another steampunk world Britain is home to five tech giants and we can now order the Chinese to give us Formosa or we cut off their banking
One of the true greats.
(TBF to the Telegraph, Bonny and Clyde was the movie which helped make him famous.)
also the first two (decent!) Superman films, and Enemy of the State.
If Trump's tariffs were purely pressure to achieve a desired result, the EU could offer something on digital services to get them removed. But Trump seems to think tariffs are desirable in themselves. They reduce imports and deliver revenue. In which case the EU would do better to remove its economic dependency on the US to the detriment of all, but particularly the US. Everyone else is trying to do the same thing of course.
If you have one way into a cryptosystem and add a backdoor you now have two ways into a cryptosystem. It is inherently less secure. Anyone who argues it has equal security is bluntly put an idiot.
Secondly because these golden-key, key escrow, secondary key, or key-wrapping techniques — whatever term or approach is used doesn't matter — are intended to operate at a large scale not only have you added a second door, but you have created a master key in effect. By necessity they give one of few people access to everything, a master key level of access.
The US built such a system into their telecoms networks, CALEA, the Chinese Salt Typhoon* hackers have exploited it at scale across most US telecoms companies. The FBI has actually been warning Americans to avoid this threat by using end-to-end encryption. The very thing the UK government wants removed from iCloud at a global scale.
If the UK had some master key level access to iCloud it would be one of the top targets for Russian and Chinese intelligence services. Rightly Apple have decided not to cooperate with such a terrible idea.
* Salt Typhoon don't even break any cryptography they simply backdoor the servers that run the CALEA lawful intercept/backdoor. The very existence of the backdoor IS the vulnerability, not a flaw in the cryptography. If anyone in the UK government thinks that they will be immune to such attacks they are idiots.
I don't even remember him being IN Bonne & Clyde (partly because of the overwhelming presence of Faye Dunaway and Faye Dunaway's incredibly sexy name)
For me his best role is in Unforgiven. Magnificent movie, magnificent performance
.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/
PS if you want to call the man a thicko, at least spell his name right because otherwise it looks like, well, you get the picture.
Vaccines work best if everyone takes them, but are useful even when most people don't.
Which it tends to do, as the cell receptor it targets is greatly overrepresented in the memory cells of the immune system.
Do Americans just like to buy lots of stuff ?
Utterly selfish.
IIRC Conservative Central Office sent assistance to Cleverly last time, rather than to his neighbour, Priti Patel. In the event it was about even.
Sad news about bumblebees - partly the weather last year. And potentially not great for gardeners or farmers. But Mrs C's garden will still be as full of flowers for them as possible.
'Figures show 2024 was the worst year for bumblebees in the UK since records began.
Bumblebee numbers declined by almost a quarter compared with the 2010-2023 average, according to data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The researchers said the drop was probably due to the cold and wet conditions in the UK last spring.'
Measures proposed in the review, commissioned by the previous government and led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, are understood to include making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing women being choked during sex.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q1wx3nzy9o
Only in porn or will the government also ban simulated strangulation in mainstream drama, along with simulated shootings, stabbings and other forms of murder? It is a hard problem given this may condition real life behaviour but this looks like simplistic drivel. At least Mary Whitehouse was consistent.
(They travel further than bees when pollinating, resulting in a greater genetic mix...)
There are also bee resuscitation kits available; Granddaughter bought Mrs C one for her birthday last summer. So far we've rescued one bee!
A majority in all seven of our EuroTrack countries say immigration has been too high nationally
🇩🇪 81% say too high
🇪🇸 80%
🇸🇪 73%
🇬🇧 71%
🇮🇹 71%
🇫🇷 69%
🇩🇰 55%
The idea that a leader might lose their seat is interesting only if it's pivotal in some way - if they could have been important in the next Parliament if only they'd clung on.
Trump allies circulate mass deportation plan calling for ‘processing camps’ and a private citizen ‘army’
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/25/documents-military-contractors-mass-deportations-022648
As I said before he is going for London Mayor, where his more Cameroon/LD positioning will better place him
https://x.com/JamesCleverly/status/1894661350321778715
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMgNz9ZeY_Y
https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/liverpool-fc-parts-company-matt-beard
The withdrawal from Russia following international sanctions and the invasion of a neighbouring democratic country is not comparable to a voluntary decision to terminate delivery of a service to customers in a mature western country.
The problem is the walled garden - if Apple stops serving the UK then all those poor fools who spent £1,500 on an apple phone (ahem, @TheScreamingEagles) will have a useless hunk of junk.
That will be used very effectively by their competitors in other markets. May be they would only lose 10-20% of their customers. But that’s a lot of money
Good use of your daily allowance ..
Drone giant DJI didn't appear overnight.
Their decade-long dominance stems from CEO Frank Wang.
Wang's research and his eventual 2011 thesis defined the blueprint that revolutionized quadcopters forever.
Let's revisit this thesis here:
https://x.com/akapoor_av8r/status/1894795258728456606
It does raise intersting issues. Should our government also ban first cousin marriages, as Norway does and Sweden intends? Or is this a step too far in government interference in people's lives? I'd tend towards the former, but am unsure.
That's a big difference between the covid vaccines which mainly prevented serious illness, but still allowed transmission and less serious symptoms (hence no herd immunity was possible via vaccination), and measles vaccines which stop 97% of children with 2 doses catching measles.
Also a few years ago while tidying up a pile of western red cedar branches I disturbed a bumble bee nest (so stopped). I looked them up, but can't remember the name now. They were small for bumblebees and very yellow so not the typical big ones that have a lot of black.
It's probably horrible, but I've always liked the notion
Pentagon issues memo stating that transgender service members will be discharged from the military
I wonder, would Mac services be disrupted.
Of course it’s not going to get that far.
That is, Apple themselves cannot access your data.
This is the gold standard for privacy and security.
Other companies, that use E2E encryption may well follow Apple. Signal (A better version of WhatsApp) almost certainly will
The government passed a law demanding a backdoor. It also demanded that compliance with the law be secret. We only learned of Apple’s refusal via a leak in the US.
Maybe something could be done around visas where one partner is flown in for an arranged marriage but then all that would do is move the marriage ceremony abroad.
It may be that time and education solve the problem, with younger, UK-educated women rejecting the practice, as in the family in the article.
One complicating factor is endogamy (about halfway through the article) where any concentration of marriages within small communities can lead to similar outcomes owing to common ancestors further back.
So any attempt to go after Apple US in the courts, by the U.K., will fall on constitutional grounds.