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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • 30 years away from it (reduced from the original 100 years they provided only 5 years ago)

    More like estimates on this are completely unreliable. As in that 100 years could have as well been 1000 years. It was pretty much “until an unpredictable technological paradigm shift happens”. “100 years in future” is “when we have warp drives and star gates” of estimates. Pretty “when we have advanced to next level of advancement and technology, whenever it happens. 100 years should be good minimum of this not being taken as an actual year number estimate”.

    30 years is “we see maybe a potential path to this via hypothetical developments of technology in horizon”. It’s the classical “Fusion is always 30 years away”. Until one time it isn’t, but that 30 year loop can go on indefinitely, if the hypothetical don’t turn to reality. Since you know we thought “maybe that will work, once we put out mind in to it”. Oh it didn’t, on to chasing next path.

    I only know of one project, that has 100 year estimate, that is real. That is the Onkalo deep repository of spent fuel in Finland. It has estimate of spending 100 years being filled and is to be sealed in 2120’s and that is an actual date. Since all the tech is known, the sealing process is known, it just happens to take a century to fill the repository bit by bit. Finland is kinda stable country and radiation hazard such long term, that whatever government is to be there in 2120’s, they will most likely seal the repository.

    Unless “we invent warp drives” happens before that and some new process of actually efficiently and very safely getting rid of the waste is found in some process. (and no that doesn’t include current recycling methods. Since those aren’t that good to get rid of this large amount and with small enough risk of side harms. Surprise, this was studied by Finland as alternative and it was simply decided “recycling is not good enough, simple enough, efficient enough and safe enough yet. Bury it in bedrock tomb”).


  • Main issue comes from GDPR. When one uses the consent basis for collecting and using information it has to be a free choice. Thus one can’t offer “Pay us and we collect less information about you”. Hence “pay or consent” is blatantly illegal. Showing ads in generic? You don’t need consent. That consent is “I vote with my browser address bar”. Thing just is nobody anymore wants to use non tracked ads…

    So in this case DMA 5(2) is just basically re-enforcement and emphasis of previous GDPR principle. from verge

    “exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data.”

    from the regulation

    1. The gatekeeper shall not do any of the following:
      (a) process, for the purpose of providing online advertising services, personal data of end users using services of third parties that make use of core platform services of the gatekeeper;
      (b) combine personal data from the relevant core platform service with personal data from any further core platform services or from any other services provided by the gatekeeper or with personal data from third-party services;
      © cross-use personal data from the relevant core platform service in other services provided separately by the gatekeeper, including other core platform services, and vice versa; and
      (d) sign in end users to other services of the gatekeeper in order to combine personal data,

    unless the end user has been presented with the specific choice and has given consent within the meaning of Article 4, point (11), and Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

    surprise 2016/679 is… GDPR. So yeah it’s new violation, but pretty much it is “Gatekeepers are under extra additional scrutiny for GDPR stuff. You violate, we can charge you for both GDPR and DMA violation, plus with some extra rules and explicity for DMA”.

    I think technically already GDPR bans combining without permission, since GDPR demands permission for every use case for consent based processing. There must be consent for processing… combining is processing, needs consent. However this is interpretation of the general principle of GDPR. It’s just that DMA makes it explicit “oh these specific processing, yeah these are processing that need consent per GDPR”. Plus it also rules them out of trying to argue “justified interest” legal basis of processing case of the business. Explicitly ruling “these type of processing don’t fall under justified interest for these companies, these are only and explicitly per consent type actions”.



  • I would also add that isn’t empty talk like “Well he said it once, non biggie”. That statement by POTUS itself drove the national policy other countries. When POTUS says “other nations you are with us or are our enemies”, that matters.

    That is a signal the reverberates around with “do we dare to anger USA on this one”. The Afghan war partisipants list is long and contains some not so obvious participants often doing rather small token participations. Which I think is exactly “Well we have to show we are with USA”.

    For example here in Finland in the after action report of Finnish participation in Afghanistan tells the reason wasn’t building peace, it wasn’t even combat experience. It was “coalition and alliance building” aka showing USA “we are with them”.

    In the after action study one of the interviewed decision makers literally directly quoted:

    Yhdysvallat sanoi 9/11 jälkeen: olette joko meidän kanssa tai meitä vastaan.”

    United States said after 9/11: You are either with us or against us.

    Right above explaining how it was 20 year long very unpopular operation caused losses and achieved nothing in Afghanistan, but hey the Finnish NATO application will go through with flying colors.

    The whole time the media blitz was about “Helping and building peace in Afghanistan”. When in reality we went in because USA publicly extorted pretty all of west to show colors.

    This isn’t only in Finland in other European after action reports have shown similar “We went in, because Bush publicly demanded show of loyalty”.


  • Since he was an idiot and gave a no reservations or conditions bid for the company. At way overpriced at that. The existing biard and owners must have been fainting from shock and glee.

    No one sane ever gives no reservations and conditions bid. That is insanely stupid thing to do.

    Twitter didn’t make Elon buy Twitter. Elon did that to himself. Under normal bid, absolutely he could back out by arguing one of the conditions his lawyers would have put in.

    Either his lawyers were highly incompetent, he didn’t use them or he ignored their advice that it would be highly unusual and monumentally stupid to issue such bid while waiving ones right to have terms and conditions included. Well negotiate in terms and conditions. Since obviously otherside might refuse to accept the buying contract, if they don’t like the terms and conditions.

    In this case all the judge did was looked at the bid contract and went “Mister Musk, you signed bid to buy with no terms and conditions. So you have to honor the bid.”




  • However I would note… France has rule about no crosses or cross wearing in schools. So it isn’t like Islam is being singled out. Well this specific rule is about them, but France has very wide rule of “no religious clothing, items or symbols” in school and they don’t much pick sides. Jewish kids… No kippas, Protestants and Catholics, no crosses, Muslims, no head scrafs, no face veils, no religious robes. Sikhs, no turbans.

    So it isn’t xenophobic, since the local majority religion is also under rules of “no religious symbols wearing”.

    What one can say is, that it is highly anti-religious. However that isn’t same thing as xenophobic or say specifically antisemitic or islamophobic. Islamophobic would be “Muslim girls aren’t allowed to wear scarfs, but it’s okay for catholic girls to wear crosses”.

    French government “doesn’t like” the local traditional majority religion either.

    One absolutely can argue about “is it too much restriction of religious liberty in general”, however one can’t argue “well but this is about jews or muslims”. It isn’t. This specific rule about abayas is mostly a technocratic decision based on wider political decision of “we have principle of no religious displays in school”. It was decided “oh yeah, we missed this one religious clothing wearing/display. Add it to the long list of specified banned religious displays of all kinds”.

    I’m sure, if member of the church of the flying spaghetti monster tried to walk to French school with colander on their head, the courts would rule "no colander hats either, that is religious display also. You can go join the Jewish and Sikhs on the club house of “France banned our religious hat” club.


  • Depends how deep the lines are. They have breached the first line at some points. However as per ukrainians, after the first line is the second line and so on. Russia knows how to make deep defences and anywhere, where they lose one line, they will adjust and start added more lines to the rear to compensate for the lost line. First line lost, second line is now first line, third line is second and so on and add the new Nth line, since the old Nth is now Nth-1 line.

    It will be a slow slug and battering ram fest, unless Russian army morale breaks/ supplies exhaust and they run.


  • Did he really?

    Rather is it instead some billionaire would have done it. We had the bad luck of it being Elon Musk instead of someone better.

    He put money in Tesla. That is his main contribution. Tesla which kinda had the first mover advantage of being the one well placed EV company via their deals with AC propulsion and Lotus. Both which happened without Elon.

    What really made Tesla possible aka the first Tesla roadster possible was Tappering and Eberhard personally flying cross the Atlantic to go personally meet Lotus leadership for Lotus to produce the gliders aka most of the car. The chassis, body, the suspension. The roadster was mostly a Lotus made car in which Tesla dropped electric drive train. Electric drive train, which core technologies were licenses from AC propulsion.

    Funnily worlds first big EV company might have been called AC propulsion. They had their Tzero prototype, which is pretty much hand build kit car Tesla Roadster. All of first Eberhard, Tappering and then Musk talked to AC propulsion about them starting serial production of tzero. However it didn’t happen since the company leadership adamantly refused. That is why Eberhard and Tappering incorporated Tesla Inc. They needed separate company to start production of tzero style roadster, since AC Propulsion strictly stuck to the field of just electric drivetrain tech. Under which field they then did what they thought their business is, AC propulsion licenses the drivetrain tech to Tesla and then let Tesla take the job and risk of actual automotive production.

    Main contribution of Elon was insisting on carbon fiber instead of glass fiber composites. Requiring expensive retooling at Lotus for the Tesla production line thus making making car more expensive and saving negligible amounts of weight.

    All the engineers apparently went: We already considered carbon fiber anyway. Carbon Not worth the extra cost of parts for the weight saving. This body can be perfectly well be done with glass fiber composites. Like you are the main stock holder, so it’s your money. We do it in carbon fiber, if you insist. Just saying there is no reason to do it engineering wise.

    However Elon wanted cool space age carbon fiber body so they did it in carbon fiber. Again at great extra cost for both Tesla and the customers.

    Sound familiar? Elon insisting on non practical engineering choice, since he got in its head a obsession to make the thing that way and no otherway. Like removing radars and other sensors even though as leaks have later revealed all the main engineers on the driving systemics said it is stupid idea and leads to unreliable sensorial leading to problems.

    Atleast in the camera only case he is trying to save money. I guess that is improvement over the unnecessary exorbitantly expensive carbon body paneling on the Roadster (Roadster is aluminium tub chassis car , the carbon fiber was doing no mechanical work, it was literally just body cladding).



  • SO if Russia starts lobbing around chemical and biological weapons, then Ukraine should do that too? Like not gonna work like that, for example biological weapons are one of those were you can’t just go “tit-for-tat”. Since every biological weapon used is new risk of launching a pandemic on the world and so on.

    To certain level, yes if other side breakes the rules, we get to break them also. However there is a line. Line which you never cross. Under no circumstances should Ukraine be allowed to target medical facilities, even on Russia having done it multitude of times. Indiscriminate intentional bombardment of still habited cities with no allowing of civilians to evacuate should always be off the table. You just don’t do that. All it leads is to needless human suffering.

    It’s one thing to aim for military or strategic target and miss and hit civilians. That is recognized as reality of war. Terror bombardment? Never to be allowed. Not to mention it doesn’t work. Every example in history has shown all it does is make the receiving end angry, instead of demoralizing them. It sets a “So it’s to the last breath then? That is the name of the game, fine that is the name of the game” and they fight to bitter end.


  • CAT, Cat Anti Tank. Disables armored fighting vehicles by missiling up to the vehicle, climbing on top and driving through the hatches to scratchs the hell out of the on board crew. Dont ask how the CAT, gets through closed hatches, practical experience just shows they do.

    When asked about the hatches matter, the CAT complained about:

    • questioners lack of understanding importance of operational security around classified war technology.
    • where is their food, they don’t disable couple enemy tanks per day for free.

    Benefit of CAT over other AT weaponry is they leave the vehicle in good technical condition to be captured. Minus gory remains of the previous crew inside.


  • Well mostly the flaw is people assigning the test abilities it was never intended. Like testing intelligence. Turing outright as first thing in the paper presenting “imitation game” noted moving away from testing intelligence, since he didn’t know to do that. Even on the realm of “testing intelligent kind of behavior” well more like human like behavior and human being here proxy for intelligent, it was mostly an academic research idea. Not a concrete test meant to be some milestone.

    If the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think’ are to be found by examining how they are commonly useit is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

    Turing wanted a way to step away from stuff like “thinking” and “intelligence” directly and then proposed “imitation game” mostly to the rest of the academia as way to develop computer systemics more towards “intelligent behavior”. It was mostly like “hey we need some goal to have as a goal to have something to move towards with these intelligence things. This isn’t intelligence, but it might be usefull goal or tool for development work”. Since without some goal/project/aim to have project don’t advance. So it was “how about we try to develop a thing, that can beat this imitation game. Wouldn’t that be good stepping stone. Then we can move to the actual serious stuff. Just an idea”.

    However since this academic “thinking out aloud spitballing ideas” was uttered by the Alan Turing, it became the Turing Test and everyone started taking it way too seriously. Specially outside academia. Who yes did play the imitation game with their programs as it was intended as research and development tool.

    exemplified by for example this little exerpt of “not trying to do anything too complete and ground breaking here”:

    In any case there is no intention to investigate here the theory of the game, and it will be assumed that the best strategy is to try to provide answers that would naturally be given by a man

    It is pretty literally “I had a thought”. Turin makes no claims of machine beating the game having any significance other than “machine beat this game I came up with, neat”. There is no argument of if machine beats imitation game, then X or then it means Y is reached.

    Rest of the paper is actually about objections to the core idea of “it could ever be possible for machine to think” and even as such said imitation game is kinda lead in or introduction to Turing’s treatise various objections of various “it would be impossible for machine to think” arguments. Starting with theological argument of “only human soul can think. Hence no animal or machine can think.” … since it was 1950’s.


  • Yeah. Unless he has evidence… Yeah, don’t go around spewing that kind of stuff. How about going with “looks like middle-aged man having midlife crisis and currently in the “gym rat” phase of it”… little dig in there, but you know more realistic. Yeah he is little funny with the shirtless sports posing, so throw some shade over it. However it in no way implies cheating on his wife. Don’t know if he is, don’t know if he isn’t, but getting the middle life crisis hobby of “jiu-jitsu” doesn’t tell anything about that.

    As said I think him getting in shape, sports and posing is way more about just bulk standard mid-life crisis. “Oh I’m getting little old. When did that midsection and belly got so wide. I should start a sports hobby to get in shape and avoid cardiovascular disease”. Some people get a motorbike to catch the lost youth. Others become gym rats/sports nuts to try to catch back their lost youth body.

    Again which really wouldn’t be that interesting except billionaire and also him apparently getting so hooked on it, that he started competing in tournaments.

    Doesn’t also remove anything from his horrible record of business ethics. He has absolutely horrible business ethics as most of these silicon valley billionaires in the advertising/social media sphere. Comes with the territory. One doesn’t start a targeted advertising social media business, if one values the ethics of peoples right to privacy.


  • Issue isn’t Russia reaping them. It never is with cluster munitions. In fact given the battle field is Ukraine, it will be Ukrainian civilians repair the harvest on this. Problem isn’t “ohhhh cluster munitions are nasty to enemy soldiers”. No those are free target, we rip them, tear them. Huge 155 mm shrapnel HE shell will tear flesh just as nastily as a cluster sub munitions, if not worse even.

    The issue is submunitions in effect ending up being anti-personnel mines, since not all of the submunitions detonate properly and then end up teetering on their fuse and then some civilian stumbles upon them later, knocks it and boom, there goes civilians hand/leg/life.

    All munitions have a fault percent of not detonating (fuses fail, the safety self-destructs fail). Issue is cluster sub munitions are small and there is lot of them.

    It is pretty obvious should there be 155 mm dud HE shell sticking from the field soil. sub munitions, not so much. It’s a small hand grenade sized thing.



  • intentionally made to a public forum could be considered private information after the fact

    Well that’s the thing. The criterion is Personally identifying information. Not private information.

    Remember GDPR includes right to be forgotten. Person is allowed to change their mind. At one point they might have wanted and agreed for that information being readily publicly available. Then they have right to change their mind “Nope, don’t want the information out still”.

    As I said. Just because it has been publicly published, doesn’t remove the protection categorization GDPR offers.

    It is just then PII you at the moment want to be publicly available. Ofcourse deleting anything completely of the net later is not possible, but the point is when informed of deletion order, that organization is not supposed to be part of the “this persons information is published, when they don’t want it” problem anymore. Company can’t control all of Internet, but they can control their own conduct and within that limit they must comply to privacy order. Even if it doesn’t perfectly swipe the information from all of internet.

    It is utterly different mentality and regime from “private/secret” or “public/its gone now” system. In this other system privacy is on going process and scale. It can move two ways instead of just unidirectionally. Person has right to ask and demand for what has been public to be made more private. As they also can choose to make private more public.

    EU and its citizens have right to choose what principles they base their privacy laws on and they chose this different kind of regime. Other regions and countries are free to choose otherwise in their own jurisdiction (though EU does this super claim of “EU data subject involved, we claim jurisdiction”)



  • Well lordstown was always a niche player. Plus the production capacity is going nowhere, since it is now owned and operated by Foxconn.

    Lordstown was always going out of business. They merely bought couple extra years by selling the factory to Foxconn. Foxconn got it at a steal, since Lordstown was indesperate need of money.

    Foxconn has no intention to make success out of Lordstown and endurance. They are aiming to be contract maker for hire like MagnaSteyr, Valletta Automotive or VDL. They aim for big secure contracts with the main brands.