Humanius

Just wait till Musk learns about banking regulations.
He's already complaining about the EU regulations on social media, but they nothing compared to what banks have to deal with.

I have a YouTube Premium subscription

Okay.. So he went to Russia in 2003. Considering that the consensus in 2003 was that Russia was still on its way to becoming a democracy I am not that offended by it personally.
"Putin's hometown" being St. Petersburg, which is the 2nd biggest city in Russia.

What is more worrying is all the things that happened since 2003.

It really boils down to a few reasons:

• I don't like ads, and I prefer not to see them
• Running a platform like YouTube is not cheap, and I understand that Google needs money to keep things running.
• The revenue of Premium is split between YouTube and the creators, much like ad revenue is. So it also supports the channels that I follow.

From what I understand this change will retroactively apply to games released in the past as well. I think that's a rather scummy move on Unity's part. "I've altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

And it's not like game devs have been using a free product. They already pay for it through expensive licenses per developer.

If the justification on Unity's part is true, that for each install of a Unity game the runtime environment needs to be downloaded from their servers, then maybe they should look into fixing that rather than nickle and diming their customers for each individual install (customers in this case being the game developers)

The headline is a bit misleading. Trump agreed to the ABC debate if Harris agrees to the Fox debate.
This is just a ploy for him to either get Harris to show up on Fox, or if she doesn't debate him on Fox, spin it in such a way that Harris is somehow not wanting to debate him (Even though she never agreed to a Fox debate)

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that retroactively applies to things that happened before the ToS got updated.

So 23andMe would still be open to lawsuits for the previous breach

So they can bitch that people booed, but he won’t acknowledge the reason is he raped a literal child?

Mathew Immers is not the guy who raped the child. That is Steven van de Velde.
Immers is van de Velde's beach volleyball partner.

Guess I'll be contacting my MEPs, and looking into which MEPs support and oppose this plan.
Though I am glad to see my country at least has stated it finds the proposal unacceptable.

I'm guessing they probably have rules against plagiarism, or passing off other people's work as your own.
So then I guess it would be down to whether using AI (without disclosure?) is plagiarism or not

Please please please don't vote the orange man into office.. good God.

That hasn't stopped me from using other Google services like Gmail, Docs, or Drive either.

If I ever decide I want to opt out of Google's ecosystem I'll just serve them a GDPR data deletion request.
That's what I did when I deleted my Twitter account as well.

It's a form of protest. He's clearly not actually aiming to get elected.

The German state doesn't recognise Palestine as a state currently, so probably not.
Only a few countries west of the former Iron Curtain recognise Palestine (Iceland and Sweden, and as of this year Norway, Ireland, and Spain)

I like to think that these videos are the only thing keeping Patrick Boyle sane from his career in finance.

His channel is great. I love his dry sense of humour.

It's because back when smartphones and Whatsapp were new, unlimited text messaging plans were either expensive or unavailable in much of Europe (and I would imagine other places as well). From my understanding these kinds of plans were much more common in America.

When your cellphone plan has limited text messages, but sending messages via Whatsapp takes so little data that it might as well be unlimited, the barrier to early adoption becomes very low. So people start using Whatsapp, and get their friends to use Whatsapp. And once that ball is rolling it becomes very hard to stop.

These days people use Whatsapp because everyone else uses Whatsapp.
It's the assumed default.

Edit: Heck.. even to this day I have limited text messages.
My current cellphone plan is for 12 GB, Unlimited calls, and 500 texts.

And I've not sent a single text message in months, if not years.

They don't care whether you call it Facebook or Meta.
All they care about is that enough people were talking about the name change, so that they were distracted from the real controversy (which is the "Facebook Papers" revalations)

It's odd to me that there are places that would consider that piracy

In my country (the Netherlands), to my knowledge, you have the right to do whatever you like with your copy of a movie as long as you don't distribute it.
That includes ripping it, and putting the mkv on your personal server. That is precisely what the home-copy tax is for afterall..

Netherlands here. We're dealing with a couple of difficult problems, each of which making each other worse:

Nitrogen oxide emissions crisis

Nitrogen oxide emissions are a serious problem for biodiversity, and as a consequence the EU has put limits on how much nitrogen emissions can be emitted close to Natura2000 areas (which are a form of official nature reserve).
However, the Netherlands is a very densely populated country, and also has a lot of these Natura2000 areas.

Now it turns out that basically all human activity emits nitrogen oxide in some form, and it's completely paralyzing the ability for anything to get done.
This problem is core to a lot of the other problems my country is dealing with right now.

The government is trying to limit nitrogen emissions, for instance through means such as buying out animal farms, but this is not very popular.

Housing availability crisis

About a decade ago the government abolished the ministry of people's housing, because it was believed at the time that such a ministry was no longer necessary to provide enough housing. This coincided with the after effects of the 2008 housing crisis.
As a result, every year since too few houses have been built to meet demand, and now we are dealing with a crippling shortage in the housing supply.

The government has since realized the problem and is attempting to tackle it, but the aforementioned nitrogen oxide crisis also makes it very difficult for new housing development to obtain the necessary permits.

So instead the government tries to push hot-fixes like rent-caps, which ultimately just reduce the supply of rental properties even further. This is because land-lords cannot make a profit renting out these properties with the proposed rent-caps, so they just sell the property instead.

High inflation / High cost-of-living / High interest rates

Last year, like much of Europe, we were dealing with pretty high cost-of-living and inflation rates.
This is a direct result of our prior dependence on Russian gas, and the war in Ukraine disrupting the supply of that gas.

I stand with Ukraine, and I think it is good we quit cold turkey on our addiction to cheap Russian gas, but it had a lot of serious knock on-effects on the cost of living and the inflation rate.

The ECB (European Central Bank) has tried to fight the inflation rate with interest rate hikes (and it would appear they are succesfull at doing that). But by raising inflation rates, they do slow down the ability to invest in the economy. This in turn affects things like the ability for property investors to build housing, which worsens the housing crisis again.

Full electricity net

On top of all this, we are also running out of capacity on the electricity net.

This is going on at the same time that we are trying to eliminate our natural gas consumption for environmental reasons, as well as the need to reduce our reliance on potentially hostile foreign powers (see Russia).

This is causing numerous issues with regards to businesses switching away from gas, new businesses opening, new housing construction, etc..

Severe employee shortages

Despite everything, the Dutch economy has been running pretty well, and as a result there has been very low rates of unemployment. It's gotten to the point that there are significantly more jobs available in basically every field, than there are people to work those jobs. That is causing other serious problems in turn.

As an example, public transit cannot find the necessary workers to get all the trains to run reliably on time.
Another example is a shortage of workers in the construction industry, which worsens the aforementioned housing availability crisis, and the electricity net being at capacity.
Another example is a shortage of engineers able to plan out extensions for the electricity net

This shortage can pretty much be extended to every industry right now.

Asylum crisis

On top of the other stuff going on, we also have a large amount of asylum seekers trying to obtain refugee status in the Netherlands.

Under normal circumstances these asylum seekers would apply for asylum in Ter Apel, which is an asylum processing center. They would stay there until they obtain refugee status, after which they would find a regular place to live elsewhere in the country.

However, the severe housing shortage is making that last step impossible, which is causing refugees to stay in Ter Apel for far longer than they reasonably should be. This is clogging up the system with people to the point where Ter Apel has long since exceeded capacity.
This causes numerous problems, and politically it's very difficult to get other parts of the country to carry their weight in dealing with this crisis.

The main concern is that refugees take away houses from the Dutch people who are also unable to find housing.

14 years of a mainly liberal-conservative government (VVD), and a future mainly populist government (PVV)

While I think the VVD (liberal conservatives) is not as bad as some people make the party out to be, they are liberals.. And liberals seem to be allergic to interfering with market forces, even if those market forces are actively making things worse.
Because of this, government action on all of these crises over these past 14 years has largely been too little, too late.

The people are fed up with the inability of the government to solve these issues, and have voiced their displeasure in last year's general election.
But instead of voting for a party which will tackle the fundamental issues mentioned above, they largely voted for the PVV (populists) who blames all problems on the refugees and migrants.

They propose to significantly reduce the number of people coming into the country.
However, they seem to ignore that our economy is highly dependent on skilled migrants coming in to work for companies such as ASML. They also seem to ignore that reducing the number of people coming into the country will worsen the general employee crisis we are already dealing with.

So while I hold out hope that they might be more effective than the VVD, I'm not holding out hope for any meaningful change in the next term.

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I probably forgot a few things, but these are the main issues my country is dealing with right now.
Sorry for the long post, but there is just a lot we are dealing with.

This is a judgement by the Dutch high court, not the government.
The Dutch government is still studying the verdict, but is seemingly looking to reverse the decision.

If the situation in Germany is anything like the Netherlands, it legit is just a shortage of workers outright.

There are more job vacancies than people to fill those vacancies, so you end up with a shortage of workers.
Making tram driving more attractive by paying them more would draw employees away from other industries, who also need people to do the work.

Not saying tram drivers shouldn't be paid more, but if the situation in this German city is anything like what we are dealing with here in the NL, then paying people more is not going to solve the issue. Only solution is to either decrease the number of open positions (which usually only happens in a recession, which is not great), or to increase the number of people who can do the work (for example through immigration)

Edit: A possible solution specifically in the case of trams could be automation (self-driving trams), which would relax the overall demand for workers.
There are already transportation system without drivers that have been operating since the 80s (e.g. the London DLR)

It's probably a bit more tricky in mixed traffic, but since trams are on predictable rails it would be easier than automating cars.

https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-reveals-plans-to-charge-per-game-install-drawing-criticism-from-development-community

Other articles I have been reading on the topic do mention it:

Unity has also clarified the changes are "not retroactive or perpetual", noting it will only "charge once for a new install" made after 1st January 2024. However, while it won't be charging for previously made installs, fees do indeed apply to all games currently on the market, meaning should any existing player of an older game that exceeds Unity's various thresholds decide to re-install it after 1st January, a charge will still be made.

When I say that it applies retroactively, I mean that it applies to games released in the past.
It's true that they are not retroactively charging devs for past downloads. That would have been even worse.

Wasn't the TGV sabotage attack also targeted at the fiber-optics lines? Wouldn't be surprised if they were related.
Or maybe these people just really dislike fiber-optics, and are in the pockets of big copper /j

As someone who works in the tech industry and has used AI tools (or more accurately machine learning models), I do think it is overrated.
That doesn't mean that I don't think it can be useful, just that it's not going to live up to the immense hype surrounding it right now.

https://www.thecable.ng/historical-review-nigerias-national-minimum-wage/

It looks like this would be a monthly figure. Based on this source minimum wage currently sits at 30.000 Naira ($22,45) /month.
From what I understand it is higher than what it was set at in the 80s, but the value of the Naira did drop quite a bit over time (when compared to the US dollar)

According to this website the 1981 wage would have been equivalent to $204, while the 2024 wage is equivalent to $24

But at least is was a lemon with style.. unlike the Cybertruck ;P

Judging by the article Volkswagen is not really opposing the union effort? They appear to be okay going along with whatever the employees decide.

Unlike many employers who conduct campaigns against union membership when faced with an organizing effort, Volkswagen had remained neutral in this campaign. Its statement once the vote was announced was similarly even-handed, stating only the vote results and that “We will await certification of the results by the NLRB. Volkswagen thanks its Chattanooga workers for voting in this election.”

[...]

One reason the company was more neutral than many employers facing a union vote is the strength of unions in its home country of Germany. The main union for its plants there has a seat on the company’s board.

I think you are missing the point why people take issue with overtourism.

Amsterdam isn't a themepark, it's a city where people actually live, grew up, have lives. And overtourism tends to hollow out what makes the city authentic. The houses get converted to AirBnB's and hotels, the regular shops, pubs and restaurants can't find regular customers anymore so start catering to tourists instead, etc. This results in a sort of Disneylandification of your city. It's generally a nuisance to the inhabitants of a city.
Ultimately a city is for the people who live there, not the people who visit.

Tourism can be good for the local economy, but there is only so much people are willing to put up with.

Edit: Also, old hotels are allowed to be renovated, as long as the number of sleeping places in the city doesn't increase

A new hotel in Amsterdam can only be built if another hotel closes, if the number of sleeping places doesn't increase, and if the new hotel will be better, for example more sustainable.

Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it's a tale as old as time.

If you really want to make comparisons (and I'd argue it's really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it's a more valuable number.

By the medals per capita metric the USA is 47th, and China is 75th.
https://www.medalspercapita.com/

I can't find a good list for medals per athlete sent.

Archival link: https://archive.is/D60ep
Link to the study: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online/

Personally, as a member of the community, I just go with LGBT+ or LGBTQ+ (or in my own language LHBTI+)
You can keep specifying further and futher, but the acronym just becomes so unwieldy that noone knows what you are talking about anymore.

Regardless of your stance on what is going on in Gaza, I don't think unions should be picking a side either way.

The point of a union is to represent the worker toward their employer. This is most effective if all workers stand together.
Taking a stance on a matter that is so politically controversial as the situation in Gaza/Israel, only serves to divide workers, reducing the effectiveness of unions to achieve their core purpose.

If individuals (or groups of individuals) want to support or denounce either Israel or Palestine that should be their choice, but I don't think a union should get involved in that.

Sadly it's tricky to separate the two.

Say if hypothethically we have a data center that is not connected to the grid, and is entirely running on solar power and battery storage.
If the grid still generates (part of) its electricity need using fossil fuels, those same solar panels and batteries could instead have been used to (further) decarbonize the grid.

While using solar power is good, increasing the overall unnecessary electricity consumption is still not great.

According to Cornald Maas (the Dutch commentator for the Eurovision) the "threatening motion", as far as he is aware, was Joost pushing down the camera/phone, after asking not to be filmed.

Source (also in Dutch)

People who have a more in-the-middle opinion generally don't talk about AI a lot. People with the most extreme opinions on something tend to be the most vocal about them.

Personally I think it's a neat technology, and there probably exist use-cases where it will work decently well. I don't think it'll be able to do everything and anything that the AI companies are promising right now, but there are certainly some tasks where an AI tool could help increase efficiency.
There are also issues with the way the companies behind the Large Language Models are sourcing their training data, but that is not an inherent issue of the technology. It's more an issue with incorrectly licensing the material.

I'm just curious to see where it all goes.

In other words, the price of the Pixel 8 Pro will be higher in order to include a smart watch that you may or may not even want

More like they have an ancient sewage system.

Basically, if the sewer system gets overwhelmed, for instance if there is a large amount of rainfall in a short time, then the sewage overflows directly into the Seine.
They have built infrastructure leading up to the Olympics to capture this overflow in storage tanks, but you cannot build infinitely large storage tanks so at some point it will still overflow.

And 2024 has been a very wet year thusfar, so..

You can plug a USB hub into your phone. That'd give you more ports.
I'm fairly certain there are hubs out there with a pass-through for charging as well

The court did not use the term genocide (or at least that is not how it is being reported on here in the Netherlands)

https://nos.nl/l/2508537

"Israël houdt bij haar aanvallen onvoldoende rekening met de gevolgen voor de burgerbevolking", schrijven de rechters. "Het hof oordeelt dat er een duidelijk risico bestaat dat met de F-35-gevechtsvliegtuigen van Israël ernstige schendingen van het humanitaire oorlogsrecht worden gepleegd in de Gazastrook."

Translated:

"Israel, in its attacks, does not take enough consideration of the consequences for the civilian population," write the judges. "The court judges that there exists a clear risk that, using the F35 fighter jets, severe violations of the humanitarian rules of war are being committed in the Gaza Strip."

"Violating the humanitarian rules of war" doesn't mean the same as "genocide is being committed"
In my honest opinion, implying that the court has said anything along those lines is being dishonest.

Edit: The following paragraph is also worth noting:

"Dat op dit moment niet een definitief juridisch oordeel kan worden gegeven over de vraag of Israël het humanitair oorlogsrecht op ernstige wijze schendt, dat klopt op zichzelf", ging de rechter verder. "Dat oordeel geeft het hof ook niet. Maar daar gaat het in deze zaak niet om. Het gaat er in deze zaak alleen om of er een duidelijk risico is dat de naar Israël uitgevoerde F-35-onderdelen gebruikt worden bij het begaan van ernstige schendingen van het humanitair oorlogsrecht. Het hof oordeelt dat onmiskenbaar is dat dat een duidelijk risico is."

Translated:

"That at this moment there cannot be a definitive legal judgement on the question of whether Israel has violated the humanitarian rules of war in a serious manner, is correct on its face," continues the judge. "The court doesn't make that judgement. But that is also not what this case is about. This case it is only about whether there exists a clear risk that the F-35 parts which get exported to Israel get used in the committing of serious violations of the humanitarian rules of war. The court decides that it is unmistakable that that is a clear risk."

The court case did not look at whether Israel is definitely committing violations of the humanitarian rules of war, but rather whether there is a reasonable assumption of risk that the F35 planes get used in such violations.
And judging by the extent of the attacks on Gaza by Israel, it's probably fair to say that there is such a risk.

Edit 2: Some tweaks to the translations.

I'm technically still sharing a Netflix account with my parents, though I rarely use it at this point.
Whenever I want to watch a movie, and I check Netflix, they don't have it. (It's worth pointing out that I'm not in the US)

In contrast, YouTube Premium gives me pretty much exactly what I seek from it. Videos from channels that I follow, but now without ads.