The "banana" rule isn't actually a "rule" at all, it's a classification scheme so purchasers know what they're getting sight-unseen. Bananas can be as bendy as the buyer likes, as long as the buyer knows they're bendy.

More importantly, it's a WTO scheme, not an EU one, so it will still apply after Brexit, if we manage to join the WTO.

I wouldn't call them bog-cheap, but I know such receivers are available.

20 years ago I was working on GPS fiducial networks that could do that. WGS84 coordinates are good enough for most applications, but fiducial networks have to deal with the coordinate system not being fixed for just that reason. They wouldn't work so well if the DoD decided to degrade the signals, though

A good question to ask, but the answer is an unequivocal "no". The packets are purely data, there is no executable content, and receivers don't have the capability of executing anything in the satellite broadcasts (at least as far as the civilian side goes - the DoD doesn't tell us what the military has). So there's no way properly designed 5G networks could receive a shutdown message. The nearest I could think of would be if some malformed packet could cause a data buffer overrun in buggy network software; that would be specific to the particular buggy software, so it's up to the developers to design robust systems.

The EU has, quite properly, been looking after the EU's interests. May still doesn't seem to have worked out yet what she wants. And Galileo isn't scheduled to provide full operational capability yet, so it's no big deal that it doesn't.

It's not surprising, but part of the issue is how precisely they can define the area over which the degradation can be applied. If you're a friendly State near a war zone, and the US cripples your aviation and/or shipping as collateral damage because you're in the degraded area, you might not stay friendly for long.

Sure, we could build our own satellite navigation system, to rival Galileo. But it needs a bit more than just launching bits of hardware, and we certainly did not provide all of the satellite technology - the work was deliberately spread all around the EU. Still, I'm sure those EU-based companies will happily sell us back the technologies we already partially paid for anyway - and all because of May's fit of pique, in saying that we're not even to get the access the rest of the non-EU will get to Galileo.

That is just *so* incorrect! The satellites send precise timing signals, along with two sets of orbital details: the almanack, rough positional information so the receiver knows which satellites to search for if it knows its approximate location and time, and the ephemeris, precise orbital information, for the actual position calculation. It works by measuring the time taken from the satellites to the receiver and triangulating from that (it actually does that in 4 dimensions, needing at least 4 satellites, because the receiver's clock won't be accurate enough to use the timing signals directly to work out the distance from the satellites). When it was introduced, the DoD only made one of the frequencies, L1, available and deliberately degraded it (which was called "selective availability"). That degradation was turned off in May 2000, and further enhancements to the civilian availability have been made such as the introduction of further signals that are easier to detect, make the satellites easier to locate, and compensate better for atmospheric effects.

Thanks for crediting us here in the UK with Galileo, but it's an EU project, not a UK one, and we appear to be shut out of it because of Brexit.

Back in the 1990s, the US DoD put out a statement that in the event of a conflict, GPS augmentation systems (which would now include things like the EU's EGNOS) would be considered a valid military target whether on friendly soil or not. It's part of the reason other States started to develop their own systems (except Russia, which was already well established with GLONAS by then).

Octopodes do no lyin' deeds.

Of course, if it were done under government supervision, someone else might try it without government supervision. But no, I can't remember a case of it being done retrospectively.

Not so, at least if the removal is at build time. There was at least one story in which the rules were modified. A mining robot, if I remember correctly, in an environment in which it wouldn't have been able to function with the standard laws.

PDP 11/70? Eee, tha' were lucky. I cut my computer teeth on the PDP 8/E. I also did the maintenance course on it, which with my electronics degree meant I could follow a high-level instruction (in FOCAL) all the way down to the movement of electrons in specific gates. Am I of the last generation for whom such an end-to-end view of computing was reasonably commonplace?

Yes, because the computer farms doing blockchain proof of work are devastating for the environment. If blockchain dies, there's a much better chance of there still being a habitable world for my grandchildren. The sort of person heavily into cryptocurrencies tends to be the sort of person who either doesn't believe humans have any impact on climate change or has wet dreams about helping cause widespread devastation, so it needs something external to kill them.

How does this apply to content hosted outside the USA? Are they simply pushing ISP jobs overseas, or are they going to Build A [Fire]Wall?

When the vehicle has stopped, it doesn't matter what the steering is set to.