No, actually if you read them, you'll find most of them are quite reasonable, and have already been copied by other countries (incl California).
The only dumb one IMHO is the FLOPS training limit.

So far, AI companies have only complained about one thing specifically: the fact that they couldn't train models using private user data without their explicit consent.

All the other companies have *claimed* that they were hindered by the AI laws, only to promptly release their models in the EU a week later. I don't live in the EU, but I checked with a VPN and it was indeed the case.

A lot of this is pure marketing and companies trying to exert political pressure on the only countries in the world trying to enforce sane privacy laws.

Drop the "(Gulf of America)", just "Gulf of Mexico". It's cleaner.

I have a very different interpretation.

> an LKML rust technical disagreement

The point is that there's no technical disagreement. It's only a philosophical/religious disagreement about whether Rust should belong in the kernel or not. (Go see the original thread, the maintainer flat out says that much.)

My issue with this situation is Linus' inconsistency. Either Linus accepts Rust in the kernel, or he does not. Since he did accept Rust in the kernel, he shouldn't allow maintainers to boycott patches just for the sake that they oppose Rust in the kernel, which is _exactly_ what seemed to be the issue here. There was no technical argument for refusing the patch. Nor was there a request for C developers to learn Rust, nor even to have Rust drivers consume C APIs directly.

This *really* seems like a situation where any leader worth the title should step in and resolve these social/philosophical/religious issues. Again: either kicking Rust off the kernel, or allowing it, are both fine options. But just an in between that causes chaos, including several maintainers to resign out of desperation, and just doing nothing, is leadership failure. Linus may have been very successful, but he's not a god, and this is clearly a failure on his part IMO. (I added this last sentence because people seem to put him on a magical pedestal).

You missed the point entirely, that's not at all what's being claimed by anybody. Go read it again more carefully, and while you're at it read the original post too, which precisely uses AOSP as an example.

Imagine graphics performance vs price depicted as a saturation curve: PS5 went the wrong way, getting more expensive for very little performance gains. I wish Sony would have (in addition to the Pro, perhaps) went the other way: give me the same PS5 graphics (perhaps even slightly less!) but for WAY cheaper. And smaller, while we're at it. That might have gotten me to invest in a PS5 while I would never get a Pro.

Precisely Pangolin.

I always wonder myself why everybody assumes that they somehow use a supercomputer to crack encrypted streams. The NSA probably has access to private keys by Verisign, Thawte, etc... and can just perform MITM attacks. After all, most companies use a US-based Certificate Authority.

Android users who are able to run Chrome Beta (that is, who are running ICS) are literally the 1%, according to Google's platform pie charts:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

I prefer that they exploit the full power of their latest and greatest, but it's sad that only a mere 1% can access the latest and greatest :( (as of today, I'm sure this will change very quickly)

I have tried Siri on a jailbroken iPhone 4 and it works just as well, I did not notice any difference.
I doubt this is a major reason for not enabling this on the iPhone 4, especially when taking into account how little difference "just" the improved camera and a dual core processor is to most users.

I would think the improved hardware sensor played a major role, but again, Siri worked just as well for me on an iPhone 4.

Also, I'm surprised that they advertise as "removing most or all of the background noise", while Siri did a fairly good job of knowing who was talking to her, it gets confused too often, which means that it won't work very well if other people in the room are talking.

When did I say that they somehow were falsely advertising or tricking customers into thinking those were actually ePub files? I didn't.
They did, however, decide to base their file format *very heavily* on ePub3, and change it in a way that will make it incompatible, without submitting their changes to the International Digital Publishing Forum (who maintain the ePub file format on which the ibooks file format is heavily based).

Yes, actually, I would expect from a big company such as Apple who is a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum. Especially when they are selling this as a way of reshaping education and school textbooks.

Repeat with me: I'm not saying that they *must* contribute to standards, only that I think it is greedy of them not to do so, considering the circumstances and their competitive advantage.

It is worth noting that you can't export to standard EPUB3 file format, only to PDF. PDF is obviously non-interactive, while the EPUB3 standard would allow for most if not all of the interactive elements that can be created with iBooks Author.

Many argue that they are in their right to put that EULA, and that others have done it before (Microsoft's Word, for example). And they are absolutely right.
That does not mean, however, that this isn't a very greedy move - many even describe it as 'evil' - and just like it happened with Microsoft in the past, I can totally understand why.

Having a right to do something is not incompatible with being greedy or even evil.

A peek into .iba files and a comparison with epub files evidences that Apple deliberately re-designed and implemented features in order to make the ibooks file format incompatible with industry standards. Again, while they are fully in their right to do this, this should be worrying to anyone who appreciates healthy competition and doesn't enjoy Microsoft-like monopolies. Ironically, this has happened with Apple being a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum, who manage the EPUB standard.
(This really smells like embrace-extend-extinguish to me.)

Perhaps what bugs me the most is that in spite of all this, no-one (AFAIK) has taken the time to provide an alternative tool which allows to create interactive ePub documents just as easily. It seems to me that Apple was first to do this "properly" (as it usually happens), and in this case there is no technical reason why it could not have been created 1 or 2 years ago by other industry leaders - I have used iBooks Author and it isn't much more than a glorified presentation editor.

That is a VERY interesting thought! Wish I had modpoints.

..but regular internet users.

The summary sounds like it was a specialized group of hackers - it wasn't it was anyone who followed a link like the following:

http://pastehtml.com/view/blaoyp0qs.html

What if arab countries start seeking extradition of US citizens for women who don't cover their faces in public, or because they didn't do certain things (like traveling) with their husband's written permission?

What about european countries seeking extradition of US citizens for carrying guns in public?

I'm sure there are _many_ things which are done every day by US citizens but are illegal in other countries, perhaps some of which do have extradition treaties!

PD: I realize most US citizens think this is ridiculous, too. I'm not confronting them, just making the same statement with switched roles.

Most apps run well on every android version thanks to the design of API cross-compatibility (I have experienced this myself, being an early android developer).

However, I don't think you can avoid the fact that the OS itself is fragmented when your OS takes 6 months to a full year to be available on the majority of android handsets.

In addition, has Mr. Schmid had a look at this chart, put up by google themselves?
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
It reads OS fragmentation all over it! And this is PRECISELY what pisses many (geek) users off, that they can't get the latest and greatest or that new phones come to market being outdated!