I have an android phone. Gemini somehow installed without my permission. I have never touched it. Is Google counting me as a user?

If these numbers might move stock prices, the word fraud comes to mind. Faking user counts these days really isn't any better than falsifying the accounting. It is about the same as reporting fake revenue and fake profits.

Landfills seem like a bad idea in general, to me. It seems like doing something most would not do, dig a hole and toss their trash in it, scaled at country level. But I'm biased, since we phased them out last century I've never really "known" them. We recycle what can be recycled, food waste is used to produce bio fuel, and whatever is left is incinerated and the heat generated used for water borne heating or electricity production depending on season.

Apparently, landfills produce more potent greenhouse gases (i.e. methane), so even without CO2 capture incineration is supposedly still a climate win.

An iPhone is designed for personal use. It was never designed to have 1000's of these things (or more) 100% owned and 100% centrally managed by a company.

Companies supply "work phones" for a reason. You really don't want all your employees in key supplier or customer facing roles to be working on a privately controlled phone number and device (and sometimes private email addresses/messaging services). Don't even get into all the data retention legal issues when people discuss non-public information on devices that can personally wipe.

It's further evidence we live in a simulation. The universe's random event timer(s) trigger, and random (often unfortunate) shit happens.

</troll>

My apologies, but since no-one else seems to have hypothesised the obvious explanation, I thought I'd do it. ;-)

I was thinking something similar. If it's not US soil, then US officials have no jurisdiction there and no basis for complaining about what anyone does there.

It's been a while since I've flown, but isn't it usually on the same panel as the fasten seatbelt sign? If so, you'd need a new panel just without the no smoking part.

Heck, even replacing the whole sign with a placeholder would probably be a process. Those wires go places, connects to electronics, ending up in a switch in the cockpit, probably has redundancy. I'd be wiling to bet the list of "what's involved in making any change, even just removing the wiring for a single LED" is mighty long.

And then there would be changes in procedures for the crew as well. A whole new sequence of steps to document and make changes to training. You can't very well have someone fail their exam for not flipping a switch that no longer exists. And the same for, as you mention, inspection items.

Anyway, I'm just speculating. Perhaps it's just everyone being lazy and not bothering and it wouldn't have been a big deal.

I wouldn't be surprised if the expense and bureaucracy of getting anything approved for use on airplanes is the reason for that. They'll just keep using what was approved at the dawn of time until they really need that space for something that's worth the cost.

Either that, or it's a requirement in some document that will probably take another few decades to be revised.

Thank you for providing this correction to GP's post.

Somewhat amusing that that's at +5, Informative though, whilst your post is languishing at +2 (including, I think, my default +1 user / karma bonus).

Interesting, in the sense that, between you and a previous post(er), I now have an idea of scale* and costs:

12m tokens / day @ $50 / m = $600 / day
~ $150,000 / year

This equates to (roughly: varies by location, etc.) the salaries of 2 to 3 junior developers. And I have been led to believe that most AI companies are currently losing money on their offerings, with quoted ratios of 3:2.

There's going to be some 'testing' times ahead...

*I still have no real idea what you're using 12m tokens per day on - though I presume some sort of coding assistance.

Commonly available estimates put the number of Iranians recently (last 5 years) killed by the Iranian state at ~40,000 (well, just under; I've rounded up to the nearest 10k, and make no distinction between demographics)

Similarly, available estimates put the number of recent (last 5 years) casualties in Gaza at ~80,000 (again, I've rounded up to the nearest 10k, and make no distinction between soldiers and civilians; adults or children)

It's also worth pointing out that Iran hasn't damaged or destroyed ~80% of all its infrastructure, including hospitals, power production facilities, sewage systems, desalination plants, etc. nor uprooted or burned all its orchards - unlike the IDF in Gaza...

You, sir, are full of shit!

I have no particular knowledge of global markets or which metrics are being used, but it's what I've heard repeated for a very long time. Perhaps it's wrong,or perhaps it changed when the UK left and everyone's just parroting the old reality. But either way, it's a huge market.

Let's imagine Ali Express has no local representation in the EU and thus a fine cannot be enforced. They can then choose to not pay. And the EU can choose to not allow any merchandise shipped from Ali Express into the EU. That's the largest single market on the planet they'd be kissing goodbye. Somehow, I figure they care.

For a particular definition of 'allowed', I guess the answer is: because they pay for it...

"Europe's top court has ruled Google must pay a €4.1bn (£3.5bn) fine handed down for using its Android mobile operating system to block rivals.

When the fine was first announced in 2018, it was alleged there were three ways in which Google had acted illegally:

[1] - requiring Android handset and tablet manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and its own web browser Chrome as a condition of allowing them to offer access to its Play app store

[2] - making payments to large manufacturers and mobile network operators that agreed to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app on their devices

[3] - preventing manufacturers from selling any smart devices powered by alternative "forked" versions of Android by threatening to refuse them permission to pre-install its apps"

Computer. Cure Cancer.

DONE!

I was about to post a glib hypothetical question about which millennium this story was from, but I think you got it just about covered right there.