I'm sure you'd be welcome if you ever wanted to - you're already ideologically highly aligned (and never really were with the US...) :) Honestly, economically and geopolitically it'd be a very strong alliance for both parties, as what Canada offers vs. what it needs is a good match for what the EU offers vs. what it needs. Though admittedly both parties need to rearm fast - but the EU has a lot more resources to do that than Canada has on its own. Canada has raw materials, EU needs them. Canadian automakers/parts suppliers need an alternative market, EU can provide it, etc.

Shifting eastward wouldn't be frictionless - for example, your oil infrastructure is designed to send it south, not to ports that can export it to the east, and European refineries would need to set up to process it, for example. But it's pretty clear that the current status quo can no longer be relied on, as the US is intent on extortion.

They're certainly trying. I was listening to an exoplanets researcher the other day (in response to "How are scientists adjusting the way they work during the Trump administration?") grumble about how they're afraid to use the phrase "diversity of exoplanets" in their work because of a (well-grounded) fear that having the word "diversity" will get their paper flagged for rejection. This sort of environment is toxic.

(My favourite response was "Spell it 'divers' and throw in the occasional 'thou art' and 'exeunt' " ;) )

"another human - like me"

Serious Zalgon 26 McGee vibes there ;)

Yes, I'm sure children in poor countries who may or may not read English are desperate to get ahold of, say, an obscure 1993 book on VCR repair.

These are books that are unsold for a reason.

It's a testament to the interplay of words that forms the tapestry we call language!

But leaving out a comma can certainly make sentences more fun ;)

Anyway, let's eat Grandma.

Companies should, in general, avoid keeping any user data one second longer than they legitimately need it. Data should be viewed as a liability more than an asset, and every company that achieves significant scale with user data soon realizes this, though some take longer than others to learn the lesson.

The reason it's a liability is because it exposes the company to an endless stream of warrants and subpoenas, and contrary to popular belief, the government does not pay for that data. In some cases the government might pay a portion of the expenses the company incurs in responding, but it's always still a net loss, and most of the time the government just shows up with a court order and says "Hand it over or be held in contempt of court". What makes it even worse is if companies actually want to be good stewards of the data and not hand over more than they should, they'll often get overly-broad requests and then have to go to court to fight to narrow or quash the requests.

This all gets very expensive. It's just a cost of doing business... but it's a cost that can be avoided if you don't have and can't get the data.

Encrypt everything, and arrange to destroy the keys when you no longer need the data is the best way to do it, too. Scrubbing large databases quickly and effectively is hard. Deleting a set of AES keys is a lot easier. This also means that you can focus your internal access controls on controlling which systems and employees can get the keys.

I'd encourage Ring to find ways to close the window of access even more.

A few points:
1) maybe you didn't follow my argument: that's why it's farcical to believe that these companies are wasting money buying/destroying them when they are digitally available. Why would they waste $$ they don't have to?

2) FWIW, that's the 1901 edition, the 1915 3rd ed was (as the author says) largely rewritten with updated information not available for the 1901.

3) Do you realize your comment is literally justifying scanning and preserving books that aren't yet available?

Isn't there a clear bright line of liability here?
If the hugging face event cost hugging face (hypothetically) $250,000 to fix, how is the ai creator not instantly on the hook for a multiple of those damages?

It feels like we should quickly establish say a 10x multiplier as standard penalty for ai caused damages.

I know it's a shitty post facto tool and yes, it has failed plenty of times, but product liability is a well-precedented path (ie no new law approach has to be created) to compelling corporate responsibility. If this were the case, even a trillion dollar market value would feel shallow compared to potential liabilities.

Someone please name one rare, valuable book that has been destroyed. I'm still waiting.

Nobody has answered my criticisms of this particular Frankenstein story:
1) there's essentially nothing IN rare books that LLMs benefit from
2) rare old books are difficult to ocr in the first place, when reprints are both easier to scan AND cheaper.

This entire contrived hysteria is even more amusing as people basically don't read anymore, not generally. Oh heavens! They're destroying the books NOBODY READS? Really? That's what you're weeping about?

The only remaining meaningful contemporary book sales are women reading their own particular flavor of smut.
https://www.pensandpoison.org/...

Less than half of adults say they've read ONE BOOK in the last year.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

I love old books. I'm currently reading Rogers 3rd ed (1915) of A History of Babylonia and Assyria and it's delightful. An absolute pleasure to read from the skill of the author, the comprehensiveness of the information (without a tedious agenda to flog, imagine!), to the very tactile experience of leather bound, deckle-edged paper. A joy every minute I'm reading it.

I would genuinely join you if there truly was a threat against old books.
But this? This is a manipulated hysteria contrived for some reason, maybe an experiment to see if they could spur nearly-illiterate sheeple to rise up to 'save' something they absolutely care nothing about.

....are books that they can buy by the meter, for pennies on the dollar, if that much. These are surplus books that publishers - the world's leading destroyers of books - would have to destroy anyway.

Trainers can't afford to buy actually rare, desirable books.

It's a shame that all of this data is locked up on private servers, but that's really more of a problem of the copyright system than anything else. Anyone who scanned these books would be banned from making it public.

That's literally what I said, you dumb pillock.

The fact that Canada is insisting on their right to propagandize their own populace doesn't change that it's propaganda.
Of COURSE it's still 'soft power', even if the target is their own disaffected population.

Duh?

You mean the site whose water discharge processes were indeed certified shortly after that article in 2025?

https://www.faa.gov/media/9434...

Water discharge is covered in section 3.2.7, fyi.

The quote was from the Bavarian government guy, so it seems unlikely that he's concerned about Waymo's competitive worries.

Also, German regulators are very cautious, so I expect Tesla's camera-only and less-mature robotaxi service will have a harder time getting approved.

Well, given that Waymo has been testing for nearly 20 years and been operating commercially for six years, currently operating nearly 4000 vehicles in 11 cities doing 500k rides per week... there's not a lot of risk.

Roads in Munich aren't terribly different from roads in US cities. Stoplights work a little differently. Munich does get a little snow, but rarely very much and it almost never lasts long. If Waymo's vehicles can't deal with it they may just suspend service... though I expect they'll probably handle it fine. They're supposed to go live in Detroit and Minneapolis this year, and if they can handle the weather there (where just shutting down for snow is not an option), Munich will be no problem at all.

So, not much like OceanGate.