That's interesting, and just to add my own two cents, I have been following a number of doctors and scientists over the last 10 or 20 years, the ones who have been willing to question things. And it seems that there are quite a few myths in the field of medicine and nutrition. One of the curious myths is that eating lots of fibre is good for you. For example, apparently there's only ever been one study on constipation and it found that increasing fibre increased constipation. At the same time, there's the work of Sabine Hazan who points to the microbiome as being really important for a lot of things and she's been raising the alarm around apparent widespread loss of bifidobacteria. Fibre alone doesn't increase it (just increases other bacteria instead, but apparently vitamin C can increase bifidobacteria). There's also something about a gut-brain axis. And then in the carnivore world, they find that if they just eliminate all fiber, then they digest pretty much everything that they're eating and absorb it, because it's just protein and fat and the body can use all those things bof building and energy, and just absorb them. Consequently, they end up pooping very little. And then there seems to be a thing where every individual is a bit different; some people can absorb certain nutrients very easily, whilst other people struggle to absorb them and have to eat more or be careful they're not also eating anti-nutrients. So the whole thing seems to be quite complicated and there seem to be a lot of unknowns. I guess at the end of the day it's being open-minded, but at the same time, experimenting with oneself and trusting how one feels.

Apple II, Mac, etc: write software to do anything you want to. Sell it, directly to your customers, if you want. Oh, you're just a user? No problem, just access the Free Market. It's your PC, to do as its user wishes.

iPhone: use the app store to access this approved list of software which does what WE want. Want something else? Go fuck yourself; this computer isn't yours. It is important that we all remain the same, and only do what nanny wants. (Oh, and if you do sell, and we deign to approve your software, we're taking a big piece of the action)

The iPhone is more like a videogame console than a personal computer. That's a step backwards, as if it's still the 1960s and those Jobs/Woz guys had never existed. I don't want a 1960s not-so-P C. I want a 1980s PC. Why the fuck would anyone want to go back to before Jobs & Woz?

Steve Jobs worked hard to undo his legacy as one of the people who helped to start the Personal Computer revolution, and the iPhone is his monument to the denial and refutation of his earlier role. He became a counter-revolutionary.

It wouldn't be so bad if the revolution were something lame, but the revolution was that We The People could use computers however we wish, instead of however The Company wants. That was innovation.

Thank you to 1977 Jobs, and Fuck You to 2007 Jobs.

One could read that statement to mean the Chinese via the UK want access.

It's just a matter of time until President Pedophile insists on a coin to honor Timothy McVeigh.

(No, Jobs isn't in that league, but he's a lot better known for the regression of the iPhone than the progression of NeXT.)

My guess is a white pixel would in a blur scatter more light in the visual effect, therefore having to compute more of the adjacent pixels, whereas a black pixel has no light to scatter visually, therefore no computation is needed on the surrounding pixels.

I've been online for a while and have not noticed Philadelphia being singled out in any way. Everything in the article's "notorious cultural touchstones" is unknown to me. Not that I'm celebrating my ignorance, but I just haven't seen anyone discussing those particular topics.

on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable

From my point of view, on the internet Philly culture is just one of thousands, not particularly emphasized.

I suspect the author has some connection to that city which has caused him to read about it more than average.

angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore

Sorry, whose favorite characters? Did you mean yours or did you mean Disney's?

Not that I have a problem with you actually making a video of Disney's characters. I haven't seen any evidence that these AIs have any idea how copyright law and Fair Use work, so obviously it doesn't make any sense to restrict what they're allowed to do. The user is perfectly qualified .. well, ok .. the most qualified of the two, to make such decisions.

If Disney wants tools to try to figure out Fair Use vs not-Fair Use, then they should throw money at AI lawyers, which currently have an absolutely terrible reputations, since they're so incredibly unreliable and borderline-fraudulent.

And if Disney doesn't think they can make a near-perfect AI lawyer (at least one good enough to not enrage judges with fake citations) then they have no reasonable expectation that anyone else can/should do it, either, so keep your human lawyers away from our computers.

What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year?

Because that's what their customers are demanding! Don't you hate when you're doing something, and you realize you've done it more than 3 times? Just yesterday I adjusted the mirror on my wife's SUV and thought "we keep undoing each other's mirror adjustments. Can't it just stop moving so that one of us permanently loses and one permanently wins? Why is this car letting us change it back'n'forth?"

Microsoft fights for the users!

Always remember your disclaimer, people!

Maybe they're good at specific tasks and the problems are when they are used for general tasks.

Besides, all code has bugs -- it's just that traditional code has logical errors whereas neural networks have irrational errors.

Sure, there is a lot of experimentation and hype at the moment, but that seems to be part of the process.

I was going to say that, but with punctuation.

I'm fine with sending Musk to Mars. He can take DOGE and the rest of MAGA with him. Few of them are smart enough to realize there is no return trip, even if the trip there is a success. Musk and Trump can spend the trip trying to convince each other who is the most important person in the history of the universe while those of us here on earth rebuild from the destruction they left behind here.

A somewhat overlooked point: the 600 year old Ottoman Empire fell in WWI.

New powers decided the new borders.

Some years ago I used to believe that Britain was a sensible country. And I'd have agreed with your general sentiments.

But something about globalization -- and I just don't know enough to know what to call it or why it's happening -- perhaps it's something about establishing a new global multipolar world, or a global government which then creates the opportunity for one superpower to take more control over everyone else...

But since globalisation, we've started having all of this -- and the average level of things has been turning more authoritarian.

For example, the comment about doctors' advice being from real doctors etc -- maybe that was true 60 years ago, but everything is so under the influence of corporations now -- it just stopped being true quite some time ago.

This opinion is based on watching one or two health matters develop over the last 20 years, and at first the scientists were saying we just need to show this and that evidence, and then when they showed it they said, well we just need to get the authorities to see this as well, but then that just never happened, the authorities were obviously not serving science. (That's not meant to convince anyone, that's just to say my opinion isn't based on one blog I read last Tuesday).

So it's not run by the people, it's not for the people. I don't know what's running things, it's probably something to do with globalization.

Our old ideas about what's British are long gone. Although I do tend to think that there is a kind of cultural memory, the Magna Carta 800 years ago, etc. But post-modern thought has convinced everyone that there are no truths, so even the tradition of individual freedom is being watered down.

And with so much rapid migration these days, to and from and all over the world, and don't just mean people, but especially, money and corporate systems flowing, not to mention geopolitics, endless wars, all the "trans-national" influences and power games...

I think if anything the world is going to settle on a common ground, which if you look at China and Russia and emerging things in Africa, that common ground is going to be much more authoritarian for everybody, because that's the average held by billions of people, and as we let go of "British" identity and habits, we'll merge into the wider global authoritarian patterns, except now backed by high tech infrastructure.

Britain is just too small to matter in that respect. So yes, Digital ID is going to come. They've been pushing it for decades. And everyone who's pushing for it, has the big bucks. It's inevitable.

The question is, what will the world look like then?