- Yes, wellknown solutions have a strong grip on you. In this case it is unfortunate.
I know that the preparations for eIDAS 2.0 (the European thing) did contain many good parts. Taking inspiration from SSI. So at that point their specifications were rather good. I havent kept up with it for almost one year now, so that might have changed.
- The push for age verification must be about something else. There are good solutions to this, but they are ignored. Its always about some complex setup leaking information all over the place. It must be either ignorance or indeed about surveillance, as many here think it is.
Shameless plug: I wrote about hash chains some time ago. They are a nice and simple solution to age verification. https://spredehagl.com/2025-07-14/
- >> "Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity > >It really needs to be, though, that's kind of the crux of it. > >Federate or die off, it's time to get rid of old tribal thinking. We're all Europeans.
OK, let us play this game...
China, Japan, Taiwan and the Koreas "really needs to be" a single entity. Theyre all East Asian.
USA, Canada and Mexico "really needs to be" a single entity. Theyre all North Americans.
Nigeria, Algeria, Somalia, and so on "really needs to be" one entity. Theyre all Africans.
It is obvious where this is going, and it is not some place most people want to be. You never explained the rationale behind the need you think there is. You just stated your opinion. But your rationale would be much more interesting to hear.
- That sent me looking it up. It seems that NetBSD, as the only one, has a rump kernel, but it also looks like work on it stagnated around 10 years ago. That could be because the guy doing a thesis on them, moved on. There is quite some bitrot when following links. Do you know what happened? Were they a failure? Maybe they were surpassed by other OS architectures?
- The sheer number of civilizations, that it is normally believed there is in the Milky Way, pretty much guarantees that some of them, some of the time, do exactly this. For whatever alien reasons they might have. The Milky Way should be drizzling with moss spores already, or whatever exobiological life that can survive interstellar conditions.
- I am leaving Windows now because of this, the Windows 11 push, and the cloud enforcement. I have been far too patient with Microsoft, I should have made the jump years ago. This is the last straw. The trend for the last many years has been disempowerment of the computer owner. It coincides with Satya Nadella being CEO, but that might not have anything to do with it. You get the same treatment from the rest of Big Tech.
- Indeed. Why did grass shears loose out to lawnmowers? The question is misguided, they are two different categories.
The interesting question is why Forth lost out to BASIC on the home computers. There were a few that were Forth based, and there were RPL on calculators, so that whole programming paradigm could conceivably have caught on. I wonder how that would have affected other kinds of programming...
- From the comments, it looks like eating stinging nettles is quite common throughout Europe. It is definitely well-known in Denmark, and used in a number of recipes. You can buy dried and chopped stinging nettles, but they are best when you pick them fresh. The classic Danish recipe is "brændenældesuppe" (stinging nettle soup). I dont think it is as common as it used to be, as our food culture has been so americanized.
- This is how I see LLMs as well.
The main problem with the article is that it is meandering around in ill-conceived concepts, like thinking, smart, intelligence, understanding... Even AI. What they mean to the author is not what they mean to me, and still different to they mean to the other readers. There are all these comments from different people throughout the article, all having their own thoughts on those concepts. No wonder it all seem so confusing.
It will be interesting when the dust settles, and a clear picture of LLMs can emerge that all can agree upon. Maybe it can even help us define some of those ill-defined concepts.
- Then you really should be angry at Apple and Google, not the hardware.
The preparations for eIDAS 2.0 (the EU thing) has been heavily inspired by SSI. If they keep up the good work, and implement it properly, security and privacy will be top notch. And that is only possible by using TPM (or really SE when we talk about mobile phones).
Yes, I know that eIDAS might end up not meeting the early promises. We will have to see. But in that case it will be despite the possibilities that the hardware provides, not because of them.
- I see your point. Its the very unbalanced power balance between consumers and providers, and the dishonest tactics of the latter. It ought to be addressed politically (its idealistic, I know). Until then use free software and multiple devices, or something like that. The TPM chips in themselves are a powerful concept, that can, and should, be used to the consumers advantage.
- > There is also a real potential for abusing TPMs or cryptographic co-processors to enforce remote attestation.
Remote attestation can be misused, yes. But why writing it as TPM is the problem? In cases where remote attestation is used for good, TPM improves the setup, if anything.
I dont see the rationale for what you wrote, and am genuinely curious what it is.
- This is a clear case of "you get what you measure". Measuring speed is so easy, everybody can do it, and do it all the time. No wonder that providers optimize for speed. But it also works the other way around. We have developed a focus on speed as it was the only thing that mattered.
I have worked with networks for many years, and users blaming all sorts of issues on the network is a classic, so of course in their minds they need more speed and more bandwidth. But improvements only makes sense up to some point. After that it is just psychological.
- I think the article is a bit out of focus, but its premise reminded me about the discussions that we students had at the university many years ago. It was a popular view that the universe is a big all-encompassing computer, and everyhting happening in it is part of its computation. Not just life, but really everything. The big question was, is this computer a Turing machine? Not necessarily in the sense of a state machine and an infinite tape, but in the sense of its computational power. These days the question would be whether it is a quantum Turing machine, I guess.
- It is a cool product, but I have the clumsiness of the average home cook. So my old style knifes are plenty sharp for me. I would not be comfortable using this. But if there were a version with the slipperiness he shows, just having standard sharpness, it would be much more interesting to me.
BTW I think the focus on knife sharpness is overrated for most kitchen tasks. At least for home cooks. Your knives should just have the necessary sharpness. More than that is a negative in my opinion.
- That is just equivalent to North pointing up. Many commenters have explained why that is the most prevalent.
I mean, except that you could of course have the subterranean view of the World, with North point up, East to the left, and West to the right, if you so like... Confusion guaranteed!
- Surely publishing a result is not in itself costly. But I guess the peer review is.
So journals could have a section (the grey pages?) for "unsellable results" that they didnt give a peer review. They would of course need to assess them in some other way, to ensure a reasonable level of quality.
I think that reading the classics can be beneficial to the first type. But some of the classics can be very bleak. Its not fair to the children to make them read those. 1984 is probably in this category. Read Animal Farm instead. It is also better for the second type of children.
If done properly, and in moderation, I think reading classics is beneficial.