My brother, who is blind, has been using a ChatGPT enabled app for a couple of weeks, he takes a picture with his phone and the app describes what is in the photo. The ability to ask more questions about the photo makes this a very valuable tool for the blind. He has had this read him the menu at a restaurant, identify which knob does what on his guitar amplifier (and even how to reproduce the sound Keith Richards used on a particular record), taken a photo of his living room and had the app locate his keys. I'm sure that the seeing will also find this useful, but for the blind it can make many things much easier.

I suspect that most of the cargo the FedEx planes are carrying is fungible, if your package is lost, just order a new item. Not so for passenger planes. I would have thought that if an anti-missile system is needed on a cargo plane, the need for such counter measures would be even greater on passenger planes. Getting the FAA to allow lasers and stuff on a cargo plane might be easier than getting permission to install it on a passenger aircraft so it makes sense to try it out on a cargo plane. If this gizmo works with out a problem on an A321 cargo plane, that would be an argument in favour of allowing it to be installed on an A321 passenger plane and that is probably where the money lies for Grumman or whoever is developing this system.

Yes, teenagers are basically herd animals and everything needs to conform to what their group considers cool. Some loose this herd mentality in their twenties but a lot don't, spending their lives trying to keep up with the Joneses.

One problem for the general public is that there are influential people who benefit from the virus killing off the old and the poor, the more people on Social Security that die, the less the Government will have in unfunded Social Security obligations and more money to put into combating the economic woes of the pandemic, something that benefits the rich much more than the poor with layoffs and unemployment hitting the unskilled and middle income workers hard while the stock market is at a record high. Even killing off the relatively well of pensioners is good for the stock market. A lot of stock is owned by the Baby Boomers who are retired or about to retire, they will be selling out of their portfolio putting downward pressure on the price of stocks in the future while their heirs might want to hang on to those shares until they themselves retire. I'm not saying that there is some secret Government policy to decimate the old and poor population. But the pandemic is an Ill wind that blows some people some good and they might want to make the most of it.

I would have thought the inverse law of squares would play merry hell with the signal strength of this thing. If the idea is to use this as a long range tracking device, figuring out how to use the human body as an (directional) antenna would be an even greater feat than designing the chips.

The National Library of Iceland has had a similar program for a couple of years. The national TLD is collected three times a year and made available via the Wayback Machine. The english version of the project's page is rather terse, but according to the Icelandic version, selected pages are collected more frequently when warranted, e.g. political debates around election times. Icelandic law requires publishers to deposit copies of ther work with the National Library. This includes web pages so the library doesn't have to worry about copyright.
For a small country with few resources, co-operation with other small countries and archive.org is probably best. The task of collectiing the british TLD is orders of magnitude bigger. It may well be cheaper for the British Library to pay for a system tailored to their needs rather than figure out how to make archive.org's software do what the library needs.

The government is (in theory) accountable to the people. Visa and Eurocard are accountable to nobody except (in theory) their shareholders. Yet these companies have the power to turn whole economies on or off.
When Iceland's banking sector went bankrupt in October 2008 and the Icelandic Króna lost half its value we were still incredibly lucky. The Central bank managed to persuade Visa and Eurocard to continue honouring Icelandic cards. We were about 1/8 of an Ångström from total disaster. Without credit- and debitcards the whole nation would have had no means of buying food or other basic necessities.

Five hundred years ago all you needed to stir up trouble was a handful of people to organise and infuriate the masses - and a bunch of people with pitchforks. Today, all you need to stir up trouble is a handful of people to organise and infuriate the masses - and a bunch of people with computers. The blokes with the pitchforks didn't need to be experts in martial arts and neither do the blokes with computers need to be expert hackers. I haven't been following the media all that closely, but it looks like a handful of people are now trying to organise and infuriate the masses against Anonymous. If they are successful they might get a bunch of people with computers (or pitchforks) to show Anonymous the error of his ways.

There will probably be an Android app out shortly that will do precisely that.

How the Swiss recycle their copper is irrelevant. They have a population of less than 8 million and are already one of the most developed countries in the world. What does matter is that China and India have a population of 2.5 billion, a much less developed infrastructure than Switzerland and can't meet their demand for copper (or other resources) simply by recycling. There is an awful lot of dirt poor people wanting to improve their lot and approach the quality of life we in the west are enjoying. For that to happen, all kinds of scarce resources are needed and demand will continue to grow.

I'm not sure they did fuck up. This case was all over the media. Now, all that is needed is a woman to come forward and report him to the police for raping her in the US. Mr Assanage is needed to help the police with their inquiries, can the Swedish authorities please hand him over? If an US three letter agency can get two swedes to file a complaint against Assange, I'm sure the could also find an american to do so.

Well, it is within the realm of the possible that somebody sat down and applied Occams razor to the possible scenarios: The first scenario involves this bloke (1) planning to rob somebody, (2) setting up a proxy or vpn service and (3) some people conspiring to give false evidence. The second scenario: The bloke was at home and nobody lied.

With only two cables connecting Iceland to the Ineternet, companies have not been eager to set up shop here. FARICE-1 is fairly modern (2004), CANTAT-3 is rather old (1994) and a new cable, DANICE is being built. For many companies the risk of one or more of these cables being down is to large to offset the cheap electricity and cool weather.

To some this IS cruel and unusual punishment. In 1997 a couple wanted by the authorities in Arizona successfully avoided extradition.

"They demonstrated [to the district court] that the conditions in that [Maricopa County] prison were inhumane and degrading, and that an Icelandic decision to grant the extradition request would therefore conflict with their rights under Article 68 paragraph 1 of the [Icelandic] Constitution, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention, and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Supreme Court sustained the view that the legal requirements for extradition were not fulfilled[.]"

(Interim report of the Icelandic Government to the European Committee Against Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), 1999) http://eng.domsmalaraduneyti.is/reports/nr/126