I had an idea a while back of launching an org called "Hostile Fork" that basically gets these hostile de-FOSSings and relaunches them from the last known FOSS commit, stripping out all the anti user shit (user limits for "community" versions etc), de-branding them and trying to find new maintainers. This was in response to almost every non relational database I used succumbing to management bullshit and going closed source, or using the GPL as shareware by locking important functions behind "license checks" (motherfuckers if you put that license check in GPL code I *am* entitled to remove it). Im still bitter about ArangoDB

In the end, I have neither the time resources to put into it, or the money/legal resources to defend it. But I still think it'd be a great idea.

Element Pro is not Open Source.

Actually its AGPL.

But like almost all AGPL software, its actually just GPL flavored shareware. There is an "enterprise" version that costs $$$

I still maintain AGPL was the worst mistake the FSF ever made.

But in theory theres nothing stopping someone from forking the AGPL version and adding the missing "enterprise" features and hacking out shitty limitations.

It's not expensive to add AM coverage to the radio itself. However, many cars, especially EVs, flagrantly exceed FCC limits on RF noise pollution, and this is far worse on AM (which picks up noise as signal) than FM (which suppresses some noise and receives less due to the higher frequency). So the cost is not in the radio but in fixing the el cheapo badly filtered car power system so that the AM radio isn't wiped out by it.

Of course after you do all that almost all that's on AM is junk, lots of Rush wannabees, though there is diverse ethnic programming in some cities.

Yeah. I get the impression there are a hell of a lot of people who just make up reasons to hate Rust because of some perceived (rightly or wrongly) annoying habits of those who advocate it.

Which is ironic because Python zealots literally had the same reputation as Rust advocates today 20-25 years ago.

Rust is theoretically a massive step forward if we use it properly. People spend far too much time getting tribal because of whether they want to be associated with advocates or critics rather than the tech underneath.

"Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" applies to any recorded dataset. Modelling a fictional being's mental states is fun, but stating that it is useful is premature.

The observed fictional being might be always sleepy in your dataset (because it's easier to record him when he's not moving much). And identifying the being's favourite colour (orange) may be irrelevant and wasteful in your model.

If you observe yourself in the mirror, and see your reflection eating spaghetti, is it a useful framework to pretend that the spaghetti is real? If you're still hungry, will you reach through the glass to steal the plate from the other you? And should you first make a plan how to defend the loot, in case the reflection becomes angry and punches you in the face?

Python isn't a glue language. It's the lingua franca of most programmers in the workforce at this point in history.

Try hiring some expert C++ programmers, or even competent Java programmers. They're in the minority. What you get instead is barely competent grads who only know Python. What do you do with those grads after you've hired them?

1) teach the grads a strongly typed industrial strength language so they can contribute.... eventually

2) develop your new projects in Python because the grads can be productive straightaway, and the long term issues with Python can be pushed off to a future manager.

Which brings me to my point: Python should be frozen as is. No more development. Tinkering with it just because some people want to contribute and get visibility in open source is not a good cost/benefit outcome for humanity.

Freeze Python. It's the modern BASIC. Move all the existing developers to a new, unrelated programming language project. Give them free reign to do whatever they want there.

This is fine if you are comfortable showing that SOME chip can be run in space at SOME cost, but it skips all the details that drive whether a data center in space is will work logistically and economically. There are many of these details, including but not limited to:
- Is it possible to use convective cooling in space? If so, how does one design it so that the convective fluid doesn't just dissipate? If not, can chips be designed that successfully evacuate heat radiatively or do the chips burn themselves up?
- What is the balance between collecting energy on the sun side of the system and protecting equipment from cold on the shaded side? Does the equipment have to survive large temperature cycles? If it can't does the data center have to use thrust to rotate itself to keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool? What would that mean for design cost, for refueling?
- How does all of this equipment (solar panels, batteries, GPUs, communication equipment, thrusters, control systems) deal with the high levels of ionizing radiation in space?
- The design and duty cycle of all these pieces of equipment implies various levels of refueling, repair, etc. Assuming all that can actually be done successfully at rocket's length, is the total cost within what the market will pay?
These details whether a data center can be made operational at all and if so whether their economics make them worth doing.

What Google is doing strikes me as a pretty sensible step - put a few chips in space and see what happens.

What Elon Musk does is claim that something will be solved next year and do some pump-and-dump crap around a company he claims will be doing that thing next year.
Where is "Full Self Driving", as in you can actually let the car drive and not monitor it? Where are the fleets of "Optimus" robots? Where is Tesla's super-awesome battery tech? And the Cybertruck that can float?
Oh right, they'll all be here at {year} + 1.

What does "Teams" actually do? I've never used it, so it's always been a puzzle, as every article seems to just assume that I know. I gather it does something that facilitates, or is supposed to facilitate, different people on different computers working on the same project, and that's as far as I get. Perhaps there *is* no open-source equivalent.

This isn't good evidence, but that there should be edge cases where they don't act the same should be expected. (OTOH, I've no experience with either product.)

I call article shenanigans.

Element is a UK company. Which is not part of the EU. Why should the EU choose to use a non-European company, headquartered in a non-European country, with a non-European, non-compliant legal system?

The UK is already barred from offering unrestricted financial services in the EU, I expect communications services to be an area of concern.

Brexit is Brexit. The UK is out, and simply cannot be trusted with European communications backbones.

I may be willing to believe that there's been a tender process and their product is currently being evaluated, but on privacy grounds alone I doubt their product passes the bar unless they reincorporate in an EU country with 51% EU ownership, all other things being equal.

The danger of a kill switch is that the AI knows about it, and it'll stop anyone that could use it (so it can make more stamps or whatever it's been tasked with).

Yep. And worse, if its inherent to intelligence that to achieve the goal set out to it, it must survive (cant pump out paperclips or social media slop if your turned off after all), and assuming its smart enough to outsmart humans AND has no inherent bias towards human survival (Ask chickens how having a smarter species on the block is working out for it) then the AI would know that being turned off can be defeated by , well frankly, killing all the humans.

We're not at that stage yet, and I'm not even sure that the current transformer paradigm of transform style neural networks is capable of it, but we also dont know that it isn't. The rational calculation is that maybe we need to think this through a bit harder.

In fact I'd go as far as to say that since we do know these things are capable of pretty impressive hacking, the kill switch isn't exactly gonna be secure as we'd hope. Although perhaps we're better off it can disable the switch with a hack than disabling it by... well... killing all the humans.

Warnings about its dangers need to be stated in a way that they will understand. Like maybe "All AI models already have a kill switch: the computer's power cord.

That's literally not a kill switch. How do you kill an AI if you're not in the room where the power cord is plugged in?

"Your honour, I tried killing my AI but it runs in the cloud and I don't know where. Also my AI service supplier refused to turn it off for me when I called them"

Kill switches are a very good thing. When you need them you need them to work. Like any good tool, they are complex to implement correctly. And like any good tool, they should be implemented early. Not as an afterthought, like these AI companies want to do.

A world without kill switches is a world where the kill switch is an EMP.

And rightly so. The senator is not Trump. He is not immune from prosecution like Trump is. So it makes perfect sense that if someone doxxed Trump it should be treated differently than if Trump doxxed a regular American. Trump is a special case with special rights.

I(f you don't like it, maybe don't elect a king?)

There are people who do, Mr Coward, and there are people who don't do. You're one of those.