> Apple have deep enough pockets that they can actually sue OpenAI but I bet OpenAI are surprised they got caught.
Maybe? But more likely their 'surprise' will be that it's actually happened, because the people doing this kind of thing must surely know it's wrong and won't be telling their bosses, and/or their bosses definitely won't be passing that info up the chain. Just like movies, 'plausible deniability'.
> because the populace was not asked at all about the treaty
Well, the UK has only been asked about Europe twice - once to join and once to leave. Unlike many other European countries that frequently ask their populace as a way of standard governance.
The only other UK referendum in my lifetime was the 'alternative vote'
The UK government (no matter the party) just doesn't seem to like asking the public's opinion, on things. And after 2016, I'd be very surprised to see another referendum on anything, any time soon as the outcome of that was opposite to what the 'establishment' wanted (cue the last decade of squabbling). They will instead use the excuse: 'you gave us the mandate choosing us at the General Election'.
I guess if the new model has the capability to do 'something' that's national security threat, then this makes sense. Otherwise this move makes zero sense, and actually is a drag on innovation - who wants to invest money and people to make a better model that can't actually be sufficiently sold to make a return on investment? Meanwhile other models from Europe or China that are better steal market share. Though that's not to say they won't do the same thing for the same reasons.
> Are we heading to a world where GPU use is regulated
Well, there was the kerfuffle around PS3 (IIRC) and 'supercomputers'. I suppose that would be the 2020s version of that. What's old is new again. Ultimately you can just continually wire together less powerful hardware to come up with something that can do the job.
It would be nice if billion dollar big tech, in particular those that have R&D donate and form a not-for-profit together with universities that puts this to sleep once and for all. The small irony is that they're paying to submit their own research to another company to make it publicly available.
That's UK politics in general, which I suppose is microcosm of the UK. Everything is now a career. We have many, many, sitting MPs, that have only ever studied topics like politics with the sole aim of becoming a politician. Or never worked in private industry, or even worked in the public sector in parts that aren't necessarily unionized. In the past many MPs had 'life experience' outside of politics.
They are therefore naturally detached from unions, and more worryingly, the every day reality of the electorate.
For some of these MPs, losing their seat at a General Election is the first time in their entire lives they've ever lost a job, unlike the general public that have to put up with routine dismissals, via redundancy, company bankruptcy and so on.
Indeed. I paraphrased this line from wikipedia - "The LTV is usually associated with Marxian economics" perhaps I should have read the next bit ", although it also appears in the theories of earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. "
Perhaps. Though if you strike endlessly, you have no product to sell. So people buy elsewhere and you go out of business. If you disagree, perhaps edit this line in wikipedia:
> These internal issues, which were never satisfactorily solved, combined with serious industrial relations problems with trade unions, the 1973 oil crisis, the three-day week, high inflation and ineffectual management meant that BL became an unmanageable and financially crippled behemoth
The reverse is true. Unionization of the UK car industry in the 1970s, more than played its part in the collapse of the UK car industry, for example:
> The company became an infamous example of the industrial turmoil that plagued the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Action by unions frequently crippled BL manufacturing.
In a jobs market place of wide choice, unionization is unnecessary. The tech job pool spans multiple industries, so if your employer is treating you poorly, leave.
In a jobs market where there are few employers, maybe unionize, because those employers are essentially a monopsony. Hence, in the UK, the NHS, teaching, and public transport, where the employer is the Government, they're heavily unionized.
This is the correct answer. Win2k was probably the most solid and cruft-free release that they did.
Then the enshittification started with Window XP, jelly-mold/curved glass buttons, activation, and .NET everywhere, followed by the disaster that was Vista.
They released Windows 7, and somehow then decided, yet again, to screw things up with Windows 8 because 'mobile'.
It's the UK gov. Rather than do something, it's endless inquiries and 'research'.
Example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing - the planning application is 360,000 pages and not a single shovel is in the ground. Or HS2. The list goes on. This is a really, really minor example of the same sickness that infests British politics for the last few decades.
> Elizabeth Louise Kendall (born 11 June 1971)[1] is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
> [sic] graduating with first class honours in history in 1993
> [sic] after graduating from Cambridge, worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (charity)
tl;dr never worked in the private sector, and utterly unqualified to make judgements on technology.
So of course she's the science minister.
This is what UK parliament is full of, ill qualified, political lifers.
MS has inertia on its side, and its abusive marketing and lock-in strategies of the 90s. Remember when you couldn't buy a PC without Windows from most vendors? Meaning you were paying MS, even if you immediately uninstalled it?
The long term outcome of that is that 90+% of industry still buys Windows PCs. And non-industry: once non-techie people are on an OS (Windows/MacOS), many don't move off it, though Apple's ecosystem has been a good carrot+stick.
One of the more interesting indicators is (even though desktop software is in decline) - the number of apps that are Windows and Mac and maybe linux, and the increasing number of apps that Mac-only or Mac+Linux but do NOT have a Windows download. Something unimaginable in the 90s and 00s.
MS are certainly accelerating adoption of other platforms due to their own mismanagement.
I'm not sure what this obsession is at the moment with 'fat pensions'. Pensions are far from 'fat', and (european) governments have been very dishonest about what will happen state pensions for decades. Governments simply don't have the nerve or honesty to tell the population what's going to happen and get the message across to everyone. And at the same time, youth unemployment is really high. So what do you want, old people to retire 'early' to make way for young people to work, thus requiring a 'fat pension', or do you want them to never retire, and thus not need a 'fat pension'?
Europe's problems can be summed up by Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Which is the next part:
> The older people I talk to show no concern about Europe's economic future, they're always dismissive about the problems Europe faces. They're stuck in the 70's, 80's or 90's it seems.
As an 'older' person in the UK, I've always been 'concerned' about the economic future of the continent, but we've elected increasingly incompetent politicians. When you get older you'll have the same opinions. Politics has gone from being a job trying to manage the country, to being an all expenses paid job with little risk other than re-election, and little responsibility because everything is 'the EU', or a quango (quasi-governmental organization - basically still the Government but not really sackable either).
Consider the UK - ARM was 'ours'. Could you imagine the US allowing it to be sold off to a foreign country? Well, you can guess what ukgov did.
Sabre Engines wanted a tiny amount of Government funding, who said no, so they closed and sold off some incredibly useful tech.
Maggie Thatcher sold off, and perhaps had to sell off, public utilities such as water, with little extra thought as to 'what happens next'. Well, that's 'gets bought out by foreign companies and channels profit abroad instead of reinvesting'.
Then there's the very European union-centric industries that often shoot themselves in the foot and ruin entire industries (UK car manufacturing spent more time on strike in the 1970s than building cars and can you guess what happened).
Maybe? But more likely their 'surprise' will be that it's actually happened, because the people doing this kind of thing must surely know it's wrong and won't be telling their bosses, and/or their bosses definitely won't be passing that info up the chain. Just like movies, 'plausible deniability'.