It's actually quite hard to say, as there are no official figures on arrests specifically for social media posts in either country. And lot of the specific cases that people point to in the UK (e.g. Lucy Connolly) have parallels in the US:
(The figures that the American right give for "arrests for social media posts" in the UK are actually figures from certain police forces for arrests under various pieces of online communication legislation, many of which have nothing to do with social media.)
I think the point is that preventative action against crime is unquestionably good to about the same extent that enforcing the law is unquestionably good. In both cases there are exceptions, but few would question that it’s a good thing to do in general.
Right, but we’re not talking about a worst case scenario where models are trained primarily on their own output. We’re talking about what will happen in the long run, as future models are trained on a realistic mix of content. It’s surely an open question what will happen.
AI isn't going to go away, and AI-generated content isn't going to go away. So while it's an open question the extent to which AI training will be hampered by the proliferation of AI-generated content, I think that the existence of such content is a reality that we'll have to accept, whether you like it or not.
Humans face the same problem. So this at least shouldn't make AI perform worse relative to humans, even if AI slop degrades the performance of both over time.
This reminds me a bit of that stuff people used to say about how China could never compete economically with the US until it embraced Western-style democracy, or about how it could copy but not innovate, etc. etc. Europe will continue being Europe, culturally speaking. Some aspects of European work culture will seem off to Americans, and vice versa. But ultimately, if the market for European cloud services grows, companies will adapt and take advantage of this.
Indeed. GPT 5.4 was perfectly happy to help me write some 8051 assembly and integrate it into a weird vendor-specific Eclipse/Keil C51 build system. I would never have had the time or patience to figure it out. Embedded isn’t ready for full vibe coding to the extent that web development is, but it’s certainly not going to be an escape from AI.
We don’t really disagree on any substantial point. However, if we’re going by the F135, that’s an engine that first flew in 2006. If China now has an engine that’s comparable to it it some ways, that means it’s about 20 years behind, give or take.
As you say, militarily speaking, engine tech is just one of many factors. Quite possibly, China would beat the US in a real war just in virtue of being able to manufacture more screws.
I think we're talking slightly at cross purposes. The f119 is an engine that flew in 1997. So while the WS-15 is evidence that China can make modern, well-performing military jet engines, it doesn't show that China has caught up with the West in that particular area.
For civil applications, fuel efficiency is non-negotiable if China is to sell engines outside its domestic market.
The WS-15 is impressive, but it’s on a par with the jet engine technology available to the US military in ~2005. No-one doubts that China can make functioning jet engines. The question is how long the West can maintain the technical lead that it still does have.
Sure, the US has been in a better political situation in the past than it’s in at present. No argument there. The title of the post we’re commenting on contains the words “in 2026”, though.
The open corruption of the current US administration is in fact something quite unprecedented in a stable democracy. Corruption obviously exists everywhere, to varying extents. In most democratic countries, leaders try to hide it, and the media reports on it as a scandal when it’s discovered. Trump, meanwhile, is making huge amounts of money through a wide variety of corrupt schemes while making no attempt to cover any of the corruption up. This is simply accepted as the new normal.
We are talking about the present, aren’t we? If so, it’s honestly quite a wild take to suggest that the US is doing better politically than almost anywhere else. This is not a partisan point. US politics is broken in ways that people of all political stripes can easily appreciate.
A number of political norms have totally collapsed in the US, by the way. For example, the President is now openly corrupt. In the UK, there was a mid-sized scandal when someone gave the Prime Minister some glasses for free.
I think you’d have a hard time arguing that the political situation is worse almost anywhere else. There’s a long list of democratic countries where things continue to chug along more or less as usual, without a total collapse of norms.
Supercruise matters directly for BVR combat. It means that you can get high and fast to launch your missiles with the best parameters without burning half your fuel via afterburners. (Many fighter jets would burn through all their fuel in under 10 minutes at full afterburner.)
Maintenance hours are sure to matter in a real war where equipment is getting destroyed and supply lines are being disrupted.
In a military context, the main technological gaps relating to jet engines are supercruise and maintenance hours. Both are potentially quite relevant in a ‘local’ conflict.
You can steal ‘know’ but you can’t so easily steal ‘knowhow’. I could easily find all the information that I theoretically need to make a wooden chair. But to actually make it successfully would require years of practice at carpentry. At first, I can expect results comparable to
Homer Simpson’s spice rack.
Making your own bicycle is a waste of time and energy. If you’re buying in bulk from China, you can get a bike for around a $20 per unit cost. I know that $20 is a lot of money in some parts of the world, but it would make far more sense to organize bulk purchases than to try to start up some kind of ersatz low quality bike industry.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/federal-agents-mon...
(The figures that the American right give for "arrests for social media posts" in the UK are actually figures from certain police forces for arrests under various pieces of online communication legislation, many of which have nothing to do with social media.)