bambax

This is all, sadly, very true. Anti-AC sentiment is prevalent throughout Europe, and like all superstions, it's based on false assumptions, and extremely resistant to actual evidence.

They should respond with a poop emoji, which is what Musk sends to people he doesn't care about.

This was 2017-2021. Not sure if One-Stop-Shop covers this as it mentions "cross-border sales" and the problem with Amazon fulfillment and storage was to make all sales local (not cross-border). But maybe it does cover it. I don't know.

Yes. I used to sell objects on Amazon in Europe. You can sell from just one country, but then each sale outside of that country is an "export" that triggers high fees.

For sales to be "local", products need to be stored in warehouses in each country. But that in turn means the owner of said products (the seller) has to be registered for VAT in that country, and submitting annual reports in each country's language.

I went to the trouble of registering in 6 different countries; in some countries, Amazon more or less helps sellers submit reports; in others, they offer to partner with local lawyers.

The result is a mess of reports, injunctions, penalties for late filing, etc. coming to you in Polish, German, Spanish, Hungarian. I eventually gave up.

Europe is not actually a "single market". It's a federated bureaucracy entirely indifferent (or hostile) to small businesses.

Marc Andreessen is an evil man with the behavior (and appearance!) of a Bond villain.

If you think about it, the only reason we ever spend money, is to feel a little bit less sad.

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

This seems to be limited to the English publishing world, at least for now? I self-published a historical fiction book a couple of years ago, in French, that got a little notoriety (I was interviewed on national public radio in France about it) and didn't receive any one of those scam emails. -- Not "few": zero.

That's just not true. Geopolitics isn't maths, never has been, never will be. Maths is an input amongst many, and doesn't decide the outcome.

Exactly. If Canada can do it, who can't??!?

Absolutely agree; but it's never too late to react. Europe could impose tariffs on US tech or forbid it altogether to bid on government contracts. Etc.

What are we waiting for.

Negotiating with the Trump administration is completely pointless, and can even result in your own government buildings being bombed while negotiations are still going on.

The only argument bullies understand is being punched in the face.

I wish more countries wiuld have the courage of cutting off ties with the US.

UI blocking can make sense in some situations; otherwise things "happen" suddenly that are unexpected.

I'm making a simple plugin for Gimp that sends the active layer to a model with a prompt; on Macs by default the UI waits for the request to come back or timeout; on PCs it doesn't, so the modified layer appears unexpectedly. The Mac experience is better IMHO and I will replicate it in the PC version rather than the other way around.

> If you were asked: “Would it be good if this 0day was used to apprehend a terrorist?” you would probably say “this is good”. If you were asked “would it be good if this 0day is used to arrest someone and then torture and waterboard him 183 times?”, you would probably say “this is bad”. So if your 0day was used to capture KSM, it is probably good? Or bad? Things get very complicated very quickly.

This is a version of the very classic problems "does the end justify the means" (should one torture a terrorist to prevent other terrorist acts). Much to the chagrin of utilitarians everywhere, the answer to that question is NO, because answering yes leads to a bottomless hole of infinite evil.

OT, but I feel the title is wrong, or at least ambiguous. For the author, "AI blind" means they can't process text produced with AI. For me, "AI blind" rather means one can't see when something has been AI-generated.

Yes. I really liked and enjoyed reading this post, but was a bit frustrated by the focus on "thickness". Great art is not great just because it has many layers that take some time and effort to discover, like great cooking doesn't need a large number of different ingredients.

Great art, as you say, has something true, profound, and original to tell us about the human experience, and it touches us deeply in a way that not-so-great art doesn't. It "stops you in your tracks" as other comments here mention. It hits you on the head and makes you a different person, at least a little.

And, there's a magic component to it too. Great art is greater, I think, if you can't guess how it could possibly have been made by a mere mortal. That's where trade comes in. Great art is made by great artisans with a touch of genius, but genius alone isn't enough.

Although comments below point out that this has been going on for a long time, I too think it will be geetting infinitely worse in the near future. Everyone will want their own poisoning factory.

One consequence is that one should be extra-wary when asking AI about current, controversial topics.

But another consequence is maybe that there will be a demand for models with an older cutoff, before generalized poisoning and slop?

Firefox on Android is excellent.

> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.

I don't want that! I want to be able to install any extension whatsoever (as we still can, more or less, install programs). And if I'm clueless enough to install "random" extensions that'll harm me, then shame on me! How often has it happened for the whole existence of Manifest V2 anyway?

Maybe we could have tolerated a well-hidden, well-protected "advanced" flag to open that possibility. But removing Manifest V2 altogether is unforgivable.

Also, security is a very very very weak argument, as many ads are much more dangerous and toxic than any popular extension will ever be.

There's a mystery here. People hate ads. Firefox is the only major browser (save Brave?) that properly blocks ads. Yet people don't use Firefox (indeed its popularity is in free-fall).

Why? Is it because they don't know about it? Or they won't go to the trouble of using any browser that isn't the one provided by default by the OS?

I'm not sure. I just don't get it.

The reason Apple or Google or Microsoft don't care one way or the other is their directors rarely if ever suffer from their policies. We should try to make them.

The way to retaliate against those stupid lists and the stupid way they are enforced by US companies could be to register a fake company with principals named Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Donald Trump, etc. (and many other people with less well-known names, but high up in various organizations) and somehow get that company and all its employees' names on a sanctions list?

Not sure what it would take to work, but it would probably be fun.

Earplugs work very well for me. I can't hear anything with them on.

> Recently, as I reached for the play button out of habit, I stopped. I thought: what if I just do this chore in silence today?

It seems most people today have headphones on all the time. I don't understand it. I'm not sure, but it would seem people hate their own voice?

I just love silence.

I can't work in anything but complete silence. In open spaces I wear earplugs. (If I'm not wearing earplugs it means I'm not doing much of anything ;-) That's one of the main benefits of remote work: at my home there is complete silence most of the time.

I need silence for many other activities too. Cooking, reading (of course), even driving.

In fact, I think my problem is the opposite: I just can't do two things at once. If I'm listening to something, then I can't be doing anything else.

Excellent! Thanks for the info!

But grandma doesn't use an Entreprise version now does she?

Why Windows Entreprise PCs have 'Images', 'Videos' and 'Music' folders that can't be deleted is beyond me. If I want to store music on my work PC I can create a folder for that, but why force it on me??

True! How did you spot this though? Did you look at every possible position?!?

When I was a kid (many, many moons ago) I found a solved Rubik's Cube in a house where we were staying. I played with it and soon enough couldn't put it back in its solved state.

So I took it apart and rebuilt it 'properly', which didn't take long and wasn't too hard. I wonder how many people did the same.

I've been looking for a plugin for "AI inpainting" for Gimp3 but couldn't find any that really works? Which seems weird? Anyway, I decided to make my own. Functionally it's pretty simple: you manage prompts and image model (on Openrouter), and then send a layer with instructions for modifications by the model. But it turns out fine-tuning the UI to make it as simple as possible takes some time.

Will release it on ShowHN when ready!

I used to like Steve's posts. They were all way too long, but a fun and interesting read nonetheless. He started to lose me when at Sourcegraph where he oversell Cody which didn't do anything useful (I even had a commercial meeting with Sourcegraph people who weren't of much help); then he completely lost me with his GasTown business where AI meets crypto (what could possibly go wrong with that). Now I can't read anything from him anymore ;-(