spiralpolitik

The fact he used the term “native Britains” says everything about his politics.

Having built two apps in the last two years using Rails (one making front page on Hacker News and has 10,000 plus users), there is a sweet spot that Rails hits that other frameworks don’t.

The fact that you get so much out of the box that just works and you don’t have to do much beyond configure it reduces a ton of headaches.

Absolutely would rather be using Go instead of Ruby but for apps of a certain kind and size, the omakase approach of Rails still wins out.

Yes. This fits with the UK monarch's modern role which is to ensure continuity of government.

The UK example would be if the UK government lost a vote of confidence, the monarch might ask the opposition parties to see if they could form a government that could pass a vote of confidence to avoid a general election. Although parliamentary math makes such a scenario unlikely in practice.

On the UK end I don't think the monarch can sack the Prime Minister. While the UK monarch could strongly suggest to a Prime Minister that it's time to resign. Usually when a Prime Minister gets to that point, it's usually the end of the road and they won't last much longer anyway even if they pushed forward.

The monarch has a lot of soft power which under the modern system is usually deployed to ensure continuity of government rather than in a controlling manner.

(The Australia, Canada, etc constitutions gives the monarch different powers than the UK and it's usually delegated to whoever is the governor for that nation)

If you are a non citizen, you should have "Not valid for work without authorization" written on your social security card. The social security administration knows who is and isn't a citizen because it's the part of the government that's reviewed the paperwork you have proving your status (birth certificate, naturalization document, work authorization etc).

(When you become of US citizen one of the first tasks is to take your naturalization document to your local SSA office so that they can update your file and issue you a new card without the notice)

The only citizens who aren't in the social security database are people who were never registered at birth, either because their parents didn't tick the box when registering or they were born overseas and their parents never registered the birth with the US government. Both can easily get registered via their birth certificate.

Everyone else in the system has already provided documentation to verify their status one way or the other.

The UK constitutional system is built around mutually assured destruction. If one part doesn't follow convention, the whole system will collapse and everyone loses.

Yes, the monarch can in theory override the government by blocking legislation, but won't because one time a monarch did that, he ended up with his head cut off. If a monarch ever did that in modern times, Britain would quickly be a republic.

Everyone follows convention and stays in their lane and doesn't rock the boat. The last time a bill didn't get royal assent was in 1708. It simply hasn't happened since.

'The kings speech' is written by the government usually based on the manifesto they were elected on. The monarch just reads it. The monarch's role in modern times is to advise the prime minister and act as continuity advisor across governments. While the monarch may offer commentary on legislation, they won't block it, and the government is free to ignore it.

Same with the armed forces. It's ministers that control the army not the monarch. In modern Britain, the monarch's role is purely ceremonial. The monarch cannot order the armed forces into conflict.

Usually legislation gets blocked in the House Of Lords (the unelected chamber) which is why a lot constitutional reform is focused on cleaning that up, but it's game of inches because neither party wants to lose influence.

While the constitutional system may make it seem like the monarch has a lot of hard power, in reality they have none, and since the civil war can't do anything without the approval of Parliament.

Since the motor voter bills in the 90s. Most US states handle voter registration via the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). When you apply for your license or renew you tick the box and it automatically registers you.

The drivers license database is the defaco registry of where you live and most states require you to update your address within 2 weeks of moving (although enforcement is loose). There is a state identification card for those who don't drive that fulfills the same purpose as a drivers license.

Since RealID states now have to check immigration status if you request a RealID license (some states will issue non-RealID drivers licenses to the undocumented). There is a further Enhanced ID check that some states do that will indicate that you are a US citizen on the license. RealID and non RealID licenses are clearly marked.

Basically true voter fraud is largely a non issue because the States generally have their systems together. Voter suppression, which is the goal of most of the voting related legislation of the last 20 years, is however rampant.

It does. However the party of small government doesn't believe in SQL joins between tables so kicks the problem down the states. ;)

The Federal government has several central registries. The social security database for example knows which socials belong to citizens and which do not. The IRS database another as are the passport and visa databases.

The problem is that they aren't interconnected in any meaningful way by design so the bulk of the work gets pushed onto states. Real ID forced a lot of the states to get their act together but it's still a bit of a goat rodeo in places.

I'm guessing Canada and Australia would go for an EFTA 'lite' type deal. As EFTA doesn't require a customs union it's probably the easiest to implement and build up from.

I think they amended EFTA to require free movement which was a no-op as all the EFTA countries had free movement with the EU. I could see the EU agreeing to a NAFTA style workers visa if they really wanted push the freedom of movement side hence the 'lite' bit.

While there isn't an official "associate member" status, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland all have custom deals with the EU so this just codifies what already exists in an ad-hoc form.

The only bit the EU is rowing back is that they mentioned during BRExit that there would be no more custom deals so this simply a case of the realpolitik winning out.

I'm sure the UK will be looking at this very carefully as well.

There have also been a couple of audio versions over the years (one with Paul McGann).

There was also a partial BBC attempt in late 80s/90s that was released on VHS with Tom Baker narrating the missing scenes.

It's the same plan. Apple's model is:

Handle the query on device. If the device cannot handle the query, push the query to Private Cloud, If Private Cloud cannot handle the query, push the query to a third party of the users choosing.

Which is pretty much the same as what they announced a few years ago.

Apple underestimated the amount of time and work needed to get to work and really the only bit that I think changed is that Private Cloud (and possibly the on device model) is a white label Google model rather than being developed in-house by Apple.

This is Apple's Achilles heel.

If another company could release something like the Duo that seamlessly switches between phone, tablet, and desktop experience and make it Apple quality then Apple are in trouble. The technology is all there since the days of Ubuntu Touch.

Sadly I don't think there is a company in a position to build such a device that could compete.

Definitely a v1 product but it's an interesting device. Apple is rarely first to market, but they definitely produce the device that indicates the point where there is a market.

You can also see where they are going. In a couple of years, assuming it sells well there will be a Pro model with a 3x fold and better camera system. I'm guessing to make in thinner they will have to drop USB-C and come up with a flat charging/data connector. The EU won't like that.

The final interesting thing is this is the first Apple product that I can think of since the iPod era that they've released a product that will cannibalize another Apple product. If you were looking at getting a high end iPad Mini this replaces both phone and tablet.

The complaints at the time were entirely valid. The state of web development for mobile was pretty dire. HTML 5 wasn't released until 22 January 2008. People wanted to build apps for iOS in XCode. Nothing else would have been acceptable.

IMHO the web community dug their own grave here. WAP/WML and whatever it was the Japanese phones used was a better starting point than HTML etc as they'd already solved a lot the big problems around mobile developement. They were not perfect and support was terrible but they were much more focused on the problem of mobile app development than the "everything is the same nail" approach of HTML.

Even to this day the UX experience of web apps in HTML/Javascript/CSS is subpar to native apps and I say that as someone who spends their day developing such web apps. You can only put so much lipstick on the pig.

This matched my experience. 2002 I renewed in Canada with no issue. 4 years later I had to go back to my home country as I was told by my immigration lawyer that unless I had a connection to Canada, they would redirect me to my home country.

Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.

Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.

The big advantage is that you can convert from JPEG to JXL without re-encoding. This gives you an easy way to save 10%-20% in bandwidth for images you don’t have a lossless master for.

There are two angles to this. One is that if you want to integrate your agent setup into the Apple ecosystem you need a network connected Mac running 24/7.

The second is that the puck is heading towards local models. The people running their own 'Claws are usually experimenting running their own services either to save money or to explore the future where 95% of requests are handled on device.

If the Delaware company has zero presence in Virginia then the state of Virginia can't do anything about it.

The presence of us-east-1 in Virginia probably will complicate the matter considerably and I'm guessing it's something the courts would need to sort out.

There is no moat in the model and by making the them open, it’s hard for one to be established when the free models are “good enough”.

OpenAI and Anthropic are both hamstrung by this. Anthropic does have the better chance of surviving.

I think the article makes a bit too much of the decision to partner with Google for the AI model. Sometimes knowing where the boundaries of your business are is better than trying to expand too far and getting it wrong.

I think Apple understands that the moat in AI is the UX, something that historically they've been very good at. The model is a commodity and I suspect they will quite happily go with another provider if Google doesn't work or buy a company in the inevitable AI fire sale if they can see a good fit.

Nah, they'll just make the battery an external MagSafe accessory like the Air.

In-house vs Cloud Provider is largely a wash in terms of cost. Regardless of the approach, you are going need people to maintain stuff and people cost money. Similarly compute and storage cost money so what you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.

In my experience you typically need less people if using a Cloud Provider than in-house (or the same number of people can handle more instances) due to increased leverage. Whether you can maximize what you get via leverage depends on how good your team is.

US companies typically like to minimize headcount (either through accounting tricks or outsourcing) so usually using a Cloud Provider wins out for this reason alone. It's not how much money you spend, it's how it looks on the balance sheet ;)

There is no moat in the models. The moat is in the UX. The problem is that OpenAI is far away from where the user is and not going to get there anytime soon. Google meanwhile is exactly where the user is.

OpenAI IMHO is a dead company at this point. They are overvalued relative to the fundamentals and don't appear to have any way of getting the numbers to work in the timeframe that their investors will expect. They are throwing stuff against the wall in the hope something sticks.

They are almost certainly looking for a bag holder. This will either be the retail investor via an IPO or the Federal government via "we are too big to fail".

I don't think Nokia at that point would have gone with Android with Google services which what the market wanted. They would have gone with Android with their own services (Maps etc) and app store.

I don't think that would have succeeded against Samsung and the Nexus phones.

But TBH I think going with Android would have a better move than what Elop did.

The Pre and WebOS were hands down the best non iPhone experience at the time. The mistake Palm made was going exclusive instead of pushing it everywhere. I don't think the Pre ever recovered from that in the USA.

The BlackBerry Z10 was also a great device but by that point there was no way BlackBerry to deploy a competing ecosystem to iPhone and Android for it to matter.

European tech was doomed in late the 90s when the EU decided to throw in with Microsoft et al instead of supporting building out a homegrown alternative ecosystem based around open source software.

Nokia was dead company walking before Stephen Elop. Elop saw the writing on the wall and made one of the choices available. A different CEO would have made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia.

Nokia was a great hardware company that missed the boat when the market changed to be based around software. When the market changed again to be based around ecosystems, Nokia was beyond saving.

Good luck doing a controlled burn where the smoke is going to blow into a rich neighborhood like the Palisades.

You'll be buried under so many environmental impact lawsuits that any burn will take years (if ever) to happen.