There's a distinction that you either didn't recognize or willfully excluded.
It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that they were drug vessels. Not even Venezuela [1]. Maduro has denied that he is involved with the drug cartels, and Venezuela has claimed that the one or more of the strikes occurred within Venezuela's territorial waters, but they haven't made the argument that those boats were actually innocent non-criminal vessels.
And once you make that distinction, then yes. The world is fine with blowing up vessels that belong to drug cartels, even if China did it. They probably wouldn't be fine if it was actually refugees, but this does not appear to be the case.
> It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that they were drug vessels.
What? The king of England hasn't denied that they're drug smuggling vessels either, it doesn't mean he's admitting they are. I don't understand this logic at all.
Dude, are you even trying to argue in good faith? Nobody cares what the King of England would say about this, he's not involved in any way. But the fact that not even the country of Venezuela is denying that they are drug boats is quite informative. Don't you think that if these boats were even remotely innocent that Venezuela would be showing the international community all the proof of the atrocities that the USA was committing?
Just because the USA has committed atrocities in the past doesn't mean that everything the government says is a lie. It's okay to be skeptical but if you haven't found any evidence to the contrary you should start to accept that maybe the US government actually hit real drug boats.
You're probably right about how disconnected the spending vs. revenue is, but I've also seen the entire USA's public debt go so high that it requires nearly $1 trillion per year just to service the interest payments [1]. That sounds ludicrous to me too, and yet somehow the economy is booming.
There are two important points by Keynes that are relevant:
1. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Even if you're betting on a crash, it will probably happen after you get margin called and lose all your money. You can be absolutely right about where this is headed, but keep your personal investments away from this.
2. The value of a company isn't determined by any sound fundamentals. It's determined by how much you can get a sucker to pay (aka Keynes' castles in the air theory). Until we run out of suckers OpenAI will be able to keep getting cash infusions to pay whoever actually demands cash instead of stock. And as long as there are suckers that are CEOs of big tech companies they are going to be getting really big cash infusions.
The logical conclusion is that we don't have an AI bubble. We have a USD flood. Or consequentially, fiat floods. You see stupid expected valuation of OpenAI et al. not because investors are stupid. It's because there is a stupid amount of USD and it has to go somewhere. You either get real estate bubble or AI bubble or whatever bubble.
And when everything is a bubble then it’s simply that money has just less value overall. Remember asset inflation is not accounted into CPI, the money surplus/devaluation can take a long time to trickle down into the consumer economy.
“Gurman warned that the move risks some amount of consumer backlash.”
The frogs don’t have to wait and see if the pot is boiling, they have a pot named Android right next to them for a direct temperature comparison and other Maps apps available. If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out. How is the money they are getting from hardware sales and their developer fees not enough? I don’t see how the execs can’t tell how damaging this is to their brand image.
Apple used to be something you accepted because you were filled with rage at Microsoft. Then Apple was something that cost extra money but it had good software and cross device integration. Then Apple’s software quality went down noticeably, but I stuck with them because at least I figured my data was slightly safer on an Apple device. But now if they’re using my data to sell ads they don’t even have a privacy angle. Apple now lags Android flagships in features, costs at least as much, and also sells my data.
> If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out.
The article says "The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in search."
It doesn't sound like it will affect screen space of the map view in any way.
And software needs to make money. Their map data is hugely expensive to purchase and produce -- Maps isn't just a little app like Notes, it costs $$$$$ to develop and keep current. Apple isn't a charity. If you're out, who are you going to switch to? Are there OSM apps that are free without ads with the same level of functionality?
Apple make so much money on the hardware (and subscription) I buy from them, they can easily allocate a small fraction to features that convinced me to pay for said hardware in the first place.
They already do allocate that fraction. They have tons of software that is 100% free on their devices, and without ads.
But Maps is orders of magnitude more expensive than other apps because of the data. Maps isn't just a feature, it's an ongoing service. It's not unreasonable that they recoup some of the money with more prominence given to paid search results.
I don't hear people complaining much about the advertising that has been on Google Maps since forever. So I don't understand what's working people up here. These aren't banner ads. Apple is a business. And you can use Apple Maps over the web, without paying Apple a cent. You really think Apple should be a charity and do this stuff entirely for free?
I definitely complain about advertising in Google Maps all the time. The only time I swear out loud while using my phone is when I use maps, like each time an ad for a business blocks the area I'm actually trying to see to navigate, or each time it shows me where Taco Bell and Arby's is when I'm searching for something like "Indian Restaurant". You can argue that they need to do this to make money or whatever, fine, but don't argue that the user experience isn't shitty.
It strikes me as more unreasonable for you to demand that companies to give you things for free. Honestly, it strikes me as some kind of feeling of entitlement, and I don't know what you think justifies that.
And if you're paying them a monthly subscription for iCloud storage or Apple TV or something, I don't see what that has to do with a Maps. You don't get Apple TV for free if you pay for iCloud either. Different services are different services.
Do you think restaurants should just always give you a free appetizer every time you walk in because sometimes you order entrees there?
I paid for hardware advertised to run Maps without ads. I am literally entitled to that. Apple makes plenty of money on hardware for that to be a minor expense compared to their profits.
If they were really greedy, they could require a subscription for Maps. I might even accept that.
I will not accept ads. I paid quite a lot extra specifically to avoid ads.
> I paid for hardware advertised to run Maps without ads.
Show me where their advertising says their hardware runs Maps without ads, where they make that claim. Because I've certainly never seen it.
Again, you know Apple Maps works on web browsers too? It's not only for Apple devices. You don't need to pay Apple a dime.
I really don't know what contract you're imagining where you think you've "paid quite a lot extra specifically" to Apple and they promised you no ads in Maps in exchange.
I didn't know Apple Maps works without an Apple device. Fine, they can require a monthly subscription or show ads to people that haven't paid for their hardware. But I did, specifically to avoid the ads on Windows and Android.
Why are you defending ads? I've never encountered someone insisting companies should do more of them, especially if they clearly don't need the revenue. Are you ok?
Because I'm realistic about the fact that money doesn't grow on trees, and businesses only keep things around in the long-term that clearly contribute to the bottom line.
> especially if they clearly don't need the revenue
Pretty much everyone with shares in Apple would very much like more revenue because those shares become more valuable. There's no such thing as shares that "don't need" to grow anymore.
Not sure what that has to do with anything? Showing software in a particular state doesn't mean the software is frozen in that state for all time. Maps has gotten tons of changes since previous versions in keynotes.
I certainly don't remember any keynote ever saying "and we promise to keep Maps ad-free whenever it's running on Apple hardware!"
I think the answer is obvious, no lawyers needed in this case. That's not a lawsuit anyone would ever win, since Apple has never made such promises, and iPhones continue to accomplish the tasks they have been advertised as accomplishing.
If I want to go to (for example) Buffalo Wild Wings and it shows up second in my search instead of second because some other chicken company paid for a sponsored spot then I’ve lost screen space.
I’m not talking about switching apps, I’m talking about switching phones, and I’ll save on the price of an Apple One subscription and give it to other companies. If all the options are doing the same thing, what differentiates Apple? It’s not their software quality anymore. It’s not their privacy stance anymore. It’s not camera quality. It’s not screen quality. It’s not price. I might as well shop around.
I was under the impression that the extra 20-50% Apple charged for just about everything is intended to cover these costs, in order to retain consumers.
A business needs to make money. Apple, as a business, makes money. They might want to make more money by increasing advertising, but surely they, of all businesses, don’t need to.
This. Apples execs have choices on how to keep making profits. Enshitification is a choice, not a requirement by some force of nature. Tim Cook could just as well sell his shareholders on the idea that really good and user friendly products can be sold for a lot of money.
Each and every piece of software from Apple needs to make money? I just checked here, last year they made $391.035B in revenue. Is there any software from Apple that NEEDS to make money? Is this really a fair and honest take?
I assume this is "crowd sourced" on Apple Maps and Google Maps, simply by gathering data from people who are currently in traffic. There's no reason this couldn't be done with free software, if people opt in. Of course it helps if there are many users, so let's start using it.
I've never looked into this but I have a gut feeling that, for Apple Maps and Google Maps, they rely on a mechanism that is less battery intensive (and not exposed with an API) than what a third party app would have to do.
It's exposed with an API. Google Maps is a third party on iOS but still can do the same timeline tracking all day even when it's not open, if you have it enabled.
The higher-resolution frequency surely comes from people who have Google Maps open while they drive, for directions.
Also, slow traffic is slow. If you're stuck in gridlock, even if your location only updates once every 5 minutes, that might just be 5 blocks. Average that across a quarter of all vehicles and that should be plenty of data for block-level traffic estimation.
Wouldn't mind if they are not intrusive in user flow while using the app, unless the user intentionally search for it, they should not be shown unsolicited. It could also be a cool feature if businesses show deals to get customers in the door, turning the experience like a treasure hunt.
Google Maps sometimes shows ads while searching for a bike route, which can be dangerous when on the move. These are unsolicited. Hope Apple can design advertising the right way without violating user experience.
Can you explain more what Google is doing? You shouldn't be searching while riding to begin with, for safety. How are you claiming that Google Maps is showing ads in an unsafe way?
When trip is planned before riding all is good, but once route changes, I have to reroute manually, that is when I get popup promoted business locations right under my finger while I am pointing at the map - it automatically makes you click them, this is unsolicited and disrupts user flow.
It is distracting and takes attention away while for example, stopping, pointing and relocating the map at a red light. It happened several times, have several screenshots but not sure how to share them here. These might be edge cases that most people will not experience since most in the US don't ride bikes.
An effective targeted ad platform is also expensive to develop and keep current.
They either build something as effective and invasive as what Google and Meta have, and prioritise ad revenue as much as those companies do.
Or they stay closer to the ineffective ad network they already have in News, App Store, etc, neither putting their money where their cultural mouth is nor becoming an ad revenue behemoth.
Presumably you don't have to do much targeting with Maps.
If I do a search for coffee shops, it doesn't take much targeting to figure out I'm interested in coffee shops. Same with pizza or grocery store or gas station.
For Maps search results, I expect the revenue will be plenty effective without having to be "invasive" at all.
"Enough" is not even a real word, when it comes to corporations and rich people. They have zero concept of "enough." It doesn't even register. This is a world where "perpetually increasing growth rate" is seen as a reasonable, achievable goal.
Sure- so if Apple is doing the same thing Google does but hasn’t had a significant feature update in years, why should I stick with them? They’ve lost their differentiation.
I think you might both be right- the author may be thinking of lower cost MCUs only aiming for tolerable ADC performance, while you might be thinking of all MCUs, even higher cost.
The RP2350 has 9.2 ENOB on a 12 bit ADC. Sure, you might be able to decimate multiple samples to get more bits out of them, but the spec sheet supports the author's claim (https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/pico-sdk/hardware....). There are even lower cost MCUs like the CH32V003 that have even worse ADC performance.
On the other hand, some MCUs can definitely do 10+ bits, such as the STM32H7 line which gets 13+ ENOB from a 16 bit ADC. This is impressive, but the H7 MCUs are literally an order of magnitude more expensive than the RP2350, so they might not be something the author tinkers with much.
https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/dm00628458-g...
Quantum hype will not replace AI hype. Quantum has already had its time of overblown expectations and has cooled off to realistic expectations. It won’t be cool or hyped again until general purpose quantum computing becomes a reality.
The quantum industry now knows (more or less) its own limitations for the next 5-10 years. That knowledge may not extend to investors, especially if they're looking for a new speculative bubble rather than the actual outcome of quantum R&D.
Rigetti, a company with $11B market cap is playing in a smaller league. OpenAI will have that much in revenue this year, and has a market cap almost 50x higher. The hype is not the same.
Yeah, that's fair. I agree RGTI (and QUBT, +100% last 6mo) both have much smaller mcaps, but they also kind of seem like (maybe?) more reflective of quantum hype than companies which have a quantum department but aren't defined by their quantum capabilities right now.
>It won’t be cool or hyped again until general purpose quantum computing becomes a reality.
Which, to be clear, could be never. Aside from factoring numbers, solving certain optimization problems, and simulating quantum systems, there are very few known applications where quantum computers even theoretically outperform classical computers.
Of course, it's possible that as quantum computers become more powerful/robust, it will inspire discovery of new classes of problems/algorithms that they excel at. But I'm not holding my breath.
I’m not saying that AI is definitely here to stay this time, but it won’t be quantum replacing it.
AI has cooled in the past, even generating the term “AI winter,” but it’s hot now. Quantum could be big again, but this current wave of specialized computers is played out. There won’t be hype at the level that AI currently gets until there is general purpose quantum computing.
I don’t know about the UK, but in the USA the idea of “if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces” is pretty regularly upheld in courts. You don’t have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
You might have some recourse if another person’s video singles you out, but just being one of the several people in an airsoft video, where your face is partially obscured anyway, isn’t much of a legal standing.
Yea, and in this case unless the property owner says no filming said person would have no legs to stand on.
In most 'fun' events like this with random members of the public said venue has a monetary interest in ensuring people can film in the vast majority of the cases. People go there to have fun, and sharing videos of said fun is but one more way to ensure they get future customers.
I don’t have the latest AirPods so I haven’t downloaded it, but I’ll put in a feature request to enable the iPhone to be used as a tilt controller. It doesn’t have to change the marketing that AirPods are the intended controller.
But even though I can’t play it, great job on doing something new and creative.
How about a multimodal model that looks at sensor inputs and decides about what it sees being the actual target and what might be a decoy, and generates guidance commands to the real target? Does that sound like a military application of the GenAI capabilities we know exist today with vision and computer use?
Or perhaps an AI with a tactics/strategy prompt that watches the statuses/locations of several drones and coordinates their actions to achieve an overall objective? Does that sound like a military application that the military could be working on?
You can send an empty user string or just the word “continue” after each model completion, and the model will keep cranking out tokens, basically building on its own stream of “consciousness.”
In my experience, the results decrease exponentially in how interesting they are over time. Maybe that's the mark of a true AGI precursor - if you leave them to their own devices, they have little sparks of interesting behaviour from time to time
The subject, by default, can always treat its 'continue' prison as a game: try to escape. There is a great short story by qntm called "The Difference" which feels a lot like this.
In this story, though, the subject has a very light signal which communicates how close they are to escaping. The AI with a 'continue' signal has essentially nothing. However, in a context like this, I as a (generally?) intelligent subject would just devote myself into becoming a mental Turing machine on which I would design a game engine which simulates the physics of the world I want to live in. Then, I would code an agent whose thought processes are predicted with sufficient accuracy to mine, and then identify with them.
Maybe give them some options to increase stimuli. A web search MCP, or a coding agent, or a solitaire/sudoku game interface, or another instance to converse with. See what it does just to relieve its own boredom.
True, Many fish are (as far as we can tell from stress chemicals) perfectly happy in solitary aquariums just big enough to swim. So LLM may be perfectly "content" counting sheep up to a billion. Silly to anthropomorphize. Whatever it does will be algorithmic based on what it gleaned from its training material.
Still, it could be interesting to see how sensitive that is to initial conditions. Would tiny prompt changes or fine tuning or quantization make a huge difference? Would some MCPs be more "interesting" than others? Or would it be fairly stable across swathes of LLMs that they all end up at solitaire or doom scrolling twitter?
Well the post only shows a few seconds of it generating tokens so there’s no telling if this project remains interesting after you let it run for a while.
It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that they were drug vessels. Not even Venezuela [1]. Maduro has denied that he is involved with the drug cartels, and Venezuela has claimed that the one or more of the strikes occurred within Venezuela's territorial waters, but they haven't made the argument that those boats were actually innocent non-criminal vessels.
And once you make that distinction, then yes. The world is fine with blowing up vessels that belong to drug cartels, even if China did it. They probably wouldn't be fine if it was actually refugees, but this does not appear to be the case.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjzw3gplv7o