They only logged the IP. That’s metadata. IIRC Apple refused backdooring its phone encryption. That’s a lot more invasive.

Even the biolab one could be both natural and man made: the virus was found and isolated by biologists studying local bat populations. They then failed to contain it properly (remember how surprised everyone was when they realized how contagious it was over the air?) and it started spreading.

Well, France needs the rest of Europe to align or it doesn’t matter much what France is doing on its own. They have the best nuclear arsenal in Europe, but that alone doesn’t enable them to act independently.

There’s a few things Europe isn’t good at:

• Weapons and weapon systems are developed independently. That results in incompatible weapons and very expensive production costs because they aren’t produced at scale and multiple versions of the same are developed by the different countries/manufacturers.
• The only military international logistics and organization that European countries currently know is NATO. Outside the NATO framework organization is completely chaotic.
• Similar to the first two points: The European countries don’t have their military interests aligned and can’t agree on deployment, funding and procurement of weapons. Bureaucracy stands in the way of scaling up production.

On the other hand: Europe is rich and technologically advanced. We’ve seen in the first two years since the Russian invasion that technological superiority can outpace the sheer mass of human capital that Russia can throw at the front.

Exactly. You can’t lose if you don’t fight. Khan fights… and sometimes loses

Yeah, on that front he is surprisingly good and it shouldn’t be minimized. But even on workers rights he’s not perfect. Who is though?

He appointed Lina Kahn as probably the strongest antitrust chair of the FTC in a long time.

Sure, he could do more than just wag the finger at shrinkflation, but Khan stopped a lot of mergers already.

Yes, actually at my job a co-worker just found exactly such a bug yesterday: Debug build zeroed out the variable and the release build didn’t. So the bug only occurred in the release build, but could not be reproduced on the debug build where the developers work on. So in the end he found it because of the different compiler flags used for debug vs release builds at our work place.

All true, but there’s a reason for lamp shades as well, as they diffuse direct light and make the illumination of a room friendlier. Glare is a real issue and so while placing a mirror next to lamp increases the light in a certain direction it could be uncomfortable looking into the direction of the lamp. A white wall would reflect the light in a more diffuse and thus agreeable fashion, but the overall output measured in the room is gonna be smaller. Illumination depends on your needs in the end.

Yep, variables that are merely declared are not initialized, so their value is not guaranteed. Could be anything.

You’re charging the class for a thought crime!!

Horrible code. First, it doesn’t compile because there’s no ; at the end of the class definition.

And then more importantly you have a private destructor which means this CriminalScum’s destructor will never be called, so you can’t charge it with distruction either. Or are you telling me this CriminalScum has friends?

All the new Quests have a see-through function. That’s nothing new for VR devices. AVP got only 12ms delay and sacrificed FOV for image clarity, but that’s the only innovation.

My Android phone is so customizable it doesn’t run any Google services on it. That’s the difference: open source. But like I said, it’ll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.

Indeed. Has all the VR features, but tries to sell as AR device with little to no AR use cases with the exception of a text field opening up over a real bluetooth keyboard. Having dozens of screens and apps floating around you isn’t “AR”, it’s VR. And that you can see the real world has already been done by Occulus years ago. Sure this is a better quality and leverages the Apple ecosystem, but you can’t sell it believably as an AR device yet. That said, the apps of the first iPhone weren’t great either, so let’s see how they iterate over this 600g ski goggles.

The first iPad also had shitty reviews and then it still established itself. I wouldn’t judge too early just based on these initial reviews.

Went to one of these with my co-workers. We were the only ones and nobody was there before we arrived and when we left there wasn’t anybody else coming in either.

They probably have to constantly update the HW to actually get customers and then it has to be expensive enough that the few that come, make them a profit.

If you look at it as an extension of Android, we’re at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.

It’s true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.

Luckily Apple isn’t directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.

I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I’m not a friend of golden cages. So I’m just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that’s where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let’s say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.

Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn’t need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.

But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I’m worried. It’s no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google’s localization API and they’ll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc… This should leave us worried.

I shared Naomi Klein’s support for the “No Label” party on Facebook many years ago. It was of course satire.

Since then I really look into the things people share before I share them myself. Even though I generally trust these people.