I'll be honest. I discovered him with this post. And I studied in France. I am also familiar with his projects, the obfuscated C code contest and more. Just don't remember seeing his name.
I guess that if people aren't loud on social media, people tend to ignore them.
Respect to those who posted their praise of someone else on social media. We need more of this.
I got a prompt about trying new apps every week or something similar. The wording, the moment it prompted me were clearly designed for people to just say "ok" and then wonder how apps were installing regularly without any action. I got caught myself, disabled it but still got new app installs later. I killed the whole thing and have been free since. But definitely felt like a scam. And the apps suck.
They even force you to select a bunch of apps during out-of-box setup on some Motorola phones and it mandates they automatically download post-setup. You can't say "no", you straight up have to let the phone queue up and let it pull all the APKs down for a bunch of shitty preloaded games and Netflix and crap, load them in, then get to waste fifteen minutes removing them again. :\
I think that you underestimate the portion of people just letting Youtube play videos in a continuous flow. They are doing the dishes, sewing, folding clothes, watching the entrance of the building... Stating the subject of the video makes a lot of sense for them.
I use DeArrow to remove clickbait titles and thumbnails, so indeed, I don't need that information to be repeated. I don't mind a few seconds at the beginning, what I hate is the person rambling about why they didn't post the day before and what not. That time multiplied by the number of viewers makes me wanna cry.
Please stop saying "Brussels" to mean the EU. It's a nasty trick to give the idea that it's some kind of external entity forcing your country to do something. It's not. It's an assembly. And it's insulting to people from Brussels. I don't want this any more than you do.
It’s very common throughout English. The Russian government is refered to as Moscow, US as Washington. It’s the same and doesn’t refer to residents. It’s known as synecdoche.
No, it is not quite the same as Moscow and Washington are capitals of centralised states who give orders to the whole nation.
The EU on the other hand does not have a common constitution, army etc. so is not a real state (yet). It is made up of soveraign nations who come together debate and decide there, but then it is still up to the members to implement that.
So the transition to the EU as one state is happening, but might never complete.
The European Commission is in fact empowered to boss member states around, it's one of the things that give EU law teeth rather than it being like "international law" (unenforceable anarchy). It also acts much like a government (in the sense of executive, not in the sense of state) when it comes to EU lawmaking, and has various government-like powers in fields like competition law for example. And the European Commission is based in Brussels. Saying "Brussels" to refer to Commission activity is as natural as saying "London", "Downing Street", "the Cabinet Office", "Whitehall" etc to refer to British government functions. And that's without getting into all the other EU institutions that are based there!
It is true that the EU institutions are ultimately subordinate to the member states in a way that, say, the US federal institutions are not, but the EU is still very much is its own thing. It even has legal personality these days: you can sue the EU and the EU can sue you.
It doesn't imply that the EU is one state. It's just the place where the decisions are made. If Brussels didn't like anyone knowing that, I'm sure other cities in the EU would happily take the gobs of free money showered on wherever the EU is headquartered.
Spoiler, the parliamanet moves once a month between Brussel and there. That's how centralized the EU is, we cannot even decide on one fixed place to meet and decide.
I’m not sure you realise that this is a far more generic rhetorical phenomenon that encompasses all kinds of situations. Like referring to the FBI as Quantico.
You are right that when people say "Scotland Yard" they do frequently mean the whole Metropolitan Police. And you are also right that there is no other police entity (that I know of) which would be associated with that name.
But also, "Scotland Yard" was just the address of the original headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. Even then it wasn't the whole organisation, just the address of one of the buildings. Then they got a new headquarters and called it "New Scotland Yard". And to confuse matters further they repeated this multiple times. Which means there are 3 buildings which were called "New Scotland Yard" at various points in time.
And today of course the MET occupies far more real estate than just the famous "Scotland Yard". For example if you look at this FOI request[1] you can see that there were 226 other buildings the Metropolitan Police used in 2023. (Not counting covert/sensitive estate).
The problem here, and the source of OOPs annoyance I think, is that the governments of the constituting member states have the habit to present unpopular regulations as 'from Brussels' while taking credit for the popular things as from 'Den Haag','Berlin' or 'Paris' or whatever the local capital is. This habit is the main driver of anti-EU sentiments across the whole of europe. Which is a pity, mainly because it takes the attention away from highly needed reforms in the EU structures because people who could drive the reforms now just want out.
So while linguistically it's the same system as using 'Washington' or 'Moscow', Brussels is specifically in the bad spot where it gets blamed for impopular stuff but never praised for popular things.
I think it’s actually incredibly similar to Washington’s situation, since DC residents have pretty much nothing to do with the federal government residing there, just like the Bruxellois in Brussels
It's usually used in place of a person/active participant in something.
So ‘Brussels suffered a deadly fire’ will always refer to the city. ‘Brussels decides on new aircraft regulations’ will almost always refer to either the city government, the Belgian government, or the EU Parliament headquartered there. Brussels is just an exceptional case because there is so much based there, as opposed to the Hague or the Vatican.
Being belgian I thought that the city of Brussels did something. Using the term EU is more precise I guess in this case. For us, Brussels is just a town in our country, not the EU or representing the EU.
It's a figure of speech called metonymy. I agree Brussels is not very precise, a better word would be Berlaymont to refer to the EU commission specifically as there are a lot of institutions that could be meant by Brussels (Belgian federal govt, Brussels regional govt, EU commission, EU parliament, EU council, ...)
It definitely forces countries to do things they want to do, generally via compliant leadership of those countries. See the last 15 years of UK voters being worried about immigration levels, vs immigration levels.
> See the last 15 years of UK voters being worried about immigration levels, vs immigration levels.
Look, let's be clear here. The UK (as a member state) was concerned that the EU was becoming too federal. Therefore (following Machievelli) they decided to push for new members, mostly the eastern bloc countries.
Then, politically, it was difficult for them to refuse to allow immigration from those countries (many of the other members had a moratorium for a few years post-accession). This lead to lots of British people becoming very upset, at the EU for some reason (even though their government had done this).
It's also very common inside the EU. Brussels is not an internal entity either, it's seen as distant eurocrats by most EU citizens. Only those interested in EU funds know about them really. It's not seen as a representative assembly
The assembly seats in Brussels, so the decision comes from Brussels (geographically).
It doesn't imply that people from Brussels are the ones to decide, not everyone has the same idea anyways. Though, as citizens of a EU member state, they have some responsibility, at least indirectly.
Brussels is the seat of five governments: the city itself, the Brussels-Capital autonomous region, the Flemish Parliament and Government (luckily the Wallon Government seat is in Namur), the Belgian Federal Parliament, and the European Commission and Parliament.
The "Brussels" metonym is probably the most ambiguous reference to a government body on the planet.
You might not have a way to actually file a complaint against them but quite often, their legal department will just have a quick look at your case and just give you what you want without bothering to tell you anything. Worth a shot.
I think that it's a great opportunity to play with relatives. Each person can explain why/why not and that's probably the main point.
It'll also probably shut the mouth of those who think that they know better. This works with the driving license. Start a test with the whole family and watch the older men get a reality check.
> But critics have said E2EE makes it harder to stop harmful content spreading online, because it means tech firms and law enforcement have no way of viewing any material sent in direct messages.
Like they give a damn. I report accounts that explicitly sell fake credit cards, citing laws that make it illegal and 95% of the time "we checked and there is no violation here, we know that you're not happy but don't give a crap".
So the argument of security is utter bullshit and they just want to snoop.
This is the problem with this report. It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, it means that they are so rarely at the shop that the drivers don't notice the used brake pads, tires etc.
> This is the problem with this report. It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, it means that they are so rarely at the shop that the drivers don't notice the used brake pads, tires etc.
The average European drives about 12,000 km (~7500 miles) per year [1]. The maximum inspection period allowed by the EU for most personal cars is 2 years [2].
The average person in the US drives about 13,400 miles (~ 21,500 km) per year [3].
So, roughly, the average European vehicle is inspected after a driving distance which is about the same as that which the average US vehicle puts behind it in a year.
I thus doubt that the Tesla numbers from the article are greatly affected by a lack of inspections.
>The maximum inspection period allowed by the EU for most personal cars is 2 years
Your source clearly says that the first inspection needs to be at least four years after registration, so if you now buy a Tesla Model 3, you won't need to have it inspected until 2030. It's how Finland does it, so 4 years to first inspection, then every 2 years until the car is 10 years old, and then every year (4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12…).
> Your source clearly says that the first inspection needs to be at least four years after registration, [...]
That doesn't mean the first inspection is only required after four years, only that it must be required after four years. The countries can still introduce stricter rules, like Germanys TÜV - the first inspection has to happen in the first three years here.
Thanks for pointing out the possibility (but, as someone else pointed out, it's just a possibility - the EU regulation obviously does not set a minimum) of a double gap for new vehicles. On the other hand, don't new vehicles typically see an extra inspection by the manufacturer/dealer early on? (I don't know).
The regulation is quite clear: in any EU country, inspection must happen at least every 2 years for vehicles older than 4 years. I understand that Finland allows a 4 year gap after first registration. After that, the max period is still 2 years. Individual countries may also require 2 years (or less) during the first 4.
I’m an American living in a state with no roadworthyness inspections so I don’t have any first hand experience with this. But in previous threads, people have mentioned that the typical thing to do is, at the vehicle service (oil change or whatever) prior to the inspection, you mention “hey, my car needs to get the roadworthyness inspection soon, can you look it over for that while it’s in the shop?”. And if something is wrong, it’ll be brought to your attention and fixed before the official inspection. Then you show up for the official inspection and oftentimes, it goes smoothly. The pro-Tesla theory is that BEVs require less service so people don’t catch these things prior to official inspection.
Seems like if that’s true of BEVs generally one could find similar trends with Nissan Leafs, etc.
Not really - EV regen is really good. Even on my 4000 pound Fusion Hybrid, I don’t brake as often as I would in a gasoline powered vehicle because I’m able to coast down on the motor braking itself.
This is a software, not a hardware problem. Suitably intelligent software could gently apply the brakes every now and then in addition to regenerative braking even when it doesn't need to, just to keep the brakes in good condition.
The better you get at this, the more you'll drive around without getting the break pads checked.
This also increases the risk of running out of braking power when the car needs it the most, you'll be fine on an easy drive and then rear end the car in front of you or worse.
It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, but it does mean that the average Tesla Model Y on the road is in much worse shape than another car of similar age.
Not COBOL but I sometimes have to maintain a large ColdFusion app. The early LLMs were pretty bad at it but these days, I can let AI write code and I "just" review it.
I've also used AI to convert a really old legacy app to something more modern. It works surprisingly well.
I feel like people who can't get AI to write production ready code are really bad at describing what they want done. The problem is that people want an LLM to one shot GTA6. When the average software developer prompts an LLM they expect 1) absolutely safe code 2) optimized/performant code 3) production ready code without even putting the requirements on credential/session handling.
You need to prompt it like it's an idiot, you need to be the architect and the person to lead the LLM into writing performant and safe code. You can't expect it to turn key one shot everything. LLMs are not at the point yet.
That's just the thing though - it seems like, to get really good code out of an LLM, a lot of the time, you have to describe everything you want done and the full context in such excruciating detail and go through so many rounds of review and correction that it would be faster and easier to just write the code yourself.
Yes, but please remember you specify the common parts only once for the agent. From there, it’ll base its actions on all the instructions you kept on their configuration.
I’ve found LLMs to be severely underwhelming. A week or two ago I tried having both Gemini3 and GPT Codex refactor a simple Ruby class hierarchy and neither could even identify the classes that inherited from the class I wanted removed. Severely underwhelming. Describing what was wanted here boils down to minima language and they both failed.
Exactly this. Not sure what code other people who post here are writing but it cannot always and only be bleeding edge, fringe and incredible code. They don't seem to be able to get modern LLMs to produce decent/good code in Go or Rust, while I can prototype a new ESP32 which I've never seen fully in Rust and it can manage to solve even some edge cases which I can't find answers on dedicated forums.
I have a sneaking suspicion that AI use isn't as easy as it's made out to be. There certainly seem to be a lot of people who fail to use it effectively, while others have great success. That indicates either a luck or a skill factor. The latter seems more likely.
This sounds like my first job with a big consulting firm many years ago (COBOL as it happens) where programming tasks that were close to pseudocode were handed to the programmers by the analysts. The programmer (in theory) would have very few questions about what he was supposed to write, and was essentially just translating from the firm's internal spec language into COBOL.
I find that at the granularity you need to work with current LLMs to get a good enough output, while verifying its correctness is more effort than writing code directly. The usefulness of LLMs to me is to point me in a direction that I can then manually verify and implement.
I got banned for asking about the yfinance python module. They had an "appeal" but it was a Google Form that probably nobody ever looks at.
My recommendation would be to get in touch with their DPO (Data Protection Officer) and invoke the GDPR rule that you have the right to 1. have an explanation as to why an automated decision was made about you, 2. ask for a human review. You are out of the GDPR scope but the legal contact might not bother checking and just restore your account. Getting your data is also a right under GDPR but getting your account back would be a better option. I wouldn't mention this or they'll jump on it.
I guess that if people aren't loud on social media, people tend to ignore them.
Respect to those who posted their praise of someone else on social media. We need more of this.
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