People keep thinking Russia would attack in order to conquer and occupy Europe for some reason. I doubt that would be the plan.

Russian economy is focused on weapon production now. Changing this focus would take time and cost a lot of money. Instead of doing that they can keep manufacturing weapons and send couple hundred thousand of their people to die in another war. Any direct attack on EU member would most likely send the entire block into recession. China could buy a lot of oil from Russia and help their economy in other ways in exchange for that favor.

Basically the fear is that another war is the easiest and best way to keep Russian economy running. The only cost would be more dead Russians and Putin doesn’t care about those.

Some people actually like exploiting poor people and dislike politicians that make it difficult for them.

People coming up with all those crazy theories while the most likely explanation is that that there is no beef. It’s not the first time Trump promised something without ever planning on delivering it.

You’re technically right but the real issue is electoral college. For ranked choice to work on national level you would have to get rid of if. Which would require constitutional reform. Without it ranked choice and winner-take-all electoral college would result in a big mess. The most likely scenario would be for Republicans to organize and vote for one candidate while Democrats would split the vote between establishment Dem and some DSA candidate. To actually end 2-party system without giving the presidency to Republicans forever you would need ranked choice popular vote or 2-turn elections.

This can be done on local level but on national level you would need constitutional reform which is extremely unlikely.

I would upload encrypt file somewhere and download it when needed. If you’re worried someone will actually access your USB stick looking for encrypted data, why carry it at all? It’s cool if you want to pretend you’re a spy or something but it’s not very practical.

I understand the app is great

It’s not even that great anymore. In the recent years the app got bigger and bigger, the UI more confusing, it got intrusive features that are impossible to disable while not adding anything of value.

For example, it started playing distracting, ugly. looped videos by default with no clear way to disable this. At the same time it became impossible to say “don’t play this song even again”.

I think the idea is that the data is encrypted on the phone and password is needed to decrypt it. If Apple can load (decrypt) data without your password then they can decrypt it anytime they want, even you don’t want them to.

It’s actually interesting topic. I think Spotify worked fine and now that they are starting to behave like every evil corporation out there we’re getting alternatives like Qobuz. Music is different because you have many publishers and platforms like Spotify are just another distribution channel. You can still buy discs or use iTunes or whatever but you also get streaming. Spotify doesn’t make music themselves but artists are getting pennies from them. They make more money from other channels.

With TV it’s different because IP is so incredibly valuable here. Everyone is trying to control their content. Netflix used to be kind of the default streaming distribution channel like Spotify but then Disney decided that since they have Star Wars they can just split and monetize it themselves (Disney probably wasn’t first but you get my point). So now all the streaming platform produce their own content and since it’s the thing that gives them value they don’t want to share it.

So the real solution here would be to follow the music industry model: separate content producers from streaming platforms. The streaming platform would compete on features (remember when Netflix had perfectly functioning ‘skip intro’ and ‘next episode’ features but Amazon didn’t?) and producers would compete on content. Mixing those two jobs is what’s killing the experience. No idea if it’s economically viable but I think that would be the model that would give us best user experience.

Shitty content is definitely not just Netlix issue. A lot of content from many different providers is simply bland now. The issue is that production companies rely on algorithms to decide what will sell. “People liked this show about ghosts and this show about pirates so let’s make a show about ghost pirates”. That being said, many original shows are still huge success so they still try to branch out and try new things. So yes, there’s more and more mediocre, bland content but it affects all platform and all content, not just Netflix.

For me personally fragmentation is the big issue. If someone made “Spotify for movies”, where I could watch literally all the shows on a single subscription, without ads, with good UI and interoperability between platforms I would pay for it. I will not pay for 10 subscriptions to watch one show from each one of them. I think Netflix as a platform is fine, it’s the market that shitty.

If you hate how shitty modern Netflix i

I don’t have a Netlifx subscription but it worked fine couple of years ago. What’s so shitty about it now? Do they have availability issues? Ads? Bugs? Less content? Or is the only issue that they don’t let people share accounts anymore?

For anyone not familiar with current celebrities like me, this is Tom Holland:

It’s ok, it will trickle down eventually.

Can yo give some of your money to Italians? You have so much more than even Germans.

AI is basically evil people raising prices of electricity, consumer electronics, emitting tons of pollution and making everyone dumber but don’t worry because if they succeed… everyone will get fired. Everyone knows it’s bad but as a society we can’t do anything about it because the system was designed to empower sociopaths and make everyone else powerless to stop them.

More like…

Yes really.

1. Straight out in the first book Culture is shown as the bad guy, civilization that is not alive and has to be destroyed. It wins eventually but the point stands: Culture kind of like the Borg, absorbing humanoid species and growing without limits.

2. No other civilization relies on AI as much. In Hydrogen Sonata you have good description of other civilization that uses digital constructs that are still based on humans, not pure AI. There’s clear distinction between AI controlled Culture and other civilizations. Why other civilizations don’t use AI as much? Because they don’t want be controlled by it.

3. It’s clear AI likes to use people so it manipulates them to do what it wants. Player of Games is clear example of that. In State of the Art AI straight out assassinates a guy who doesn’t want to follow its orders.

4. In State of the Art Culture is also shows as sterile and boring. Everyone behaves because they don’t have a choice, their actions are meaningless, they don’t really control or anything or advance the civilization.

5. People have more of a sentimental value for AI. It does recognize human as intelligent the same way we recognize that animals are alive. People are sure taken care of but everything is run by AI. People are just pets.

socialist utopia

As someone who has read all the books in Culture series I would (and will if provoked) argue that, as most books about utopias, it’s actually describing a dystopia. No idea if it’s socialist or not, but in the society Banks is describing people are reduced to the role of pets, not equal partners of AI.