Is it April fools? please still be April’s fools, checks calendar, dammit, not April’s fools still. It’s actually news.

No bravery by James Blunt, so I can play it at endless loop at world leaders.

Yet again with the media, the astronauts aren’t stuck on ISS. It is blatantly false to headline such. Haven’t been since ehhh was it November. They have a perfectly working lifeboat capsule with seats. They could return any moment now should it be deemed necessary.

Their mission profile got changed. They are now part of the next expedition crew and as such their normal schedule return depends on, when replacement expedition arrives to maintain continuity of expeditions. Couple other astronauts expeditions slots got bumped to make this happen.

These are professional astronauts. Being part of expedition crews is pinnacle achievement of one’s career. Not to mention with both of them given their age and time already in space, this is their last space mission. I doubt they much mind their last mission is instead of week long test flight of a new capsule, an 8 month long long stay space station expedition. Ending ones in space career in style with a long stay expedition doing experiments and studies on ISS.

They decided it already couple years ago. However refresh cycles are such, that only now it starts to arrive to times where changes physically manifest. Another thing which they already said back then and kinda apologised for alas sorry, changes have to wait until next refresh or next generation of the vehicle depending on timing.

Like I guess this is official official now, but design team lead or someone like that said ages ago they would be going back to more physical buttons.

Because they can’t without backdooring the software? Just like they also refuse to co-operate with Swedish government and threatened to leave the market should Sweden try to force them.

You know Russian spies can also use TOR onion routing and so on.

As for phishing there is nothing Signal can do about someone scanning a signal contact sharing QR and adding it to their contracts list beyond informative “hey are you really sure, really really sure you want to add this contact”. If user trusts someone they shouldn’t, no amount of app policy protections help. Or maybe they manage to shish them to scan and approve “share account to another device”. Again nothing Signal can do about that.

In the world’s richest country… … …

The fix is simple correct informative headlining from media “Tesla issues over the air update to resolve X thing related safety recall affecting X amount of customer vehicles”

It’s not NHTSA’s fault media does their job badly.

Well that could mean anything between “she died of not immediately obvious medical reason, so cause of death inguiry is needed” to “she was murdered, we are investigating”. Heck to investigate “there is no external markers, but we don’t know is it medical stroke or a poisoning murder”.

So I would say, wait until they investigated and tell, if they suspect foul play before jumping to conclusions. Not that Israel isn’t capable and on choosing so willing, but sometimes people just suddenly die of medical causes without prior warning.

Well one doesn’t necessary need to get rid of electoral college, if the electors were appointed by proportional vote and representation. At that point it would be just a smudging filter. National popular vote with extra steps and some added in accuracy due to one being able to do so much proportionality given how many electors there is.

So the main problem is not electoral college, but the voting method. Just as note since also getting rid of electoral college isn’t a fix, if the direct popular election uses bad voting method. Like say nationwide plurality vote would be horrible replacement for electoral college.

Though I would assume anyone suggesting popular vote would mean nationwide majority win popular vote. Though that will demand a “fail to reach majority” resolver. Be it a two round system (second round with top two candidates, thus guaranteed majority result) or some form of instant run-off with guaranteed majority win after elimination rounds.

TLDR: main problem I winner take all plurality, first past the post more than the technicality of there existing such bureaucratic element as electors and electoral votes.

Battle Tested Strategies? Amazon aren’t very subtle about this being all out intentional circumvention attempt. Why don’t you name your holding company as “tax evasion incorporated”, while you are at it Amazon.

30 years away from it (reduced from the original 100 years they provided only 5 years ago)

More like estimates on this are completely unreliable. As in that 100 years could have as well been 1000 years. It was pretty much “until an unpredictable technological paradigm shift happens”. “100 years in future” is “when we have warp drives and star gates” of estimates. Pretty “when we have advanced to next level of advancement and technology, whenever it happens. 100 years should be good minimum of this not being taken as an actual year number estimate”.

30 years is “we see maybe a potential path to this via hypothetical developments of technology in horizon”. It’s the classical “Fusion is always 30 years away”. Until one time it isn’t, but that 30 year loop can go on indefinitely, if the hypothetical don’t turn to reality. Since you know we thought “maybe that will work, once we put out mind in to it”. Oh it didn’t, on to chasing next path.

I only know of one project, that has 100 year estimate, that is real. That is the Onkalo deep repository of spent fuel in Finland. It has estimate of spending 100 years being filled and is to be sealed in 2120’s and that is an actual date. Since all the tech is known, the sealing process is known, it just happens to take a century to fill the repository bit by bit. Finland is kinda stable country and radiation hazard such long term, that whatever government is to be there in 2120’s, they will most likely seal the repository.

Unless “we invent warp drives” happens before that and some new process of actually efficiently and very safely getting rid of the waste is found in some process. (and no that doesn’t include current recycling methods. Since those aren’t that good to get rid of this large amount and with small enough risk of side harms. Surprise, this was studied by Finland as alternative and it was simply decided “recycling is not good enough, simple enough, efficient enough and safe enough yet. Bury it in bedrock tomb”).

Main issue comes from GDPR. When one uses the consent basis for collecting and using information it has to be a free choice. Thus one can’t offer “Pay us and we collect less information about you”. Hence “pay or consent” is blatantly illegal. Showing ads in generic? You don’t need consent. That consent is “I vote with my browser address bar”. Thing just is nobody anymore wants to use non tracked ads…

So in this case DMA 5(2) is just basically re-enforcement and emphasis of previous GDPR principle. from verge

“exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data.”

from the regulation

2. The gatekeeper shall not do any of the following:
   (a) process, for the purpose of providing online advertising services, personal data of end users using services of third parties that make use of core platform services of the gatekeeper;
   (b) combine personal data from the relevant core platform service with personal data from any further core platform services or from any other services provided by the gatekeeper or with personal data from third-party services;
   © cross-use personal data from the relevant core platform service in other services provided separately by the gatekeeper, including other core platform services, and vice versa; and
   (d) sign in end users to other services of the gatekeeper in order to combine personal data,

unless the end user has been presented with the specific choice and has given consent within the meaning of Article 4, point (11), and Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

surprise 2016/679 is… GDPR. So yeah it’s new violation, but pretty much it is “Gatekeepers are under extra additional scrutiny for GDPR stuff. You violate, we can charge you for both GDPR and DMA violation, plus with some extra rules and explicity for DMA”.

I think technically already GDPR bans combining without permission, since GDPR demands permission for every use case for consent based processing. There must be consent for processing… combining is processing, needs consent. However this is interpretation of the general principle of GDPR. It’s just that DMA makes it explicit “oh these specific processing, yeah these are processing that need consent per GDPR”. Plus it also rules them out of trying to argue “justified interest” legal basis of processing case of the business. Explicitly ruling “these type of processing don’t fall under justified interest for these companies, these are only and explicitly per consent type actions”.

Always 50/50 because two party system, FPTP and electoral college.

I would also add that isn’t empty talk like “Well he said it once, non biggie”. That statement by POTUS itself drove the national policy other countries. When POTUS says “other nations you are with us or are our enemies”, that matters.

That is a signal the reverberates around with “do we dare to anger USA on this one”. The Afghan war partisipants list is long and contains some not so obvious participants often doing rather small token participations. Which I think is exactly “Well we have to show we are with USA”.

For example here in Finland in the after action report of Finnish participation in Afghanistan tells the reason wasn’t building peace, it wasn’t even combat experience. It was “coalition and alliance building” aka showing USA “we are with them”.

In the after action study one of the interviewed decision makers literally directly quoted:

Yhdysvallat sanoi 9/11 jälkeen: olette joko meidän kanssa tai meitä vastaan.”

United States said after 9/11: You are either with us or against us.

Right above explaining how it was 20 year long very unpopular operation caused losses and achieved nothing in Afghanistan, but hey the Finnish NATO application will go through with flying colors.

The whole time the media blitz was about “Helping and building peace in Afghanistan”. When in reality we went in because USA publicly extorted pretty all of west to show colors.

This isn’t only in Finland in other European after action reports have shown similar “We went in, because Bush publicly demanded show of loyalty”.

Amazon is a retailer, they can choose to sell or not sell whomever’s goods they want to.

Amazon is also platform operator. This is about Amazon being the direct seller on the selling platform operated by this company called Amazon vs third party seller selling Apple products on the platform operated by this company called Amazon.

Meaning stuff like Amazon placing their own direct sell offer higher on results or as said how prominently they featured advertising by their party sellers.

This is the danger of trying to operate both as the retailer and as the platform operator on same market place. Competition authority will very carefully scrutinise ones operating of the market platform on benefit of ones retail sales.

Direct single party retail webshops don’t have this problem. Neither do pure marketplace platform, where they just run the marketplace and don’t offer any first party product sales.

They could choose to not do third party sellers and be pure first party retailer. However then their selection would be smaller. Since third party sellers cover much of the niches not lucrative enough for amazon itself to cover. Then Amazon wouldn’t be the “buy everything” store, which would also hurt their retail business. Since the default move wouldn’t be “well lets first look on amazon, they have everything there”.

Amazon is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Competition authority is saying “hold on there now, you either eat it or keep it. No cheating and double dipping.” If you are to be both market place and retailer, there needs to be firewall between those two divisions and fair dealing with the other retailers on your marketplace.