After a year of going back to Linux, working on a Mac at the office feels eerily like when my first startup was acquired and we were all issued with Windows laptops. Kudos to Apple for matching Microsoft in the enshittification derby. /s
Some commentators hyperventilate about China's huge new embassy, but did you know until last year UK Power Networks, the operator for the electric grid in London and most of Southeast England, was owned by a Hong-Kong company? Xi Jinping thus had the means to plunge the UK's most critical areas into darkness at the stroke of a pen. You can't make incompetence like that up.
Fortunately, it's been acquired by French company Engie, so the French had to come and rescue the British (and previously it was owned by the French state-owned utility EDF, ÉlectricitÉ de France).
The engineer interviewed lists:
* selling off pumping stations to housing developers, which means there isn't capacity during periods of drought
* reducing pressure to slow leaks instead of fixing them
* hiring freezes means there are no more qualified staff to replace the ones retiring
I subscribe to The Londoner, which has some of the most incisive reporting on London, unlike the propaganda corporate media. This article on the causes of the collapse of Thames Water is enraging and stunning in equal measure. Yesterday PM Andy Burnham lay much of the blame for the UK's current condition on Thatcher. Her successors are also to blame, but leaving critical networks like water or electricity to be looted is government incompetence of the highest order:
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/why-thames-water-sewage-leaks/
@GrapheneOS Android 17 introduces a new permission ACCESS_LOCAL_NETWORK and when my phone upgraded to it, FairEmail lost the ability to connect to my email server at home. Google in their infinite wisdom won't allow apps in the Play Store to request that permission yet, nor F-Droid, so I have to sideload from their Git repo. I think this is going to be a sufficient problem it's worth mentioning widely in the release notes and your other channels like Mastodon.
Thameslink just announced that as part of transition to public ownership, it will be renamed Thameslink Southern Great Northern Limited. Let it never be said bureaucrats don't have a sense of humor.
Many people on Mastodon vigorously assert there is no ethical use for LLMs.
Counterpoint: I just received an email from my bank with ToS changes in impenetrable legalese. Claude immediately flagged the forced arbitration waiving the right to class-action lawsuits, and pointed out the opt-out page to go to in order to reject those abusive terms.
Corporations routinely use contract law against consumers, LLMs help tilt the playing field back towards the little guy (a little bit). I now run any shrinkwrap agreement or other contract against Claude or Perplexity as a matter of course.
The alternative is not between LLM and $200/hour lawyer, it's between LLM and being taken for a ride by a Fortune 100 trying to take away your rights by binding arbitration.
@gruber re: Calibri
It's a proprietary Microsoft font. You can't use it in Linux, and only with Microsoft software installed on your Mac. The US Government should not be entrenching Microsoft's monopolies by mandating non-standards like Calibri.
Choosing Times New Roman, while more open, does not show professionalism, just cookie-cutter blandness. Actually a surprisingly safe choice for an administration known for bombast.
Some governments have commissioned their own typefaces to take control over their visual identity, like France's "Marianne". Finland even open-sources its own, Finlandica.