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Posts
5
Comments
398
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I think this is the thing to remember. Canada is the (second) best country in the world, according to one specific set of criteria. By other metrics it may be best, or slightly lower.

    Any individual probably has done different weightings to any metric that might be used to compare countries, so your personal list may be different.

    But! But, every country has it's problems. Perfection does not exist. Every country could also be better.

    Ultimately we should all appreciate what is working and work towards making things better. In reality, people are going to also disagree with what is working and what would be better though. I'm pretty sure the Qonvoyers are a great example of this.

    The Qonvoyers want to help "real Canadians". Their perception of "better" does not align with mine.

  • It's kind of how the US is lauded for how much they donate per capita... when GoFundMe is the largest provider of "medical insurance". I don't want to dump on charity, or people who are proud of how much they donate, but I also want to emphasize that charity shouldn't ever be necessary.

  • I read the article, and it seems that the YouTube channel "Street Politics Canada" is run by a company called Geek Labs, run out of Cairo, Egypt. Also, the editor, "Emily T" is presumably Emily Torjusen, an American woman who moved to Cairo and works at Geek Labs.

    Of course the people forwarding these videos on Facebook don't care.

  • I've been half expecting something like this for a bit. I hadn't realized about redeployment from the Gaza borders, but it's just one part of this bigger problem that Netanyahu was making.

    Hamas was always going to "Hamas" as it were. I don't believe there ever can be peace with Hamas (as per Hamas' own constitution and public statements) but Israel absolutely can increase or decrease the amount of support Hamas can generate. Netanyahu has been more focused on his personal political fortunes rather than the long term health of Israel.

    I do think normalizing relations with the surrounding Arab countries is necessary, and Netanyahu has made some progress in this regard, but in the meantime he's been exploiting the retaliation cycle for short term gain back home.

  • It's more that MS has leaned into the subscription model with Office 365 and such.

    Windows is already kind of a "Freemium" OS, so I'm expecting them to continue in that fashion. Your are right, the article is mostly pointless speculation that was refuted anyways, but I'll admit it sounded a bit off to me anyways. MS wants people to be running Windows, so they can seem then GamePass subscriptions, Office365 subscriptions, and whatever other services they can think of. As such, I expect the core OS to be very free. Just what constitutes core functionality versus Premium features might change.

  • I pretty much use my Steam Deck instead of my laptop so the time now. I mostly take advantage of keyboards, much, and monitors available at my destinations though, so it's much more portable.

    For you typically Café office warrior, you're going to need to pack a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, as well as put up with a small screen. The monitors and laptop-style housings you mention can mitigate that though.

    Still, it's kind of an inferior laptop option overall. You'll either have to make do without some laptop features or end up packing more gear than with a laptop. The Steam Deck is optimized for gaming, a laptop is optimized for… officing outside an office?

    Where the Steam Deck might even though is where it can be docked. It may be large for a handheld gaming device, but it is smaller than most laptops.

    You will still have to accept some limitations. SteamOS is designed to support gaming. One thing I've noticed is no support for printing (cups). I'm sure there are others. If you were a University student and you could only buy an inexpensive laptop or a Steam Deck, I'd get the inexpensive laptop. If you have a desktop with a mechanical keyboard and buffer big monitors, and you just need a supplemental device in a pinch, and are mostly looking to play games? Then the Steam Deck would be perfect.

    For me, the Steam Deck has effectively completely replaced my laptop, but I'm not typing up TPS reports at Starbucks all day. I'm mostly playing games, and accepting a substandard "serious computing" experience or packing some essentials or just using it for non-gaming in a few locations.

  • AI has been the name for the field since the Dartmouth Workshop in 1956. Early heuristic game AI was AI. Just because something is AI doesn't mean it is necessarily very "smart". That's why it's commonly been called AI, since before Deep Blue beat Kasparov.

    If you want to get technical, you could differentiate between Artificial Narrow Intelligence, AI designed to solve a narrow problem (play checkers, chess, etc.) vs. Artificial General Intelligence, AI designed for "general purpose" problem solving. We can't build an AGI yet, even a dumb one. There is also the concept of Weak AI or Strong AI.

    You are correct though, ChatGPT, Dall-E, etc. are not AGI's, they aren't capable of general problem solving. They are much more capable than previous AI technologies, but it's not SkyNet (yet).

  • Correct, it is a spending goal, not a requirement. Or at most a soft requirement. Still, my point still stands, every NATO member on the "frontier" with Russia is meeting or exceeding that 2% goal. They are pulling their own weight. At least from what I recall, the three Baltic nations and Poland are all above the 2% GDP target, and I believe Finland, Romania, and Hungary are or will be as well.

    The US and Trumps criticism of "freeloaders" could be seen to apply, but to the countries that aren't anywhere near the frontlines. I think Luxembourg is less than 1% GDP of spending on military, and Canada is around 1.5%. Trumps criticism, if interpreted generously could be taken to mean that the US wouldn't help Belgium, but if Belgium is invaded, there's something big going wrong.

    Realistically, Trump's weak assertions would seem to signal that he doesn't care if Latvia is pulling its weight, because it's a small country and small countries deserve to be get eaten by bigger countries. This uncertainty is what would seem to have rattled European NATO countries and reignited the effort for a collective EU defence framework.

    The other thing that bugs me with Americans whinging about "NATO freeloaders" is that Article 5, the collective defence clause, has been invoked once in the entire history of NATO. By the US after 9/11. And everyone stepped up. The US can complain about Canada's military spending, but Canadian soldiers that were fighting and dying alongside the Americans in Afghanistan. It's a bit rich coming from Trump, bone-spurs himself, that other NATO countries aren't pulling their own weight.

  • I'm pretty sure that most of the solid anti-war protestors would expect Ukraine to just accept Russian territorial demands, up to and including complete annexation.

    It turns into a reductio ad absurdum pretty quickly though. Putin didn't seem to return Crimea or the occupied regions of Donbass and Luhansk when asked politely. Not even when asked sternly. Indeed, it would seem that when all he faced was stern disapproval he decided to come back for more.

    There is no doubt in my mind that supporting Ukraine now is stopping more Russian aggression later. Besides, Putin can end this war any time. Just go back to the original borders. The only reason not to is his yearning for Imperial glory. The irony being that many of these anti-war protestors would probably proclaim themselves anti-colonialists.