Full Reading List (as mentioned on CH):
1. Sapiens , Yuval Noah Harari
2. The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb
3. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes
4. Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is what the UK spyware proposal means.
There must be government spyware on every mobile device. It shall watch everything that happens, including always watching the screen, looking for things the government disapproves of.
When anything is flagged by the software as something the government doesn't like, the software must block it from being sent or displayed (in realtime).
The user of the device must not be able to shut this watching and blocking off. The only way to shut it off would be to ask the government or its proxies to do so for you, at their discretion.
Therefore the whole device must be locked down. Administrator rights and the decision of what software or operating system to run or not to run must be taken from the owner/user and handed to the government and its proxies.
Apple and Google are themselves working hard to lock down the devices they are involved in to shut out competition and establish a duopoly.
The UK government says it is "working closely" with Apple and Google and currently they synchronise and coordinate their communication on this subject.
The UK government is now proposing to mandate what would otherwise be illegal anti-competitive practices.
@GrapheneOS on the Apple and Google duopoly:
https://t.co/rbRmcUDTRu
Statement from @signalapp
https://t.co/vJILcSrs4s
@ReclaimTheNetHQ on the state spyware:
https://t.co/3FCi06bP77
The government announcement:
https://t.co/ynYjR3DIRo
Palantir’s PRISMA software is actively running inside Ukrainian long-range drone strike command posts — confirmed on camera by CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh, who filmed inside a unit planning kamikaze drone strikes deep into Russia.
Screens showed real-time maps, flight paths, and AI-processed data overlays while a masked commander (“Vector”) walked through strike planning live.
The AI ingests thousands of parameters — crucially including where Russian air defenses are intercepting drones — then calculates optimal routes for the next wave to slip through the gaps.
It’s essentially learning the holes in Russia’s air defense net in real time.
Hay gente que dice que Europa necesita un @JMilei. Yo no tengo duda de que necesita uno. Las economías europeas están asfixiadas por leyes innecesarias y el gasto público desbocado. Pero cuando veo a los criminales que circulan por Paris "celebrando" el triunfo del PSG, me queda claro que Europa también necesita un @nayibbukele. Aquí hay que meter preso a decenas de miles de personas, por años, para que nunca más un partido de fútbol lleve a un estado de guerra civil. Europa ha perdido el control de su sociedad civil.
He did indeed. I was flabbergasted by his result, which has made much existing (and continuing!) work in quantum foundations obsolete. But it has received grossly insufficient recognition from the community. They still don't know what hit them and are still ingeniously discussing non-existent things like "quantum non-locality" (and "the measurement problem") in ever greater detail.
He deserves patrons.
Our enemies have figured that kinetic war against us is very difficult and our real weakness is ideological and susceptibility to propaganda.
So they all are now pumping by the billions now every year into mass propaganda against us. China, Russ, Turkey, Qatar, Iran etc.
Trump is in a real bind now with Iran because he is correctly trying to tie the GCC under the Abraham accords as part of the Iran negotiations, as it will enable the US to leave the middle east and retain hegemony over the region.
However because of the ceasefire and lack of commitment to destroying the Iranian regime, the Arab world sees that as weakness and so they are hedging. Trump is trying to strongarm them into joining the coalition, however he is doing so from a position of weakness in their eyes. Ceasefires in the middle east are not a thing, they don't understand the concept and just see it as weakness.
The Arab countries see their core infrastructure, like water and oil production being vulnerable to Iranian attack, while they see Israel and the US not hurting the regime properly. They see how they have conducted the war as weakness, by not killing the families, not hitting infrastructure and the core regime targets. Because of this they don't believe the coalition is going to end Iran, and so instead they're forced to plan for if the regime survives, so they're hedging now.
They hate Iran and want the regime gone, they are the most vulnerable to their predatory actions and they are most at risk. But they cannot take no oil exports forever, they're willing to take pain but not indefinitely and they'll make a deal with Iran before this. They are not in the business of jeopardising their own power domestically.
Because of this, Trump is struggling to strong arm them under the US block because they aren't convinced the US will remove Iran. Remember they have paid huge money to the US and Trump in order for this to occur and the protection of the US empire. If the regime survives and the US fails to remove them, they will punish the US by ending or not following through with the trillions they have been forced to pay for this operation. Don't listen to the isolationists, the US is benefiting huge from this war. But Trump can't negotiate with the Arabs from his current position during a ceasefire, because they see this as weakness and they don't believe in signing onto weakness. This is the middle east and weakness is immediately punished.
They're very upset because they're now forced to hedge with Iran, and no amount of strong arming is going to make them join unless they believe Trump is going to finish the operation, which they now dont believe will occur.
The only way out of the bind is to continue the kinetic operation, but they don't want this because they don't think the US/Israel coalition is going to hurt the Iranians enough, and they fear retaliation on their critical infrastructure which is getting more difficult to defend.
Which is why the negotiations seem difficult and are being dragged out, because Trump and the gulf are now in a difficult bind.
Burns: Putin's assumptions were profoundly wrong. CIA had worked with Ukrainian security services since 2014 — I knew they'd push back hard.
I told Putin's people in Moscow in November 2021: Ukrainians will resist as tenaciously as possible, and they'll have our full support. 3/
Far left: we need to tear down the system
Center left: we need a system
Center right: we need positive-sum games
Far right: we need to win zero-sum games
Unfortunately, I completely agree that the United States of America is rapidly descending into all-out conflict between left and right.
The Luigi left, Kirk killers, anti-Tesla terrorists, and Altman attackers are already in shoot-on-sight mode against conservatives, libertarians, and technologists. The right isn’t there yet; they’re called reactionaries because they only react, so they’re always one cycle behind. Thus, the left has already started shooting while the right is still “only” mirroring the lawfare of last decade’s left. But anyone can see how incandescently angry the American right is getting, so one can expect them to mirror leftist tactics eventually, just as J6 followed BLM.
A problem then arises. You see, when communists and nationalists duke it out, technologists tend to be hated by both sides…and tend to leave.
That’s what happened in Europe. In the early 1900s, Europe was the undisputed center of science. But then the far left rose to power in Russia, and in response arose a far right in Germany, and then those two psychotic factions blew each other up and took much of Europe with them.
The result was that scientists with options left. Shown below is the graph of Nobel prizes. Science used to be centered in Europe when America was still a relative backwater…renowned for cranking out widgets but not much else.
Then, as Europe tore itself apart, the smart scientists (and capitalists) simply left for America. Many had no choice; you just couldn’t be a Russian capitalist in the Soviet Union or a Jewish scientist in Nazi Germany, no matter how many years your family might have been in the country.
Passionate protestations of ideological loyalty and everlasting patriotism didn’t matter. At best the enemy classes and races were unbanked and denaturalized; at worst they were simply killed.
And arguably, all of that — the communism, the nationalism, the wars — all of that arose from the disruption wrought by the Industrial Revolution. We might anticipate similar levels of disruption from the Information Revolution.
If so, if America is torn between Democrats and Republicans, or Wokes and MAGAs, or whatever factions succeed them, it’s just not going to be a good place for technological progress. Instead, progress will decentralize to other locations around the world, as it did before.
Hard leftists and DSA-types will fight AI tooth and nail because AI is the universal solvent for socialism’s three prerequisites.
AI will reduce scarcity (abundance), eliminate victimhood (agency), and eliminate the need for intermediaries (disintermediation).
I know this sounds insane
I read "Extraordinary Popular Delusions: And the Madness of Crowds" as a teenager
I thought AI would likely have a bubble phase 18 months ago
But now I think this is 1000x bigger than the Industrial Evolution
This is an evolution of our species
France having higher public spending as a % of GDP than the late Soviet Union is one of the funniest charts here.
It will end when markets stop absorbing French debt. The next Euro crisis will begin in France, it is just a matter of time. Enjoy the party as long as it lasts.
Zelensky has issued a decree allowing the Victory Day parade on Red Square in Moscow to take place without the interference of attacks by Ukrainian long-range drones.
There will a prisoner of war exchange of 1000 Ukrainian soldiers against 1000 Russian soldiers.
The biggest wealth transfer in American history isn’t happening on Wall Street. It’s happening on U-Hauls.
Over $2 trillion in income fled high-tax blue states for low-tax red states in just 11 years.
And blue states’ solution? Raise taxes again.
It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for the Iranian Leadership as they literally sit in the dark:
1. The United States has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.
2. There is a hard currency, i.e. U.S. dollar, shortage.
3. Food and gasoline rationing are in place.
4. The entire international community has turned against you.
5. The BLOCKADE will continue, until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation.