Neil Smith

Founder/CEO @12VPX. Systems administrator since 1994. Indie since 1997. Nomad since 2008. e/acc

[molson 🧠⚙️ @Molson_Hart]

People saying that they don’t want to bring children into today’s world think they’re saying that they’re good people for not wanting others to experience a difficult life.

What they’re actually saying is that they have no desire to improve the world going forward, because if they have no kids, why would they?

There’s no point.

Just extract what they can, die, and that’s it.

They don’t care what their ancestors did to bring them to today’s world, in all its greatness.

Not having kids for the ostentatious reason of not wanting them to suffer is an extremely myopic, selfish act, wrapped in a disingenuous veneer of generosity.

[Dr. Lars Henrik Andersen 🇪🇺 @EUAITaxonomy]

The Siri/EU situation is a regulatory masterpiece.

Apple cannot launch Apple Intelligence in the EU.

Why? Because under the DMA, if Siri gets deep system access, every other AI assistant must get the exact same. Anything less would be unfair competition. A gatekeeper privileging its own service.

So either Siri ships and every Shenzhen startup, Cyprus shell company, and nephew hackathon project gets identical root access to 450 million Europeans’ digital lives or nothing ships.

Apple proposed a “Trusted System Agent”: a security intermediary so third-party assistants get capabilities without ripping the phone wide open.

The EU rejected it.

Magnificent.

Apple’s response: fine, then no developer APIs either. No Apple Intelligence, no third-party integrations, no foundation model access for EU developers. The entire layer simply does not exist on this continent.

Excellent.

This is the path. Why depend on American AI when we can build the entire stack ourselves? A European foundation model, trained on a European GPU cluster, running on a European OS, on a European phone, manufactured in a European fab, powered by European nuclear plants we have spent fifteen years closing.

Estimated time to ship: 2047.

Estimated cost: the GDP of three member states.

Estimated outcome: a chatbot that requires a cookie banner before each response.

Worth it.

In the meantime, European users are protected from Apple processing data Apple already holds by ensuring nobody processes anything at all.

Not a bug. The intended outcome.

Regulatory product design with a sledgehammer, swung with precision.

🇪🇺

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@levelsio Use your own subscription logic from now on. Then you don’t have to deal with this.

You can copy customers and their payment methods very easily. It’s all these additional features that make it a pain.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@Stipe @maxkarpis There is a formula that determines how much EU roaming data you are owed.

It’s related to how much you pay your provider, not how much domestic data they give you.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@Rob_1_42728 @AZ_Intel_ Many small jets don’t have that ability.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@Molson_Hart It’s close to useless.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@candyyueliu Please make a non-camera version.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@levelsio Still waiting for it to demand access to Claudette.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@levelsio Rabobank is the worst. Stringed me along and ghosted me for weeks during a mortgage process only to reject me days before the deadline.

Almost lost the deal if it wasn’t for a brilliant ABN AMRO employee getting the mortgage approved overnight.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@levelsio Give me a seat and some cables and obscure gadgets to look at. Socks if you want to keep it simple.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

This is quickly becoming annoying.

What's the path forward? Have our own LLM reply endlessly and burn tokens on both ends?

Consider it spam and ignore it?

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

Signing up, using a service, then sending an AI bot to get a full refund.

Apparently that works with many services as this trend is rising fast.

I guess you can’t blame people for trying, but I think getting a refund for many services is about to get a lot more difficult really soon.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@VadimYuryev AMD does that too. On Linux anyway, don’t know anything about windows.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

Signing up, using a service, then sending an AI bot to get a full refund.

Apparently that works with many services as this trend is rising fast.

I guess you can’t blame people for trying, but I think getting a refund for many services is about to get a lot more difficult really soon.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@awpthorp @grok Trying to get it under 500 here. Doable when windows open, but that’s too hot. Options are limited as it’s a rental.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

You can't fire him and the US will demand you cover his income taxes as it's a US-based employee. If you're lucky he'll make your corporate income ECI and taxable in the US too.

[Peter Gostev @petergostev]

You cannot fire Claude in the EU

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

Last big hurdle for many Vibe Businesses is accepting payments.

Shopify, Polar, etc. help here, but it's still far from frictionless.

Which AI company will be first to send payouts to their creators?

@xai @OpenAI @AnthropicAI @GeminiApp

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@croissanthology @IsaacKing314 We have guns in Europe. Rules are strict and most people don’t care for them, but you can legally own a gun for sports, hunting and a few other purposes.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@radumpopescu @levelsio Similar with WiFi. Some cheapie hotels I stayed at just had a simple WiFi access point in each room.

Much better than most of these fancy managed WiFi networks.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

"Fractions are hard". Meanwhile they make you calculate taxes and tips whenever you make a purchase.

[Laura Powell @LauraPowellEsq]

Fahrenheit is superior to Celsius if for no other reason than its degrees are small enough that you don’t need fractions to hit your preferred room temperature.

[Neil Smith @NiPeIO]

@salingergregor I had this done in the Netherlands. Drill guy just stood there calmly for 20 mins or so and the job was done. You just need the right drill and plenty of patience.