The other day in a Dutch geopolitics podcast (Boekestijn en de Wijk) it was mentioned that if there's one country that could be added to the EU "at the stroke of a pen", it would be Canada. In terms of state of the democracy, shared values, etc. And I agree with that perspective. But at the same time I thought that if there's one way to get into conflict with the current US administration - who declared EU their only adversary in the US National Security Plan - this is it. It would be like a mirror image of Russia feeling encroached by NATO, but then in the Western hemisphere. And perhaps a red cloth invitation to the frothing bull(ies) of the Trump administration to invade their neighbor.
The US-Iran war is very unpopular and it's not even that the US is winning it.
Going against Canada would mean .. what? Having tanks roll in Toronto downtown? Assuming it would be a military success, which isn't guaranteed after what happens in Iran,that would be unpopular beyond anything we've seen.
Tough words, that's the worse we may expect from the US gov realistically.
It's a two way street; sanction on big tech is also the big weapon the EU has against the US if need be and that we kept threatening but never activating.
Which doesn't mean it's easy or won't hurt like hell, but this is a continent that just cut most of the gas cord lines in record times despite massive pain and cost, if it came down to it we would simply because if it comes down to this and we don't then we're done.
Short time it would damage us pretty hard, but long term it would be another net loss for the US.
From what I read about what they wanted Canada to sign (the "new deal" Canada walked out of), they want to give them strict conditions and no abilities to make new deals with someone else to make them fully dependant. So the goal was not really military conquest but economic stranglehold. All the while apparently asking to tone down their minorities including the french one.
There is an alternate timeline where Canada signed that, and it looks much bleaker for them down the road.
Then that means Canada must build overwhelming firepower clearly and mine the border to hell, build anti aircraft systems everywhere and take whatever steps needed to prevent and repel an unprovoked invasion, just like it is logical for Ukraine to do the same to protect itself from Russia.
This seems to be what Canada and Europe want from each other. Both have interests in repelling other powers that deserve to have their economic and military capabilities weakened, and both seem to be able to help each other on expanding economic base, energy security, food supply, and resource availability/manufacturing capability with existing intellectual and trade property that will distance them from the US MIC.
> But at the same time I thought that if there's one way to get into conflict with the current US administration - who declared EU their only adversary in the US National Security Plan - this is it.
This “at the stroke of the pen” idea is fantastical. Actual Canadians would have next to no interest in this. Whole provinces of Canada don’t even want to be part of Canada so their appetite for having the EU parliament and Commission anywhere near them would be slim to none. Having 250million Europeans eligible to migrate to Canada would similarly be dead in the water even if a few people in Toronto and Quebec might warm to the idea of going the other way.
It was the same way with Australia becoming eligible to enter the Eurovision Song Contest, .. and yet here we are today with that thoroughly normalised.
The context in the podcast was that EU was too picky in their reform criteria for inclusion for current candidates on the European continent, but that Canada as a modern country would sail past and pass the exam. The ease with which these experts concluded it would make sense for Canada to join struck me, because impact on geopolitical relationship with US was imho too easily overlooked. It is a sentiment I hear more often now, in the news.
So often when something launches, these are missing. And it always really surprises me. People apparently just sign up for such services, but I would want to know these details in advance before doing so.
Trust and trustworthiness. Trust is very hard to win back, once its gone. Trustworthiness makes you willing to rely on a partner. Trustworthiness only builds very slowly over prolonged periods of time, by consistently not betraying ones trust.
In the Netherlands the cradle to cradle hype of some years ago has created a paper reality where waste is turned magically into building material and can thus be effectively dumped anywhere in the environment.
I don't understand this comment. As I understand, many types of incineration (coal, garbage, etc.) produces some amount of fly ash. This can be used when making concrete. I think that is a good way to dispose of fly ash.
Nice saying. If in the prediction "given [intricate analysis] the whole [shebang] goes [bust] at [date]", only the [date] turns out to be wrong, I'd say it is still a valuable prediction however, though it was wrong.
There is plenty of evidence that they have improved in all benchmarks and also in my private experience. But have they improved in the things they still fail at? No, they still fail at them. You need only one example of failure to prove that it still fails. They still fail a lot on many real world tasks.
So, depending on what you ask, they may have not improved even a tiny bit.
I am a very light user, so this is my feeling from reading about other people's experience; I wouldn't say that they plateau'd but up to 4.5/4.8 the gains in the models felt exponential while since then they feel more linear and the big improvements are coming less from the models and more from everything around it (harnesses, agentic development, skills...).
So, while I don't feel like there has not been improvement, it really feels like there is a limit that will be reached sooner than later (and for sure before any AGI).
Since almost everything eventually goes bust, I wouldn't agree that this was particularly valuable, unless the analysis proved out in other ways. It's like the saying that some economists have predicted 10 of the last 4 recessions. The analysis that leads to that prediction may or may not be valuable, but is only valuable if it predicts something, because otherwise how can you know it has any accuracy at all?
Matrix works fine for the friend to friend, small community things. Discourse forums too. Use Signal for family and friends, perhaps work. Fediverse and Atmosphere (Bluesky) for your microblog needs, and RSS to keep track of blogs.
Having used Matrix for almost a decade, it's hot garbage.
Sync is barely working, "unable to decrypt" still exists, the encryption is flawed [0] and the whole thing is effectively just Element and everyone else follows their lead.
About the post you linked, see [1] and [2], which makes me question both whether that is an actual vulnerability (Signal, the messenger recommended by the author, also didn't have that check, and it's addition is absent from release notes and CVEs) and whether the post was made in good faith (the check was added to libsignal on the same day that the author disclosed the vulnerability to Matrix, which can be a coincidence, but doesn't seem likely given that the code has been there for years).
Can't speak about the other issues, I haven't had those but I barely use it. Based on comments, it's clear they exist or have existed for quite some time.
> About the post you linked, see [1] and [2], which makes me question both whether that is an actual vulnerability (Signal, the messenger recommended by the author, also didn't have that check, and it's addition is absent from release notes and CVEs)
I've edited the above linked post several times to make this clearer, but people still keep linking Matrix's flawed response as if it actually addressed the issue. It does not.
The issue is not as simple as "did the check exist? [y/n]". There are actually two issues:
1. Did the check exist? [y/n]
2. Did the group key agreement protocol fall to shit if the check was omitted? [y/n]
Matrix was (n, y) due to how Megolm manages keys in group contexts. Signal was (n, n) due to their protocol design.
Matrix tried to defend point 1 when the blog post was about both 1 and 2.
(Post-Quantum MLS, for comparison, would also have been impervious to this issue due to how KEMs work. Another point in favor of MLS adoption.)
> and whether the post was made in good faith (the check was added to libsignal on the same day that the author disclosed the vulnerability to Matrix, which can be a coincidence, but doesn't seem likely given that the code has been there for years).
Even if you assume the worst possible interpretation of this coincidence (which, sure, you're free to if you want-- you would be wrong if you did, of course): What does it even matter?
Like, what is the notion of "good faith" that's even necessary for someone to do independent security research and publish criticism of the cryptography used by a software project that's being propped up by EU sovereignty movements?
In my opinion, this is a stupid and vacuous framing.
Signal omitting the check didn't harm Signal's confidentiality. Matrix omitting the check demonstrably did.
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Also, if you're going to decry my blog post for not enumerating unrelated security bugs (n.b., the blog post was about Matrix, not Signal, so why would I talk about Signal's code in that post???), be aware that I reported non-cryptographic bugs to Element (Matrix client) and Conversations (XMPP client) around the same time. Only XMPP actually credited me with any fixes.
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