As a citizen of neither country, Chinese open models are in my interest more than US closed models. My only concerns is that if/when Chinese AI becomes more powerful, they too will have little incentive to make their best models open weights.

Also, remember when one of the maintainers of the passkey standard warned that KeePassXC users would get blocked by relying parties [0]? Would you allow tech companies to determine what password manager you are allowed to use?

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39698502

Bran Castle: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q390275

Citadel Hill: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q321867

The video is largely a clickbaitification of this press release: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/06/unsw-technolog...

0: https://www.hackneydesignstudio.com/brand-guidelines/logo

Generally speaking, I suggest anyone interested in learning to make charts get familiar with grammar of graphics [0] libraries like Vega-Lite, Observable Plot, ggplot2, Altair. There is a bit of a learning curve if you're used to selecting chart types like in Excel, but once it clicks, it gives you virtually unlimited choices in the kinds of charts you can make. And with ggplot or Observable Plot [1], it's about the same number of lines as something like Flint.

0: https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/why-you...

1: https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot-gallery

I don't quite get what the goal of this is other than abstracting away a little bit of the complexity at the expense of flexibility. To me, the promise of LLMs is the opposite, I can get flexibility and customisation without the cost of complexity.

That's still beside the point, unlike playing pinball, driving is an activity that involves risk to people besides you. If you have evidence these systems actually reduce pedestrian safety rather than just annoy drivers, I'll be happy to have a look. Otherwise, bring them on.

That's the point of being polite, treating people decently even if you have little in common.

Clearly we have different experiences and that's fine, we both seem to have found where we're comfortable.

It's even more noticeable with people who are paid to be polite: bar and waiting staff, the folks working at Tesco, pub security, the kebab man. I walk into a pub in the middle of nowhere in England, they treat me like I'm intruding or inconveniencing them. I do that in London, they just ask "What are you having love?".

There is definitely a lot of veiled and outright racism and xenophobia though. I've heard things like "your English is actually pretty good" (I was a BBC journalist, it's better than theirs), "at least you're not on benefits", "at least your people are not as bad as X". I've never been told these things in London.

I've never felt as unwelcome in London as I do almost every time I leave it. Constant suspicious looks, questions about who I am and what the purpose of me being there is, the occasional downright xenophobia.

To give you a recent example, just a couple of weeks ago I was in a supermarket in Bangor stocking up on some water ahead of a hike in the Lake District. My train was delayed, and I am now about to miss the last bus for the next two hours (still needed the water). I explain this to the guy ahead of me in the queue, asking if I could maybe jump ahead of him. He looks at me, says "No", laughs, and then proceeds to scan his items as slowly as he can. Not everyone is like that, but this kind of thing happens all the time.

I definitely believe that you'll feel more of a sense of belonging outside London if you're a local, but as a non-local, it is not friendly at all. And the further away from Britain you are from (geographically and culturally), the worse you are treated. I noticed the difference in reaction when I told people I am Moldovan compared with my ex-partner telling them she is Dutch, and my non-white friends tell me stories that are even worse. London can be unfriendly and isolating, but I'd never live outside London and a few of the other cosmopolitan cities.