Apple TV has not been financially successful. I imagine this is a last ditch attempt to draw in new viewers in hopes of converting them to a subscription.
Americans think of it this way because our bank statements will show the USD amount, no matter where we buy things. And to us, it is "spending USD" because that's what we had to earn.
Thanks for this timely post! My mother is going to Paris next week and asked me the very same question.
I concur with Rick. In my experience travelling and living in Europe, Americans are well liked despite whatever politics the country as a whole may take on. As he says, it's extremely important for us to be good ambassadors -- deferential, open, and keeping it light.
I think most of Europe understands that half of you did not vote for the orange man.
And in particular if you are well educated or work at a university looking for new opportunities you will be more than welcome.
If you misbehave though you will probably be frowned upon as a MAGA. But not much more than a frown. No reason to invent any risk, most of Europe is still an open society and have not changed.
If you plan to go to Hungary or places like Serbia, I am guessing that you will more greeted.
And soon enough I guess you will be able to travel to Russia and Belarus (also Europe), but I would not recommend it.
The important thing for her will be the weather. This week was great, next week may be less great.
Another imprint thing is that this is vacation time for children in the Paris area. This is rather a good thing.
Besides that they're is nothing to worry about. Seriously. We discuss like crazy what is happening in the US but this is like a tv series. When we meet real Americans we don't care (well, someone may tease her a bit :))
Tell her to be polite, learn the most basic French sentences and say bonjour/bonsoir to bus drivers, shopkeepers and hotel staff, and she'll be more than fine.
I told Mom that, too. By putting yourself on a plane and spending money there, you are sending the message that you like France and that's the message they receive. They know that makes you different from Americans who don't come.
Honestly, I don't think most french she will talk to will care who your mother voted for.
She will probably find us 'rude', but we really aren't, we have different social software than people from the US, and some of us will probably find your mom 'too nice'. I hope she enjoys her trip here anyway.
I'm much more interested in someone who says they voted for Trump. What makes em tick?
Then again, I find people with mental health issues interesting - some of my good friends are literally crazy.
There are Trump supporters that are New Zealanders too - although they are often quiet about it (due to pushback from more socialist types).
The memetic infection of American partisanship and bullshit is strong here. Talk with people and hear clichéd US words and statements (left & right) regurgitated.
If this is her first time in France, please tell her that the remove indifference she will be faced with has nothing to do with her being American.
We are much less "surface friendly" then in the US - this is particularly visible in shops and restaurants. Nobody will greet her as if she was a long time friend.
I would say this is probably the only thing that she will notice.
Ah yes, and kilograms, meters and celsius. And people crossing the street on red light. And people saying fuck rather than f**k.
I second that. MCP is more of a scaffolding concept than a solution itself. There is no safety in consulting an LLM on anything. What you're building is a RAG app that must coordinate LLM calls and tool calls. Any safety built into that is going to built into your procedural code (in a programming language) and not coming from an LLM, which by itself cannot be "corralled."
MCP is just a way of specifying which user prompts go with which LLM calls and tool calls and provides no safety (or even functionality) of its own.
This is not correct. Both the subhead of the article and the DNG format's Wikipedia Page state that DNG is open and not subject to IP licensing.
While having two file formats to deal with in software development definitely "competes" with the simplicity of just having one, patents and licensing aren't the reason they're not choosing Adobe DNG.
The fact that both your sources are NOT the actual DNG license text should be sufficient to humble yourself from "This is not correct" to at least a question.
--> Your information source is incomplete. Please refer to the license of DNG [0].
The patent rights are only granted:
1. When used to make compliant implementations to the specification,
2. Adobe has the right to license at no cost every method used to create this DNG from the manufacturer, and
3. Adobe reserves the right to revoke the rights "in the event that such licensee or its affiliates brings any patent action against Adobe or its affiliates related to the reading or writing of files that comply with the DNG Specification"
--
None of this is trivial to a large company.
First of all, it requires involvement of a legal department for clearance,
Second, you are in risk of violation of the patent as soon as you are not compliant to the specification,
Third, you may have to open every IP to Adobe at no charge which is required in order to create a DNG from your sensor (which can be a significant risk and burden if you develop your own sensor) and
Fourth, in case the aforementioned IP is repurposed by Adobe and you take legal action, your patent-license for DNG is revoked.
--
--> If you are a vendor with a working RAW implementation and all the necessary tools for it in place, it's hard to make a case on why you should go through all that just to implement another specification.
None of this is terrifying and seems overblown. I read the patent grant you linked to. It makes sense that one would not grant the right to make incompatible versions. That would confuse the user. Also, the right of revocation only applies if the DNG implementor tries to sue Adobe. Why would they do that?
Occam's razor here suggests that the camera manufacturers' answers are correct, especially since they are all the same. DNG doesn't let them store what they want to and change it at will -- and this is true of any standardized file format and not true of any proprietary format.
> None of this is terrifying and seems overblown. I read the patent grant [..]
Considering that you entered this discussion instantly claiming that others are wrong without having even read the license in question makes this conversation rather..."open-ended"
> Also, the right of revocation only applies if the DNG implementor tries to sue Adobe. Why would they do that?
As I wrote above, Adobe reserves the right to use every patent that happens to be used to create this DNG from your design at no cost, and will revoke your license if you disagree i.e. with what they do with it.
> Occam's razor here suggests [..]
Or, as I suggested, it's simply hard to make a case in favor of developing and maintaining DNG with all that burden if you anyway have to support RAW
That's fair. It's certainly not "open source" in that way that term is usually used. I still think that's not the primary issue and that the manufacturers are being honest about their preference for proprietary formats. But I see that Adobe legal concerns hanging over their heads isn't an advantage, for sure.
> granted by Adobe to individuals and organizations that desire to develop, market, and/or distribute hardware and software that reads and/or writes image files compliant with the DNG Specification.
If I use it for something it's not images because I want to create a DNG file that's a DNG file and a Gameboy ROM at the same time. Or if I'm a security researcher testing non compliant files. Or if I'm not a great developer or haven't had enough time to make my library perfectly compliant with the specification... Will I be sued for breaking the license?
The fatal scenario for a camera vendor would be to transition your customers to DNG over some years, then a dispute arises which causes Adobe to revoke your patent license, and suddenly all your past products are in violation of Adobe's DNG patent.
You not only have to remove DNG-support on those products, but due to warranty-law in many countries have to provide an equivalent feature to the customer (--> develop a converter application again, but this time for products you already closed development for years ago).
Alternative would be to settle with Adobe to spare the cost for all that. So Adobe has all the cards in this game.
Now: Why bother transitioning your customers to DNG...?
What? Number two would make most companies run the other way. “Whatever you use to create a DNG, secret sauce or algorithm or processing from your sensor data, Adobe can license” - you act like it’s no big deal but it’s often the closely guarded color science or such things.
You can argue that maybe those things shouldn’t be considered trade secrets or whatever. But there’s just a bit more to it than that.
The most fascinating part of this is that YC isn't asking for any non-AI startups. That says a lot about the future of software development. This is the new way.
Compliance & audit turned into one important aspect of my life's work, and I wouldn't have stuck with it unless it was fertile territory for computerization. Which is the kind of thing where I had an early start in school, but didn't do much good when I first started my career since most offices didn't yet have any computerized office machines at all.
Then you should have seen the "belt-tightening of the '80's" :(
Wouldn't have made it through that without it being fertile enough ground without computerization to begin with. That became a niche I always favored, where there is opportunity without a computer, but eventually when introduced properly, puts everything on steroids.
There is a parallel to what I've seen from Manual > Computerized, being somewhat "analogous" with "Merely" Computerized > AI Enhanced.
Caldwell is the furthest outlier, if you boiled it down to "a deep focus on getting the most out of limited hardware resources were critical." And "this includes this kind of maniacal focus from the founders themselves."
I wonder why his "video has been removed by the uploader" now though.
You don't really have to specifically imply AI or even computers at all.
DeepSeek, Google, and Carmack are well-recognized examples where these type of fundamental characteristics can be leveraged in the "computer business", but there's a whole world of other businesses out there.
Beyond the layer where there's still a whole lot of further computer opportunity without including AI.
AI can be pretty "deep", it's possible when you're entrenched in it, it becomes less easy to see outside the trench than others ;)
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