A challenge they forgot to mention is EU‘s very own new Product Lianility Directive.
Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity.
As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component.
Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.
Company sells product for profit - they are liable for the product and all its subcomponents - there is nothing unfair about this - it doesn't matter if you found the components in a hole in the ground or on github - if you are selling a product based off it, you are liable.
For freelancers / oss companies - you can still sell services such as consulting or support - without selling your oss project - then its a service - not a product.
Does this mean that you think a company should not be held liable for defects caused in a product they ship, if the defect is caused by an open source component?
A failure mode I see more, recently is that it gives superficially correct answers but after digging deeper, I get answers that contradict the superficial answers - really an important thing to be aware of, in my point of view, and it often leaves me wondering if I dug deep enough.
Interesting that nobody mentioned SAR in this thread, yet.
SAR benefits from space compute by reducing the strain on downlinks (pre-process, detect in space). A large-ish (think 6k sat) constellation of much bigger sats (2-2,5 ton) than current Starlink sats can run inference on board, distribute load to nearby sats, and enable full round-the-clock surveillance of the whole world.
The nominal compute capacity is in ballpark range of a modern AI data center, but it's only about 20% used on average due to duty cycles. An indestructible, global eye.
The big Starship launch vehicle is perfect platform to bring them into orbit, can maybe bring 40 at a time into orbit, so 150 launches for 6k. Maybe even fewer sats are needed, depends mostly on electrical efficiency of the components.
I have run the piece through an impromptu stylistic device detector. It found 15 different, each used multiple times and likened the writing style as a mix of Ezra Klein, Hannah Arendt, Zeynep Tufekci, George Orwell (“especially in the contrastive clarity”).
A) I certainly don’t see enough of the tells.
B) what happens to our language if everything is written as if it’s competing for a Pulitzer’s Price?
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