This doesn't directly follow from the first part of your comment, and more importantly seems inaccurate with respect to Anthropic's public statements on this situation. For example:
> As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles.
I’m not sure what the featured article has to do with Europeans? In any case, not only are the vast majority of people not in Europe but surely Europeans (in any sense of the word) are not the primary groups targeted by a “hitler salute” in the US.
While neat that a government operates this, I’m not sure it’s a viable alternative for most users given that the servers are AFAIK all in Norway. For example, the latency from my network was 150-200ms (compared to 6ms for the Speedtest.net server) and the speed test results appear less consistent than they may be in/near Norway.
> Argentina's ministry of education did something like this with university software. The one used by students to sign up and by teachers to track grades, etc.
For what it's worth, this seems roughly equivalent to Moodle, which is open-source (GPL) and used globally, apparently especially popular in some of western Europe, the US, etc. [1] School systems can and do of course customise it as needed.
To add to this, I notice this more frequently in the UK and EU countries than in some other parts of the world (although it varies within each country quite a bit).
In the US, you also wave your phone over the card reader, it goes "Pling!" and that's your stuff paid for. The GP comment is not about paying (although it can do that too [1]), but rather about providing their Amazon account details for Amazon Prime discounts and other benefits.
A similar process is the case in the UK as well at Amazon Fresh stores, last I checked.
Some quick Googling says this brand is Australian. This pattern of making Europeans, Australians, and virtually everyone else on the internet “American” when it’s convenient is getting a little old.
> The numbers are centigrade, which for the local market is mostly very obvious and widely understood. 22 is roughly room temperature, so it's good that's at 12 o'clock.
I'm aware of centigrade, I've lived in places that use centigrade. :) My issue is that absolute temperature markings don't seem appropriate for a manual climate control system that isn't matching a temperature. Here, the traditional blue/red-style markers or similar are probably more informative.
> You hand can feel the angle the dial is pointing. It was a non-issue for me. the white is illuminated softly at night, and one very quick glance can confirm the position anyway.
Fair, if it's clear with some tactile difference and is visible at night that seems quite alright!
This has a few other issues to me compared to many similar dials.
It’s unclear what the temperature numbers actually mean if this isn’t an automatic climate control system (or is in manual mode).
The part that rotates also appears to be symmetric, which means one may need to find the white marking to decipher where the dial is pointing. That can be even more difficult in a dark environment than trying to read a display.
From my reading, the GP comment isn’t claiming otherwise, but just that that sort of VPN ban isn’t enforceable in advance of some of those changes. They do directly suggest they don’t know how long this will remain the case.
In particular, this is already done using a digital ID for foreign residents (at least on most visas) in the UK, which was phased in over the past few years.
> I don't believe the US had that kind of issue or, they did, it was so long ago that nobody remembers.
There is still a similar issue of not knowing whether an area code is for another country in the North American Numbering Plan. It’s fairly common for me to see an unfamiliar number and be unsure whether it’s from the US or Canada, for instance, without additional context.
I tend to agree, and the vast majority of policies that I've seen (e.g. US states) do in fact target the use of phones, not possession. Schools in the CA bill can continue to implement or exceed those requirements as they see fit.
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