Apple unveiled some major changes at their recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 20). There will be all-new versions of iOS and iPadOS (14) and a new version of macOS (11, so-called Big Sur).

They also announced they plan to move away from Intel processors and switch to their own ARM processors across the board. They already use ARM processors in their iPhones and iPads, so the shift affects their laptops and desktops.

It all sounds very exciting but I'm a bit grumpy about it. I have a fairly modern iPhone and iPad but an older MacBook Pro: an early 2013 model.

Apple has decided this particular model is obsolete and will not be allowed to run the new version of macOS. The specs of my early 2013 model are virtually identical to the late 2013 model and I'm sure my MacBook Pro would run Big Sur just fine. What they've really decided is that it's time for me to give them more money.

It's a great business if you can get it. Sell hardware that's impossible (or, at least, very tricky) to upgrade, couple that with complete control of the OS and then decide on a whim to make people buy some new hardware after seven years. No wonder they're so rich.

If Windows was any good I'd look to swapping back, but Windows has been a detestable pile of poo since Windows 7 went out of date. I hate Windows 10 almost as much as I hated my previous mop.

The simple truth is macOS is just so much better than Windows (in my humble opinion, anyway) and their hardware is pretty good too. I must therefore consider buying a new laptop or desktop if I want to avoid being hurled out of an airlock and into the vacuum of an unsupported OS.

The thing is, should I limp through for a while and wait for ARM-based hardware, or should I just go ahead and buy an Intel machine now?

This is a question the article I link to attempts to address.

Apple claim they'll transition to ARM-based processors over a period of two years, but the first macOS machines to use them will be available before 2020 is done.

The ARM-based machines should be cheaper for Apple to make but I'm pretty sure they won't be cheaper for the consumer to buy. This is Apple we're talking about after all. Therefore price is not a consideration.

Apple claim they will continue to support Intel-based hardware for many years to come but it will at least start to feel out of date when the ARM-based hardware starts to ship.

Decisions, decisions.

There's a chap in Wales who monitors space for potential Extinction Level Events (ELEs), which is things like an asteroid or comet heading for Earth.

An asteroid the size of a cricket pitch would take out a city and an asteroid 10 km wide would cause global mass extinction.

Such an object is certain to head our way too. They've impacted before and it was one such object that wiped out the dinosaurs. Of course we don't know when it'll happen — it might be tomorrow or it might be in a million years — but it will happen.

If we see it early enough we should be able to deflect it off course. Bruce Willis got rid of that last one.

The latest news from the ET hunters is that there are 36 extraterrestrial civilisations in the galaxy (advanced enough to communicate). Or is it 211? Or maybe it’s between 100 and 3,000. The article I link to bandies a few numbers around.

The trouble with doing a statistical analysis of this sort of thing is we only have a sample size of one: us. We’re the only intelligent civilisation we know about (and I use the term intelligent in the loosest possible sense).

Such low numbers — and even 3,000 is low amongst 250 billion stars — would explain the Fermi Paradox, which wonders why we haven’t heard from any alien civilisations so far.

The most troubling term in the so-called Drake Equation they use to calculate these things appears to be L, which estimates how long an intelligent civilisation lasts. In fact, Drake himself thought that was they key term.

It took us 4.5 billion years to evolve and we’ve only been intelligent enough to send potentially communicative radio waves out into space for about 100 years. Again, the sample size we’re using couldn’t be any smaller.

I’m quite chuffed the proper scientists’ efforts produced a number so close to one I calculated a couple of years ago myself. I was a bit more pessimistic with my completely unscientific guesswork. I estimated there are 23 civilisations in the galaxy. I chose 420 years for that L number. I based that on someone’s study of Earth civilisations that have risen and fallen to date.

I’m sticking to the idea that alien civilisations are deliberately ignoring us because they’re fed up with the dreadful reality TV we’re broadcasting out into the cosmos. If they came here at all it would be to ask us to shut up.

Gravity generally behaves itself. It keeps us anchored to the planet and when we drop things we know they'll fall down rather than up.

Alas, at its extremes — such as inside a black hole — the theory that describes gravity gets its knickers in a twist. It starts to spit out an infinite number of infinite answers that are impossible to resolve.

So something's amiss and we probably need another way to describe gravity. Gravity is described by General Relativity and the other three forces of nature are described by Quantum Theory. So the most obvious new way to describe gravity would be to lump it in with the other three forces and use quantum theory, but physicists have been trying to do this for nearly 100 years without success.

It would be useful if we could perform experiments on gravity at its extremes. The trouble is, if you built some experimental apparatus that harnessed enough energy to test gravity at its extremes, the experimental apparatus itself would turn into a black hole. That sort of thing pisses physicists off and probably breaches a number of health and safety regulations.

So where do we go from here?

In the article I link to, four physicists talk about how naughty gravity is.

A computer scientist called Dr Ben Shneiderman argues against fully automated AI, suggesting it could absolve humans of ethical responsibility.

He said:

We're replacing humans in certain places with systems that are robotic and artificially intelligent. And the designers need to make ethical decisions about what they imbue the software and the robots with. It's becoming a big deal for society.

He goes on to cite examples of where fully automated AI is undesirable, such as the Boeing 737's MCAS flight control system, nuclear reactors or lethal military robots and drones.

However, he seems to be generalising too much for my liking.

I believe there are indeed situations where human input is needed. Until AI can cope with nuance and context, human input is necessary for many tasks. But there are plenty of situations where a robot can act autonomously, such as on assembly lines or when vacuuming a floor. As AI gets cleverer then the number of tasks suitable for a robot with fully automated AI will increase.

Therefore the particular caution I'd urge is that AI is not given complete power over tasks too soon and that, I'd suggest, is what went wrong with the MCAS system.

We must also remember that humans are particularly bad at making decisions themselves, of which there's ample evidence on daily news bulletins.

I tend to agree with the counter argument presented by Missy Cummings, director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory:

The degree of collaboration should be driven by the amount of uncertainty in the system and the criticality of outcomes.

Nuclear reactors are highly automated for a reason: Humans often do not have fast enough reaction times to push the rods in if the reactor goes critical.

If you had the following two choices:

1. definitely gaining £3,000, or
2. an 80% chance of gaining £4,000.

You'd choose option 1 and take the certain £3,000.

However, if you had a choice between:

1. definitely losing £3,000, or
2. an 80% chance of losing £4,000.

You'd do the opposite and take the 80% chance of losing £4,000.

Or at least that's what most people would do according to research.

This apparently demonstrates how we view losses in a different way to gains. It's all part of something called Prospect Theory and it won someone the Nobel Prize for a paper they published in 1979. Recent research shows it's still true.

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is ready for the job of preventing electoral interference on its platform:

Countries are going to continue to try and interfere and we are going to see issues like that but we have learnt a lot since 2016 and I feel pretty confident that we are going to be able to protect the integrity of the upcoming election.

Although the report goes on to say that Facebook will be less strict with coronavirus misinformation:

On the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Zuckerberg said that while Facebook had and would remove any content that would likely result in "immediate harm" to users it would not stop groups alleging that the infection was state sponsored or connected to the launch of the new digital 5G network.

Instead, they will add a warning label to such nonsense. Although they did recently remove David Icke for the repeated offence of posting unmitigated bullshit.

The thing that baffles me is that anyone takes anything posted on social media seriously. You just have to look at why people post on those platforms in the first place to realise that accuracy and truthfulness are not primary motivations.

I neither "moo" nor "baa" so I generally dislike Ryanair, but I tend to agree that the government's plans for social distancing on an aeroplane are crap.

The government is suggesting the middle seat on planes should be left vacant, but that still leaves you just a few feet from your neighbour. Let's not forget that cattle-class on a plane can only comfortably seat hobbits at the best of times. I'm pretty sure you have to check your legs into luggage to fly Ryanair these days.

Two metres is what has been touted as optimal distancing, which would probably mean a row to yourself and nobody in either the row in front or behind. It would be delightful but I doubt any airline could run a profit while instigating proper social distancing.

The bullshit web is something I rail against at length myself and Nick Heer's article sums up a lot of my own thoughts.

Violations of users’ intent are nothing new. Ad tech companies like Criteo and AdRoll created workarounds specifically to track Safari users without their explicit consent; Google was penalized by the FTC for ignoring Safari users’ preferences. These techniques are arrogant and unethical. If a user has set their browser preferences to make tracking difficult or impossible, that decision should be respected. Likewise, if a browser has preferences that are not favourable to tracking, it is not the prerogative of ad tech companies to ignore or work around those defaults.

Well, quite. In my opinion this sort of thing qualifies as hacking. It could even fall under the UK's Computer Misuse Act under Section 3. I'd argue they are trying to impair the operation of my computer, specifically its browser, and they certainly aren't authorised by me to do that.

I don't care if a website rejects me if I don't accept them tracking me, but I want to know. I don't want them to let me in and then track me by subverting my browser preferences without my knowledge. Just give me a clear choice. And no, putting up the standard sort of cookie confirmation or privacy agreement is not a clear choice.

As I said in a previous article, the default way in which I should enter any site should be with only (truly) essential cookies active and none of those should have anything to do with tracking or advertising. If I access a site without any intervention, that's the way it should be. If a site won't accept me on that basis it should intervene and tell me clearly that I can only continue if I allow it to track me. Give me the choice. They won't, though, because they probably figure that would scare me away (and they're right in a lot of cases).

I don't mind sites advertising to me or even tracking me (to a certain degree, anyway) and there are many I would give approval to. The thing is, I want complete, clear, up-front knowledge that I'm doing so.

The only way we'll achieve any control over this sort of thing is via legislation, and not the sort of half-arsed thinking that gave us cookie confirmation pop-ups.

The .org top-level domain is controlled by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a non-profit organisation. The Public Interest Registry is itself a subsidiary of the Internet Society (ISOC), another non-profit organisation.

The Internet Society has plans to sell the Public Interest Registry — and the .org domain with it — to a company called Ethos Capital, which nobody knows much about. Ethos plan to buy the PIR for $1.1 billion via a leveraged buyout using the PIR's assets as part of its leverage, which would meant the PIR would end up with a $300m debt as a result.

This all has to be approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) who oversee the domain name system for the entire internet.

ICANN seemed inclined to grant approval but they've met with some bitter opposition to the transaction, including from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. This is significant because ICANN is incorporated in California and Becerra is therefore responsible for making sure ICANN lives up to its articles of incorporation, one of which states it operates for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole.

Several former ICANN officials are involved in the Ethos Capital transaction, which stinks mightily.

There are 10m+ .org registrations and the worry for users is that the price of domains could be increased if the deal where to complete. Ethos Capital are definitely not non-profit and they could significantly increase prices to take advantage of those who want to hang on to their established .org domains.

You can now get wheels for your Mac Pro, should you have one. They're clearly made of diced unicorn mixed with tails of mermaid and then forged by Dwarven blacksmiths on the planet of Nidavellir because they cost $700. For four tiny wheels.

Apple are taking the piss, methinks.

Time can be a bit of a problem besides the problem of not having enough of it.

Relativity sees time as another dimension to add to the X, Y and Z space dimensions, forming what's sometimes called a block universe. The evolution of such a universe is like clockwork and everything follows from the initial conditions. If a suitably powerful demon knew all the properties of every particle in the universe, it could precisely predict the future. In such a universe the distinction between past, present and future is merely an illusion and all the information a universe needs is present at the very beginning.

Quantum mechanics sees things a bit differently. Quantum states are described by a wavefunction and, whilst the evolution of the wavefunction in time can be predicted, the outcomes of individual measurements cannot. Particles exist in superpositions — combinations of states — and there's no telling what you'll find until you make the actual measurement. Such a universe is not clockwork and the future cannot be completely predicted.

A physicist called Nicolas Gisin thinks the problem is mathematical and can be resolved by using a different type of mathematics.

The problem, says Gisin, is how we treat real numbers in normal mathematics. Real numbers are just the numbers we use all the time: 42, -6.3, 9.9999… etc. But the problem with them is that most have a number of decimals that, at any given time, we can only know to a certain precision. We have to zoom in further and make a more precise measurement to get the next decimal digit.

This process of zooming in on a number with more precision is called a choice sequence. Standard maths says none of this a problem. Even though we may not know the absolute precision of a number, we can treat the number as if it nevertheless exists and use it on that basis. Importantly, all numbers follow the law of the excluded middle, which says that either something is true or its negation is true. Either x equals 1 or x does not equal 1 and that seems logical at first blush.

There is however another type of maths called intuitional mathematics and the law of the excluded middle does not apply there. Maybe we can't say x equals 1 and can't say x is not equal to one either. If we have a number like 0.999999 and we were sure the 9s would continue, we could say that x = 1 (because x differs from 1 by less than any finite distance), but we're not sure how that sequence will continue. The next digit might be a 3, for example, and then x would certainly not equal 1.

Don't get bogged down with the maths, the important thing is that a lack of any law of the excluded middle gives us an imprecision that can only possibly be worked out in the future. In the present we only have 0.999999 and, right now, the future of that number is indeterministic, or at least that's the case with intuitional maths. In standard maths we'd say that number already exists in full and we can work with it as we please. It is already either 1 or not 1 even if we don't know which. It's a philosophical difference in some ways.

The point of all this is that by framing both quantum theory and relativity via a different type of mathematics, it may be possible to join them together, which is something that has been elusive for nigh on a century. In doing so we'd resolve the different ideas of time the theories have.

Apparently Tekashi 6ix9ine has been released from prison because he has asthma and is therefore at high risk in any coronavirus scenario.

Fair enough, but the judge said the rapper: "will no longer present a meaningful danger to the community".

But what if he starts rapping again?