Of course the bank is not going to make a political statement, they have more important business to do. The article makes it pretty clear right at the top that the bank’s statement doesn’t mention Trump:
> Experts say that rhetoric appears inherently related to the abrasiveness of the Trump administration towards traditional allies.
Also, the “experts” are just right here. Are you gonna say that Trump hasn’t been throwing our allies under the bus?
I mean, if I hear the phrase "geopolitical unrest", I'm far more inclined to think "Iran"/"Russia" than "51st state".
If the point is to get your gold away from the US and its president, why leave ~19% of if there? Why take gold out of Canada? Why is a two-word phrase inherently related to the abrasiveness of the Trump administration towards traditional allies"?
And the bank's stated reason is: "Gold that is held with the Bank of England must meet modern international trade standards and is regarded as the world's most easily tradable gold and will therefore be the most readily available for DNB in a crisis situation. The gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa cannot be utilised as quickly and directly in such a situation." Why is that not the more plausible one, and the basis for the headline?
Iran and Russia can both be tied to the leadership of the USA. Iran directly and Russia less directly.
There may be trading between the USA and the Netherlands that makes 31% too much gold in USA but at 19% more reasonable. Over the past 4 years the price of gold has more than doubled this would effect the amount of gold needed to perform the same transactions.
First paragraph of their statement I think better summarizes their reasoning:
> In view of increasing geopolitical unrest, DNB is strengthening its crisis preparedness. Improving the liquidity and tradability of the Dutch gold reserves is part of these preparations. Moreover, a more balanced distribution of these reserves between North America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands helps to spread risks and will make them more readily available for use in a crisis situation.
The goal is to make these reserves more liquid in the event of a geopolitical crisis. It’s easy to say that Trump was a factor in this decision given that he has been the cause of one geopolitical crisis after another. That hypothetical crisis doesn’t have to directly involve the Netherlands for this to make sense. For example, the price of oil shot way up because Trump decided to poke Iran and having more liquid reserves could make responding to that easier.
> It’s easy to say that Trump was a factor in this decision
I don't disagree with that. (I mentioned Iran, a crisis that was precipitated by the current administration.)
I disagree with "Experts say that rhetoric appears inherently related to the abrasiveness of the Trump administration towards traditional allies" and "Having those reserves in the United States is a potential vulnerability...You can absolutely imagine a scenario where, for whatever reason, the Trump administration decides to hold onto them" etc.
> If the point is to get your gold away from the US and its president, why leave ~19% of if there?
Not all of the risk is "the USA may literally steal it", some of the risk is "UK may elect Farage who could be just as bad", and there's a non-zero chance that Trump is kicked out come November.
With a diversified portfolio, economic planning can be done in terms of probabilities; this is different from e.g. military planning, because the "portfolio" your military defends is "your nation" and this is somewhat more binary in success-vs.-fail.
> Why take gold out of Canada?
Because Canada is one of the places Trump is directly threatening.
Most people who wrote software before AI didn’t contribute to projects like Debian because it takes a certain passion and commitment. Just being able to write code is not the bar for entrance here.
"Improving" it with AI is the sloppy way. Take some time and flush out your ideas the old fashioned way. I promise you the end result will be better and you will come away with a more thorough understanding.
I could contain it easy, just unplug the internet. It got out of the sandbox through a vulnerability in the package manager, from which it gained access to the rest of their network. Air gap the package manager and this doesn’t happen. You can always build a better box
As long as you give the AI any IO that is an exploit channel. E.g. it could manipulate its human handlers. This known as the AI Boxing problem.
And if you give it no IO at all then it is useless.
And the AI labs aren't currently displaying this level of paranoia, their systems aren't airgapped.
Too bad you aren’t everybody, and it just takes one mistake by someone over confident like yourself for the AI escape. Every year it gets more powerful.
Perhaps the AI then figures out how to read/write the PCI bus or memory controller or whatever to leak just enough RF to speak Bluetooth to the next closest device to proxy through that?
Given the enormous lifetime of these devices, I’d say chances are pretty good! The only thing that’s going to make an M series Mac obsolete is when Apple stops releasing updates. If you can run Linux on it, that thing is going to last forever.
My concern is for the devices I have, which are usually newer, and for battery life. Linux doesn't even have full hardware support, much less efficient battery life on these now several year old devices.
Maybe things will unlock soon and stay that way long enough for it to be viable for me. I'm just not holding my breath.
Of course it's great to have a supported OS for retired hardware--regardless of battery performance. That's a different use case. And I salute all those who work to keep old devices out of landfills.
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