As a Brit living in Japan (non-resident) I think they should protect themselves at all costs, lest what happened to my country happen to theirs. If the business visa was abused, that abuse should be stopped, not just allowed to happen like we would do.
Your point doesn't follow logically. If you're a non-resident living in Japan according to Japanese peoples' expectations, why can't you criticize other non-residents who aren't living in a way that's consistent with Japanese peoples' expectations?
Because someone who's not a resident in Japan, and claims to be living here, is fundamentally either also abusing the system, or not actually living here.
> Because someone who's not a resident in Japan, and claims to be living here, is fundamentally either also abusing the system, or not actually living here.
What? No…I am not suddenly forbidden from using the English language because of visa status. What is one supposed to say? Temporarily residing?Extended vacationing?Work-visa-free inhabiting? Come on.
You’re hanging your hat on the OP’s use of the word “living”, which is so weirdly pedantic that I think you’re just looking for a reason to be upset that they had the temerity to defend the rule changes.
For all we know, OP is living here on a perfectly valid visa.
Sure. I think it's meaningful to distinguish someone staying for six months, and someone staying for years; but if that's weirdly pedantic, so be it.
(Maybe it's also a cultural difference?
My native language distinguishes between the kind of "living" somewhere where you're just "staying" somewhere and where that place is the center of your life. I would not use the "I built my life here" verb for a 6mo stay.
Perhaps I'm letting that color my English a bit more than I should.)
In fairness, there are a lot of Japanese people who feel they were not consulted on the scale and scope of "Japanese peoples' expectations". So many such people that they could get a Prime Minister elected. I wouldn't assume that living according to the laws that exist currently means that you're living in accordance with "Japanese peoples' expectations". That's the whole reason the laws are being changed at the moment.
That said, as a foreigner right now the best thing to do is to watch the legal environment as it shifts so that you don't fall afoul of it. And to be extra mindful of adhering to Japanese customs, which boils down to being nice along with things like realizing some places may not look on your tattoos the same way those tattoos are looked on in the West.
It’s not rich to recognise your own ship is sinking and want others to save themselves from sinking theirs. I truly love Japan and the last thing I want is the same cultural dilution to happen here. Deport me if that’s what it takes. Japan must invest in itself and not give in to the temptation of unlimited cheap foreign labor.
Yes, a country should want to keep out people with negative fiscal impact and bring in people with a positive fiscal impact. Isn’t that obvious?
By all means bring in people to run businesses in Japan. Legitimate businesses, not visa mills. This increase in capital requirements stamps out the visa mills.
> This increase in capital requirements stamps out the visa mills.
No, it doesn't. The rich people abusing the system just deposit more money and get their checkmark. Small businesses cannot raise and float this kind of cash quickly.
Also, the policy change is being applied retroactively to visa renewal applications that had already been filed, before the policy change was even announced. So if you filed a few months ago, before any of this was announced, now you're getting rejected and sent home. If the govt was actually interesting in getting rid of illegitimate businesses, they could just go to them and see if they're real or not. All businesses that qualify someone to get a business manager visa have to be in commercial spaces, with signs with their name on it, and accessible. Instead, it's performative punishment.
They usually come with tax exemptions (so not really good fiscal impact), and make prices climb like crazy. See Portugal and their remote worker visa, they outpriced most Portuguese people out of every city slightly near an airport.
What’s rich about it? You can live in Japan as a non-resident and still be following 100% of the rules.
I agree with the GP. It’s their country. They set the rules. If they want to change the rules because those rules aren’t working for them, that’s their prerogative. As a USian, I’m actually sort of jealous that they have the ability to make changes so quickly.
Well, it depends a little on what OP meant by “resident” - often that gets used by expats to mean “permanent resident”, which is a pretty high bar.
But even if you just assume that OP
is here on the digital nomad visa thing, you’re effectively living here. More to the point, you’re following the rules, and it’s not at all ironic or contradictory to have an opinion that the rules can be changed by the host.
If they meant "permanent resident" when they said "resident" that'd be a pretty weird, given, you know, our 在留カード literally say "residence card" on them; but perhaps this actually common, and I'm one of today's lucky 10,000.
But if they're here on a Digital Nomad visa, then their stay is limited to 6mo with no pathway to extending this — _I_ personally don't think that qualifies as "living" in a place, but perhaps reasonable people can disagree on this point.
Yes, I knew as soon as I wrote that that someone would chime in with the English definition of 在留. I thought about deleting it since it isn’t important to the argument, but I left it in because it’s a thing I’ve heard expats say here.
Look, even if OP is just living here on a tourist visa and doesn’t have any form of residency at all, and (s)he’s still following the rules as established, it’s not even remotely ironic to say that the rules are the rules, and the host has the right to change the rules.
It would be ironic if OP did that while admitting to violating immigration law.
It’s not the point. If you’re following the rules, you can call it whatever you like. If you’re not following the rules, then it’s at least ironic that you’d be calling for defense of the rules.
It’s a weirdly motivated form of pedantry to get snarky at someone for using the word “living” when you know nothing about their situation. It’s almost like you’re looking for a reason to be upset.
Double standards. He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries. Pretty ironic come to think of. I guess he thinks his type are “good” immigrants, others are not so much.
The UK isn't exactly an assimilation success story.
As someone with potential aspirations of moving to a different country I don't mind it if they tried to avoid that kind of scenario and to retain their state's character to some extent.
The irony comment comes across somewhat innefective and petulant when I and others i've encountered with such views hold them in spite of the effects it could have for us. I don't see the point in laughing at that any more than i see it in calling out irony when a rich person calls for tax hoops to be closed and taxation to be fair.
When the OSA came into force I checked the iOS App Store and the top 10 apps in the UK at the time were all dodgy free VPNs. This legislation is utterly idiotic.
I'm sick of this government, they won't be getting my vote in the next GE.
The way this has been pushed through after countless attempts over the past decade, and push back from advising experts, does not feel like it originates from genuine concern for children. It feels like a state trying to wrestle for digital control amidst rising civil unrest.
It’s not meant for subscription users; the subscriptions are just the gateway drug to Enterprise pricing which Anthropic intends to use to juice their numbers before IPO.
Darwin namespaces would be much more interesting and we are in dire need of them in the current security landscape.
I don’t really understand the hype for Apple’s Containerization, it’s just another container runtime alongside many others. It’s not really any better than OrbStack - in fact it’s worse.
When Apple Sherlocks something, aren't their implementations usually worse? Typically the thing being Sherlock'd is very mature and featureful, and Apple's implementation is much less capable and has undergone much less user testing, at least at the outset.
My employer is all in on Anthropic via Enterprise (API) pricing despite it being a total scam.
Last month I pushed like <100M tokens for $800. On a personal project I pushed 600M tokens via DeepSeek V4 for $10. The pricing of SOTA models is insane but companies are still willing to light money on fire with no hard metrics proving increased productivity.
They already have though, no? If we lost access to every model permanently besides Qwen tomorrow, would we really be limited by AI in what we could achieve in the future? Sure, it might be slower and take a little more work but it seems like the cat is already out of the bag.
It is an access issue. If you could get step by step instructions on how to modify a virus so it kills all people over 6ft you bet your ass there would be people attempting it.
Column A, Column B. Building a small explosive device isn't hard. Building a million is very difficult, doing it covertly virtually impossible without the resources of a nation-state.
The problem with biologics is the self-assembly and replication machinery comes for "free." So the numpties who might otherwise blow up a trash can [1] now have a real chance of taking out a million people.
The problem with biologics is that you cannot build a virus in your garage. You need a lab. AI will give your recipe, but you still need a lot of money and cooperation of other people (and if you have so, you could hire human biologist in pre-AI era).
Also AI makes mistakes. If you ever coded with AI agent you know that loop "write trash => compile => fix compilation errors => repeat" (if there are no compilation errors, there are definitely logic errors to be fixed). In real world cost of attempt is huge. You need a lot of money and you risk to draw a lot of attention if you perform long series of iterative experiments to create working virus.
In case with bomb it means that even if you have AI which gives you recipe of the bomb, but you will explode your garage and yourself with a decent chance. So you probably need to setup a good experimental pipeline (hardened lab where you can try different formulas and see that happens without being killed) if you want to go beyond publicly known explosives available in pre-AI era to anyone who read school/university chemistry books. And this also requires resources and draws attention.
People extrapolate programming experience (the area where experiments are cheap, cannot kill you and provide detailed feedback what went wrong) to real life.
They would still have to procure things that would (I hope) light up many screens before they're able to. And such numpties are probably already monitored, or in prison for some other stupid life decision.
I also would like to hope that people that are likely to do such things are probably:
A) don't know how to break even the most basic guardrails of models
> They would still have to procure things that would (I hope) light up many screens before they're able to
“Many of the largest and most responsible providers in the industry already screen and record orders voluntarily,” but there is no requirement to do so [1].
If that were possible, they would already be attempting it with the same level of ability as if they didn’t have access to a text file generator app. It is not about access to the information.
All of this “guardrails” handwringing is nonsense. These things output text. Are you for censorship of a book written by a biotechnology expert that gives out the exact same information?
I don’t know if you’re being silly but it is orders of magnitudes easier to modify an existing virus to selectively target certain snps than make “antiviral nanobots”
Claude, modify the existing 6ft killer virus so that it only makes my balls itch slightly for a day and gives me lifetime immunity to all further stamms of the 6ft killer virus. Make no mistakes, double check so the virus causes no unforseen complications.
It's inevitable. Also, it's not like I get to vet who does or doesn't have access. Blind trust in the current selection made by an unregulated corporation just makes me anxious.
Security in the form of "pay to play" is just kicking the bigger issue down the road.
The argument against security through obscurity isn't that it doesn't work at all. It does to a degree, only it is not as strong as people think.
An example from the meat world: not publishing your vacation dates well in advance for the world to see somewhat reduces your chance of being burglarized. That is security by obscurity; not reliable, but not completely inefficient either.
But if you live in a fortress (security by key material), you can well declare your vacation dates without running the risk.
It the tool was made available to anyone to build a virus, anyone would be able to build counter measures, if only a select few people have access they get to build the virus and everyone else is at a disadvantage. So, yes, I am leaning towards making these tools open rather than gated behind some priesthood and government that gets to wield exclusive power.
Compare the cost/ease of attacker vs defender if one person is given a virus to unleash anywhere in the world and another person is given a vaccine to distribute to the whole world. Or compare building a large bridge to someone disabling that bridge, etc. Prevention and repair is almost always more expensive than vandalism.
I don't think there's an ideal solution here, but giving trusted people access to fix security issues before giving it to the wider public seems like a reasonable compromise. They're letting you use the model for all other uses.
you need a lot more than the nucleotide sequence to make a virus. you need the DNA or RNA to be synthesized, assembled, packaged properly. and long sequences are pretty hard to do. you need a lot of equipment, or you need to order from services. the oligo synth services can harden their KYC and/or screen for suspicious sequences.
sure, a malevolent state actor could swing it, but they could make a bioweapon without Mythos's help already.
also, vaccine production and disease surveillance have ramped up very quickly. they will ramp up further, despite political setbacks. it's a cat and mouse game that favors the defenders IMO.
but the bioterrorism narrative is useful FUD to spin open-weight models as existentially dangerous. I am far more worried about Anthropic's own goals than the goals of some crackpot in a shed.
> it's a cat and mouse game that favors the defenders IMO
How so? I'm actually against most of the "safety-tuning" that anthropic does, but this seems fundamentally untrue, a close analogue being video game cheat development. I think in general the cheat developer has an advantage and the cheats generally proliferate for quite a while before being patched.
Video games are an interesting analogy since they often trade security for performance, trusting clients about world state quite a bit.
Finance and biology do come across as two similar high level systems. But while we can employ KYC, fraud detection, and various auditing techniques to finance, I don’t know what you do for biology. You can easily run an algorithm over every transaction a person makes in their account but there’s no equivalent for every cell, every bacteria strain, every virus in the human body.
(disclaimer: layperson remembering how the immune system works.)
the adaptive immune system effectively does KYC by checking the antigens presented on the surfaces of cells. the thymus selects for B-cells (iirc?) which don't react to a corpus of the body's own antigens, but cover a wide library of everything else. when it sees something it doesn't recognize, it reproduces, warns the rest of the immune system and marks targets. that's why our immune systems can eventually conquer almost every pathogen we encounter, if we can survive long enough for it to do its work.
but the KYC I was referring to was KYC that vendors of oligonucleotides (should) be doing, to keep people from ordering nefarious sequences.
I'm bullish on mRNA vaccine technology to release the "patches" much more quickly. there was widespread resistance to this during covid, but covid wasn't horribly lethal. if airborne Ebola spread as productively as covid, for example, I doubt there'd be many anti-vaxxers left (one way or another!) the acceleration of biology research that might accelerate pathogen development should also accelerate the development of broad-spectrum mRNA vaccines with high persistence.
also, afaik the most effective way of developing pathogens is through serial passage through humanized mice or something like that - directed evolution at a small scale, selecting for traits. AI simply isn't needed for that. I don't think information or intelligence has been the bottleneck for bioterrorism, it's motivation and resources - same as for any other kind of biology research program.
IIRC 4chan was indirectly responsible for his death. An anon bought him a drum kit and Terry annoyed his parents with it, to the point that there was a heated argument and I believe violence. After that, they kicked him out of the house and gave him a van to live in. That’s when he started to really spiral and how he eventually ended up sleeping rough.
I had a stint with VM gaming over Christmas but gave up after wasting too much time trying to bypass anti-cheat detection. My desire came from security concerns; games have a massive attack surface and running them on bare metal makes me uncomfortable. I've always wanted an ephemeral Windows environment for gaming, but it's too much effort to make it work.
I run CachyOS on my gaming PC now and I'm pretty happy with it.
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