What actual usage you want ? Because imho the answer is very different if you want code, or computer use, or vision, or text analysis, or ...
The subscription from frontier labs can handle all that (though each has its best strenght, they all perform well on most things), but it's usually a bit of a waste compared to taking the best one for you.
I've been able to get some truly great digital copy of old analog printed photo using Google snapseed and a sub 1k€ smartphone and that was almost a decade ago, so I'm pretty sure anyone dedicated can.
While we're on this, I find it really really weird how windows defender insists on sending my codex work files for analysis all the time (which I block in automatic permissions so it has to ask me in a notification). I don't think i've seen it ask to upload more than one or two things, and it doesn't do it with other AI app I use (eg Claude Code) but they really want to see what's inside my codex files.
It's easy to trigger, I just need to go inside Codex settings and change something, it saves and instantly windows defender who never wants anything want to "you may be at risk, let me upload that for analysis yes/no".
> EU is notoriously fractured and divided in the best of times, especially around membership.
Eh, we're less divided than people who think so realize, we're more divided than people who think we're united realize. Not really an issue on that particular case.
> Importantly, many EU countries have not ratified CETA
Like a lot of deals, including a big part of dicussion in the Canada/US talk, CETA's issues are about food.
But the thing is, unlike a lot of deal like Mercosur, CA/EU is very vast even excluding food, for BOTH sides of the talk. So I'm pretty sure we can figure things out.
It's a bit funny saying all the naysaying comments, "this is just a name", "you have an ocean between each other", ...
Yeah, it's only a name, that name represent a reciprocal want to work closer together and do something. What, how, we will figure it out, the fact that people on both side of the exchange are all for it says so.
We're not idiots we know there will be hurdle, on one side you have the federal country that managed to convince the french Quebec to stay and on the other you have 27 countries who managed to convince each other to work together, we will figure it out.
I have a feeling that this "made up name/category" will be a pretext for fast-tracking whatever they want to do with Canada-EU relations without the other members voting on it since the last one they tried to do is 10 years on and still pending.
Specifically I think this will be true around defence procurement: Canada was just added as the first non-EU state in the EU SAFE defence agreements, and just did a major booth at the International Defence Industry Exhibition EU defence trade show. They decided to buy new subs from Germany instead of Korea, and have slow-played the new fighter acquisitions and will potentially replace at least some F35 orders with Saab Gripens. And they have a new deal to start manufacturing Ukrainian designed military drones in Canada (partnership with Ukraine announced last week iirc?).
If getting this status helps simplify process and costs of EU<->Canada military procurement, then it will be a clear win for both sides given the current desire to reduce dependence on US defence providers.
Who are "the other members" in your message? Because if you mean all the 27 of course their government has to give approval, just like they did for the last one too
But they can't? That's not how this works? Who do you think can do anything in name of the EU, beside either the parliament, or a body made of the named representative of each government?
There is no "they" in the EU that can do anything that isn't also constituted either equally or proportionally by each and every member.
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