The 5G mind-control and cancer-causing work fine, but the modems don't meet the spec for spreading coronavirus yet.
Posts by fidodogbreath
1600 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2009
Apple extends Qualcomm contract to 2026 as homebrew 5G chip dream still on snooze
Chat2024 stuffs US election hopefuls into generative AI so you can be an 'informed voter'
Co-founder of Yandex – Russia's Google clone – denounces war on Ukraine
Microsoft can't stop injecting Copilot AI into every corner of its app empire
Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware, say researchers
When it comes to Linux distros, one person's molehill is another's mountain
Another cloud provider runs to shelter from Microsoft's licensing practices
Microsoft suggests businesses buy fewer PCs. No, really
Our IT provisioned one of these for me to try out because "we think it will work really well for your use case."
So I load the thing and (as expected) it's completely locked down. I pointed out that since I work in the development team, I'd have to open an IT ticket to install every new software build. They promptly ended the experiment.
As someone else noted above, I don't get WTF problem cloud PCs solve, since you still need a physical PC (with all of its attendant risks, hardware failures, and maintenance) to get to the cloud PC.
(Edited to clarify that the cloud PC was just a trial)
Where are we now – Microsoft 363? Cloud suite suffers another outage
Smile! UK cops reckon they've ironed out gremlins with real-time facial recog
1 in 6000?
the chance of a false match is just 1 in 6,000 people who pass the camera
That's actually a pretty bad false match rate. A busy street in a retail district can average 5000 pedestrians per hour (or more) passing dozens of cameras. Seems like a lot of people can expect to have their day ruined by the polizei.
Bank rewrote ads for infosec jobs to stop scaring away women
Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system
When Google cost cutting goes molecular: Staples, sticky tape, and PC sweating
Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins
Re: Deter people from studying in the field?
Not anymore.
A USC office removes 'field' from its curriculum, citing possible racist connotations
the IOP’s own monitoring of the term over the last 12 months has found it used for racing tipsters, political pollsters, dermatologists, astrologers and car designers, as well as physicists, biologists and chemists
So, by their own admission, "boffin" is widely used in a non-gendered manner, to describe anyone with even a modicum of perceived expertise in pretty much anything. Yet their headline take-away is that it is gendered and (they hint) racist-classist and dissuades people from STEM.
Ah, but they made us look.
Don't Be Evil, a gaggle of Googlers tell CEO Pichai amid mega layoffs
Microsoft dips Teams in the metaverse vat with avatars ahead
Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you
Zoom chops president it hired less than a year ago
Hyundai and Kia issue software upgrades to thwart killer TikTok car theft hack
Cheating carriers could cost web-starved Americans billions in subsidies
Ring system discovered around dwarf planet Quaoar leaves astronomers puzzled
Cedars-Sinai hospital's website shares patient info with Meta, lawsuit claims
Re: I should also sue
Depending on their corporate structure, the business entity that operates the hospital web site might not be subject to HIPAA. The act only applies to direct providers of health care service. It does not apply to aggregators or "matchmakers," e.g., sites where you describe your health issue and the site connects you with a care provider. Ditto for prescription discount card providers, information resources such as WebMD, etc.
HIPAA also does not protect your PHI when it is "inadvertently shared" with an entity that is not covered by HIPAA -- such as Meta or Google. The provider who leaked the data can get in trouble (in theory, anyway) but good luck getting your data deleted from their bit barns. In the US, once an aggregator has your deets they can and will do whatever the f--k they want with them.
Edit - too prolix.
Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting
Re: Who loves cryptocurrency?
Is anyone still writing (sic)checks?
Not if it can be avoided, but sometimes it can't. In our US state, some local taxing authorities still only take payments by paper check -- and if we want it credited properly (which we do), we also have to include the tear-off coupon from the bottom of the paper bill when we send our payment by snail mail. (This also means we still have to have postage stamps...)
Wait, there's more. Seemingly every criminal in the US has keys to the postal drop boxes now, so we also have to drive to the post office and physically carry the envelope inside the building to mail it if we don't want to risk having the payment stolen (which we don't). Note: the linked article is from three years ago; the problem has gotten worse since then.
The above is not satire. This is something that we still have to do in the year of our Lord 2023, in {Jeremy Clarkson voice, although he would never say this about the US} "the greatest country...in the woooorld" -- at least for certain agencies that remain deeply stuck in the 1970s.
Also, many of the small contractors that we've hired to do work on our house don't take credit cards because of the transaction fees; nor do they use Venmo and its ilk, I suppose out of concern for being scammed or ripped off. So, checks for them as well.
Surprise! China's top Android phones collect way more info
Re: As an owner of a Xiaomi
Buy Samsung or Apple.
Not to sure about Sammy these days. The S23's massive 60GB Android image is 4x the size of Google's Android, and double the size of a Windows 10 or 11 install. But don't worry, I'm sure all of that third-party bloatware totally respects your privacy.
Linux Mint 21.2 includes a bit of feature creep from the GNOME world
Microsoft sweeps up after breaking .NET with December security updates
Sweating the assets: Techies hold onto PCs, phones for longer than ever
Re: No surprizes here...
My recording studio computer is a circa 2012 core i7-2700K. The only upgrades I've done in 11 years are SSD storage and a low-end nVidia card. It runs Windows 10 Pro 22H2 smoothly (W10 was a clean install vs an update from 7). The current versions of my digital audio workstation software and plugins run flawlessly, and feel fast and responsive.
Artificial benchmarks suggest that newer machines are 6x-10x "faster" than my Ancient One, but unless you need that horsepower for specific applications the added juice doesn't really translate to a better user experience. In my limited experience with W11, the UI felt less responsive, which I'm guessing is due to the overhead of a forced permanent connection to a Microsoft account.
But hey, the PC manufacturers aren't making their numbers; so let's all landfill our working hardware and buy new machines that will feel slower.
Three seconds of audio could end up costing Fox $500,000
Home Depot sent my email, details of stuff I bought to Meta, customer complains
Re: Suspect Home Depot aren't the only one's...
It is absolutely common.
Thousands of Companies Send Your Data to Facebook Without Your Knowledge
UK govt Matrix has unenviable task of consolidating several different ERP systems
Half of environmental claims about products are full of crap, says EU
AI-generated phishing emails just got much more convincing
How to track equipped cars via exploitable e-ink platemaker
Thin edge of the wedge, indeed
Reviver didn't develop this for California specifically. They're a private company that wants to (a) deploy this widely), and (b) have a monopoly on it. California's 'oversight' probably began and ended with making sure they get all of the DMV revenue that Reviver collects.
That said -- this product makes no financial sense for anyone other than maybe fleet operators. As an AC pointed out elsewhere, it is the "thin edge of the wedge" that will be used to insert real-time road use taxes -- with copious assurances that GPS tracking of every car at all times would never be used for Big Brother purposes.
Governments will, over time, make it harder and harder to renew registration any other way to force adoption. Then they will use a "think of the children" crisis to grant law enforcement temporary emergency access to everyone's real-time movements -- followed shortly thereafter by unlimited real-time tracking by LEOs. Again, because of the children.
Wiretap lawsuit accuses Apple of tracking iPhone users who opted out
Corporations start testing Windows 11 in bigger numbers. Good luck
OneDrive back on its feet, but ongoing Skype credit problem hasn't gone away
Palantir's Covid-era UK health contract extended without competition
Solid advice from the vendor
"No, don't waste time improving your specifications and getting stakeholder agreement. That will just delay the project and force us to re-allocate our staff to other projects. As your Palantir project manager, my advice is to keep throwing no-bid contract money and random change orders at us until the system does what you want. That's the fastest and most effective way to shore up our balance sheet for the rest of the decade get your project up and running!"
With Mastodon, decentralization strikes back

Mastodons and birds (descended from dinosaurs)
I never gave a crap about Twitter. Now I have decentralized my indifference and moved it to Mastodon.
Agree 100% that open standards are important. If history is any guide, though -- where there is money to be made from using a standard, there is more money to be made by "extending" the standard to force user lock-in. Sadly, this will probably be the fate of ActivityPub.
In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity
To protect its cloud, Microsoft bans crypto mining from its online services
Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged
Gunfire at electrical grid kills power for 45,000 in North Carolina
KmsdBot botnet is down after operator sends typo in command
Windows 11 still not winning the OS popularity contest
Almost 300 predatory loan apps found in Google and Apple stores
Criminals use trending TikTok challenge to make data-stealing malware invisible
Re: What kind of neo-narcissism is this?
I suppose this is better than TikTok's GTA Meatspace Edition "challenge."