Posts by walterp

Apple ropes off at least 4 GB of iPhone storage to house AI

Nothing burger story

Apple reserved 4GB on phones that will average 256GB. Doesn’t seem like an issue. Even if space was an issue, preemptively reserving space seems like smart move on Apple’s part:

Supreme Court orders rethink on Texas, Florida laws banning web moderation

You should look up the details of the case about shouting fire in a crowded theater. The justices on SCOTUS mostly rolled that case back as overstepping. It is a much narrower exception that most people believe.

Also remember that the base issue in that case was a public speaker arguing against the draft. The linking of that to shouting fire was regretted by the Justice that said that a few years later.

It would do to pick a better example for your case.

The Linux box that runs the exec carpark gate is down! A chance for PostgreSQL Man to show his quality

Re: Outsourcing

HR can be outsourced. One of our sister companies does outsourced HR.

Rocky Linux is go: CentOS founder's new project aims to be 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux

I read "graft" as "grift", I still think that I might not have been wrong...

Twitter, Mozilla, Vimeo slam Europe’s one-size-fits-all internet content policing plan

None of the "platforms" are "pure platforms", they are all publishers. They have always been publishers. They still have Section 230 coverage as publishers. Platform doesn't exist as a legal term in this context.

The point of Section 230 was to allow publishers to look at user postings and edit the content without having the threat of "You edited the content, now you are libel for everyone on the site" hanging over each company.

The publishers can be held libel for changes they make to posts that then cause libel. What they can't be sued for is removing posts. Private companies removing posts from computers they own is not censorship.

Google Cloud (over)Run: How a free trial experiment ended with a $72,000 bill overnight

Oracle is desperate for new customers. As a small player in the cloud business, they need to grow the business. The business model they have been using for decades is to make the big money after you are customer on the renewal fees. Once in their cloud, they hope to do the same thing that they did with databases.

Shock news: NASA lunar ambitions might be a bit too... ambitious

Re: Apollo

Black Astronauts are not tokens in the American space program. There have been 15 of them that have gone into space, starting with Guion Bluford in 1983. Frederick Gregory was the first black pilot and commander of a Shuttle mission. There have also been multiple black women in space. There are currently black women in NASA's astronauts program, one of whom (Jeanette Epps), is scheduled to go to the ISS in Boeing's Starline.

I've meet Jeanette Epps, she is not a token. It is a fully qualified member of NASA.

I know this is an old fashioned request, but do you have any proof that these women are tokens?

There is a difference between saying it would be an opportunity to put one of NASA's qualied black women on the moon and putting a black woman on the moon because she was a black woman. I thin the first was what was meant. Jumping to conclusions in the absence of evidence is rarely a good idea.

Struggling company pleads with landlords to slash rents as COVID-19 batters UK high street. The firm's name? Apple

Re: My heart bleeds

Based on US laws and how banking is structured, for many US companies that have "savings" in Europe, the money is often sitting in the US accounts of the European banks. So Apple's jersey money could still be in the USA (just listed as European deposits rather than American deposits).

With the US election coming up, when better to petition regulators for a controversial way to chill online speech?

Re: More obvious signs ...

How to you calculate those numbers?

Excess deaths during the Trump Admin are now greater than Kennedy or LBJ.

Microsoft tells AMD-powered Insiders they're unblocked in new Windows 10 Dev Channel build: 'Oh no we're not!'

Re: the much-vaunted Eye Contact feature

That all depends on your setup. For a laptop that might be true. For a desktop with two monitors, there is no requirement that the camera is mounted over the monitor that is displaying your Teams window.

For many meetings, once you have read the text on the screen, there is no need to continue to stare that the text. I often change to watching the image boxes which makes make look like I'm looking down, not straight. This happens because I have 32" monitors and the camera is mounted on the top of the display.

If I look up at the camera, it is actually harder to pay attention to what is happening in the teams meeting.

Many seem to assume that users are using phones/laptops for meetings. There are millions (maybe 10's of millions) of desktops that do teleconferencing. Assuming anything about their cameras is a mistake.

Canonical accused of violating GPL with ZFS-in-Ubuntu 16.04 plan

Re: bazza @HCV - I don't quite get your point

FreeBSD is used in a commercial manner. It powers the NetFlix cache network. It is the basis of the Islion platform.

From the point of view of some commercial FreeBSD groups, Linux is a hobbyist OS gone pro and FreeBSD is a commercial grade/quality OS. I agree with them.

From a historical point of view, FreeBSD came from the commercial versions of Unix through the rework done by Berkeley (the BSD in the name). Linux was written by college student and spread out among the the hobbyist on the Internet. It was years later that Linux became commercial. Remember, SCO sued IBM at the turn of century claiming that it took something like IBM to make the hobbyist OS known as Linux into the commercial/professional OS that Linux has become.

Quit the 2D internet, flee your cave, and GET LAID, barks rock star

The meaning of the word "Cave"

I was surprised to see the author confused about the meaning of the word "cave" [Well, I guess I shouldn't be, given then modern state of education]. The cave that Jack White white is talking about is the Allegory of the Cave. This is reinforced by the use of phase 2d.

The Allegory is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and Plato's mentor Socrates.

Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

US Navy boffins put an end to drought

Rain water in Seattle, Washington owned by the state

Brian Miller is correct, in the the State of Washington (where Seattle is located), the state government considers rainwater to the be a water of the state and public resource. Its use requires a water right permit (See RCW 43.27A.020).

The reason that the Anonymous Coward saw the Seattle Website about rainfall catchments was because the Washington State Department of Ecology (which has the regulatory authority) has not required permits for "de minimis" use.

See http://www.martenlaw.com/news/?20090619-wash-rainwater-harvesting, which basically explains that if you rainwater catchment can be shown to reduce the 'Water Rights" of someone else that was the rainfall run-off, you can be required to remove your system.

Washington State is not alone in this policy...

Fail because the Coward can't do a 30 second google search to see that Brian Miller was correct and the Government has taken ownership of rain water.