Posts by Randy Hudson

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

50 miles is an insane distance. That could be hours of daily commuting for some employees. I thought about this for a whole 30 seconds before coming to the conclusion that a time-based commute threshold makes a lot more sense, and should probably depend on whether you are using mass transit (can multitask) or driving yourself.

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

Yes, but can you give us a few examples of the randomized crap?

Chrome exists for the sole purpose of perpetuating Google's monopoly in advertising.

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

As an owner of a Tesla, I have to disagree. There's actually no dashboard.

From browser brat to backend boss: Will WASM win the web wars?

"Now, WASM is not a programming language per se."

When was it a programming language?

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Poor design in my opinion

There's really no reason to combine the power and the playback speed into a single button with multiple modes.

Shareholders accuse Tesla of overegging Autopilot, Full Self-Driving capabilities

The buyers of the cars are the real victims. Who gives a crap about the investors who have doubled their money several times over.

Hold off on that 2046 Valentine's date, asteroid might hit Earth

“ it'd probably strike the Pacific Ocean region” in other words they have no real prediction

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

> The security hole stems from wireless carriers' practice of recycling former customers' phone numbers and giving them to new customers

No, the security hole stems from using phone numbers as the username.

> we strongly encourage people to use two-step verification

Seriously? Anyone with your old phone number will also receive any SMS to that number.

Marketing company chases Twitter for $7,000 over 'swag gift box for Elon'

Musk is just sharing some of the company culture outside the company. Namely: character limit.

5% of the cloud now runs on Arm as chip designer plans 2023 IPO

The death of CISC?

Many will say that the demise of CISC was pretty obvious 30 years ago, but what has taken so long? IMO, we have Apple to thank for speeding things up. The benefit of developers having the same architecture sitting in front of them can't be ignored.

Everyone's doing it: PayPal sends 2,000 workers packing

Why in the world does PayPal need 30,000 employees to build a website consisting of a simple form with a submit button?

2002 video streaming patent holder sues Amazon and Twitch

"Even a cursory review of the '473 patent by Amazon and Twitch's patent counsel would have shown that..."

...the patent couldn't be enforced.

FTFY

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Re: Too expensive, too heavy, too range limited

Expensive? How are 86% of Norwegians able to purchase an EV?

Re: The sticker price ...

> Those that want one, have one

That certainly explains why Tesla's Model 3s are starting to pile up. I mean, across the entire US, they're sitting on 19 unsold Model 3s.

White dwarf study suggests planets are as old as their stars

“Planets have to have formed early”

TIL a new verb tense

Apple sued for collecting user data despite opt-outs

So this lawsuit rests entirely on the fact that the User couldn't be bothered with the fact that "Allow Apps to Request to Track" is just a shortened label for the setting whose full description is: "Allow Apps to Request to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites"?

Meta approves four programming languages for workers and developers

Looking forward to the JavaScript free Facebook website.

Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users

So, the same thing YouTube and other Google apps have been doing for years? YouTube even has the balls to prompt you with the option to open a link in "Safari", and then proceeds to just show you a webview so they can track you.

AI detects 20,000 hidden taxable swimming pools in France, netting €10m

> the Euro and US Dollar are just about on parity

And soon the pound.

Intel shows how chiplets will form Meteor Lake CPUs

I don't think I'll be disaggregating any money for one of these.

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

As soon as I saw this

I immediately told my wife we'll have to stop dressing our kids like Paddington Bear

Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols closes hailing frequencies

If I'm not mistaken, that was the only Star Trek scene to feature two actors in a closet.

Thunderbird 102 gets a major facelift, Matrix chat support

Re: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

After the upgrade, I lost telegraph support

Coinbase CEO cuts 1,100 jobs, warns of 'crypto winter'

Hopefully those about to be canned had the wisdom to short crypto, especially after seeing how the pyramid is being built.

EV battery can reach full charge in 'less than 10 minutes'

Re: Full charge in 10 minutes?

I think the opposite is true. If cars can charge in 10 minutes instead of 15, you need fewer charging stations.

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

Re: In other words...

The same thing that happens to lead acid batteries. 99% are recycled.

Re: In other words...

What dealer was selling an EV with 600k miles on it?!

AMD nearly doubles Top500 supercomputer hardware share

x86?

Are there a lot of 32-bit supercomputers these days??

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

What's the deal with cars? Every car I get in is the same.

Round steering wheel? Check

Accelerator on the right? Check

Brake pedal on the left? Check

Blinker/wiper controls on the left? Check

Demand for PC and smartphone chips drops 'like a rock' says CEO of China’s top chipmaker

Did the proof reader not even make it to the second sentence in the article?

Hooking up to Starlink might be pricier than you thought

Misleading

The hardware rise is effective immediately? That is misleading. If you order today you won't receive the hardware until 2023. Just like Tesla, Starlink is doing the right thing by attempting to predict future costs, and then locking in prices for preorders and honoring them.

I ordered a Model X in Feb 2021, but I'm not expecting it until July or later. But Tesla locked in my price and I'll be paying significantly less than someone ordering today, because they would be ordering a car to be delivered in January or later.

Billionaires see wealth double during pandemic as tech bros lead the charge

Wealth accumulates exponentially. A tax system that is linear (after a certain threshold) will always lose the race.

Google emits Chrome 94 with 'Idle Detection' API to detect user inactivity amid opposition

Re: Do Evil

"Do Know Evil"

FTFY

AI caramba, those neural networks are power-hungry: Counting the environmental cost of artificial intelligence

Re: Human alternative

Modern engines running on an iPhone (5W) can outplay any human

See what's on the slab: Apple reportedly mulls stretching the iPad Pro to 14 and 16 inches

iPad and MacBook are converging

It's really just a matter of input preference. Do you want to touch the screen, with the detachable keyboard, or do you want a touchless screen, in which case the keyboard needs to always be there. macOS and iPadOS will continue to evolve until they meet in the middle, unfortunately.

I recently bough the 12.9" iPad Pro. They basically force you to buy the removable keyboard by disabling the split, on-screen keyboard. Why can I use split keyboard on my 9.8-inch iPad Pro, where my thumbs easily reach the middle of the screen, but not on a larger iPad, where reaching the center is a real problem (when holding the iPad upright with the rest of your fingers).

Microsoft and Google, sitting in a tree, working on browser compatibility

Re: Weird way round?

The annoying thing about standards is they’re written by Mozilla, after the fact, while other implementation chose more logical interpretations yo various combinations of settings.

Apple's app transparency rules: Google's privacy labels for Chrome and Search on iOS highlighted by DuckDuckGo

They even track you “outside” their apps

If you click on a URL in one of googles apps like YouTube, they ask how you want to open the link. If you pick “Safari”, they just show you an embedded web view widget so they can continue to track your browsing history

Blackberry Cylance's consumer antivirus product won't work with macOS Big Sur until end of January

Based on past OS releases, it sounds like they’ll have it ready well before it makes sense to upgrade to Big Sur

And now for something completely different: A lightweight, fast browser that won't slurp your data

This is an existing rendering engine, just tweaked for parallel execution where page layout is independent.

Pretty naive

... of the reg to think anyone would write an HTML/CSS layout from scratch at this point.

Apple now Arm'd to the teeth: MacBook Air and Pro, Mac mini to be powered by custom M1 chips rather than Intel

This is great news for people buying a notebook but then use it as an iPad.

Seriously though, it's going to be years before you can do actual laptop tasks with these. Just this week I've flashed firmware in my Jeti ESC and receivers, used Fusion 360 to design a part for my plane, and used Cura to slice the file for printing.

Node.js 15: What's new, what's coming, and keeping pace with Deno. 'We're not going to reinvent' module ecosystem

Supporting TypeScript at runtime is just encouraging more runtime bloat.

npm packages are a mess. It's not uncommon for 95% a package's footprint to be unit tests, documentation, or other crap someone decided to publish, but serve no runtime purpose. On top of that, files are loose on the file system, causing more waste due to slack space.

If you're going to fix the mistakes of node.js, look at what java did right 25 years ago. Support optionally running packages from an archive, and have developers publish their runtime separately from their SDK (source code, etc.).

Trump's official campaign website vandalized by hackers who 'had enough of the President's fake news'

Try big boobs, with a "Z"...

GitLab scans its customers' source code, finds it's as fragile as you'd expect

Re: Don't build on sand

"people will use a library just to avoid writing a one-liner"

Perhaps some thought this was an exaggeration. Check out the "has" package. It gets 14m downloads a week.

https://github.com/tarruda/has/blob/master/src/index.js

Re: Don't build on sand

In the mid 90s I had a buddy like that in college. In his AI class, they had to write a program that navigated a 2D maze. When he presented his program, it was a first person view of some creature running through a 3D world similar to DOOM. When the teacher what software packages he had used to achieve visuals above and beyond what even the professor considered within the reach of undergrads, his reply was, "a C compiler"

Mozilla signs fresh Google search deal worth mega-millions as 25% staff cut hits Servo, MDN, security teams

Why is Google paying for this? Even if Firefox came with some other search providers, everyone would change it to Google anyway.

The intersection of Firefox users and people who don't know how to change their browser's search provider must be like 10 people.

Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft speech-to-text AI systems can't understand black people as well as whites

Siri: Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da help!

Beyond JAMstack: Next.js creator on hybrid rendering, TypeScript and Visual Studio Code

Next.js is written in TypeScript I believe, not JavaScript.