The final paragraphs nailed it. This has NOTHING to do with defense - it's ALL about making Trump and his "pals" rich(er).
Posts by Twilight
158 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Nov 2010
Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America
Want Intel in your Surface? That’ll be $400 extra, says Microsoft
Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors
Re: You only get out the effort you put in
Given that many people didn't seem to learn anything from 2016-2020, I would not count on them to learn anything this time either. Many people in the US will vote against their own self-interest seemingly just because some charismatic (or at least loud) politician tells them to...
FCC net neutrality rules dead again as appeals court sides with Big Telco
Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July
Not just digital products
Digital River does (or at least used to) have a decent sized warehouse and handled fulfillment of physical products (largely computer-related) as well as digital-only products. I wonder if they still do the physical fulfillment the same way and if those vendors are at least getting their physical merchandise back? My detailed knowledge of them is quite old (I consulted for them in the late 90s and my wife consulted for them in the 00s) so I'm not sure if they kept up the warehouse in the last decade (possibly they shut down direct physical fulfillment with the VC buyout in 2015).
Ah but it isn't a contract - it is a service agreement (that just happens to look exactly like a contract (albeit probably pretty one-sided)). Companies in the US (and possibly elsewhere) have been massively pushing the bounds of what is legal for a couple decades now. The bigger ones, at least, seem to just figure that they may have to, at worst, pay some fines if what they've been doing is determined to be illegal.
It often seems like the US is trying hard to turn itself into a cyberpunk corporate dystopia. Although none of the authors I've read seemed to predict exactly the shape it is actually going (Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash seemed to come closest).
By accounts that I've been reading, they are essentially operating like a Ponzi scheme and not keeping enough cash. Essentially they are relying on sales of following months to pay the vendors for previous months. Kaspersky (now banned in the US) used DR for payment processing - there is an unverified theory that Kaspersky may have been a VERY significant portion of DR income so losing those ongoing sales means they can't pay vendors.
Uncle Sam may force Google to sell Chrome browser, or Android OS
National Public Data files for bankruptcy, admits 'hundreds of millions' potentially affected
CrowdStrike unhappy about Delta's 'litigation threat,' claims airline refused 'free on-site help'
CrowdStrike CEO summoned to explain epic fail to US Homeland Security committee
Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up 'reimagining' project
Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union
Microsoft Research chief scientist has no issue with Windows Recall
Crooks threaten to leak 3B personal records 'stolen from background check firm'
Dell customer order database of '49M records' stolen, now up for sale on dark web
Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins
Reddit gets a call from Nokia about patent infringement ahead of going public
Biden urged to do something about Europe 'unfairly' targeting American tech
Congress would better serve the American people (their job) by passing similar laws in the US to protect us rather than complaining on behalf of their corporate masters (Citizens United was probably the worst ruling in the history of SCOTUS (which then lead to even more corruption and more bad SCOTUS decisions)).
'Return to Office' declared dead
Asahi Linux goes from Apple Silicon port project to macOS bug hunters
Re: Yup.
We didn't at work. We updated to 14.1 (which appears to still have the issue if the article is correct (eg 14.0+)) due to the security patches (not sure why 13.6.1 (security patches back-ported) wasn't an option). However, afaik, nobody at work has run into this issue (possibly everyone had the ProMotion refresh rate?).
Biden's facing the clock to veto Apple Watch import ban after ITC patent ruling
Re: Its just someone wanting a slice of the action
I agree that is how patents are supposed to work. I don't agree that that necessarily leads to Apple doing something wrong.
At least in the US, a TON of (most?) patents should never have been issued (existing prior art, obvious to anyone working in the industry, etc). I don't know enough about Masimo's patents to say if that is the case here or not.
It took seven years but over-40s fired by HP win $18m settlement
Re: Forget the legalities a minute
You're forgetting that "long-term planning" at US companies is now a MAXIMUM of 2 years. The older workers tend to be more highly paid so, if we replace them with new grads with little or no experience, the permanent (capital?) expenditures go down on the stock report so the stock price goes up... in the short-term until the move causes tons of problems for the company down the road (by which point there's a fair chance that the C-suite has already switched out (and the high-mid managers may have moved on as well)).
Stupid stuff like this happens ALL THE TIME at big US corporations...
Re: Fair, adequate and reasonable
The US is a representative democracy which means (in the way it is implemented in the US) the voters really don't have significant say in a lot of things - the elected officials have all the say. The only say the voters have is in who they elect. Compound that with the way the US media works (it's amazing how low the bar is to be considered "news") and the US has a mess created by the 1% (really it's more like the 0.1%).
USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix
Zoom CEO reportedly tells staff: Workers can't build trust or collaborate... on Zoom
Microsoft’s Azure mishap betrays an industry blind to a big problem
Healthcare org with over 100 clinics uses OpenAI's GPT-4 to write medical records
Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed
Re: Ah.
I don't understand why auto makers allow dealers to do pre-sale modifications with third-party kit. It seems like it's just asking for issues and tarnishing the brand due to problems.
My current potential issue (that thankfully hasn't been an issue) is I bought an Audi with a Stasis chip (conservatively modified engine chip). Stasis was an official Audi partner. The chip was sent direct to Statis for reprogramming before I ever took receipt of the car. Stasis went under and, per Audi, if I have a problem with the engine chip, it is NOT covered by warranty -- even though I bought it through the dealer with Audi's official partner and the dealer stressed that it had the exact same warranty. I'm sorry but, at that point, it is an Audi problem (fortunately I haven't had an issue with the chip since Stasis went under so I haven't had to argue over it).
Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death
Re: Never do hardware development on Kickstarter
If you think Kickstarter is bad, try Indiegogo. Indiegogo directly promoted a project that was later proven to be a scam (took backers for iirc about $2m) and washed their hands of it and said they had no responsibility. I really don't understand how it was legal that they directly promoted the campaign and were still able to walk away (with their fee in hand).
US commerce bosses view EU rules as threat to its clouds
Per a couple of summaries of the US Cloud Act, it (this quote from Wikipedia) "provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy rights of the foreign country the data is stored in". So, it should be compatible with GDPR provided the cloud providers agree that any request about EU citizens is a violation (and will refuse to honor).
Re: Oh noes! So we may have to get our own cloud services up and running...
I certainly think companies can compete with US companies. However, AWS has 15+ (20+?) years head start. Even the other US cloud providers have inferior products. It would take a *MASSIVE* infusion of money for an EU provider to offer a service comparable to AWS.
Re: "ensure that non-EU suppliers cannot access the EU market on an equal footing"
I'm not following these arguments. By default, this may be the case (no idea). However, it is absolutely possible to set the cloud storage up in such a way that the data can't be provided (an encrypted copy of the data could be provided but that's not usable).
Wells Fargo, Zelle slammed by Liz Warren over rampant online banking fraud
Interestingly, Chase just started classifying Zelle (and Venmo) transfers as cash advances on their credit cards. They gave zero notice of this change in policy but are issuing refunds (once) to people that complain about it.
It's easy to have bank accounts at credit unions. However, the big banks really do have better credit cards (at least in my experience).
Another place it is nearly impossible to actually choose the bank (in the US at least) is mortgages. A huge proportion of mortgages are sold soon after being issued (and you have no control over who they are sold to).
Microsoft leaves the Office, rebrands everything as 365
I used to be locked into Office because I used a lot of Excel sheets with (VBA) macros. I never understood why nothing else (including MS Office for Mac) supported (Windows) Excel macros.
At work, I'm now forced to use GSuite and am actually quite happy with it except some places where they decided to keep Excel behavior (where it was particularly boneheaded like merged cells) rather than actually implementing it in a useful fashion.
Rather than take the L, Amazon sues state that dared criticize warehouse safety
Re: Key question
They are since the horrible Citizens United ruling.
Originally corporations were "people" only for the purposes of lawsuits (prior to that, you had to file suit against individuals and the leaders/owners could all point fingers at each other making it virtually impossible to prosecute). Then Citizens United decided that corporations are people for all legal purposes (but especially for giving massive amounts of bribes ^W campaign contributions to politicians).
You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis
The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it
Re: windows 11 makes me cry
I would disagree. I like MacOS (except no focus-follows-mouse). From what I've seen and read, I do not like Windows 11 (I've kept telling MS "no, I want to stay on Windows 10").
However, I need a new personal computer before too long so may be stuck with Windows 11 :(
Microsoft: You own the best software keyboard there is. Please let us buy it
I have an iPhone but just found that SwiftKey is available. I may give it a try. Apparently Swype was available but got pulled when it was discontinued (so can't buy it since I didn't before)...
Generally I think iPhone autocorrect and predictions are pretty decent except for two issues that massively bug me:
* It almost always uses "ate" when I want "are"
* It almost always uses negative contractions when I want the positive ("couldn't" vs "could")
Patch now: RCE Spring4shell hits Java Spring framework
Running Windows 10? Microsoft is preparing to fire up the update engines
Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson
XUL and single process were both security risks and there was good reason to abandon those models. Yes, I hated losing some of the addons with XUL but I got over it...
In unrelated weirdness, I have Chrome and Edge setup nearly identically with the same extensions. However, Edge runs GMail noticeably faster than Chrome does...
I still do run Firefox as well. I use each for different things.
ExpressVPN bought for $1bn by Brit biz with an intriguing history in adware
Machine learning data pipeline outfit Splice Machine files for insolvency
Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told
Re: Pot calling Kettle
MMOs like WoW have a different sort of lock-in. They make minimal money off the software itself. They make all of their money off subscriptions (or sometimes in-game-store transactions).
Most music on iTunes is now DRM free. I do have some tracks that are stuck with DRM because Apple only let you "upgrade" from DRM to DRM free for a limited time (there are workarounds - easiest is subscribe to one of Apple's music-related services for 1 month at about $10-15 which allows you to download DRM free).