Posts by Chet Mannly

Meta calls €200M EU fine over pay-or-consent ad model 'unlawful'

Re: Lots of news sites use this model

Difference being news and blogging sites provide actual content - Meta just serves up other people's content provided for free.

Re: As much as it pains me to say this...

"Either everyone should be able to offer "Pay or OK" or nobody should."

Nobody should. Simple.

I really hope this sticks. Since Meta pulled this cr@p everybody and his dog has been slapping 'pay or accept tracking from 1096 partners'* on their websites.

*Actually a real number that was on a website today...

Supremes uphold Texas law that forces age-check before viewing adult material

Re: I Have a Question...

The VPN I use (Windscribe) allows you to create a mock location in the system under Android. Works like a charm - if the GPS is turned off Google maps, Uber et al all dutifully report I am in the middle of the city where the VPN server is.

It's the only one I've stumbled across that has this feature but there are probably others that do it too.

(No affiliation with Windscribe, just a user...)

European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Re: Why upgrade quickly?

The new Pixels give 7 years of updates, even less reason to upgrade...

Re: Do you really need that expensive phone?

Phones are like computers. A couple of decades ago you couldn't wait to update your computer because the new ones were a huge jump in performance. Nowadays you only update your computer when it dies because the difference between a few years old computer and the new one is negligible.

Phones are the same now - the new ones don't do anything the old ones didn't it's a mature industry.

Hence the reason computer and phone makers are desperately spruiking AI to try and make someone buy their prducts again...

Completely unsurprising

How is it surprising that people are holding on to their phones longer?

The market has long reached maturity - new phones are really just 5% faster than the previous model with a 5% better camera. Plus manufacturers are marketing their phones based on how long they get OS upgrades for, some are promising 7 years.

Under those circumstances the only reason you'd upgrade frequently is because you're a prat that always has to show off that you have the latest phone, or someone who gets their phone free on their phone plan.

If the EU have regulated themselves out of the market whinging about the lack of old phones on the market is not the problem they need to address...

100% When the new Samsung Fold came out I looked at upgrading. They offered me A$250 trade-in for the 3 year old top of the line Fold that cost A$3000 3 years ago.

Needless to say I told them to get stuffed...

Google's unloved plan to fix web permissions gathers support

Except the problem is that this will get abused. Google know that the majority of users just click OK, especially when the don't give permission button is reduced to a greyed out text link buried in the permissions box (like they always do with cookie permissions). It also opens the interfect up to a full screen 'approve this or you can't use the website' boxes like the Admiral ones demanding subscriptions.

The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests

Re: Huh what a load of twaddle

"Content created by humans is easy to keep creating, just ask humans to sit in a room and create content."

Except now most of those humans will use AI to create....

Re: the problem pre-dates AI

Except people are using AI to research now.

Re: The problem with AI is trust

The problem is ask most peole and they think that's what it can do and trust it.

Re: Why search?

"good results from asking AI complicated things"

I'd argue you get answers that would please you - not the truth. These things are trained to be yes men that provide believable results you'll be happy with. Sometimes these coincide with the truth, but that is a secondary consideration.

It's the real danger of AI - it's a slightly more sophisticated 'I feel lucky' button from Google search. When was the last time people genuinely thought the first result from a Google search was 100% accurate?

Blocking stolen phones from the cloud can be done, should be done, won't be done

Re: Nice idea

"the scrote is still back on the street nicking phones the same day."

Perhaps you should actually read my comment - it talks specifically about getting them off the streets.

Besides letting 'scrotes' skate with no police intervention achieves nothing.

"Nick the bell end who pays scrotes for stolen phones, and you have a whole bunch of scrotes that have to look elsewhere for their drug money"

Yeah they'll just mug you for your wallet instead, which involves a LOT more risk to the victim. You really need th¡o think things through.

"If you want more cops, then pay more taxes"

I don't want more cops, I want the ones I'm paying for now to actually do their jobs.

Re: Minimal Impact

The police could walk them through it. Heck a police website called 'what to do when your phone gets stolen' would do.

But it isn't about that, it's about the police wanting the power to shut down any phone user they point at.

Re: Nice idea

So you have zero problem handing the UK police the ability to kill any phone they point at?

Err...ok...

Re: Nice idea

"Proven not to work"

Utter garbage. If you take 1 criminal off the street that is 1 less criminal that can potentially break the law and potentially many, many more who will now think twice about it.

Letting criminals run amok and not doing anything about it does nothing to make people safer.

Re: Nice idea

Are you not familiar with the concept of democracy?

Re: Nice idea

You can't. Even if the IMEI is blocked they are still very valuable for parts.

VIN numbers are listed for cars and they are knicked all the time (and the UK police similarly do SFA about it)

Smokescreen

Let's cut through the smokescreen eh?

The solution to not having a global IMEI ban list is to make one.

This is about the UK authorities demanding the ability to kill any phone they choose, just like their demands for backdoors into encryption.

Google and Apple know that if they say they can do it every third-world dictator and authoritarian in the world will be demanding the same power to shut down their opposition.

BTW I have zero skin in this game - running Graphene with zero Google stuff installed so I could care less about their cloud or any bans...

Cops want Apple, Google to kill stolen phones remotely – so why won't they?

Re: Nice non sequitur there...

Why? Because the UK Police want the power to kill any phone on the planet they choose to that's why. Just like they want backdoors into encryption etc...

Re: Maybe...

You don't need to go to the police state/amputation level to get some decent deterrance.

UK police don't even pursue car theives, they just fill out a report for you to hand to your insurance company. They don't enforce anything.

Re: Do the opposite

100% it's about the cops wanting the power over phones. Nothing to do with stolen phones, the plod do sweet FA about thefts in the UK.

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Re: So "You can opt out of Personalization anytime"

Exactly, they'll still hoover up all your data and profile you - they just wont use that data to personalise. Big difference between opting out of data collection and personalisation, seems like MS are only offering the latter...

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

If his move is a negotiating tactic, whereby other countries then come to the table and drop their already-existing tariffs on US goods in exchange for Trump dropping these tariffs then it's better for US businesses selling overseas. If you look at what was happening with Canadian and Mexican tariffs earlier it could be the case.

So the glass-half-full view could be that this is a short-term measure to prompt trade deals where the US had the whip hand. The half empty view being that Trump really thinks the US can ever be cost-competitive with developing countries and import tax his way to prosperity...

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

You also could not download from the website if you had one of their new 2024 Kindles before they dropped the hammer on everyone else.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

Re: Now brave is the default browser

Brave has their own advertising network and at one point were using people's browsers for crypto - you SURE that's a better option than Firefox?

Re: Benefit of continuous improvments?

The problem with that for browsers is that they have always been free, and there are no new features to add for a browser.

It's the same problem Adobe faced when they inflicted subscriptions on the world - Photoshop had gotten to the point where it did everything people wanted it to do and didn't want to pay for new versions (heck I'm still on CS6 and frankly there's still no new features I'd pay for...) so from a corporate perspective their revenue dried up. S***y deal for users though...

Murena kicks Google out of the Pixel Tablet

Privacy doesn't have to cost extra...

"Privacy costs in inconvenience as well as financially. The de-Googled version of the Pixel Tablet costs rather more than the ad-subsidized version from Google"

Privacy doesn't have to cost. OK I get this is a Murena puff piece, but you can buy a normal Pixel tablet and install GrapheneOS for free.

uBlock Origin dead for many as Google purges Manifest v2 extensions

Re: 'privacy'

According to the company, Google's decision to shift to V3 is all in the name of improving its browser's security, privacy, and FINANCIAL performance.

Hmm I have the opposite experience. Firefox is noticeably quicker on my machine, and uses less ram (at least according to the task manager). Could vary according to the sites people visit I guess...

Amazon puts an $8.5bn MGM in its shopping cart, clicks on checkout

Re: Just a shame

100% this. I wanted to rewatch a series, searched for it by it's exact name and it didn't appear in the search results. Show was there, by going back to my history I could watch it, but WTH...

AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

Re: LLMs cannot summarise

"Often it will drop something in the summary that I look at and decide "no, that bit is important, I really want that in" and I put it back in"

Serious question - if you have to review things in that depth anyway, and it's only 100 words, is it actually more efficient?

I could do a 100 word summary of a doc I wrote in about 2 minutes and not have to revise it - is the AI really helping all that much if you have to apply so much effort into review? Let's leave aside the nightmarish reality that probably 90% of people wont bother to review output at all...

Trump's Dept of Transport hits brakes on Biden’s EV charger build-out

Re: Slow charger rollout

All that red tape and seemingly endless complexity slowing everything down is a good argument for a review.

Whether Trump's review is the review it needs is another question though...

TSA’s airport facial-recog tech faces audit probe

Re: "The ones at the gate are private"

Whay would they need to? There's security cameras running facial rec all over the airport

"You don't think there are cameras there taking photos of everyone boarding the flight?"

Do you not understand it is those cameras they are looking into and want to stop?

Re: Opting out seems an available option in my experience

That is not what is being looked at - it's the mass surveillance in the airport that cannot be opted out of that is being examined, not at security checks/boarding.

Re: Privacy?

Every person who enters a US airport is run through facial recognition and identified by the system - that mass surveilance is the problem.

What you linked to is opting out of that identification being then used for things like boarding, not from being identified and tracked in the first place.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: Same story, different year

"Eventually your jalopy can't keep up with traffic on the highway and becomes a hazard to everyone else on the road."

I have a 65 Mustang that would love to differ with that statement.

Re: TPM is my lifeline

And that's the point of the encryption - ensuring it's vastly difficult/impossible for a typical user to recover from a failure unless you have paid for Onedrvie...

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

Err he IS releasing it in Texas. The article states test cars are running in Austin.

Re: "But I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time and you can drive it."

I thought the whole point with self-driving cars was that you *don't* drive them...

Europe, UK weigh up how to respond to Trump's proposed tariffs. One WTF or two?

Re: And

No, you were a citizen of what was an EU country thereby making you a citizen of the EU by extension. Now your country is not part of the EU ergo you aren't an EU citizen.

If EU citizenship is important to you them become a citizen of an EU country. In most EU countries that means living there for 5 years.

Re: There's an easy solution

If Trump introduces tariffs on the EU *he* will be placing traiffs on 'German cars, Swiss watches, French wine and so forth' entering the US.

It seems you don't understand how tariffs work...

Re: Prisoner's Dilemma!

"Breathless reporting about headline figures, not so much reporting about soaring poverty levels."

To be fair that's been an apt description of the US media for at least a couple of decades now.

US AI shares battered, bruised, and holding after yesterday's DeepSeek beating

Re: Too early...

"Students all over the world already recognized that writing "good" prose and correct grammar has become as easy as using correct orthography."

Those students haven't learned enything except gto get a computer to do their work for them.

And I'd hardly call what GPT produces as good prose. It's grammar is hit and miss as well...

Words alone won't get the stars and stripes to Mars

Re: Columbus?

Not to mention Columbus actually made the full trip - Magellan died less than halfway into his trip, before they even decided to try and circumnavigate the world.

Elcano was actually the Captain that circumnavigated the globe...

Trump hits undo on Biden AI safety order, EV mandate, emissions standards, and more

Re: What is interesting is the economics behind it all

Safe bet - you can say those 2 things about every administration in the last couple of decades.

The only thing that varies slightly is which group of squillionaires get to line their pockets the most...

Copilot invades Microsoft 365 Personal and Family for an extra three bucks a month

I did the same last year when I got a new laptop and MS refused to activate my "perpetual" Office licence on the new machine.

Interface isn't quite as polished but does absolutely everything MS Office does, and with a lot less fuss.

'Savvy' shortcuts produce near-instant speech-to-speech translation of 36 languages

They do lots of real-word research - in California :)

Re: A few loose thoughts

"how do they 'know' what is 'reliable'?"

100% this. Skype builds language models locally for incorporation into MS' larger models. These local models are built on my language lessons in very rudimentary Italian and somewhat better Spanish. I can't imagine how horrific the models Skype is building based on my terrible 2nd and 3rd languages are...